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The Social Organization of Book Production in China During the Sung Dynasty

The Social Organization of Book Production in China During the Sung Dynasty

PRINTING AS AN AGENT OF SOCIAL STABILITY: THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION IN DURING THE SUNG DYNASTY

by David Wei Ze M.Phil, Stirling University, UK, 1991

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the School of Communication

O David Wei Ze 1995 Simon Fraser University February 1995

All rights resewed. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. APPROVAL

NAME David Ze

DEGREE Ph.D.

TITLE l'IIIN7'IN(; AS AN A(;ENrI'

EXAMINING COMMITTEE:

Chair Willi,im Ricli~irds PARTIAL, LICENSE

1 hcsehy grant to Simon Fr;rscr IJn~vcssitythe sight to lend my thesis. psc!ject or c~xtcrided essay (the title of which is shown hc.low) to users ofthc Simon Fsi~serClnivcss~ty

Lihrasy, and to m;rkc p;u'tial or- single copies only i'os such users or in rcsp~isc.to a

rcy~cstII'rom the lihsary ot' any otlics u~iivcssity.or other educational institut~on,on it\ own hcliali' or i'os one of' its user-s. I I'u~llics agr-ce that pcrrnission for niultiplc. copying ol'tliis tIiCsis 1.0s SCIIOIIISI~ 1x11-POSCS11i;ly he gsimteti hy nlc or the Dean ofGsnd11ate

Studies. It is ~~ntlcsstoodthat copying 01. publication 01' this thesis for fi~ii~ncialpi11

shall not hc ;~llowcclwithout niy written permissio~i. ABSTRACT

Through a case study of the history of in China during the Sung Dynasty (960-

1279), this dissertation explores the use and development of a communication and the social factors that influenced it. In imperial China, monopoly of knowledge production was a consistent state policy of ideological control over book production. When became widespread and was invented in the Sung Dynasty, state control was strong enough to ensure that these became new ways to produce standardized texts and, as a result, ways to extend state control over the dissemination of ideas in Chinese society. Even though favorable social conditions were in place for the development of printing in the Sung, such as the establishment of a civil society and the civil service examination system, urbanization, commercialization, and the growth of popular culture, the new civil environment did not change any of the fundamental political dynamics surrounding Printing. Furthermore, Chinese printed texts had strong oral residues, which encouraged a "restricted " among the general public; this "restricted literacy" was oriented to memorization and aloud and neglectful of logical thinking. By a comparison with Europe at the time when printing was first introduced, this study

argues that technological change may not necessarily bring social change. On the contrary, because the use of technology is subject to social dynamics and human agency, it can just as easily consolidate tradition as bring about change. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

My ideas and interests in the research of history, which had their origin at Stirling University, could only develop as a dissertation with constant guidance and encouragement from Professor Rowland Lorimer, my senior supervisor. He read all the drafts of my dissertation and offered many detailed suggestions. He worked arduously in the shaping of the dissertation, and without whose patient and intelligent handling of problems of presentation it might well never have reached its final form. His dedication to the task, strict requirements on my work and friendship to me are priceless outcomes

of this work. I would also like to express my gratitude to a number of people, especially Professor Paul Heyer and Professor Jan Walls, whose advice, help and ideas have been responsible for whatever may be of value in this dissertation. It goes without saying that many of the virtues which this dissertation may contain are due to others, and that what is wanting in judgment and style can be imputed only to myself. I also wish to thank my wife, Jean , for her continued understanding and encouragement during my Ph.D program. The five sagely kings had no disciples, not because there were not virtuous men but because their philosophy was not recorded. The five kings had no successors, not because there were no qualified politicians but because their

Policies were not recorded. Yij and T'ang's policies were less organized than the Chou's, not because they had less qualified political philosophers but because they did not have adequate records. CONTENTS

Abstract iii

Acknowledgement iv

Quotation v

Chapter 1 : The Question Raised 1

Chapter 2: Book Publishing Before the Sung Dynasty 29

Chapter 3: The Sociocultural Background for the Development of

Printing in the Sung

Chapter 4: Confucianism and the Civil Service Examination

Chapter 5: State Book Production

Chapter 6: The Banning of

Chapter 7: Literati and Literati Culture

Chapter 8: Civil Book Printing and Collecting

Chapter 9: The "Chinese Dream" in Popular

Chapter 10: Oral Discourse in Print Literature

Chapter 11 : A Comparison with the European Situation

Chapter 12: Summary and Conclusion: Printing as a

Sociocultural Product

Bibliography CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION: THE QUESTION RAISED

The study of printing as the first means of mass communication has received more and more attention in recent years. In the West, the coming of the is regarded

as a dividing line between the medieval and modern ages. In McLuhan and Eisenstein's

Paradigms, the printing press brought forward a new mentality - typographical man - and

the new mentality gave rise to a series of social transformations.

According to Eisenstein (1980) and McLuhan (1962), science and technology

started to enjoy rapid development because printing linked individual scientists to an

integrated body of research and researchers could build up their knowledge-production

on the basis of previous endeavours. Cross-indexing, which was made possible by the

Production of identical copies in quantity from the printing press, substantially widened

Scientists' visions for their and designs by providing an easy access for

reference to other people's works. Double-entry bookkeeping greatly facilitated business

operations and the development of trade on a sophisticated level was the prelude to the

development of capitalism. Through investment, risk-taking and profit generation,

Publishers as one group among the earliest capitalists helped to bring entrepreneurship

into society.

All these elements laid the foundation for industrialization in Europe by the

eighteenth century. Politically, the printing press broke through the knowledge monopoly

Of the Church and started to spread democratic ideals. Luther's Reformation was a direct

Chapter I 1 result of the use of the printing press. When the voices of various political forces found their outlet through the printed word, a representative system in parliament was made

Possible. Scholarly printers acted as the bridge between scholars, workers and readers and successfully emancipated philosophy from the ivory tower of universities. The traditional relationship between artists, patrons and the public also changed with the coming of the press. Print enabled artists to publish their own works for a profit in the marketplace and financially they could expect to stand on their own rather than relying on patrons. In their pursuit of market value, artists began to have the freedom for the development of their own originality and thus, individualism emerged.

Culturally, the printing press promoted literature in vernacular languages and encouraged the growth of popular culture. Folk stories, lyrics, songs, etc. were recorded and spread in print form and became the repertoire of a whole cultural tradition. Gradually

People's mentality changed from the 'holy" to the secular, from superstition to rational thinking, from closed to open, from worship of the old to a yearning for the new, from

Observed to adventurous, and from the tolerance of the status quo to a commitment to

Social change. AS a result, Europe witnessed fundamental social, economic, political and

cultural transformations from the seventeenth century forward. When we trace its roots,

the printing press provided a technological foundation for a beginning of the emancipation

Of consciousness.

CHINESE APPROACH IN PUBLISHING STUDIES

The glorification of printing is equally celebrated in China, but the emphasis is on printing

Chapter 1 -- the hardware and skills -- rather than on social organization and its consequences.

Chinese printing existed at least six hundred years earlier than in Europe, but it seemed to have nothing to do with modernization as the European press did. Compared with

McLuhan and Eisenstein's fascinating lists of the social changes in Europe brought about by the printing press, the image of Chinese printing was gloomy. In Europe, the coming of the printing press was like a timely rain in a drought and it spread throughout the continent in fifty years. In China, the story was different. At first, printing was restricted to marginal areas in Ssu-chluan and was neglected by the ruling elite. We still do not know when block printing was first used. At its beginning it was suppressed - we know that civil printing existed in the T'ang Dynasty (689-987) largely from imperial orders banning it. In the Sung Dynasty (987-1268), printing experienced a rapid development, but the use of the technique was not followed with an age of fundamental social changes.

In contrast to Europe, Chinese printing was employed to strengthen centralized control and unorthodox voices were further silenced. Vernacular -- the dialects of various regions -- were marginalized to a greater extent than before its and printing helped establish the classical style as the only formal discourse. Even movable type - the

Symbol of modernization in Europe - was rarely used and we have no more than thirty

Words of the use of movable type from the Sung to the Ch'ing dynasties (1644-1911).

China stuck to woodblock printing throughout the imperial time until Western missionaries

Imported Gutenberg's technique into China.

However, China has many reasons to glorify the technical side of its printing.

Where printing was very much connected with the "modernization myth' in the West, in

Chapter 1 3 China it is closely associated with the "tradition myth" - a myth that celebrates the

"intelligent superiority" of the past. China had which exerted

substantial influence on human history: , printing, the compass and gunpowder.

Francis Bacon says:

We should note the force, effect and consequences of inventions which are nowhere more conspicuous than in those three which were unknown to the ancients, namely, printing, gunpowder and the compass. For these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world. (Bacon, 1985: 129)

Among the four inventions, two were connected with printing. Paper was invented in

China in A.D. 105 and it has been widely acknowledged that Europeans learned the

technique of paper-making from Chinese. Printing technique started in the seventh

century, although some scholars have alleged that it appeared even earlier (see Chapter

TWO).Chinese movable type was invented in the eleventh century and it was noted by

Shen Kuo in his (Meng hsipi tan) in 1086. It is generally agreed that

Gutenbergls invention, about four hundred years after Pi Sheng, was independent, but

it is not totally illogical to imagine that Chinese movable type could have had an influence

On it. Although we have no record that Gutenberg learned his technique from the

Chinese, we equally have no record how he invented it (Rawlings, 1901: 89-93). Given

the fact that Marc0 polo brought back a lot of Chinese experience and the Mongolian

hordes brought many oriental techniques and crafts to Europe during their westward

in the thirteenth century, it might be conjectured that the concept of printing

Originally came from China.

In the past thirty years, we have seen many books about the development of

Chapter 1 4 Chinese printing, the most outstanding one being Tsien Tsuen-hsuin's Paper and Printing.

These books, mostly in Chinese, provide detailed descriptions of how printing production operated, what kind of materials were used, the names of renowned printers and the titles they produced. Much of their content is repetitive and they have a similar orientation: the early use of printing techniques was a hallmark of Chinese intelligence and evidence of

China's highly advan-bed civilization.

Ironically, the first systematic exploration of Chinese printing history was undertaken by a European, Thomas Carter. He provides, for the first time, a detailed account of how printing evolved in China, how it was used in different dynasties and how it influenced the neighbouring countries. In the eyes of Chinese scholars, Carter's book was Western recognition of China's superior position in the use of printing techniques, but

Carter also lefi the Chinese scholars with a sense of regret; they did not systematically

dig their own treasure, but waited for an "outsider" to it out for them.

There was a cultural reason that Chinese scholars did not start the research by

themselves. Traditionally, printing belonged to the area of artisanship and it could be

connected with the culture of scholars only after the finished books were displayed in

Scholars1 studies. TO study the technique of printing was undignified work for a real

Scholar, just as the craft of the blacksmith, the baker, the barber and the potter did not

deserve scholars' attention.

At best, the study of printing was a token of a scholar's casual interest

to his talent in history and poetry. He would concentrate not on the

Process of book-making, but on the "cultural' side of books - the editions of books, the

Chapter 1 5 changes made by various literati printers, the styles of layout and binding, the comments on a particular , the collections of books by individual scholars, rare books, and the forewords and postscripts of different editions. In such research works, details of

Production processes were not recorded, such as how printers decided on their titles and reprints, how many days were needed on average for preparing the woodblocks for a book, how many copies could be printed in one day, how long a woodblock could be

used, how much investment was involved, what were the print runs specifically or in a general sense, what was the profit margin between the book price and the cost, how the

books were distributed and how a bookseller settled his account with the , and

whether a printer paid anything to an author and in what form.

The traditional treatment of printing history was usually a list of happenings, such

as Scholar X edited and printed a book in one hundred volumes (not one hundred copies)

and Scholar Y collected ten editions of this book. The emphasis was always on the

Scholarship rather than on the market process. The best-noted book of such research

was Written by Yeh Te-hui, a rural member of the gentry, a holder of chin-shih degree'

at the end of the Ch'ing Dynasty, and an imperial loyalist who was executed in the

revolution in 1927. His book Clear Talks in the Forest of Books (Shu /in ch'ing hua) was

an introduction to various printing and binding techniques and some literati printers in

history. It was an attempt to preserve the fading cultural tradition of woodblock printing

against the widespread use of Western movable metal type. After the book was

1 A degree in imperial China, similar to a doctoral degree in the modern sense. See Chapter Four.

Chapter 1 6 Due to the literati cultural bias in the research of printing history, much useful data were ignored and nowadays we have no way to know how market imperatives were involved in book production. For instance, we only know that the price of labour, paper, woodblocks and was cheap and therefore, the book price was cheap, but we do not know how cheap it was for the rural gentry, for a tenant, for an artisan, or for a scholar- official. We know that many state and civil printers in the Sung Dynasty were engaged in printing encyclopedias in hundreds of volumes and we assume that the initial cost was substantial. But we don't know if they collected orders before they started carving woodblocks, or carved woodblocks first and waited for orders before printing, or prepared a Stock at their own risk and waited for buyers. Nor do we know if the initial cost - the Preparation of the woodblocks - was subsidized by the state or rich families. These things were not recorded either in standard histories or in the essays of scholars. Maybe

We can find some clues from the local records of villages and counties, but nobody has

done this work. There are technical difficulties; some of the records have been destroyed

in the cultural revolution and the systems in China are so poor that a data search

1s like trying to "find a needle in a haystack".

After Carter's book was translated into Chinese in 1936, the study of Chinese

Printing history became a popular subject in China and the basic purpose was to

'competeu with Carter and prove that the Chinese could do a better job of describing their

Own history. Carter's book would not have received such attention in China if it had

appeared earlier. The study of traditional printing could come onto scholars' desks only

after the woodblock technique was no longer used and became an antique with a new

Chapter I 7 meaning. The practical obsolescence of woodblock printing brought scholarly and cultural

Prestige to its study. But almost all research works continue to follow the old paradigms and distance the use of the technique from the sociocultural context. They provide a long list of individual stories, such as "in this year a certain market appeared" and "in that year a certain technique was used", some of which were not noted by Carter, but nobody is interested in why this or that happened at a particular moment.

The reification of historical happenings gives a reader the impression that Chinese

Printing technology developed along a linear route and in a natural manner. A careful reader may have questions about this linear history; China had wood seals with many characters and stone inscriptions from the second century, so why did it take several

hundred years to adapt these techniques to woodblock printing? Why did China refuse to use movable type? Why did a thousand years of printing experience from the Sung to

the Ch'ing only produce several hundred new titles, according to our present record? Why

Was there no record of printing before the T'ang emperor issued orders for state printing?

Why do we have many records of book but little about book sales? Why do we

always focus on a handful of elite -- famous politicians, poets and historiographers who

are recorded in many other histories -- in regard to printing history, while few other people

are noted? why do we only have the production record of Confucianist books, histories,

Buddhist and Taoist literature, encyclopedias and standardized fictions, but no other

Popular genres such as fodune-telling, astrology, how-to books, civil rituals and even

Pornography?

The researchers have no answers and are reluctant to explore them, because the

Chapter 1 8 explorations will complicate the issue of Chinese printing history and will not bolster the

''tradition myth". In their efforts to reify individual happenings in printing history, they have made some improvements in data , such as the exact year that a particular book was printed and a complete list of titles that a particular printer produced, but I see no distinct advance from Thomas Carter's level of analysis. The research is treated more as a Promotion of the cultural prestige of the country than a social study of a technology.

WFICULTIES IN THE STUDY OF CHINESE PUBLISHING HISTORY

There are political reasons that the social study of printing history is avoided: the research of printing technique is safe while the research of its social organization is politically inconvenient. In concentrating exclusively on the hardware and skills, researchers can avoid the issue of human agents and cultural policies which may have obvious

implications for the present situation. Looking into history, we will find that the publishing

Structure in China has been remarkably consistent. The only difference between the

beginning and the modern time when the technology has become more

advanced is that the centralized control is tighter. The state has been the largest

Publisher throughout Chinese history. In the imperial time, civil publishers were allowed

to exist in marginal positions and under close state scrutiny; now civil publishers are

forbidden and state publishers are the only channel to represent the voice of the party

and the "people'.

Both in the past and in the present, printing technology has been controlled by the

persons who have been properly educated within the state ideology. In the imperial time,

Chapter 1 9 they were scholar-officials in the government, scholar-commoners who enjoyed the state's

Patronage, and non-scholars who did not attain a degree but had received the same education. In the present time they are university graduates with degrees and self-trained

People who gain their positions by passing certain political examinations. Although the form of education for publishers has changed from Confucianism to Marxism, from calligraphy practice to , the trainees have always been regarded as the apparatus of the state. The task of a publisher has been the same in the past and the

Present: the production of standardized texts.

A publisher's primary job is not to create new titles and generate profits, but to design, select, edit and standardize texts for the moral education of the entire population.

The establishment of canons is the most important task, although it was Confucianism in the past and it is Marxism in the present. The standardization of history is another fundamental work. In the imperial time, the standardization was about the histories of

Previous dynasties. Now it extends to world histories. are the main channel for the Standardized texts and their production is monopolized by the state. In the imperial he,the monopoly was limited to the editorial sector and private printers could reprint them on the condition of faithfulness; now the state also monopolizes production and

Selling and special publishing houses (e.g. the people's education publishing house) are

established to reinforce the process.

Because of the pre-determined political orientation, editors always occupy the

dominant position of a publishing house. Production and selling are regarded as minor

and unworthy parts of a house both in the past and in the present and are not thought

Chapter 1 10 to be suitable careers for a man with a proper education. Technically, woodblock printing, an ideal means for reprints of standardized texts, has been replaced by movable type, but technology has provided a better means for the reprints: letterpress , film and, nowadays, a floppy disk. The structure of production remains the same and the

efficiency is much higher. In the imperial time, the Imperial Academy, the State Book

Administration and other state organs produced standardized texts and distributed them

to provinces and counties. Local printers, both state and civil ones, carved woodblocks

accordingly, printed them and sold them on local markets. Nowadays, local publishers are

supplied with letterpress stereotype or film produced by the publisher of the central

government. It is put on the machine and millions of identical copies appear in every

corner of the country. The modern state is more strategic than the imperial court in

considering market imperatives in publishing reprints. In the past, local printers still took

limited financial risk in carving their own woodblocks, although the market for the reprints

Was obvious. Nowadays the state uses administrative orders to make every factory,

company, government office, school and village buy dozens or hundreds of the

Standardized texts. Local publishers already have tens of thousands of orders in hand

before they press the button for reprinting and the letterpress stereotype or film is

Provided to them by central publishers virtually without cost. There is no reason for local

Publishers not to be enthusiastic about the reprints: the state allows them to keep a

Substantial part of the proceeds from reprints for their new apartment buildings, new

Offices and new cars.

The structure of book usage is also the same. In the past, books were read by

Chapter 1 11 teachers to students in the classroom, by local gentry to villagers in rural communities,

and by storytellers to the illiterate in teahouses. Now books are read in study groups in

every factory and village by political instructors to both the literate and the illiterate.

Storytellers read books aloud on television. The difference is that in the past, local gentry

and storytellers had to buy books with their own , but the present political

instructors can use government funds to buy "educational materials" and write them off

in their financial report.

The biggest difference in the publishing structure is the distribution system. In the

imperial time, books were mainly sold by private booksellers and there was no

administrative system to guarantee that the standardized texts could be accurately

reproduced and distributed in a timely fashion in every province. Neither was there a

system to guarantee that non-standardized books could be permanently eliminated from

the market. There were repeated imperial decrees that the book market should be

cleansed of unauthorized books and badly-produced editions. Now the state has

established a nation-wide distribution system -the Hsin-hua Bookstore - which guarantees

that only standardized texts circulate on the market and "illegal publications" - books not

authorized by a state publisher - have no access to readers. Through such a process, the

State fully monopolizes the book market and controls people's reading opportunities.

There are many other policies that were beyond the imperial rulers' imagination, such as

the State's regulations for book pricing and for the payment to authors, the reinforcement

Of book and journal registration numbers, the compulsory submission of publishing plans

for approval one year ahead of time, the control of paper supply, the special license to

Chapter 1 printers for book production, regular ideological training to editors and publishers, the mutual political supervision between publisher, printer and bookseller, the human resource control of every unit that involves publishing, and, above all, the arbitrary allocation of

Publishing areas to each publishing house, a method learned from the former Soviet

Union.

It is not difficult to see that the Chinese cultural policies have been a continuum in history. The social function of Chinese printing is not to facilitate knowledge production, but to monopolize knowledge production - an orientation that is not only inconsistent with the "tradition myth", but also contradicts the state ideology. Consequently, any analysis of the social organization of printing in history is likely to be regarded as an attack against the existing cultural policies and cultural regime and is thus politically incorrect or dangerous.

APPLYING A WESTERN FRAMEWORK TO CHINESE CONTEXT

In the West, Carter's book virtually closed off the research into Chinese printing history

and few books have addressed the issue of the social organization of printing in the

Chinese context, although there are some minor works, such as Twitchett's (1983)

booklet Printing and Publishing in Medieval China. Probably there is a technical difficulty

for Western scholars; a good knowledge of Chinese classical language is required for the

and the acquisition of this knowledge is formidable even for a native Chinese.

In recent years, however, especially since 1980'~~many Western scholars have

come to the issue of book printing in their research of Chinese popular culture, such as

Chapter I 13 David Johnson (1985), Richard Smith (1983), Chun-shu Chang (1992) and Shelley Chang

(1990), just to mention a few. Although book printing is never a main topic in their , they have offered insightful views about the social organization and the social function of printing in imperial China. Because they are free from the "task" of cultural promotion which has been ideologically assigned to the scholars in China, they have ventured into the study of the political and cultural limitations of the Chinese printing and their research has laid a foundation for a re-examination of Chinese printing history.

Meanwhile, publishing studies in the West have provided useful frameworks for a re-examination of the printing press. Since Eisenstein published her monumental The

Pkting Press as an Agent of Change (1980), studies of publishing history have increased in importance and have been given more attention. In publishing studies, book printing

is not treated as a purely technical activity, nor is it a symbol of civilization or

modernization, suitable for worshipping. It is a social activity and its social organization

1s an important ingredient within a broad sociopolitical environment. Research into the

history of the formation of the social organization of publishing not only sheds light on the

understanding of history, but also provides clues for understanding the present.

This framework is what inspires this dissertation. However, there is a theoretical

difficulty in applying a Western framework within a Chinese context: printing technologies

were different in Europe and in China. One was movable metal type and the other was

woodblock printing. When Eisenstein, McLuhan, et al. regard the printing press as the

force for the rapid social transformations in Europe after the sixteenth century,

are talking about movable type. But in China, even though movable type was

Chapter I 14 invented, it was rarely used. Therefore, the question raised is whether the rare use of movable type in China determined that Chinese printing played a "medieval" role in its constitution of social settings. Why didn't China use movable type more extensively?

Many scholars, such as Gernet (1972), Goody (1968) and McLuhan (1962), think that China did not use movable type because there are too many characters. It saves a lot of labour to carve a woodblock instead of creating a large collection of movable type.

This explanation is not entirely convincing, because the total number of characters in common use was quite limited, especially in imperial times. Although the total number of characters in Chinese is said to be 58,000, the characters in common use are just three thousand.

An American missionary, William Gamble, who printed a Chinese Bible in Shanghai

in 1860, undertook some statistical research on the subject. (Ho & Lai, 1984: 230) The

whole Chinese Bible, including the Old and New Testaments, had 1.I million characters

with 5,150 individual characters. Only thirteen characters were used more than ten

thousand times and 224 were used more than one thousand times. Characters used

fewer than five times numbered 3,715, about 72% of the total individual characters used.

GambleYsresearch shows that technically the variety of characters is not as overwhelming

as is often thought. Although Pi Sheng (1040s) and Wang Chen's (1290s) movable type

Was made of clay and wood, movable metal type (1380% see Chang Hsiu-min, 1988: 19)

Was Soon developed. Logically it should be more convenient to cast a mould for a

character than to write and carve the same character ten thousand times.

Wang Chen's invention of the turning case in 1298 was a SUCC~SS~U~attempt at

Chapter 1 15 movable . The typesetter had three rotating shelves around him, each shelf held dozens of cases with different characters arranged according to their phonetic features. The typesetter could sit in a relaxed manner and compose the galley. There are some official records of the use of movable metal type. Emperor Yung Cheng used movable type to print a huge anthology in ten thousand volumes in 1726. The

printer made up several pages, did the printing, disassembled the type and made up new

Pages. The speed of printing was quite fast. Even at the present time, movable

typesetting is still the cheapest and most popular means of book production. A typesetter,

most of whom are women, holds a wooden frame, walks along several groups of shelves

retrieving different characters to make several dozen pages in a working day. We could

say that the large number of characters was not an insurmountable obstacle to using of

movable type in the imperial time.

Different printing technologies seem to have been chosen in China and in Europe

because of different political and cultural intentions. We may partly agree with McLuhan's

Paradigm that woodblock printing was not suitable for the development of the

't~~ogra~hicalman', but even if movable type had been extensively used in China, one

cannot conclude that Chinese publishing history would have been fundamentally different.

In fact, in the imperial time, the books produced by movable type looked exactly the same

as those produced by woodblock printing. Historians can distinguish them only from

typographical mistakes - a reversed character in the text shows that the book was made

from movable type. On the other hand, the use of woodblock printing did not hinder the

speed of the publication of new editions. For example, from 1163 to 1189, 208 titles were

Chapter i 16 carved and printed; about forty were updated versions of Confucian classics (Chang,

1988: 96). In Emperor Kuang-tsung's reign in 1190-1 194, another ten updated versions

of the classics were produced (Chang, 1988: 108).

The appearance of new editions was almost as frequent as new books were in

Europe when Gutenberg's invention started to be used. Although one may assume that

the continuous use of woodbiock printing was a factor in the slow social progress in

imperial China, we must see that the use of woodblock printing was a result of social

conditions, which could not be fundamentally transformed merely because of the change

of a technique. In other words, the "medieval" role that China's printing played was not

caused by using hardware and skills in a simplistic manner, but by the social organization

behind the technology.

Recent publishing studies provide a useful framework for the study of the social

organization of printing technology through an examination of the relationship between

author, publisher, printer, bookseller and reader. They ask such questions as who writes

the texts, who decides what to publish, who prints the texts, who buys the texts and who

uses which texts for what purposes. This framework encompasses a vast area far beyond

book publishing. Darnton gives an example of such exploration in his study of the French

Revolution. He says:

Without the press, they can conquer the Bastille, but they cannot overthrow the Old Regime. To seize power they must seize the word and spread it ....When the revolutionaries grasped the bar of the press and forced the down on type locked in its , they sent new energy streaming through the body politic. came to life again, and humanity was amazed. (Darnton and Roche, 1989: xiii-xiv)

Four points arise from this passage. First, the transformation of coercive might into

Chapter 1 17 cultural hegemony depends on the ability to produce and disseminate ideas. Second, social organization of printing is an indispensable part of social stability or social transformation. It would be unimaginable for the Jacobins !o control the power while the aristocrats still controlled the press. Therefore, in examining the social function of printing, we should not only look at the technique, but also at the nature and dynamics of ownership and the content it produces. Third, printing technology is like a weapon and

its social effect depends on who uses it for what purpose. In other words, the social

function of a technology is dependent upon its user's actions and ability to act. Fourth,

the historical function of printing must be examined within the context of particular periods

of history. Instead of examining printing on an abstract level, we must look into particular

historical moments and see how the technology was socially constructed and

institutionalized.

AN OUTLINE OF THIS DISSERTATION

This dissertation is composed on the basis of the above framework - it puts aside the

issue of the modern and the medieval and the place of individual happenings and,

instead, considers the original context, i.e. the sociocultural infrastructure in which printing

Was used and developed. I chose the Sung Dynasty (960-1279) for this examination,

because it was in this period that printing technology was widely used and movable type

Was invented. To some degree, it was like the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Europe,

In Which Gutenberg's technique spread rapidly and a medieval society was displaced by

modernity. Although there is a four-hundred-year difference, social similarities make the

Chapter i 18 two periods comparable. Both had just emerged from a medieval age where aristocrats and military men occupied dominant positions and both developed a civil society. Both societies witnessed a rapid growth of the merchant class and experienced unprecedented commercialization and urbanization. Popular culture underwent a rich development in

China and Europe and book readership shifted from the aristocrat to middle and lower classes. Of course there were many differences in the different degree of centralization of authority, modes of production and ownership, religious impact, geographical environment, military situation, philosophy, moral values and cultural policies. These differences made the same technology operate in a different manner and generate different social effects in the two civilizations.

The second chapter of the dissertation introduces the use of writing and printing technologies before the Sung Dynasty. Through a brief look at the two-thousand-year history before the Sung, we will find that the imperial cultural policy toward the use of

Printing technology was consistent; it was designed not to facilitate knowledge production, but to control and monopolize knowledge production. The ruling class had long realized that the control of text production was fundamental to the consolidation of imperial rule.

should be allowed to have access to texts and study them, but should not be

allowed to create or change texts as they pleased. Various measures were taken to make

standardized texts unchangeable by their users, from moulding texts on metal utensils to

carving stone inscriptions. The use of printing technology was just a continuation of this

Policy. When imperially authorized editions were carved on WOO~~~OC~S,they bore the

authority of seals and no one was entitled to make any changes. The advantage of

Chapter i 19 woodblocks for repeated reprints of identical texts was fully exploited under this policy regime.

The third chapter tries to address why printing was widely used in the Sung time but not in earlier times. Printing technology had existed several hundred years before the

Sung Dynasty, but it had no room for development in a medieval society where great clans dominated society by using coercive force and maintained power by the

rather than by texts. It took several hundred years for the ruling elite to realize that winning consent was a more effective and long-lasting policy for maintaining hegemonic

leadership. Learning from past lessons, the Sung emperors aimed to establish a civil

society and they tried to use moral education as the main method of social control.

Standardized education needed standardized texts and political necessity made the

growth of printing technology a matter of first priority. Meanwhile, the civil society greatly

Promoted trade, urbanization and communication systems. The consumers of books

extended from literati to non-literati and functional literacy opened job opportunities in

urban areas. Improvement of the infrastructure and a change in the general sociocultural

atmosphere brought an ideal environment for the proliferation of printing.

The fourth chapter deals with imperial policy of cultural hegemony, which was the

theoretical rationale for the development of printing. The philosophical basis of the

hegemonic policy was Confucianism. A emphasized winning the consent of the populace

and it proposed a series of concepts for their moral education. Through sophisticated

~hilosophic~larguments, Confucianism tailored an ideological web which tightly bonded

people's ~onsciousness.Its basic political discourse was the Tao and it used the concept of jen as the manifest and materialization of the Tao. The civil service examination was a Coercive measure in the process of winning consent. The largest portion of book production in the Sung Dynasty was for the examination. Indeed, we can say that without the examination system, printing could not have made such rapid development. The examination was not just for a handful of the cultural elite. It produced a sociocultural mechanism which brought the widest part of the population into the mainstream of moral education. Although the success rate in the examination was small, preparation for the examination was by itself a symbolic mark of a person's and of his family's social status.

Schools were the places where examination candidates were trained. Students from a

Young age were exposed to Confucianist texts and they spread the Confucianist ideology to their family members and neighbours. A requirement for the preparation of the examination was standardized textbooks authorized by the state. Because of the possible

Profits that were obvious from printing, civil printers were actively engaged in

Production. Thus the entire printing force of the country was brought under the regime of state control. The examination system brought market imperatives into the production and dissemination of standardized texts and stimulated the printers' voluntary act.

The fifth chapter is about state printing. The state was always the largest book

Publisher in history. It controlled the authority for the standardization of texts and only

Such texts were allowed to publicly circulate on the market. The political necessity for the

establishment of standardized texts made editors enjoy the highest position in the book

trade. The state publisher was a "not-for-profit' organization. It standardized texts and

encouraged private printers to copy them free of charge. Some Chinese researchers have

Chapter 1 21 claimed that the concept of "copyright" started in the Sung. However, the Chinese concept of copyright was fundamentally different from that of the West. It was not at all related to the author's economic status and its sole purpose was to guarantee that the copying of the versions standardized by the state was faithful and accurate. The

Propagation of standardized texts made woodblock printing an ideal means of

reproduction. After the woodblock was carved, no change was ever possible. By

comparison, movable type was not suitable for this purpose, because type had to be reset

each time a reprint was needed.

In the process of standardization, the state publisher acted as censor. It evaluated

existing texts, made additions, deletions and changes according to political and cultural

need, and issued orders.for printing. The unchosen texts would not enter the marketplace

and gradually they were forgotten and lost. The Sung Dynasty was famous for its

encyclopedias, which were collections of chosen essays. History has shown that only

texts Standardized in the encyclopedias have been preserved. We have little knowledge

about books mentioned by title only in the encyclopedias. None of the content of the

books was included, and no record remains of books that were totally discarded by the

encyclopedia editors. This kind of censorship did not involve imperial inspectors making

regular visits to private printing shops; usually private printers did not have to submit

every book for the state's approval before printing. The state relied largely on market

imperatives to consolidate its control, imperatives that were designed by the state for its

Political ends. Under the sociocultural mechanism of the civil service examination and

Standardized moral education, unauthorized books had small market value and private

Chapter 1 22 printers had little interest in printing them.

The sixth chapter is about the banning of books. When standardized texts were

Propagated, non-standardized texts were banned. Although the market for unauthorized books was generally small, there were always private printers who sought loopholes. For

instance, when imperial calendars did not arrive on time, private printers produced civil

calendars and could expect quick returns. Some genres of books, such as fortune-telling,

were totally despised and ignored by imperial editors and private printers would produce

them to cater to local needs. Usually the state would not bother with these minor printing

Projects, but some private printers went too far - they would omit the dates of imperial

rituals in their unauthorized calendars and indicate the fate of the existing dynasty in their

fortune-telling books. Thus began the practice of banning. The method of banning was

to burn the unsold books and destroy the woodblocks. The purpose of banning was

always political, but we should not overestimate the imperial rulers' ideological judgement.

Many of the bannings were not based on farsighted plans, but on superstitious, political

in-fighting within the court, and the intention of disguising imperial foibles and failures.

The Sung also saw a new kind of persecution that paralleled the proliferation of

Printing: literary inquisition. In the inquisition, not only writers, but also printers.

booksellers, book-readers, book-owners, the family members of these people, and their

neighbours and friends who did not report them, were persecuted and punished with

flogging or the death penalty. The reason for the literary inquisition was often not that a

book carried serious unorthodox views, but that several innocent words in a book were

thought by the ruler to insult the court officials or the emperor. After the Sung, the literary

Chapter 1 23 inquisition became more and more serious and frequent. The literary inquisition as a coercive measure for the regulation of book production brought terror to private printers.

Though they did not want to commit themselves exclusively to the reproduction of

standardized texts, they were forced back onto the "correct" route.

The seventh chapter is about literati and literati culture. When we talk about

Chinese book writers, printers and the majority of readers, we mean this group of people.

For the purpose of this publishing study, we categorize literati not as a social class, but

as a social group. They included scholar-officials, scholar-commoners and some non-

scholars who were not degree holders but had been cultivated in this tradition. Many civil

Printers were non-scholars. Their products spread Confucianist ideals to the remotest

villages and educated thousands of degree holders. But literati culture was not limited to

this social group. It penetrated deeply into the circle of non-literati who constituted the

majority of the population.

The non-literati were by no means homogeneous. Many of them, such as the

wives, butlers and maids of literati families, were heavily influenced by literati qualities.

Even for people who had no personal relationship with literati, they were exposed to

literati culture through civil rituals, communications at the marketplace and popular

entertainment. Thus literati culture was an overwhelming web that ensured the cultural

integrity of the whole country. If we examine the cultural as it is recorded,

at least, we will find that so-called is nothing but literati culture and it is

materialized in the non-literati sector in the form of books, the dragon dance, the dragon

boat race, religious worship, the moon cake, antithetical couplets, heroic legends, etc. In

Chapter 1 24 order to understand the essence of imperial Chinese printing, we must know who the literati were, what their social, cultural, economic and political status was, what role they played in mass communication and how they used printing io consolidate literati culture.

The eighth chapter deals with book printing and as a symbolic mark of S~cioculturalstatus. Book-writing, printing, reading and collection were a materialization of literati culture. Printing and owning finely-produced books showed a family's cultural tastes, socioeconomic position and its closeness to the ruling authorities. Books became a Person's identity mark. This habit of mind was one of the dynamics for the Sung's development of printing. How was this mentality formulated? Why did people prefer using books to other things, such as land, garments, chariots and the number of servants for their social identity marks? What kind of books qualified as social identity marks? What

social meanings did the books bear? In the exploration for the answers, we will have an

understanding of why the Sung editions were the best throughout the imperial time, why

Printers even used leaves to make a book, and why so many beautiful printing

Jargons, such as "butterfly binding" and "whirlwind binding", were coined in the Sung, and

Why book printing became a family tradition lasting for dozens of generations.

The ninth chapter is about the indoctrination of the imperial ideology through

Popular literature. If we regard the standardized textbooks and histories as a "hard" push

of the imperial ideology, popular literature was a "soft" push. In the Sung, popular culture

flourished. Fictional works started to appear and storytellers read fiction to illiterate

audience in teahouses, inns and marketplaces. Drama was another new genre and plays

were based on fiction. Poetic style changed from strict discipline to a relaxed format.

Chapter 1 25 Popular stories started to spread at an unprecedented rate. Civil printers collected the stories and put them into print. The printed stories were then spread orally over a broader territory. Writers used them and created fiction, dramatic scripts, lyrics, etc. In their creation, they used standardized histories as the skeleton and popular stories as the

flesh. Finally, imperial editors came in. They edited popular literature, standardized them

and used the state printing machine to propagate the stories to the entire . The

audience might find that the new version was more interesting and entertaining, but they

could hardly realize that these stories were already ideologically manipulated. This

manipulation came to its climax in the , but its foundation was laid in the

Sung. We will examine several cases to see how popular literature was manipulated in

the process of editing and printing and how the imperial ideology was cleverly

represented.

The tenth chapter is about the oral nature of Chinese printing -- Chinese printing

was designed primarily for oral purposes and for the restriction of reading. It may seem

strange: why was reading restricted when so many books were produced? Here I use

Walter Ong (1982) and Jack Goody's (1968) paradigms. First, although printed texts

belong to written culture, the way in which Chinese printed literature was used meant that

the Content it conveyed and the discourse it adopted all reflected strong oral residues.

These oral residues helped constitute an oral mentality on which it was easy to impose

centralized ideological control. Second, printed literature used classical language and

Style; it was not anyone's mother tongue, but was a learned language. Literacy was thus

conceived not as a functional ability, but as a renowned ability to read and write in

Chapter 1 26 classical language for the civil service examination and for the contemplation of the timeless truth of the "four books and five classics". The ability to read in the discourse of high culture meant a prestigious social position, while literacy outside of that discourse was simply regarded as being "illiterate". The oral residues and the "restricted literacy" successfully merged into a powerful constituent for the mentality of the masses who were thus made vulnerable to the indoctrination of imperial ideology.

In the eleventh chapter, I make a brief comparison between the social, cultural and

political situations in Europe and in China when printing technology started to spread and try to explain why it was no accident that the same technology brought different social

outcomes in the two civilizations. While the printing press acted as an agent of change

in Europe, it acted as an agent of social stability in China. Social context determines how

a technology is used or not used. In Europe, woodblock printing was used about fifty

Years earlier than movable type. It was soon displaced by movable type, because it was

no longer suited to the social environment. In China, movable type was rejected because

although it had some technical advantages, it was culturally unsuitable.

In Chapter Twelve, I conclude from this case study of imperial Chinese printing that

a technology cannot bring social transformations by itself. A technology exerts an impact

On a society only when there exists an accepting environment for the widespread use of

the technology directed at social change. Otherwise, the technology will be deliberately

rejected. The history of European printing reflects the same point. Papyrus was used

even before the Chinese invented paper and it is hard to imagine that the people who

ComPosed great philosophies and mathematics on papyrus could not figure out how to

Chapter i 27 make paper over several thousand years. Seals were widely used even in King Arthur's day and it seems unbelievable that no one ever thought of enlarging the seal to make a printing block. The craft of paper-making and movable type appeared in Europe just at the right time for it to be embraced and used as a means for the emancipation of society from feudalism. The age demanded a new type of "man" - typographical man or some other kind of human being - technology starts to exert an impact on the society only when the social settings are ready for the impact.

Chapter 1 CHAPTER 2

BOOK PRODUCTION BEFORE THE SUNG DYNASTY

The history of the Chinese written text can be traced back three thousand years to the

Shang Dynasty (1324-1066 B.C.).The texts in the , mainly a record of harvests, the weather, the calendar, major events, rituals and fortune-telling, were first carved on turtle shells for preservation. In the late Shang, with the development of metal

production, these texts started to be carved on bronze pots, urns and bells both as

records and as decorations. These metal utensils were at the same time the symbol of

social status - only people with certain official ranks were entitled to use certain kinds of

utensils and only people with utensils could produce the texts. Thus the creation and

Production of written texts reflected the relationship of power from the beginning.

Not only was the recording of knowledge highly centralized and monopolized, but

also the consumption of the texts was limited to a privileged social group. The "book" was

fixed at a particular place, such as in the palace or in the residence of a high-ranking

official, and only selected readers, such as the king, his family members and other high-

ranking officials could have access to it. Texts were guarded both as an exclusive means

of communication between ruling members and as a symbolic form for the political status

of the privileged social group. The physical clumsiness of metal utensils and the large

expense of cawing texts further strengthened the vaults: no individual could ever steal

the text out of the vaults and few people could afford to produce a text even if they were

bold enough to break the hierarchial regulations. In fact, although most people outside

Chapter 2 29 the ruling circle might have had a concept of words, rarely did they see a piece of text and, even if they did, they could have had little understanding of its significance. Hence words were mystified as the exclusive property of those who had the "mandate of heaven" to rule, and the social organization of knowledge was strictly controlled by the ruling elite.

MONOPOLY VS. FREEDOM IN A TECHNOLOGICAL CONTEXT

During the Chou Dynasty (1066-221 B.C.), a new form of book appeared made of or wooden tablets. (Wei, 1988: 11) Water-based ink was also invented from burnt wood ashes to facilitate writing on these tablets. Each bamboo tablet could carry four to five vertical lines of words and each line could have twenty-five hand-written characters. The tablets could be strung together. This technological progress greatly encouraged the use of books and made writing and reading affordable for people outside the Court. Soon afterwards, and cloth started to replace the tablets. Although silk and cloth were more expensive than bamboo and wood, they were lighter in weight and were

convenient for personal correspondence. Bamboo and silk books enabled commoners to

read the calendar by themselves and plan their farming schedules. They could record

events and rituals according to their local cultures, record ballads and poetry, and write

letters to one another. Gradually, these bamboo and silk books broke the monopoly on

the Production of written words enjoyed by the ruling elite to some degree and helped

foster the growth of local landlords and warlords.

With the collapse of the monopoly on knowledge production and dissemination by

Chapter 2 30 the court, sophisticated scholarship and argumentation developed and a whole generation of brilliant scholars appeared, such as , Chuang-tzu, Mencius, -ti, -fei- tzu, Sun Wu and Sun Pin. This was the so-called "one-hundred families" of scholarship in the pre-Ch'in time. Most of the scholars were "persuaders"; they travelled from state to state and tried to sell their philosophies to kings and princes. However, with affordable writing technology, they also recorded from oral form the wisdom and experience of ancient people, edited them, wrote down their own comments or ideas, and made their own books. For instance, Confucius edited a number of history books and popular literature written on wooden or bamboo tablets, such as the

(Ch'un-ch'iu), a history of the Kingdom Lu and the Book of Odes (Shih ching), a collection of Popular songs, and he embedded his own philosophy in his editing. Scholars fully realized the importance of written texts for the continuation of their ideas and their students were equally eager to write down what their masters had said for their own studies and for later generations. Confucius was said to have three thousand disciples.

He never wrote any books under his own name, but his disciples recorded his words and

later Compiled the book (Lun y0)- sayings of Confucius. Other philosophies were

established in similar ways. Through the repeated process of talking, recording, talking

on the basis of a previous recording and recording new talks, philosophies were

developed at an unprecedented level and philosophical reading became a common

Practice in schools.

Learning and reading created a market for book production and a new job category

appeared - that of the book scribe. To be a student, the first task was to copy the sayings

Chapter 2 3 1 and books of his masters. Copying was encouraged as a necessary way of learning, because it would ease memorization of the texts. Therefore, most students copied their own books. A student could lend his versions of books to fellow students and ask for a

Payment. There were always lazy students who did not want to copy by themselves and were willing to buy from others. This provided an opportunity for the students from poor family backgrounds to make some income through copying books. Also, there was an

increasing demand for calendars, farming books and medical books, and rich families

would hire people to make copies for them. We should recognize that the market for book

Production was still very small. For one thing, literacy was very limited. Although we have

no record of the literacy rate of the population at that time, it is commonly assumed that

literacy was only confined to a handful advantaged people who could afford education.

For the second, few people had a large enough space at home for huge quantities of

tablets. Also, the payment for book copying was minimal and was barely enough to make

a living, because the cost of tablets or silk was already substantial. Therefore, book

copying was not yet a profession. However, written texts were already changing from

being symbols of sociopolitical status to commodities; mass-scale book production was

on the verge of prominence. Meanwhile, the emancipation of texts brought an

emancipation of thinking. For book readers, there were no physical boundaries to limit the

acquisition and dissemination of knowledge through books, and they had the freedom to

express their views in writing about everything, including current politics.

This freedom was, of course, not appreciated by the ruling authorities. However,

in the Warring States Period, every king was too concerned about his own future and his

Chapter 2 32 political and military wrestling with other kingdoms, so the application of ideological controls was not strict. After the Ch'in State conquered all other states and built up a unified empire to form the Ch'in Dynasty (221-206 B.C.), the rtiling class had enough time and energy to restore the greatly-undermined monopoly of knowledge production. Shih- records the worries of the ruling authorities:

Private schools teach unauthorized doctrines. Learners of such doctrines examine imperial orders from their own perspectives. They show disagreement in the court and launch critiques and libel in the street in order to establish their own names and show off their learning. If such conduct is not forbidden, the imperial authority will decrease and heretical political gangs will proliferate. The policy is to such books. (Lu, 1986: 34)

Consequently book technology experienced a huge setback. Shih-huang-ti, the first emperor, ordered massive burnings of books, mainly the philosophy books of the one- hundred schools. Book learners were condemned, for they "eat without farming and obtain fame without fighting on the battlefield." (Kuo, 1985: 97) Owners of such books,

People who talked about or taught from such books, and the people who knew of the existence of such books but failed to report them, were executed in public. People who complained about the persecution were executed together with their families. Education was not banned, but only officials could be teachers and no student should follow a

Private tutor. Through the ideological dictatorship, Shih-huang-ti expected that his empire could be long-lasting. He appreciated the Legalist philosophy:

A governs with the establishment of one standard of reward, one , and one doctrine. One standard of reward makes soldiers fight bravely. One law makes imperial orders enforced. One doctrine makes people obey ....One doctrine means the condemnation of those who learn from books, launch critiques, advocate moral cultivation and rituals, form their Political gangs, praise their peers, and differentiate the state power. Such

Chapter 2 33 persons shall not be entitled to personal wealth, not be permitted to comment on state affairs, and not be allowed to discuss in private among themselves or talk to the ruler. (Kuo, 85: 100-103)

Shih-huang-ti also knew that "the one doctrine" could not be secured just by . Books could be written again so long as their writers and readers were alive. He gave orders to arrest the most noticeable scholars who did not favour his policies and buried them alive -- 460 scholars in total.

Although the Ch'in almost succeeded in its centralization and monopoly of knowledge production, its tyranny was still short-lived. Later emperors saw that its coercive policies of book-burning and burying scholars alive were as useless as trying to cut water with a knife. Water could not be cut, but it could be directed. The rulers of the next dynasty, the Han (206 B.C.-A.D.220), learned the lesson and turned to moral education to maintain their knowledge monopoly. They gradually lifted the sanction on books, which had been placed by the Ch'in, and promoted Confucianist learning.

The first imperial library was established and Emperor Hui-ti made a decree that books should be donated for the imperial collection. The court also paid handsomely to borrow books from private individuals and copied them. The Later Han History records that in A.D. 56, Emperor Ming-ti gave a public lecture on the occasion of his enthronement ceremony in order to collect books: "The emperor gives the lecture

Personally and scholars bring their Confucian books to seek guidance. People with scholarly hats and lookers-on are thousands in number." (Lu, 1986: 40) Quite soon the atmosphere of book learning was restored. An imperial academy was set up with three thousand students in the capital city in 8 B.C. to teach the philosophies of the preGh9in

Chapter 2 time, and various private schools revived in other cities.

In the second century A.D. this university had 240 buildings comprising 1,850 rooms. By the middle of the century, although we have no idea how it was administered, this institution had 30,000 students either enrolled at or affiliated with it. (Huang, 1988: 50)

Book collection and copying became a fashion both in officialdom and among scholars.

Private schools were restored. "It became fashionable for renowned scholars to gather

500 or more disciples around themselves; the most accomplished had 3,000 followers."

(Huang:88:50) The whole situation was like that in the time of the "one-hundred schools"

and books were once again on the verge of mass production.

THE INVENTION OF PAPER AND THE BEGINNING OF MASS BOOK PRODUCTION

A new technology came into the picture at this time to facilitate the change: paper

production in A.0.105. We have no record of who invented paper or at what exact time.

Archaeological research has shown that paper existed long before A.D.105: hemp paper

found in Hsin-Chiang was dated to 49 B.C.; hemp paper unearthed from an ancient tomb

in Hsi-an was dated to 140-87 B.C.; two pieces of hemp paper found in Kan-su was dated

to 100 B.C.; and hemp paper found in Shaan-hsi were dated to 73-49 B.C. (Sung, 1991:

16) TO place the invention of paper at A.D. 105 is only to do so on the basis that this was

its earliest formal record in official history. The "inventor", Ts'ai Lun, was an aristocrat and

was the person who reported to the emperor that paper could be used to replace tablets

and silk as writing material. Paper soon proved to be a much cheaper and more

convenient technology for writing and gave the book scribe professional status. With the

Proliferation of schools, the demand for textbooks increased rapidly and more students

Chapter 2 35 wanted to buy books rather than copy them. Professional scribes brought their own paper and ink, set up their booths in front of schools, and took orders. Some scribes who owned authentic versions would copy the books at home and sell them on the market. In a way, the scribes who took their own initiative in book copying were like an early form of publisher, for they had to assess the market demand, make their title decisions, invest

their time and paper, and take the risk that their copies would not sell. It was the first time

that book production entered the business sector.

The book market existed before the invention of paper, and paper brought the book

market to a new level. Books were first sold at normal markets just like other

commodities. Gradually an exclusive market for books appeared beside the Imperial

Academy. It was called huai-shih (market beside Chinese scholar trees). At first it was

a place where students exchanged their books. Once professional scribes were

established, the book exchange changed to the book trade. The market was open twice

a month and attracted many scholars and students. They shopped around for books and

discussed philosophical questions in a leisurely manner. The marketplace actually

became a regular scholarly salon (Sung. 1991: 33).

The market also produced a new kind of publisher. They did not copy books by

themselves, but invested money, hired scribes to copy books for them, took the financial

risk, and sold the books to students. Their primary job was to decide which titles to copy

and choose scribes, for books with more authentic versions and better handwriting could

sell at better prices. Their title decisions started to change from producer-oriented to

consumer-oriented - they not only copied classics, but also explanations to the classics

Chapter 2 36 by various contemporary scholars, which students needed for their studies. They also went beyond scholarship to appeal to non-scholarly readers by producing calendars, farming books and fortune-telling books, which could also generate good sales. They had

a sense of entrepreneurship already and what they needed was better book production technology so that they could serve a larger market.

Another thing happened during this time period that both further stimulated book

production in the private sector and made the emergence of state publishing a necessity.

Within the walls of Confucius' residence was discovered a large pile of Confucius' works

on bamboo tablets (Lai, 90: 27). It was believed that these bamboo books were hidden

in the walls by Confucius' descendants when the Ch'in emperor ordered the burning of

all Confucian books. The problem was that many of the books were different from the

ones preserved in the imperial library and studied in the Academy. This was not entirely

a surprise. The classics were passed down by scribal copying and differences in different

scribal editions were natural. But as these books were found in Confucius' residence, they

carried much more weight than an ordinary edition. Which versions were more authentic?

Huge arguments arose and the key question was whether the education promoted by the

state was the most authentic. This debate provided an excellent market opportunity for

scribal publishers. They did not care much about the authenticity of the versions, but they

knew that scholars and students would want to have both versions for scholarly research

or for Curiosity. Suddenly various versions of Confucian classics came onto the market

and some were even different from any of the previous versions. Many new explanations

of the classics also appeared. Readers could choose according to their preference and

Chapter 2 37 teachers were at a loss as to what they should follow. The book market became a chaos

for orthodox Confucian scholars.

Once again knowledge production and dissemination went beyond the tolerance

of the ruling class. For them, the challenge to existing Confucian studies was much more

than scholarship. Confucianism was the philosophical basis of the imperial ideology and

they could not allow scholars and scribal publishers to explain and comment on the

ideology at will. This time the court did not use the brutal coercive means of the Ch'in.

With a good command of writing technology and adequate financial backup, the court

became a publisher itself. First, it hired imperial editors to work on standardized versions

of the classics and explanations and propagated them by imperial decree. These versions

were regarded as the only authentic ones for school education and students who failed

to follow these versions would not be recognized as scholars. The market chaos gradually

quieted down when scribal publishers turned to the imperial versions for their book

Production, because other versions would not be purchased by students. This was the

first time the state was massively involved in book publishing. After text production was

centralized, the court looked to dissemination. Scribes could make mistakes in copying

and some even wanted to make changes to the standardized versions according to their

own understanding. Certainly they could not be relied on for standardized education and

the state needed to find a way to control textual generation and dissemination. A new

technology was therefore favoured in its development to disseminate standardized texts.

The technology was stone printing or rubbing.

Stone printing was based on the concept of textual inscription on metal utensils

Chapter 2 38 and the usage of seals. Seals started to be used in offices from the Chou Dynasty and in Han times, even private persons had seals. Sealing a document had the same meaning as a signature does today and a document could be legalized and authenticated only through proper sealing. Thus sealing symbolized authority and order. A governor without a seal would not be regarded as a legitimate governor, and an emperor without a seal could not be an emperor. Before the T'ang Dynasty, there was only one authentic seal for the emperor, which was made by the Ch'in emperor, and everyone seeking the throne fought to possess it. The conceptual basis of stone printing was that if the standardized texts could be reproduced in the image of a seal, the authority and power of the seal would be naturally transmitted into the texts. Certainly a seal was too small in size for the texts. But what if the texts were carved on large stones like the text on metal utensils? The stones could be erected in public places so that a student who wanted an authentic version could make a rubbing by himself. The first set of stone texts was handwritten by C'ai Yi, a well-known scholar of that time in A.D.175. The carving was

Completed in A.D. 183. The carved stones were erected outside the gate of the Imperial

Academy. There were forty-six pieces of stone in total, each ten feet high and four feet wide, carrying the six basic classics of Confucius: I-ching (Book of Change), Shu-ching,

Li-yi (Rituao, Shih-ching, Ch'un-ch'iu and Lun-yu. As the carving was made in the year of Hsi-p'ing, it is known to later generations as Hsi-p'ing Stone Inscription (Hsi-P'ing shih- k'o). Huge crowds of scholars and students made rubbings from the standardized classics. Private scribal publishers also joined in, but this time they had only one text to

COPY and sell and the basis of their competition with their peers was the quality of

Chapter 2 39 rubbing. They were deprived of their own initiative in title decision and selection, and they became agents for the spread of a centralized voice.

Following this event, stone carvings of classics became popular. In the Three-

Kingdoms period (220-265), Ch'i K'ang carved the other three Confucian classics Shang- shu, Ch'un-ch'iu and half of Tso-chuan under the order of the king of Wei and completed

them in 241. It is called Wei Sione Classics (Wei shih-ching). The characteristic of this

carving was that it not only provided standardized content, but its form also conveyed the

imperial patronage for the of calligraphy in standardized styles. The carving was made

in three kinds of calligraphy: classic style (ku wen), seal characters (chuan tlr), and clerical

script (li shu). Each word was written three times in three styles and was followed by the

m%t word written in the same manner. This carving, therefore, is also known as Three-

style Stone Classics (Sari-tli shih-ching) or Three-character Stone Classics (Sari-~ZU shih-

thing). There were thirty-five pieces of stone in total with 147,000 characters.

~nfortunatelythese stone carvings have been destroyed in wars and we only have their

rubbings. What we can see are the K'ai-ch'eng Stone Classics (K'ai chleng shih ching)

made in the in the year of K'ai-ch'eng (837). They carry twelve Confucian

classics and are now preserved in the Museum of Shaan-hsi Province in Hsi-an. Because

of its importance for the maintenance of standardized texts, the tradition of Stone printing

continued even after the proliferation of woodblock printing. The Imperial Academy of

Northern Sung (960-1 127) stone-carved nine Confucian classics. Southern Sung emperor

Kao-bung (1 127-1279) personally handwrote Confucian classics for Stone carving.

Emperor Chien Lung of the Ch'ing Dynasty (17%) ordered thirteen Confucian classics to

Chapter 2 40 be stone carved with over 100,000 characters; the stones are still well preserved.

Although stone classics had little practical use in those times, they acted as the symbol

of imperial patronage behind Confucianist education.

Stone printing brought limitations to private publishers in terms of title selection and

editing, but it did not bring any harm to scribes. On the contrary, since rubbings made

from stone inscriptions were often blurred and difficult to read, readers preferred hand-

written copies. Also, after authentic texts were established, readers from other cities

requested them and demand increased as more private schools were established. Thus,

the market for copy work undertaken by scribes expanded. Scribes not only copied the

standardized classics, but any other texts as well, so long as there were orders from

buyers. Some wrote their own books and self-published them through scribal copying.

Some scribes had no money for schooling, but they learned from the books that they

copied and gradually became scholars. Pan Ch'ao (32-102), a military general and

diplomat, started his career as a scribe. It was recorded that Pan Ch'ao "went to Lo-yang

[capital city of the Eastern Han] with his mother and brother [Pan Ku who later became

a historiographer and poet and wrote the Han Book]. Because he was poor, he became

a scribe in order to make a living. Later, Emperor Hsien-tsung asked Pan Ku about his

brother. Pan Ku replied that he was scribing to support his mother." (The Later Han Book:

Biography of Pan Ch'ao) K'an Tse (?-243), imperial tutor for the prince of Kingdom Wu,

"lives in poverty and scribes for other people" in his youth. (San-kuo Chi, vol. 5.) Wang

Ch'ung (27-97), philosopher and official in the Eastern Han, "came from a poor family

without money for books. He wandered around book markets and read the books that he

Chapter 2 4 1 sells. He could memorize the texts through one reading and soon he knew the sayings of one hundred families." Hsun Yueh (148-209), politician and philosopher, was from a similar family background and gained his learning through book scribing and selling (Lai,

1990: 67).

Authorship in the scribal culture was not considered in the price of a book. Readers

paid for scribing, but no money would go to the author. To be an author did not result in

any income. As soon as the author completed his book and let other people see it, it was

published, that is, in the public domain. The author would never know what happened to

his book on the market, how much it sold for, how many people bought his book and how

far his book spread. Furthermore, mistakes in scribing were so frequent that it was hard

to tell what the original version was like soon after a book was on the market. In the

Eastern Wei time (534-550)~a man called Yang Tsun-chih wrote many licentious poems

with the title "Yang Wu's Companion". According to the official history, "whatever he wrote

could sell and his writing flooded the market." One day Tsung-chih saw his poetry book

on the market, found a mistake in the text and pointed it out. The seller did not know he

was the author and argued: "Yang Wu is a virtuous man in history so that he has written

this 'Companion'. What do you know of Yang Wu and you dare to comment on him!" (Pei-

shih, vo1.36.) General Kao Ch'eng of the Eastern Wei was one day visited by a bookseller

who tried to sell him a fairly large book in 640 volumes.' Kao borrowed the book, hired

a number of scribes, completed the scribing in one day and one night, returned the book

1 The meaning of a (chum) originally derived from a bundle of bamboo tablets as a part of a book and its length may vary from several to several dozen pages. It can be seen as a Signature of a book in modern sense.

Chapter 2 42 to the seller, and said: "I do not need it any more." (Pei-shih, vol. 47) The seller could have charged a sum as a lending fee, but he said nothing about this "piracy". This also shows that the labour of a scribe was so cheap that the gereral would rather hire people to do the copying than purchase the completed book.

THE EMERGENCE OF WOODBLOCK PRINTING

Thanks to the work of scribes, there came a cultural trend that had a substantial impact on the birth of woodblock printing: private book collection. When the emperors of the Han decided to build an imperial library in the capital city and launched a decree for book collection, officials of various levels and local elites also started their own book collections. According to the records in the Later Han Book, many scholars had a collection of several thousand volumes, such as C'ai Yi, who copied the text for stone inscription, and Pan Ku. There were three sources for their books. First, they scribed books themselves or made their own editions by correcting the mistakes. Second, they received books from the emperor as gifts. There were many records in the Later Han

Book that emperors gave his collections to his officials as rewards. Finally, they bought books from the market. As imperial collections were repeatedly destroyed in wars, private collections became the main source for books. Possessors of large collections enjoyed cultural respect from their peers and donors of books to the court would enjoy imperial

appreciation. Most of the imperial collections of the were lost in wars. The

next dynasty Chin (265-420) had a collection of 22,945 volumes in the beginning, but lost

most of them in the end when the empire fell. The next dynasty Sung (420-479) launched

Chapter 2 a new collection, received 23,106 volumes and again many of them were lost in the war

The emperor of the (502-557) kept 140,000 volumes of books, but he burned them before his capital city was captured by the enemy:

When the soldiers of Kingdom Wei broke into Chiang-ling, Emperor Hsiao- yuan burned one hundred forty thousand volumes of books; when asked for the reason, the emperor replied: "I come to this stage just because I have read ten thousand volumes of books, so I must burn them. (Lu, 1986: 72)

In contrast, books preserved in private were relatively safe and through

years of accumulation some private collections could well match that of the state. For

instance, K'uo Tai of the Eastern Han was recorded to have over 5,000 volumes of books

in his library. Fan Wei of the Chin Dynasty had over 7,000 volumes and Chang Hua

needed thirty chariots to carry his books when he changed his residence. Jen Fang of the

Liang dynasty collected over 10,000 volumes. (Wei, 1988: 28-31). The possession of

books with elegant calligraphy, rare books, books written by renowned scholars and

Poets, and even the mere quantity and variety of books, could become what Bourdieu

calls "symbolic violence" for the demonstration of sociocultural status of the book owners.

These books provided a literary basis for the wide use of printing technology and they

also made classical learning consistent despite the constant changes of dynasties.

Since the Han dynasty, book production continued to develop and book variety

gradually increased as poetry, Buddhist and Taoist scriptures and genealogies were

Produced. Meanwhile, a noticeable genre started to flourish in the Six Dynasties (222-

589): fiction writing. The majority of fiction writings were stories of the supernatural (chih-

kuaihsiao-shuo), with plot, character, point-of-view and meaning. The most notable works

included Records of Spirits (Sou--chi, c. 340), Tales of Marvels (Lieh-i-chuan, c. 220)

Chapter 2 44 by Ts'ao P'ei, Records cf Strange Things (Po-wu-shih, c. 290) by Chang Hua, Accounts

of Marvels (Shu-i-ch~)by Tsu Ch'ung-shih, and Forest of Marvels (I-Lin) by Lu (Dewoskin,

1977: 50-51). The writers of chih-kuai were often officials or even members of imperial

families, such as Ts'ao P'ei, the king of the Kingdom Wei, but the stories originated from

folklore and had been well circulated among the populace. In some ways these stories

were the products of the combination of high culture and popular culture and this

characteristic was reflected in their style. The style of chih-kuai fiction followed the

narrative tradition. Narrative tradition, a literary style in which individual happenings were

stated one by one without abstraction or generalization, was first used in history writing

for scholars. Tso-chum and Ssu-ma Chien's Shih-chi had obvious narrative elements.

Scholars used this style in their fiction-writing, because this was the style by which they

acquired their education and with which they were very familiar. The social significance

was that these fictions brought formal discourse to the popular sector and the elite and

Popular cultures started to have a common ground on which they could merge.

Booksellers took the books outside cities and storytellers would tell the stories to their

audience, many of whom were illiterate.

Thus book culture started to spread from urban centres to rural areas. Later chih-

kuai Stories became the literary basis for the development of (hsiao-shuo) in the

Sung Dynasty and the mass production of popular novels reached a peak during the Ming

Dynasty (1368-1644). Without the extension of books and into the popular

arena, book culture would have been confined only to a limited number of scholars and

the Social effect of printing would not have been so substantial. The whole process of

Chapter 2 shifting books from being elite media to mass media took about one thousand years.

While the imperial and private collection of books, the establishment of the imperial academy and private schools, and the spread of popular literature amounted to a

significant expansion of book culture, they were not the decisive forces behind the birth

of ~oodblockprinting. The demand for books, although always increasing, was still limited

to educated people from well-off families, and the number of scribes was large enough

to keep labour plentiful and costs low. The masses, i.e. farmers, artisans and merchants,

were largely outside the world of books. In other words, there was inadequate demand

for the use of printing technology. Printing had to wait until the masses joined in the

community of words and the number of scribes could no longer satisfy the demand for

texts. This moment came with the popularization of .

Buddhism was never a state religion, although it repeatedly received state

Patronage. Buddhism came into China in A.D. 67 in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Although

it did not receive immediate welcome from the state, it was accepted by the populace as

a means of the pursuit of inner peace. As Richard Smith points out:

Buddhism brought to tormented and disillusioned Chinese individuals the hope of escape from worldly suffering and sorrow. It introduced new ideas of reincarnation, karmic retribution, and the release of Nirvana, and exerted a lasting influence on many aspects of Chinese philosophy, religion, art, literature, music, and architecture. (Smith, 1983: 25)

After five hundred years of and preaching in the Chin and the South and North

Dynasties, Buddhism became a popular religion and was elevated to the level of a quasi-

state religion in the Sui Dynasty (581-618). The masses wanted Buddhist charms and

books for their worship and religious practices in which the images of Buddha and his

Chapter 2 disciples were required to be identically produced. The massive need for texts accompanied by images made woodblock printing a technical convenience -- if not

necessity -- for book production.

The technical requirements for woodblock printing were not very complex. A man

with some talent as a carpenter and the technique of rubbing could soon master the

elements of printing. Gardner describes the process of woodblock printing:

The text to be printed is written by a professional scribe in formal characters upon broad sheets of thin paper which are ruled in vertical columns, ordinarily eighteen to twenty-six in number, with a distinctive centre column designed to receive the title of the work with the chapter and page numbers. Each sheet is then pasted, inverted, upon a smooth block of pear wood, and skilled carvers cut away the background of the characters and column-ruling so that these stand in . Ink is brushed vertically across the surface, a sheet of paper is laid upon it, and impression is assured by deft brushing of the back. Each sheet is printed on one side only and then folded down the centre column so that the indexing which it bears is partly visible from either side. The loose edges of the are then stitched with eighty to one hundred and fifty others to from a limp paper-covered volume." (Gardner, 1961: 47-48)

There was no procedure involving a "press" as there would be in Western printing, the

term "printing press" was not a proper term for the Chinese printing shop. A better term

would be "printing brush", a literary translation of the Chinese term yin shua (printing).

For the printing process as such, the printer did not need to be literate and the

educational requirements were lower than for a scribe. Hence, the cost of labour was

cheaper and the technique spread quickly. Rawski notes:

In China, literacy was not required [for printing work] because the texts, written on thin sheets of paper, were pasted onto the blocks. Carving might require some skill, but the other operations such as the inking and pulling of sheets could be done by virtually anyone. A local of Ma-Kang, a printing centre in the Pearl River delta of Kwangtung, notes that "women and children can all do it; the men only carve the text on the blocks,

Chapter 2 47 according to the handwritten manuscript. The rest is done with female labour. Because of their cheapness, the books go everywhere. (Rawski, 1985: 18)

Gallery also notes that in Kwangtung women and children were doing printing and, as their labour was cheaper, the books could sell well for a cheap price. (Callery:20-21) The advantage of woodblock printing was that once blocks were carved, they could be

Preserved for a long time and be used repeatedly whenever there was a demand.

Therefore the concept of "print run" was largely unknown to printers. Rawski thinks that a woodblock carved of the standard woods, such as pear and jujube, could be used to print 16,000-26,000 copies, and she assumes that it was a better techniye compared to early European movable type in terms of mass production and reprint. (Rawski, 1985:

20)

It is commonly believed that woodblock printing started in the early years of the

T1ang Dynasty (618-907)~when the spread of Buddhism was at its peak, yet the use of seals and stone printing was very close to woodblock printing. The major technical difference was that the carving was made on woodblocks with characters in inverted form and in relief rather than in concave form as for stone inscription. The other steps were very similar: the printer transferred the image of the characters from woodblocks to paper

by rubbing, bind loose sheets together, and sold them on the market. We tend to wonder

why it took several hundred years to make such a small technical advance. In fact, there

are records that the technique of woodblock printing had an earlier beginning. In 200 B.C.

it was used to print decorations on silk, as has been discovered from a Han tomb at Ma-

wang-tui. In the Han and Chin times, Taoists carved their charms of the Yellow God on

Chapter 2 woodblocks, the largest one with 120 characters, and printed them onto the ground and

Paper as a religious practice. (Carter, 1925: 13) Cheng Chi of the Ch'ing Dynasty argued that in Han times, woodblock printing was used to print the images of criminals in official orders of arrest. French sinologist Terriende Lacouperie thought woodblock printing appeared in Ssu-ch'uan in 320's A.D. Li Yuan- of the Ch'ing Dynasty also thought w00dblock printing started around this time, but that its usage was quite limited. (Wei,

1988: 32-38) Another possibility was that it started in the Sui Dynasty (581-618).

In 588, when Wen-ti of the Sui Dynasty issued an edict justifying his invasion to the State Chen in south China, he made 300,000 copies and distributed them widely throughout the Yangtze area. In the edict it said that 'this edict is written in 300,000

pieces in a scattered way" (Chang, 1988: 39) But the word "written" cannot convincingly

Prove that the 300,000 copies, 150 characters in each copy and 45 million characters in total, were really written by hand, when the war was already immediate and human

resources with good penmanship were limited. When we think that an emperor would

want his edict to be produced identically, legibly, and with the power of sealing, there was

strong reason to believe that these copies were block-printed rather than hand-copied.

There are arguments against these dates, such as those mounted by Chang Hsiu-

min (1988) and Wei Yin-ju (1988). Their reasons for disputation are that there were no

records in official histories about woodblock printing before the Tang. It should be noted

that the progress of printing technology was not regarded as a significant ~volutionby

the ruling authorities and naturally there was no official celebration of it, just as there was

no official record of the invention of paper before Ts'ai Lun brought a pile of beautifully

Chapter 2 49 made paper to the emperor in 105 A.D. The chief purpose of woodblock printing was the same as stone printing, i.e. to produce and disseminate standardized texts in quantity.

The ruling elite wanted their desired texts to be reproduced efficiently and accurately.

They did not have particular interest in which technology was used, whether it was scribing, stone inscription, woodblock printing, and movable type. In fact, the ruling elite did not immediately see the potential of printing technology for spreading its ideology

even after printing had been recorded in official histories. It took them several hundred

years through the Sui and T'ang dynasties to realize that printing was a suitable means

for the spread of their standardized moral education to the masses. In the T'ang period,

w00dblock printing saw its boom mainly in the private sector and state policy largely

restricted rather than promoted its use. It wasn't until the Sung Dynasty, in which the

policy of civil society was carried out, that printing entered the state sector and

experienced rapid development with the state forces.

There was another reason for the lack of development of woodblock printing

technology between the Han and T'ang times: there was no large-scale social demand

for Standardized texts. The fall of the Han marked the fall of Confucianist education. After

long argument, the rethinking of Confucian philosophy and the failure of the Han dynasty,

later dynasties decided to abandon Confucianism and started to adopt neo-Legalist

Political ideas. They favoured hereditary right as a basis for office holding and rejected

the Hank policy of recruiting officials according to their personal merits. The country was

ruled not by an educated elite, but by hereditary nobles who had racial or clan ties to the

ruler. The enthusiasm for education among the populace declined, for their learning was

Chapter 2 not appreciated by the court. Scholarship became marginal and the only key to success was control of the army. Scholarship as a sociocultural marker lost its positive sense and scholars became a laughing stock among privileged social groups. When the so-called barbarians from the north - barbarians in the sense that they were outside the community of traditional Chinese culture - ruled the whole of north China in 312, literati and their families immigrated to the Yangtze Valley. Their descendants became the main force behind printing culture in the Sung when the cultural and political centre of the empire moved to that area.

In north China, the ideal environment for the spread of printing culture was totally absent for three hundred years from the fourth to the sixth centuries - there was no fmssive need for books, no standardized texts to print, and no adequate human resources to do the editing and printing. It is understandable that we cannot find any official records of printing in these periods. Even if the technique existed, it could not receive any attention from the princes and aristocratic clans who were busy fighting for their territories. In other words, it seems reasonable to assume that the woodblock- printing technique may have existed long before the record in the official history in the

T'ang, but as there was no cultural need for it, it was simply neglected, just as movable

type was invented and neglected after the Sung time.

The Sui Dynasty brought an end to the chaotic period of the North and South

Dynasties. Emperor Wen-ti admired the strategies of the Han dynasty which could hold

the entire empire together, yet he chose Buddhism as the core of the imperial ideology.

Buddhism received strong imperial patronage and Buddhist scriptures and charms

Chapter 2 penetrated into almost every village and every household. Wen-ti's preference toward

Buddhism was not because he was a Buddhist or because he particularly appreciated

Buddhist philosophy; rather it was an expedient. Many of the populace, especially those in south China, were Buddhist believers and he thought that Buddhism could be the most effective means for breaking down cultural, racial and regional barriers within a short time.

When he saw that the State of Chou, which he was to conquer, persecuted Buddhist monks, burned temples and left a painful scar on the populace, he found in it an opportunity to win over popular support. He built the metropolitan temple, Ta-hsing-shan

Ssu, in the centre of capital city Ch'ang-an and generously used state funds to build more

Buddhist buildings. In twenty years he sponsored the establishment of over one hundred

Buddhist institutions. He ordered Buddhist monasteries to be built at the foot of the five

sacred mountains where divinities were supposed to live. This was supposed to show that

Buddhist monks had an important relationship with the forces of both the natural and the

supernatural worlds, and that the imperial court as the sponsor for the continuation of this

relationship would certainly be blessed by Buddha. Buddhist ceremonies were organized

on a national scale. In 601, Wen-ti issued an edict that all thirty provincial capitals should

have a pagoda for Buddhist holy relics. In 602 and 604, two similar distributions of relics

were made to other cities, "all [of which] without exception had suffered in some way from

the Northern Chou persecution, and they were able to give eloquent testimony to the

benefits and favour which the Great Sui had shown their faith." (Wright, 1964: 102) On

January 5, 594, Wen-ti declared himself to be a disciple of Buddha and he offered a large

amount of silk and to Buddhist monasteries for their scriptures and buildings. He

Chapter 2 52 claimed in an edict:

We contemplate with awe the perfect wisdom, the great mercy, the great compassion of Buddha that would save and protect all creatures, that would carry across to deliverance all classes of beings. We give our adherence to the Three Treasures and bring to new prosperity the holy teachings." (Wright, 1964: 101)

His enthusiasm for Buddhism paralleled the rapid spread of Buddhist literature. It is recorded in the Sui Bookthat "in the capital and other metropolitan cities such as Ping- thou, Hsiang-chou and Luo-chou, state officials write all scriptures and present them to temples, and they also make extra copies for preservation in the state library. Everybody under heaven follows the trend and the quantity of Buddhist scriptures in the populace is hundreds of times more than Confucian classics." (Lai, 1990: 115) In thirty years from

581 to 610, one temple, Ta-hsing-shan-ssu in the capital city, translated and published scriptures in 132,086 volumes. The temples in Yang-chou edited and published 903,580 volumes. In order to know the scale of Buddhist literature that had been or would be published, Wen-ti ordered the compilation of an index. The index itself was 5,310 volumes long.

In the official celebration of Buddhism and Buddhist scriptures, and Taoist scriptures suffered serious setbacks. At first Wen-ti tried to win support from Taoists by building a hall of worship to Lao-tzu at Lao-tzu's birthplace. But soon he found that the

cult of Lao-tzu would not bring any good, because according to Taoist doctrine only

Taoists were supposed to interpret their scriptures and the state could hardly intervene.

Furthermore, Taoists could "foretell" the fate of a dynasty by reading their scriptures and

they were enthusiastic about this practice. In 593, Wen-ti declared that their private

Chapter 2 53 possession of Taoist books was not allowed and Taoist diviners must be put under strict state scrutiny and control. The state not only stopped its sponsorship of Taoist monasteries, but also set limits on their growth.

Confucianism was also promoted, although its had less impact than Buddhism. As the rulers of previous dynasties had done, Wen-ti also ordered collection of books from

private individuals for copying. The Sui Book records that he "sends people to different

places to search for new editions. The donor of each volume is rewarded with one bunch

of silk. After the court completes its editing, the book is returned to the donor." (Lai, 1990:

109) Most of the books were Confucian classics. Wen-ti also tried to select his officials

by testing their knowledge of Confucianism and he encouraged Confucian education in

the populace. However, he thought that education would take a long time to produce a

social effect and it would be a waste to invest heavily in something that would not bring

immediate results. The full revival of Confucianist education had to wait till the mid T'ang

when the civil service examination was formally established.

Again we have no official record of woodblock printing of Buddhist scriptures at this

time, although one can assume that printing was already in use because of the

overwhelming cultural policy promoting Buddhism and the widespread use of Buddhist

literature. We have evidence to show that printing was used in the early T'ang for

Buddhist scriptures as a result of the Sui's propagation for Buddhism; many of the T'ang's

Products have been found in Tun-huang. As Buddhists required sacred pictures and texts

for their religious practice, they found woodblock printing an ideal means for rapid

reproduction. The state of the early T'ang, in supporting the spread of Buddhism, also

Chapter 2 54 used state force to engage in massive religious book production. The best-known printed work of this time was the printed in 868, which is the earliest printed document in the world still in existence. The image of Buddha and his disciples was so finely carved that it is unbelievable it could be a product of printing in its early stage.

However, the large scale production of Buddhist scriptures did not really promote

literacy and general education. We should note that most monks and nuns, the users of

religious scripts, were largely illiterate. The temple's editing, printing and collection of

Buddhist scriptures were basically symbolic actions for the prestige of the temple rather

than an educational procedure. Most monks and nuns in temples were from low social

backgrounds and some of them had been beggars, drifters and criminals before they

entered the temple. They had almost no opportunity for education and the temple had

little intention to make them fully literate. As Richard Smith describes:

In China Proper, priests and nuns had little social standing and even less formal political influence. Aside from comparatively well educated abbots (fang-chang), most seem to have been illiterate and ignorant." (Smith, 1983: 62) Therefore, although there was a huge quantity of religious literature, it did not bring any

obvious change to the cultural and educational structure of the populace.

In the Tang Dynasty, Buddhist institutions were established everywhere in both

cities and rural areas and vast numbers of people became monks and nuns. Buddhism

thus seemed like an autonomous political and economic power, challenging the

centralized power of the state. They owned large areas of farmland, collected revenues

from tenant-farmers, made their own books, and even raised their own army. Their growth

soon went beyond the state's tolerance and a large-scale state suppression was launched

Chapter 2 55 by the T'ang emperor. In 845, about 4,600 temples were destroyed, 40,000 shrines were abolished, 260,000 monks and nuns were secularised, and millions of hectares of temple land was confiscated. (Needham, 1978: 46) From this time forward, the glory of Buddhism in Chinese politics was gone for good. Although Buddhist scriptures, such as Tripitika and

Diamond Sutra, were still reprinted under state auspices, Buddhism as an institution had lost its past splendour. The decline of book production in temples gradually lowered the temples' literary prestige. At first, book collections in Buddhist libraries attracted many students who wanted to sit for the civil service examination and these students would maintain their friendship with the temples after they became scholar-officials. As temples'

Printing and book collection dwindled and books in the secular sector became cheaper and more widely available, the books in Buddhist libraries became outdated and could no longer attract students' attention. Fewer and fewer new scholar-officials had any connections with the monks and the temples' political influence gradually decreased.

The suppression of Buddhism in the mid T'ang was paralleled by the construction of a bureaucratic society. The T'ang emperors found that one of the main reasons for the chaos of the South and North Dynasties was the hereditary rights for office holding. They

wanted to restore the Han tradition of recruiting officials according to their merits and

replace aristocracy with bureaucracy. One of their policies to bring this about was the

establishment of the civil service examination on the basis of Confucian philosophy. The

civil service examination was an institution through which new officials were recruited,

regardless of their family background, and the standard for the recruitment was the

candidate's knowledge of Confucianism. There were three levels of tests in prefectures,

Chapter 2 56 provinces and metropolitan areas. Those who passed the examinations could expect to be appointed to civil positions either in the capital or in other provinces. Such a highly centralized and standardized education demanded centralized and standardized textbooks for teachers and students to follow. The court found that woodblock printing, which had been good for religious scriptures, could be equally good for mass reproduction of standardized textbooks, which were needed by the thousands who wanted to sit for the examination. At the same time, the T'ang codified its and needed an effective means of communication for their propagation. The reproduction of the legal texts must be exact in content and massive in quantity. Woodblock printing was naturally chosen for this

Purpose. Thus the function of printing changed its content from religious education to

Confucian education and state propaganda.

Before that function could be entirely realized, other changes needed to take place.

After years of chaos in the South and North Dynasties and the Sui, the Han tradition of classical studies was almost gone. Civil printers were busy with Buddhist scriptures and the pursuit of market trends and there was no systematic endeavour to produce standardized versions of the classics. In other words, there were few standardized classical books to print. To bring about this desired change, the T'ang emperors established a number of literary houses (wen kuan) in the court to collect and edit classical books. They included the Houses of Literary Development (Hung wen kuan), a sort of school for the children from the families of the emperor, prime minister, local officials of the first rank, and capital officials above the third rank, where students studied

Confucianism and learned to collect and edit classics. Also established were the House

Chapter 2 of Literary Respect (Ch'ung wen kuan), an editorial office for classics; the Bureau of

Classics (Ssu ching chu), a library for the crown prince; the House of History (Shih kuan), an editorial office and library for history books; the Imperial Academy (Han /in yuan), an editorial office for state documents and a school for scholars; and the Imperial Research

Institute (Chi hsien yuan), a large research and editorial body for various kinds of books staffed with scholars of high official ranks. Furthermore, there was a special ministry, the

Book Administration (Mi shu sheng), in charge of calendars, , ritual literature,

and general administration of book editing and production in the empire, such as what

kind of books were not allowed to circulate and what editions were authorized. Insecure,

however, the Tang just continued the book tradition of the Han. Little innovation was

introduced in book editing and printing, although printing technology was already

available. One reason for the lack of substantial book production projects was that the

T'ang was basically still a military and aristocratic society. Its rulers knew the importance

of control over arms, but did not fully realize that control of the pen was equally important

for maintaining rule. It had policies to restrict printing in the private sector, but it did not

engage large printing projects by itself. Another reason was that the T'ang suffered from

several civil wars, especially the rebellions of An Lu-shan and Huang Ch'ao. Each time

its achievements in book editing and collection were largely destroyed. The Old T'ang

Book records the loss of imperial books during the rebellions:

After the fall of the capital city in An Lu-shan's rebellion (755-759), previously collected books were completely destroyed. Emperor Su-tsung (756-762) and Emperor Tai-tsung (763-779) respected Confucianism and issued decrees repeatedly to collect Confucian books. In Wen-tsung's reign (826-840) Cheng Tan reminded the emperor that many of the classics were lost. The emperor then ordered the Book Administration to search for

Chapter 2 58 different versions to supplement the imperial editions. In the first year of K'ai-ch'eng (836), 6,476 volumes were completed. In the first year of Kuang-ming (880)' Huang Ch'ao captured the capital city. All books in temples were destroyed and few of the imperial collection survived. When Chao-tsung (889-904) came to the throne, he planned to glorify Confucian studies. The Book Administration submitted a report: "We originally had over seventy thousand volumes of books in twelve warehouses and they were mostly lost in Huang Ch'ao's rebellion. We have only eighteen thousand volumes left and we have purchased another two thousand volumes. We know General Sun Wei-ch'eng positions his troops in our book warehouses. Classics are the basics of the empire. We demand that the books are returned to us for our editing and supplementing and the troops move to other places.' The emperor agreed. Later, in the transfer of the capital city to Lo-yang, half of the books were lost again and many of them became unknown to later generations." (Lu, 1986: 109)

Although the rebellions were finally suppressed, state power was greatly undermined and it had little ability to undertake large-scale cultural endeavour. The vacancy left by the state printing provided an opportunity for the development of private printing. For instance, Feng Su, a provincial governor of SSU-ch'uan,saw a proliferation of unauthorized calendars on the local market and pleaded for an imperial intervention

in 835. (Sung, 1991: 58) For the imperial rulers, calendars were not merely an instrument for recording dates. 11was a symbolic form of communication between Heaven and his

Son, the emperor, and it mainly recorded the schedule of rituals in which the son would

the mandate from the father for his rule. (We will come to this in more detail in

Chapter 6.) Needless to say, the rejection of the imperial calendar was a serious crime

and the state was expected to ban private calendars and reinforce its own. The state did

by making edicts, but there was little enforcement and the supply of imperial calendars

market. However we should realize that if private printing enjoyed considerable

Chapter 2 59 development in the T'ang, it was not due to the imperial tolerance, but due to the imperial incapacity to control.

PRINTING OF CONFUCIAN CANONS

The T1angwas overthrown eventually by a peasant rebellion and another chaotic period ensued, called the Five Dynasties. But as the civil service examination did not die and the moral values of Confucianism continued to dominate, for the first time in history a large-

Scale woodblock printing of Confucian classics was undertaken. The project took 22 years, spanned four dynasties and came to an end with nine classica~texts most in demand: I-ching, Shu-thing, Shih-ching, Tso-chuan, Kung-yang-chuan, Ku-liang-chuan,

Li-i. Chou-li and Lj-chi. it used the text of the stone inscriptions of the T'ang (K'ai chJeng

~hihching) and used the best explanations since the Six Dynasties. The motivating force behind the project was Feng Tao.

We need to say a few words about Feng Tao, not only because he was in charge of this large printing project and was mistakenly regarded by some Western scholars as the 'inventoru of woodblock printing, but also because he was established by later dynasties as an exemplary patron for the spread of Confucian education. However, his fame was largely a myth created by imperial scholar-officials (Wang, 1965). There is no record that he invented printing technology, nor did he initiate the printing project. The knowledge of printing came to north China from SSU-ch'uanafter the conquest of the

Kingdom Shu in 926. ~i yu, another proposer of the project, was a senior executive

Secretary in the capture of ssu-chluan and it was probably he who brought back the

Chapter 2 60 technology and made the first proposal to use it. The editing of the nine classics was done by T'ien Min (880-971) and his assistants. On a technical and scholarly basis, he had nothing to do with the project. His name was remembered because he was the highest official in the imperial court from the start of the project in 932 to its completion

In 953 and because the content was the Confucian classics.

Feng Tao was from a poor family background, lost his parents when he was

Young, and did not even know the exact date of his birth. He did not sit for any examinations. At first he looked in vain for a permanent job in the government and was

Put in jail for a number of years for annoying a prince. At the age of twenty-nine, he entered the service of an old Chang Ch'eng-yeh (846-922) in the Office of Army

Supervision. He stayed with Chang for eight years and had no record at all for any outstanding essays or conduct. However, he learned from Chang all the secrets of court

Politics, the rule of a civilian in a military organization, and the pitfalls awaiting an official

In the court. In 918, he was introduced by Chang to a prince and became his chief secretary. When the prince overthrew the Liang dynasty and established his Late T'ang,

Feng was promoted and became his chief minister. It was in this time that he proposed

With Li Yu the printing project and got the emperor's approval.

The Later T'ang Dynasty (923-936) was soon overthrown by the Later Chin (936-

%), and the Later Chin by the Later Han (947-950), and the Later Han by the Later

Chou (951-960). Four dynasties replaced one another in less than forty years. Due to his smart political craft and his skills at the art of flattery, Feng remained in the top position of the government for all these dynasties and it was in the Chou dynasty that the printing

Chapter 2 6 1 project was completed. In fact, exc~ptfor the printing project, Feng Tao left almost nothing memorable in history. "Apart from a few congratulatory messages and a number of formal addresses to the throne which had little to do with either Confucian institutions or state policy, we cannot identify any surviving state as having been written by

Feng Tao." (Wang, 1965: 199) He was condemned by later scholars for his swift shifts of loyalty to different rulers. Ssu-ma Kuang wrote: "Feng Tao was Chief Minister to five dynasties and eight surnames, like an inn to many travellers. Enemies at the break of dawn would become emperor and minister by evening. He changed his face and transformed his words and never once was he ashamed." (Wang, 1965: 205)

However, in the eyes of emperors and historiographers of later dynasties, his

Contribution to the standardization of Confucian classics greatly outweighed his flexible

loyalty. He was depicted as a perfect scholar according to Confucian standards. In the

Old History of the Five Dynasties (Chiu wu-tai shih), it says, "when he was young, he was

sincere, fond of learning, and talented in writing. He was not ashamed to have poor

clothes and poor food. Apart from carrying rice to offer to his parents, he worked only on

his reading and reciting. Although his house might be covered by a heavy fall of snow or

his whole mat by thick dust, he remained undisturbed." (Wang, 1965: 192) His recruitment

into the court showed the imperial favour for personal merits regardless of family

background. His name was remembered for the printing project, for it showed the state

Patronage of technology and education, just in the same way that Ts'ai Lun was

remembered as the inventor of paper though he personally contributed little to that

technology.

Chapter 2 62 Feng Tao himself did not realize his pioneering position in the use of woodblock printing. At first he wanted to imitate the T'ang's tradition by making stone inscriptions.

He turned to woodblock printing simply because the court had inadequate funding for stone carving and woodblock carving was much cheaper and quicker. The carving was largely a symbolic action through which the court expected to show its sponsorship to

Confucian studies. After the Later T'ang, each new dynasty continued the printing project left over by its enemy as a token of its cultural commitment. It is recorded in the official history that the first part of the project, five classics in total, was completed after the fall of the Later T'ang, the dynasty in which the project started. When T1ienMin submitted the five classics to the emperor to the Later Chin, he was rewarded with fifty bunches of silk.

The Later Chin finished only one classic and was overthrown. The emperor of the Later

Han was reported that the remaining four classics were not done yet and he agreed to collect scholars and finish them. But the Later Han survived only three years and the

Later Chou saw the completion of the whole project. (Lai, 1990: 174)

However, the finished woodblocks were put away after completion, instead of being used for the mass production of the classics. The court just wanted to use the

Woodblocks to establish its literary reputation and had no interest in book production. This is understandable, because it was a time of chaos and wars. The contribution of the woodblocks was that they standardized the texts of the classics. The use of the texts had to wait for the Sung Dynasty, when the general political, economic and cultural environment made the mass production of books both possible and necessary.

Chapter 2 CHAPTER 3

THE SOCIOCULTURAL BACKGROUND FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF

PRINTING IN THE SUNG

Before the Sung Dynasty, printing was already known in both the state and the private sector. However, history chose the Sung Dynasty (960-1127) for the development and

Proliferation of printing in the marketplace. This was not a coincidence. The Sung Dynasty was unlike any of the other dynasties. It was no match for the Han in terms of life span, the T'ang for military power, the Yuan for cosmopolitan achievements, and the Ming for imperial grandeur. It was famous for its political disasters, military weakness, and humiliating treaties with neighbouring . However, its cultural efflorescence was also unprecedented in history and its establishment of government bureaucracy brought

China out of its medieval age. Gernet generalizes the difference between the T'ang and the Sung:

The differences are striking between the China of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the China of T'ang times, the most brilliant period which occurred during the eighth century. During these four centuries a radical change had taken place. An uncouth, warlike, rather stiff and hierarchical society had given place to one that was lively, mercantile, pleasure-seeking and corrupt. (Gernet, 1962: 14)

During the Sung Dynasty, for the first time in history, the power of government moved from the military and aristocratic clans to civil officials and the establishment of a civil

Society became the basis for the rapid development of cultural endeavour. In this chapter, we will examine how change in sociopolitical environment -- the decline of aristocratic

Chapter 3 64 clans, the establishment of the civil-service examination, the proliferation of schools, migration, the development of the marketplace and the growth of merchant class - affected the growth of printing technology.

The Sung emperors attributed the Tang's failure to its military policies and decided to avoid the same mistakes. Chao K'uang-yin, the first emperor of the Sung and a military man by origin, believed that the Tang's lesson was its dependence on military solutions to civil affairs. The T'ang had a huge standing army, hereditary military commands, military frontiers with autonomous administrative power, and employment of non-Chinese soldiers. This decentralization of power tore the whole country apart. Local and military officials remained loyal to the emperor only when the emperor had overwhelming military power. The emperor had to fight against his own forces and buy his subordinates' favour by giving them land and titles, but he could never expect to win their real loyalty. Chao was not the first emperor to see this problem. The T'ang emperors had already tried to minimize the powers of the clans and the military generals and Chao was continuing this political struggle. Eventually he succeeded in the transition from what Denis Twitchett called "aristocratic" government to "bureaucratic government", from "medieval" to

"modern". (Twitchett, 1973: 47-48).

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A CIVIL SOCIETY

From the time of the Han Dynasty, the imperial government had been administered by aristocratic families. They were either military generals who were assigned land and titles

according to their feats on the battlefield, or scholar-officials (shih ta-fu) who formed small

Chapter 3 65 groups of extremely powerful lineages dominating the political scene. The emperor was at best the primus inter pares among them. The political and military elite considered themselves his social equals, sometimes even his social superiors, and their primary loyalty was not directed to the emperor, but to its own class and family clans. The clans turned the provinces under their jurisprudence into small autonomous empires within the large empire. They controlled local revenues, raised their own armies, and appointed their own officials to prefectures and counties. Unsympathetic to the interests of the court, they displaced the fiscal organs of the state within their territories and hindered the state's fiscal recovery. Their success at gaining autonomous power in their locale encouraged newcomers to further decentralize the court's sovereignty. Seeing the state's inability to control trade or landholding, new family clans tried every means to join in the competition for the private accumulation of wealth and land, and they not only disturbed the

~ociopoliticalorder of the imperial court, but also had conflicts with local princes. Fights for more territory became frequent and fierce. When one clan achieved the dominant

position within a locale, the leader would naturally ask for more rights and privileges;

princes sought more from the court. Although no clan denied imperial sovereignty

because clan military and economic power was still not strong enough to confront it, the threats to the court were increasing and the position of the throne was shaker,.

Eventually, the court lost its control and the empire came to an end, as happened to the

Han Dynasty. Because of the decentralization of power, social instability ensued after the

fall of the Han. Dynasties, kingdoms and states fought against and replaced one another

with short intervals and the chaos lasted over three hundred years.

Chapter 3 After they reunified the whole country, both the Sui and T'ang rulers realized that they needed to establish a strong centralized authority by decreasing the power of family clans and recruiting a professional bureaucracy. They reasoned that the members of the bureaucracy were to be selected by the state not on the basis of family origins, but on individual merits. Unlike the old aristocracy, these new bureaucrats would owe their primary allegiance to the state, because it was the state, not their own social group, that gave them office and titles. They would necessarily be inclined toward the interest of the state in their political standing, for they knew that their positions would be undermined if the state's interest was harmed. For the sake of the selection and recruitment of bureaucrats from non-aristocratic families, the civil-service examination was designed and those who succeeded in the examinations would be expected to replace the military and the aristocrats in civil positions.

The Sui was only short-lived and did not have time to develop the whole scheme for the displacement of the clans' domination. The entire T'ang period can be seen as a transition of the political structure through fierce struggle between the state on one side and aristocratic clans on the other side. The state attempted to retain effective control over the appointment of individuals to office in order to keep the executive power in the

hands of the emperor, and the great clans were continually fighting a rearguard action to

retain their privileges and prestige against the encroachment of the centralized

government. The transition was by no means easy. The T'ang reunited the whole country

by relying on an amalgam of Chinese and non-Chinese nobility. The emergent aristocracy

monopolised the political and economic terrain and left the central power an empty title.

Chapter 3 67 The family clans of the T'ang refused to give up their status and privilege and be pushed aside of the political infrastructure. Many political, military, economic and cultural measures were taken in the desperate struggle between the state and the aristocrats, including buying, assassination, coup d'etats and conspiracy.

In the realm of printing and publishing, one measure which fed into this whole process was the compilation of family genealogies. In the T'ang, the compilation of all types of genealogies, both by private individuals and by the state, continued throughout the period. The political purposes of the state and private compilations differed. The private geneologies normally aimed to preserve the pretensions of aristocratic clans, while the official compilations were designed primarily to check and eventually control aristocratic claims to preeminent status and aristocratic influence on politics and social life. When family origins were clarified and recognized, the clan's privileges would be

increased or decreased accordingly. However, for the T'ang emperor, there was a serious problem: the origin of the imperial family was not prominent at all compared with other clans that dominated a number of provinces. The emperor, therefore, had to justify his

rule genealogically so that his family origin was magnificent enough to claim the throne.

In order to limit the power of prominent clans and meanwhile promote his own, Emperor

T'ai-tsung (627-649) appointed a committee of high-ranking officials to draw up a large- scale genealogical work covering the whole empire, allowing no room for future expansion

by individual clans. In the state genealogy, powerful clans that might threaten the throne were deliberately downgraded. For instance, he rejected a first draft and ordered the

reduction in status of one of the great Hopei clans. Twitchett describes:

Chapter 3 It was a very extensive work in one hundred chapters. listing 1,651 separate lineages from 293 surnames, all of which were graded in nine degrees of social importance, 'rewarding and promoting the loyal and sage, and demoting the rebellious and refractory.' The emperor approved it, and it was promulgated to the empire. (Twitchett, 1973: 62-63)

The next emperor, Kao-tsung (650-683), took a further step: only the nobility awarded by the T'ang Dynasty was recognized and the nobility of previous dynasties was not respected. He compiled a new genealogy in which many old names were demoted or deleted, and many new names were added who favoured his rule. It consisted of two hundred chapters and included 2,287 lineages from 245 surnames. Unlike the earlier compilation, it ranked all families strictly in accordance with the official rank or noble title achieved by heads of families under the T'ang Dynasty. Furthermore, Kao-tsung started to prepare for the establishment of a bureaucratic government by restricting the resulting family status exclusively to the direct descendants of the holder of office and denying equivalent status to collateral and distant relatives.

Some thirty years later, a year after he came to the throne, Emperor Hsuan-tsung

(712-755) ordered this book corrected and updated this book by further degrading the clans that were prominent in previous dynasties and promoting the clans of the T'ang.

Twitchett points out the political purposes of the genealogy: "In this sense the genealogies may be seen as one aspect of the attempt to limit intermarriage among the greatest lineages and the continuing policy of cutting away the power and authority of the great Hopei clans." (Twitchett, 1973: 68) It was probably the first time in history that book production was so pragmatically used in political struggles. We have no record that these genealogies were ever printed, although we may assume there were printed versions

Chapter 3 69 because the emperor used the geneaiogy as a sort of legal code to judge a clan's social standing. Nonetheless, many parts of the official genealogy were later compiled into the official history and were thus printed for mass consumption.

Meanwhile, the civil-service examination for recruiting new officials was brought to a new level in the T'ang. This system had its origins in the seventh century and its effect on social mobility became gradually tangible. Persons who demonstrated their academic success in the examination were awarded noble titles and enjoyed the social privileges that used to be the monopoly of famous clans. This new political force soon developed a strong solidarity and vied with the aristocracy for power and prestige. Gradually the

T'ang emperors managed to move their political reliance from acritocracy to scholar- officials. Although the T'ang was unable to fundamentally eliminate the influence of aristocratic clans, it shook the sociopolitical basis for aristocratic rule and laid the foundation for the transition from medieval to bureaucratic society.

The next time period, the Five Dynasties (907-960), brought the final ruin of the noble houses. The noble houses weakened one another in their fights for the throne. This opened an ideal atmosphere for the development of civil officialdom.

A sign of the aristocratic downfall was the decrease of genealogy writing. In the

Late T'ang, the compilation of genealogies died down. The virtual disappearance of the fight for standardized genealogies indicated that even the members of famous clans did not see much point in creating records for the legitimization of their claims. Those in power did not see gaining the support of great families as a necessary part of establishing order and the number of high-ranking officials who claimed descent from great clans of

Chapter 3 7 0 the Tang declined abruptly and greatly. This decline in the importance of geneologies formed a sharp contrast with the courts of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, in which the collection of genealogies and the creation of new clan lists paralleled each change of the imperial throne.

Because of these changes, the Sung Dynasty had the effect of leaving men who valued their pedigree at the mercy of rulers who did not share their pretensions. Chao, the founding emperor, was himself a person of humble family background and he certainly did not allow the dominance of any clans over him. As the overall mechanism of the state operation was re-oriented toward civil officialdom, the clan as a loosely organized cultural structure soon collapsed. As David Johnson points out:

the clan as an idea rather than as a biological entity - was vulnerable just because in the end it was no more than an idea. It was an idea without strong institutions to embody it. And it was an idea which had never developed an ideological foundation. (Johnson, 1977: 48)

Chao learned from the failure of the T'ang that military officials could not control civil

positions. While dismissing military officials through his famous "cup of wine", the Sung

state under Chao greatly enhanced the prestige and power of civil officials and made the

examination system an increasingly important channel of sociopolitical mobility. In civil

positions, persons with military backgrounds were soon replaced by persons with

scholarly background. The size of the army was reduced and the top military command

was placed in the hands of civil officials. Army men were even forbidden to take part in

the examination. Gradually, a civil society was solidly set in place.

Preparation for the examination needed schools. However, from the T'ang to the

early Sung, the state only regarded the examination system as a venue recruiting civil

Chapter 3 7 1 officials and it did not immediately realize that education for the examination could bring a general atmosphere for the moral education to the masses. It was thought that education was a private matter and should depend entirely on the individual's family background and personal opportunity. In the T'ang time, there was no public school and even the venerable institution of the Imperial Academy was confined to a nominal existence. Once the institutionalization of the examination was well in place in the Sung, some provincial and local officials started to consider systematic education in state- sponsored schools so that there would be more personnel in the state government from their regions. That was the beginning of public school.

The first public school was founded in 1022 in Yen-chou in southwestern Shantung on the initiative of the prefecture; the emperor allocated a piece of land for its maintenance. After that, a few more public schools were established in other provinces.

Following Fan Chung-yen's prime-ministership in 1043, the state paid more attention to public education. There was a decree that the lack of public education facilities had prevented many gifted men from serving the state and public schools should be established in every province and prefecture. The rationale was that if the preparation for the examination was only taught in private schools, only the children of wealthy families could have access to it and civil positions would again be held largely by aristocratic clans. The people of poor family background, even if they were gifted, would never be selected for the civil officialdom. A proliferation of public schools was expected to solve the problem by recruiting students on the basis of their merits instead of their wealth.

Nonetheless, this policy was not carried out very successfully and throughout the

Chapter 3 72 remainder of the Sung, good public schools were the exception rather than the general rule. There were several reasons. First, the Sung empire was constantly under the threat from the north. After the fall of the capital city K'ai-feng, there was a large-scale migration to the south. The military disaster and the shift of population caused social instability and made the plan for public schools almost impossible. Second, because the cost of maintaining the military was overwhelming, the state hardly had any funds to develop education systematically. The few successful schools owed their existence largely to the initiative of some local officials and donations from the localities, which were less disrupted by the war. For most provinces and prefectures, the lack of funding greatly hindered the establishment of public schools. Third, there were not enough teachers.

Teaching in public schools was undertaken by state officials who could only contribute part time to their teaching. Although there was a decree in 1078 that provinces and prefectures should hire full-time teachers and award them official ranks, the total number of teachers in public schools was only 53 in an empire of some 1,000 counties. (Ho,

1962: 170) Furthermore, the pay for teachers was meagre and the officials who acted as teachers had to do sundry jobs to make ends meet. Finally, Fan Chung-yen's policy of public schools was a part of his reform package. With the failure of his reform, this plan was also neglected. The rapid development of public schools had to wait till the Ming time, which founded 1,200 public schools in thirty years at the beginning of the dynasty.

However, the education policy of the Sung did encourage the expansion of the Imperial

Academy. By the time the northern Sung fell in 1126, the total enrollment in the Academy

increased from a nominal few to 1,700; the peak enrollment was 3,800.

Chapter 3 THE GROWTH OF THE MARKETPLACE AND POPULAR CULTURE

The establishment of the examination system was undoubtedly an important factor in the rapid development of printing. The proliferation of private and public schools called for the mass production of textbooks in standard formats. The demand was like that in the Han

Dynasty, but as the number taking part in the examination was much larger than the

Confucian studies in the Han, stone printing and scribing was inadequate. Another stimulus for printing was that the explanatory books to the classics and the books of new theories, especially neo-Confucianist theories, were copious in number and the publication of their standard versions had to rely on a more efficient and cheaper technology than stone printing. (We will come to more details about textbook-printing in later chapters.)

There were three other factors that stimulated the massive expansion of book production and market growth, especially in south China, in the Sung time. They were large-scale migration, urbanization and commercialization. With migration, urbanization and commercialization, south China, i.e. the provinces south of the Yangtze River, enjoyed an unprecedented growth of mercantile atmosphere, a peaceful environment from wars, and some political freedom for literary creation. As a result of these social changes, printing saw rapid progress.

Although we have no specific statistics about the population of the Sung, it is believed to be over 100,000,000. (Ho, 1968: 7) Large-scale migration was an important factor in creating the changing social conditions of the Sung and it brought some fundamental changes to the sociocultural structure at the time of the T'ang-Sung transition in the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries. The migration took place from the North China

Chapter 3 74 Plain and Kuan-chung to the Yangtze delta and its roots can be traced to the Han

Dynasty. The main reason for migration was the constant state of war and the poor agricultural output in the north. Perkins (1969) argues that the per capita farm output in real terms in south China in 1077 was not much different from that in 1933 (Perkins,

1969: 1 17) and, as the population was only a quarter of what it had been in 1933, the reason for the "gold rush" was obvious to the northerners who lived in a perpetual nightmare of social instability. According to the census of the imperial court, only 23 percent of registered households lived in the south and 77 percent in the north in 636.

However, by 742, 43 percent in the south. The population of Che-chiang increased 10 times in 136 years, Chiang-su about 5 times and Fu-chien about 7 times. From the early to mid-Sung, the population growth kept up its momentum. The population of Fu-chien

and Kuang-tung increased 16 times, Che-chiang 3 times and Ssu-ch'uan 5 times. It was

recorded that when the Chin captured K'ai-feng, the capital of Northern Sung, people fled

southward to the new capital Hang-chou and its neighbouring cities - twenty thousand

salaried high officials, tens of thousands of clerks, four hundred thousand regular soldiers

and their families. (Shiba, 1975: 13-48)

The migration from the north to the south brought a rapid increase in population

in the south. The marketplace boomed and south China became the financial centre of

the country. People brought their wealth to the south to protect it from war and natural

disaster. Rich city dwellers purchased expensive real estate in southern cities in order to

be close to the local urban class. In the countryside, large pieces of farmland were

purchased by a few wealthy people. Many local farmers and poor immigrants were made

Chapter 3 7 5 tenants or had to occupy land that was unsuitable for rice cultivation. The relative surplus

of fertile land in the new economic areas also changed the pattern of landholding.

Absentee ownership and tenancy enabled scholar-officials to live in the city while enjoying

revenue from farming and trading in the country. Gradually the availability of land

decreased and the price of land in preferred areas rose rapidly. For the new immigrants,

Nanking was preferred, then Chen-chiang, Ch'ang-chou, Hu-chou, Hang-chou and Ssu-

chou. When these places were full, they went to Shao-hsing, Ning-po, Wen-chou, T'ai-

chou, Ch'u-chou and Wu-chou. (Shiba, 1975: 13-48)

The boom of the marketplace brought overwhelming commercialization. One

example was the rapid collapse of the old market system. In the T'ang Dynasty, the state

stimulated the "ward system" or "official market system" which restricted the activities of

merchants and artisans to specific "wards" within cities for the sake of state control. The

new formation of the marketplace made the system totally unacceptable and eventually

it was removed from the state policies. Small markets in small areas gradually grew into

inter-connected medium-sized and large-sized marketplaces throughout south China and

thus a network of market economies was formed. This market network greatly facilitated

the distribution of goods and services, and book production and selling as commercial

activities experienced tremendous growth unknown in the T'ang and all other preceding

dynasties.

G. William Skinner (1964-65) has designed a typology to describe the five-level

hierarchy of the market network in the Sung Dynasty. It is based on the commercial tax

quota in 1077: less than 3,000 units of cash for an "intermediate market town", 3,000 and

Chapter 3 7 6 above for a "central market town", 10,000 and above for a "local city", and 30,000 for a

"regional city". With this standard, we can categorize the cities and towns in south China as follows:

Regional cites: Hang-chou, Su-chou, Chien-k'ang, Ch'u-chou, and Hu-chou.

Local cities: Shao-hsing, Hsiu-chou, Wu-chou, Ch'ang-chou, Wen-chou, Chen- chiang, T'ai-chou, Ming-chou, Hsuan-chou, and Hui-chou.

Central market towns: Chu-chou, Mu-chou, Ch'i-chou, and T'ai-p'ing-chou.

Intermediate market towns: Che-chiang ferry near Hang-chou, Ch'ing-lung port in

Hsiu-chou, Ch'i-kou port in Ch'i-chou, Tsao-o junction in Shao-hsing, Yung-an in Wen-

chou, Ta-tung port in Ch'i-chou, and Yu-p'u ferry in Shao-hsing.

Standard markets: these were rural assemblies or marketplaces smaller in scale than intermediate market towns and their number was numerous. Typical transactions on the standard markets were the exchange of surplus products from local farms and

workshops for commodities brought in by long-distance traders. These markets were not

dominated by landlords or great merchants. Individual farmers engaged in trade at this

level.

Market towns, both central or intermediate, were often established either on the

of two counties or on important routes of communication, such as near a ferry

or junction. These towns became communication centres between urban and rural areas.

Wholesaling operated in the towns and sophisticated credit arrangements were

established which, according to Balazs' description, approximated modern terms. A new

profession, ti-tien, developed in the market towns. The Ti-tien took care of a warehousing,

Chapter 3 77 commissioning and wholesaling goods, as well as acting as innkeeper to out-of-town merchants. Long-distance merchants could eat and live there and sell their goods to the innkeeper. The innkeeper would order goods according to local market demand and wholesale the goods he had bought to local merchants. Such inns were also communication centres where people from all parts of the country could share

information. They were a major venue that local people used to learn about the outside world. Market towns were also good places for schools and social rituals. Elite education, which was generated and spread from cities, penetrated rural areas through market town

schools.

There were also regular cultural activities at each level of the market hierarchy.

Religious and commercial assemblies were popular forms. Festivals were regularly held

at temples and the scale of festivals was based on the hierarchy of the marketplace. .In

cities and county capitals, temple festivals were accompanied by parades carrying statues

of the spirits. At times there were open-air free theatrical performances, such as puppet

shows, shadow plays and dramas. Performers, such as opera singers and storytellers,

learned new stories or dramas from travelling merchants or from the books they brought

from cities, and performed them for rural audiences in the local language and style. The

whole Yangtze valley became an integral market and, as Chi Ch'ao-ting says, "the whole

valley, except Ssu-chluan, was sufficiently developed in communications as well as

cultural homogeneity to allow the major part of the territory to be woven into one regional

unit." (Chi, 1936: 132)

The market towns were also the best places for printers to develop their business.

Chapter 3 78 They had easy access to new books brought from other cities by long-distance traders

and could transport reprints, often in bulk, to rural towns and villages at a low cost. Elite

printers, who were usually from rich families and who printed books not for profit, but to

demonstrate their scholarship and cultural taste, also liked to have their printing shops

in these towns, because they were close to their countryside villas and transportation to

cities was easy to arrange. They managed to sell books that reflected elite tastes to the

rural gentry in the market towns. Thus the towns became rural centres of book production

and distribution and the supply and demand for books in general increased substant~ally.

Because the growth of population in south China took commerce away from the political

centre in the north, the printers in the lower Yangtze delta and Ssu-ch'uan, who were

thousands of miles away from the imperial capital, had more freedom in their title

decisions and their pursuit of market trends. The accuracy of reprints decreased as the

distance from the imperial capital increased. Printers in Fukien, the farthest province in

the south, were infamous for their woodblock carving mistakes and poor quality printing.

However, these printers also produced works by literati, especially poetry and prose,

although many of these works were not appreciated by the imperial editors. In other

words, commercialization brought some freedom of publishing.

The market towns not only promoted book production locally, but also promoted

the book trade on a national scale through a sophisticated network of long-distance

trading. This national trade was first formed for the transport of staple materials. For

instance, there was a great amount of surplus rice production in the Yangtze delta. Rice

was purchased at the local market, sold again at the regional market and finally

Chapter 3 7 9 transported in bulk to cities and other provinces. Goods from cities and other provinces, such as crafts and other kinds of staple materials, were also transported and sold level by level from the local down to the regional markets. Books were usually a small portion of the transported goods, but their quantity and variety had never been seen before. It was through these towns that books from other market towns, cities and provinces

reached rural villages, so that the students in all parts of the country could use the same

standardized textbooks. The flourishing of long-distance trade owed much to the waterways system that significantly decreased the cost of transportation. For instance,

Hang-chou, the cultural, commercial and political centre of Southern Sung, had three water routes to the north. Through the Yangtze River port there was a sea route to the

northeast, shipping mainly silk. Return cargo was often incense, ivory, rhinoceros horn

and rice. The Grand Canal was the central route, mainly shipping official and private

goods, such as rice, silk, metals, salt and other specialties. Books were often transported

via this route. The third route was first overland by Hui-chou to the port of Ta-tung on the

Yangtze and finally to K'ai-feng, or via Hui-chou to the port of Wu-hu on the Yangtze.

From Wu-hu cargo could go either via northern An-hwei to the Pien Canal, or via the Yin-

lin Canal to T'ai-hu Lake. Furthermore, via the Yangtze River, Hang-chou could have

access to the silk, lumber, hemp, lacquer, oil, fruits and paper of west China, especialiy

Ssu-ch'uan. Through Tsien-t'ang River, Hang-chou could reach Fukien and the

southeastern coasts which were famous for paper, , iron, copper, lumber, and

sugar.

The long-distance trade created a need for capital in faraway places. To a certain

Chapter 3 80 extent, this broke the grip of traditional self-sufficient economy on local financiers. Trade in the form of goods exchange began to disappear and the circulation of money became the major means of exchange. Metal money, such as gold and , was still used, but for the sake of long-distance trade, money in paper form was developed. The state issued uniform paper money and private bankers issued bank drafts that could be cashed at their own branches in other cities. Paper money and bank drafts were made by woodblock printing with fine carvings and on special paper to prevent counterfeiting.

The improvement of maritime and riverine communications gave rise id a specifically urban mode of life that had been almost unknown in China. People would select and purchase better goods and expertise from other cities and invest in places where they did not live. In the Yangtze delta, specialized commercial and craft guilds, such as bankers and printing shops, proliferated and attracted northerners for their efficiency, quality and service. The state's policy of revenue collection also followed the trend by replacing compulsory labour, which was highly regularized in and before the

T'ang time, to taxation in terms of money. With a system of taxation, the state did not have to take whatever there was in a locale, but could use the money to shop around the country and buy the best quality at the best price.

With the development of merchandising and the agricultural economy, a number of technical books appeared in the Sung Dynasty, most of them first published by private printers. The classic Essential Techniques of the Common People written by Chia Ssu- hsieh in the sixth century was reprinted with new explanations and it was regarded as a sort of Bible for farming. Lou Shou's Pictures and Poems on Husbandry and Weaving and

Chapter 3 81 Ch'en Furs Treatise on received a good welcome from farmers, for they contained a number of illustrations and the language was largely vernacular so that

ordinary farmers could understand. These authors had personal experience of the techniques that they described.

Lou Shou's grandsons recalled that their grandfather had "made enquiries from farmers and from their wives who practised the rearing of silkworms." His pictures were "so perfect in their delicate detail that it was as if one were in the countryside watching the peasants in person". Ch'en Fu declared in the preface to his treatise: "I have myself farmed in the Western Hills, and am acquainted with the principles of farming. I have gathered these into a Treatise on Agriculture in three chapters, sub-divided by sections, with a systematic discussion item by item. My book contains more than mere abstract knowledge. Only if one has really trod the ground, and is capable of doing something oneself, should one dare to write explanations for the instruction of others." (Elvin, 1973: 116)

Wang Chen's Treatise on Agriculture, containing a text of over 136,000 characters and

almost three hundred illustrations showing tools and machinery, received good comments

from his peers. Wang Chenls friend Tai Piao-yuan described his style as one which

"avoided elegance and amassed facts." (Elvin, 1973: 1 16-117) Another example was the

two of 1,500 copies, each made in 1273 of the Essentials of Agriculture and

Sericulture, which constituted one of the largest printing projects for scientific books at

that time. Books of basic science were also published. Typical of such books was Yang

Hui's Mathematics for Daily Use, printed in 1262. According to the author it was designed

to be "a slight help in the contingencies of everyday life, and to assist in the education

of the young". More sophisticated was Chu Shih-chieh's Introduction to Mathematics,

published in 1299 and notable for its examples drawn from contemporary city life. With

the spread of schools, the literacy rate started to grow in rural areas. Rural gentry who

Chapter 3 82 were usually educated to a certain extent read and explained the books to farmers and the illustrations aided their understanding.

The change in the economic structure soon had an impact on the political

structure. With the proliferation of periodic markets, more and more rural households

participated in the local market process. When the frequency of periodic markets at one

place increased, more people wanted to live there and more shops were opened. That

place would then become a town. Gradually, the towns gained political importance in rural

administration. In the T'ang, each village was directed administered by the county capital.

In the Sung time towns became a level of administration between the county and the

village. A town would administer a number of villages. Each village had a fair on a

different day according to its own habit and the town would have regular fairs two or three

times a month. On the fair day, people from neighbouring villages would come to town,

exchange their goods and meet friends. Various shows would also be performed.

Consequently the town became the cultural, economic and political centre of the villages.

These market towns coalesced around central market towns, which were usually county

capitals, and county capitals fed into city markets at the provincial level. Hence a

hierarchy of cultural, economic and political leadership was established through the

expansion of the marketplace.

Gradually a merchant class emerged. According to traditional Confucianism,

merchants were of inferior status not only to literati, but also to farmers and artisans.

Nonetheless, as they enjoyed greater social mobility than farmers, stationed in or close

to urban areas, and had frequent access to officials and literati, their social status was

Chapter 3 83 not as low as generally perceived. Within the entire environment of commercialization, the merchant class accumulated its wealth rapidly. They did business among themselves, with individual customers in both urban and rural areas, and with the state, which was the biggest merchant of all. The state relied on merchants for the control of the local economy, and the merchants relied on the state for protection.

The growth of commerce affected the social distribution of wealth and hence changed the avenues of access to power and influence. As people without imperial connections or military feats could expect to join in the ruling class, wealthy families were eager to invest in their children's education for the civil-service examination. Moreover, the state's protection would be more secure if a member of the family became a scholar- official. Each year there were new scholar-officials from the families that previously had had no relations with the government. Many of them came from places where commercialization was highly developed.

The connection between commerce and education has been well depicted by

Kracke: "Data from two lists of graduates that have come down to us from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries show that the regions with more and larger urban concentrations tended to supply not only more graduates in proportion to their area, but also more graduates per family, so that they clearly dominated the field." (Kracke, 1954-1955: 479-

80) Furthermore, merchant families managed to purchase education titles or even official status for themselves. When commerce entered the realm of politics, the pattern of the relationship between the state and the merchant class started to change from mono- dimensional leadership and obedience to complex involvement. Gradually the link

Chapter 3 84 between the government and the people who controlled local economies was reinforced.

These wealthy merchants made substantial contributions to the development of printing. In many cases it was not because they particularly liked book production, but because it was one of their best choices to maintain their wealth and cultural prestige.

Unlike the merchants in early modern Europe, the merchants of the Sung time were under a massive umbrella of state supervision. The state levied taxes on private transactions and held monopolies on some trades, such as salt and metal. It was crucial for the merchant to obtain the state's favour and protection to guarantee growth and he would be risking his head if he dared to go beyond the limitations set up by the all- powerful government. The merchants fully understood that the state would not tolerate an autonomous social class that had huge amounts of capital under its control. This meant that the possession of large amounts of personal wealth was dangerous by itself and the negative image of the evil merchant needed to be offset by another image. By tradition, the state appreciated the accumulation of cultural capital in the private sector as a demonstration of one's affinity to the state, so wealthy merchants decided to invest heavily in their cultural image in order to raise their social status. For example, it was possible to purchase a degree and collect cultural goods. Cultural investment was not free of limitations - many things such as garment and architecture were symbolic orders of social hierarchy and could not be violated. Many merchants chose book printing as a cultural investment because it had almost no ritual limitations. They hired experts to make elegant editions of classics, collections of anecdotes, tales, local , and poetry books. Because of their strong financial backup, their products were often of top quality.

Chapter 3 85 Carter comments:

In quality the block printing of the Sung epoch has never been surpassed. The fine workmanship of these artist-craftsmen - beautiful calligraphy perfectly reproduced in print - sets a standard for all time. (Carter, 1925: 83)

Some merchants even used gold to make book covers or the entire book leafs in order to show their sincere respect for book learning. After the books were completed, they did not sell them on the market, but gave them to well-known scholar-officials and literati as gifts or displayed them at home. They expected that their book production would win them fame similar to that of literati. The cost of production was really small compared to their personal wealth and the business that they would secure. Although the rise of the merchant class did not bring capitalism as it did in Europe, it bequeathed a good many beautifully printed materials and marvellous artwork, which were unthinkable in the military society of the T'ang.

Elvin argues that the Chinese "merchant class failed to develop into capitalism because of the highly centralized government." (Elvin, 1973: 181) There were many other reasons, such as state political and economic policies, the geographic features of the agricultural economy, the psychology of the "cult of poverty" among farmers, and the invasion of the Mongolians. Nonetheless, history did see a time in which an early form of capitalism started to grow. This period provided an ideal environment for the rapid development of book production as a commercial activity. In conclusion, printing technology, which existed in the T'ang and might have existed long before it, awaited the

Sung Dynasty for its massive growth. In the Sung, given a suitable sociocultural environment, printing experienced remarkable progress. To summarize thereafter: in the

Chapter 3 86 same way that Gutenberg's movable type did not fully show its glory until the industrial revolution when its significance far surpassed the dreams of the early printers, similarly, woodblock printing in imperial China, which was originally designed to produce standardized texts for religious rituals and classroom use, in the age of the Sung Dynasty found its opportunity for rapid growth because of a dynamic series of social changes: urbanization, commercialization, the expansion of the merchant class, the rise of popular culture, the establishment of the civil society and the examination system, and the improvement of the communication infrastructure. However, the content of printing was basically a monopolised channel for the voice of centralized discourse. For the sake of massive moral education, the ruling class needed standardized texts of canons, which would be distributed and sold in every part of the empire, and this led to certain technological opportunities in which woodblock printing made sense.

It is worthwhile to note that after printing began to flourish in an ideal environment in China, its development was not removed from human intervention. It continued to be subject to human intention for its functions and there were strong power relations at play in determining the direction in which the technology would develop. In Europe, the printing press contributed to the development of a series of new sociopolitical realities as

Eisenstein describes (Ong, 1982: 1 17-118), because the entire power structure of society was experiencing fundamental changes before and during the industrial revolution. In

Imperial China, when these changes were minimal and the state continued to be the sole authority for the whole empire, the nature of book production was geared toward further consolidation of the old political and ideological regime through the promotion of

Chapter 3 87 standardized texts. As a result of political necessity, the state soon developed into the largest printing organ in the country and its output was more than the total production of all private printers. Although the state printers produced a variety of materials, such as mathematics, , agriculture and warfare, its main interest was outside these areas.

The largest body of printed literature was the Confucian classics and various documents for their verification and practice, such as dynastic histories, legal codes, writings of other philosophers, and chronological encyclopedias carrying systematically arranged quotations of past authors. The political purpose of these book productions was never disguised by the state; it was meant to win the moral consensus of the populace and therefore stabilize the imperial rule. In Hsun-tzu's words, winning consent through education was the "symbol of good government" (chi kuo chi cheng). (Kuo, 1985: 188)

In other words, the content of print literature was monopolized and printing was used as a tool for the establishment of the hegemonic leadership of the state. In the next chapter, we are going to examine the essence of the standardized texts and see why the state was so eager to promote them for popular education.

Chapter 3 CHAPTER 4

CONFUCIANISM AND THE CIVIL-SERVICE EXAMINATION

The largest body of print literature in Chinese history deals with Confucianism, including both the original texts by Confucian scholars and other derivative literature propagating the ideals of Confucianism. The original texts consisted of the Four books - Lun-yij (The

Analects of Confucius), Meng-tzu (Works of Mencius), Ta-hsueh (The Great Learning), and Chung-yung (The Doctrine of the Mean) - and Five Classics - Shih-ching (The Book of Poetry), Shu-ching (The Book of History), I-ching (The Book of Changes), Li-chi (The

Book of Rites), Ch'un-ch'iu (Spring and Autumn Annals).

There were also authorized explanations to Confucianism written by leading

Confucianists of different dynasties, and textbooks of various levels for chanting and memorization by students. The derivative literature included folklore, accounts of historical events, novels, romances, poetry, popular religion, music, rituals, etc., all of which had succinct reflections on Confucianist precepts of an ideal society. Through widespread dissemination of print literature, Confucianism as the state ideology penetrated every aspect of social and cultural life. Conversely, the demand both by the state and the populace for educational material caused the rapid development of printing. The state had a strong sociopolitical need for mass Confucianist book production; printing technology was developed with a clear political purpose.

In order to understand why Confucianism was always the largest portion of print literature and why the entire book-production system, including book editing and

Chapter 4 89 manufacturing technique, was geared toward the production of Confucianist books, we need to examine briefly why Confucianism was particularly favoured by the ruling class, how it was accepted by the subordinates to that class, why Confucianist moral education was fundamental to the survival of the imperial court, and how the civil examination as an institutionalized coercive force imposed the indoctrination of Confucianism.

CONFUCIANISM AS THE THEORETICAL CORE OF A CIVIL SOClEW

First we will review how Confucianism was developed and used from its beginning to the

Sung Dynasty. Between the sixth and the third centuries B.C., a succession of brilliant

Chinese thinkers offered a wide variety of solutions to China's pressing social problems.

There were four major schools: Confucianism, Moism, Taoism and Legalism. Confucius

(c. 551-479 B.C.) and his followers, notably Mencius (c. 372-289 B.C.) and Hsun-tzu (c.

300-235), advocated a return to the lost virtues of the early Chou (841-475 B.C.), which embodied family-centred ethics, ritual and social responsibility. The followers of Mo-tzu

(c. 470-391 B.C.) criticized Confucianism for its excessive ritual, lack of religious spirit, and its particularism, but shared many of its general social goals and ethical concerns.

By contrast, the Taoist philosophers Lao-tzu (sixth century B.C.), Chuang-tzu (c. 369-286

B.C.) and their disciples sought release from social burdens and were concerned less with changing the world in an active way than with finding their special niche in the natural order. Legalism, which can barely be called a philosophy, was little more than an administrative approach emphasizing pragmatic government, universal and codified law, and state power as an end in itself.

Chapter 4 Confucianism and Legalism are often thought to be opposing philosophies, yet in practice they were complementary. The former focused on winning consent and the latter emphasized coercion. For Confucianism, moral education was the basis for the cohesion of the empire and the basic aim of education was the moral transformation (hua) of the masses. Wang Gungwu argues that the term hua essentially had four aspects of meaning: to change a person's world view, to change him to a better personality through education and examples, to upgrade his personality through supernatural powers, and to imply the superiority of the Chinese world, as distinguished from other countries or regions which were not "civilized". (Wang, 1991: 147)

Confucius' concept of education used the first two meanings. It proposed that people could not be coerced to follow the will of the ruler, but could be transformed by the ruling discourse. Confucius advocated voluntary transformation by a dynamic stimulus for the realization of people's own natural potential. it started from the argument that human beings were unequal by nature. They had different levels of intelligence, ability and moral character. This difference, he argued, should constitute the basis of a social hierarchy with the most capable people at the top. However, the reality of the feudal hierarchy was that the power of rule was often controlled by men of lesser abilities, who came to power because of their aristocratic background and their monopoly on education.

Meanwhile, many naturally gifted people lacked the opportunity to be educated and were excluded from positions of power. Confucius proposed that people should receive equal education regardless of their social and economic status, for only thus could superior men be distinguished and be selected to rule according to their merits. Ping-ti Ho highly

Chapter 4 91 appreciated Confucius' education policy: "Confucius... should indeed be credited with the first step toward social and emancipation." (Ho, 1968: 26) Although Confucius' original intention was to help the princes in the consolidation of their rule, his philosophy was a positive step to break the feudal system and laid the foundation for the establishment of a bureaucratic society one thousand years later in the Sung Dynasty.

In the beginning, Confucianism did not receive immediate appreciation from the ruling class. Guided by the basic principles of Legalism, the Ch'in state - one of several major contenders for political supremacy in the late Chou period - embarked on a systematic campaign of conquest that resulted in the fall of the Chou ruling house in 256

B.C. and culminated in the subordination of all of China by 221 B.C. Therefore, Legalism exerted immediate and profound influence on Chinese society. Confucius' proposal was rejected by most princes who themselves came to a ruling positions on the basis of their hereditary status. Furthermore, they saw the immediate success of the Ch'in Dynasty through its use of the Legalist approach and thought that Confucian moral education was time-consuming and without obvious gain in the short-run.

Confucianism started to be appreciated in a relatively peaceful period of the Han

Dynasty. Wu-ti, the founding emperor, saw the weakness of Legalism through the rapid downfall of the Ch'in and saw the usefulness of Confucianism. With its elaborate rituals, ceremonies and symbols to enhance the authority of the central government and social hierarchy, Confucianism could soften the harshness of Legalism and gradually win moral consent from the populace for the rule of the imperial court. Wu-ti's idea was welcomed and eagerly pushed by Confucianist scholars, for they were the beneficiaries of the

Chapter 4 92 Confucianization of Legalism in the establishment of a bureaucratic society that would largely dismiss hereditary privileges and insist on equity before the law. Therefore, Han

Confucianism was a combination of Confucianism and Legalism with some elements of

Taoism that advocated "non-action" of the state in the marketplace.

An important element of Confucianism was its symbolic order which defined social hierarchy in a familial structure, involving the assignment of specific kinds of garments, houses, chariots, etc. to people with or without official titles. The blueprint was that a person, no matter what his family background was, could attain a government position when he had obtained sufficient education and then he would be entitled to use various symbols to glorify his family. However, both the emperor and the ruling family clans of the

Han had little interest in a large-scale practice of Confucius' ideal paradigm, because assigning people without hereditary background to officialdom would substantially undermine the existing ruling structure and bring political chaos in the court. Although the

Imperial Academy and some private schools were founded and students started to be recruited according to their merits, the assignment to civil posts according to education levels was more of an exception than a rule and social mobility through education, though possible, was limited. Most posts continued to be occupied by people with only prestigious family background.

As a result, what Confucius predicted became true: without a centralized bureaucratic system to govern the empire, various clans started to dominate local areas.

They demanded more and more from the court and the court gradually lost its control. In the end, the Han Dynasty fell and wars ensued with one clan overthrowing the other for

Chapter 4 93 the throne. The lengthy period of social instability ended with the establishment of the Sui

Dynasty in 581 and the T'ang Dynasty in 688. Facing numerous social and economic problems, the emperors of both the Sui and the T'ang dynasties had to rely largely on the coercive approach of Legalism, but they attempted to restore Confucianism as the core of their ruling policy by expelling aristocratic clans and promoting education. Confucianism saw its full development in the Sung Dynasty in which a civil society was established and the civil-service examination was fully institutionalized. Meanwhile, substantial coercive elements were merged into Confucianism. The Sung emperors thought that the Sui and

T'ang dynasties had difficulty practising Confucian ideals because Han Confucianism, on which the Sui and T'ang's ruling policies were based, were problematic. This gave rise to the birth of neo-Confucianism in the eleventh century, which dismissed the Han and

T'ang commentaries and built a new theoretical framework more suitable for the Sung's hegemonic strategy.

The revision of Confucianism was headed by Chleng Hao, Ch'eng I and Chu Hsi and it inserted substantial coercive elements into Confucius' strategy of winning consent through education. In Confucianism, human relations were defined as purely dominant- subordinate; they were applied to all aspects of human relations, such as those between the ruler and his subjects, father and son, husband and wife. The dominant had the right to decide what the subordinate must do and the subordinate must be absolutely loyal, obedient and passive. Neo-Confucianism was welcomed by the Ming and Ch'ing rulers as their state ideology and in its practice winning consent carried less and less weight.

A byproduct of neo-Confucianism was the revival of aristocracy, an intensification of

Chapter 4 94 autocracy, and a weakening of bureaucratic society. Each time a crisis occurred, Han

Confucianism was recalled to strengthen the bureaucratic system. As Ping-ti Ho points out, "Confucianism was always a tool, never the master, of the traditional Chinese state, which during the entire imperial age remained highly authoritarian." (Ho, 1968: 15)

The basic concepts of Confucianism were to use education for winning consent and maintaining imperial rules. The ethical and political root of Confucianism was based on the concept of jen. The word jen has been translated as love, benevolence, sympathy and so on, but each translation only carries one aspect of the meaning. In essence jen reflects a desired social relationship between the dominant and the subordinate.

Confucius himself gave a definition to this term: "To love fellow-men;" Hsun-tzu said, "any species possessing intellectual powers must inevitably love its fellow-beings". (Analects.

Liang, 1969: 39) But the love of the dominant and love of the subordinate carried different meanings. They signified social positions in a given context and respect for a pre- established social hierarchy. The practice of jen meant a recognition of such social relations and the willingness to adapt oneself to the structure. At the level of the ruler, jen could be compared to a benevolent despot. Confucius made this point clearly:

Serve the father in the same way as one would expect of his own son; serve the Emperor as one would expect of his own officers; serve the elder brother as one would expect of those younger than himself. What one expects of his friends, that he should do first. (The Doctrine of the Mean. Liang, 1969: 46)

Mencius developed this concept of "impartial love" in an explicit political context:

"A man possessing jen extends his consideration for those whom he loves and to those whom he does not love." (Liang, 1969: 42) It means that even if the father was evil, the

Chapter 4 emperor was cruel or the brother was indecent, respect for his position was still a duty.

Within the family, no privacy could exist and no private undertaking could escape the regulations set forth from above. The family monopolized everything from material production, such as salt, iron, tea and wines, to material consumption, such as trade, style of dress and number of servants in a household. These regulations also dictated education, such as what to read and what to talk about, as well as daily rituals, such as the regulations for birth and death. Confucianism recognized that in the familial structure people were positioned into different social classes and labour statuses according to their hereditary titles and personal merits. In perfect harmony, everybody, even the people of the lowest social rank, should be satisfied with his position. Mencius said:

There is no distinction between the self and the other, or between the self and things. It is like the body of a person. The eyes see, the ears hear, the hands hold, and the feet walk, all fulfilling the function of the body. The eyes are not ashamed of their not being able to hear. When the ears hear something, the eyes will direct their attention to it. The feet are not ashamed that they are not able to grasp. When a hand feels for something, the feet will move forward. For the original material force feels and is present in the entire body, and the blood and veins function smoothly. (Wang, 1991: 121)

Therefore, the practice of jen meant willing acceptance of one's own position, no matter how unprivileged it was, and a respect for other persons' positions. Subordinates should

not consider whether their positions were fair or not fair for themselves, but should think

how they could express their love to those above them in the way they would have

expected their subordinates to do if they could have risen in the hierarchy.

Confucianism claimed that the formation of the social relationship in the concept

of jen lay in the concept of Tao. The word Tao has almost always been translated as "the

Chapter 4 96 Way". Chad Hansen argues that the English word "way" conceals a typeltoken distinction.

The closest translation should be "discourse", which can reflect the relation between guiding and behaviour which is the core of Tao. (Hansen, 1989: 75-124) Hsun-tzu defined

Tao as "the fullest development of jen. It is not the way of heaven nor the way of earth, but that by which a man lives". (Liang, 1969: 40) Confucianists argued that jen was a heavenly quality and was naturally possessed only by sages who determined the correct reciprocal relations and the code of behaviour in a hierarchical structure. "Heaven creates the people, and sets up a ruler to guard them and keep them from going astray." (Tso

Chuan. Liang, 1969: 151) What people should do is listen to the sages, imitate their conduct, and apply their teachings to daily life. "Just as the ruler and compass are the absolute standards of rectangles and circles, so the sages are the absolute standards of human relationships." (Mencius, Li Lou, i. Liang, 1969: 121) Since the sages followed the laws of nature and tested them on the people, the laws of heaven were made evident through men and the sages' conduct became the universal model for everyone to follow.

Thus the relationship of leaders and followers was clearly defined. In Mencius' words:

"those who performed manual labour are to be governed, and those who toil with their minds will do the governing." (Huang, 1988: 11)

The Confucianists maintained that the values and interests projected by the sages were the values and interests of all humanity and the sages' aim was to upgrade the general level of morality in order that the whole society would benefit from it. As the sages' teaching and conduct encompassed the common interests of all the members of the society in an ideal form, the social hierarchy and orders set up by the sages should

Chapter 4 97 be accepted as the only rational and universally valid way. For Confucianism, the past was the same as the present and what had been practised in the past should be equally good for the future. Sage leadership was regarded as a part of nature and the validity of leadership was beyond time. As Tung Chung-shu, a Confucianist of the Han Dynasty, said: "Heaven never changes and nor does the way of life." For Confucianism, the obedience to the heavenly rules was both an obligation of the masses and an obligation of the government. A ruler could receive the "mandate of heaven" if he abided by the heavenly rules, but would be deprived of the mandate if he misused the power that had been entrusted by heaven.

Revolution of the masses as an opposition to the bad service of a ruler was justified in the name of the "mandate of heaven" and the ruler had the responsibility to listen to people's outcries of dissatisfaction. Mencius said, "The people are of first importance, the State next, and the Emperor is least important of all." (Chin Hsin, ii.

Liang, 1969: 61) The theory of the "mandate of heaven" was an essential part of the

Confucianist hegemonic paradigm. By seemingly including the general interests of the people into the heavenly rules, the ruling class attempted to erect an image that was representative of the whole population so that general consent to the imperial rule could be won. The "mandate of heaven" was a political risk because of its seductive implications and in fact many peasant uprisings used it as their slogan. Therefore, education of the masses was the cardinal principle of Confucianism. According to

Mencius the functions of government were simple: government should afford protection; but on the positive side, it should guide the people in their moral development toward

Chapter 4 98 sagacity. In other words, the state must manage to influence people's thinking through political and moral persuasion. Once people's thinking was set in a predetermined discourse, they would become conscious followers of the heavenly rules, and the

"mandate" would naturally rest in the hands of those who ruled.

EDUCATION IN A PRE-DETERMINED DISCOURSE

Since the Confucian political discourse was largely imposed by moral leadership and persuasion, the work of a statesman was by and large that of an educator. It was emphasized that education relied on models more than on rules so that people could learn by imitation. In the words of Mencius, "God creates the people, and appoints for them emperors and teachers." The Confucian ideal was to cultivate and to foster feelings of affection among men in order to extend them to build up a society based on jen.

Education, of course, did not allow the learner to venture into any territory he wanted.

Even elementary education was strongly ideological in divergent forms, such as the San,

Pai, ChJien. The educator, i.e. the official, was responsible for the protection and the improvement of public moral standards. Such officials had the power to censor any books, plays and scriptures that people under their administration were likely to come in contact with, and to punish anyone involved in the performance or dissemination of material that was believed to subvert public morality. The Confucianist strategy of winning consent was to "like what the people like, and dislike what the people dislike". (The Great Learning.

Liang, 1969: 133) Moral education should start from the moral values of the masses and

end in the world views propagated by the state. The purpose of education was to bring

Chapter 4 99 cultural integration based on a particular ideology. This cultural integration was not the natural result of the interaction of people with one another and with their own traditions, but was the willed product of the ruling class. Based on the integration, consent was possible to be won and hegemonic leadership could be established.

Education established as a social institution could not avoid the characteristic of coercion. The coercion included standardized texts, the civil-service examination system and the symbolic order of social hierarchy. However, Confucianists never believed that coercive education by itself could be eventually effective for the maintenance of the state ideology. They sought to find a strategic point where coercive education could be most legitimately and least visibly merged into the moral values of the masses. Confucius said:

If the people are restricted by law and influenced by the fear of punishment, they will try to avoid the punishments, but will have no sense of shame. But if they are restricted by virtue and influenced by the regard for ethics, they will not only have the sense of shame, but will also be removed from evil. (Analects. Liang, 1969: 49)

This reminds us of what Antonio Gramsci has remarked:

If the ruling class has lost its consensus, i.e. is no longer 'leading1 but only 'dominant', exercising coercive force alone, this means precisely that the great masses have become detached from their traditional ideologies, and no longer believe what they used to believe previously. (Gramsci, 1971: 275)

Confucianists maintained that the masses should be made to know that moral education, although coercive to an extent, is eventually for their own good and the pursuit of education is a means of developing their own interests. The propagation of the ruling ideology was designed to start from a point where popular consensus could be reached, build coercion from that point to ensure the correct route of moral education, reach a

Chapter 4 100 higher level of popular consensus for the ruling ideology, and impose new coercion on the basis of the newly-reached consensus for state policies. In this scheme, the achievement of the second level of consensus was of utmost importance and the methodology that Confucianism offered was the "rectification of names".

The "rectification of names" (cheng ming) meant that names must be manipulated to match reality. The name ming and actuality shih should be united into a complete wholeness ho. Once names were confused and became inconsistent with reality, the distinctions between the superior and the inferior, the wise of the foolish, the leader and the follower, would disappear and the established social hierarchy would vanish.

Confucius thus described the political importance of the rectification in popular moral

education:

If names are not rectified then language will not be in accord; if language is not in accord then things cannot be accomplished. If things cannot be accomplished, then ceremonies and music will not flourish. If ceremonies and music do not flourish then punishment will not be just. If punishments are not just, then the people will not know how to move hand or foot. (Hansen, 1983: 73)

In the process of rectification, language was managed to accurately reflect moral

distinctions. Hence people would be able to consciously distinguish between the right and

wrong, superior and inferior, and moral and immoral according to the names that had

been assigned to particular things and human beings and their actions would naturally be

in accordance with the expectations of the ruling class. Confucius said:

Let the ruler be a ruler, the minister be a minister, the father be a father, and the son be a son. (Hansen, 1983: 73)

In a society so constructed, each person had his own position. He could manage to

Chapter 4 101 change his position through education and providing service tc the state, but he could never violate the hierarchical order. Education would in actuality enable a person to achieve appreciation from the state for his understanding, practice and exemplification of the state policies (shih), and he would thereupon be rewarded with appropriate titles and be appointed to civil positions (ming). The name he had earned would entitle him to a position in the hierarchy of the society and the hierarchy would guarantee his social status through the arrangement of the symbolic order (ho). As Chad Hansen points out:

The characterization of 'rectification of names' favours the sense in which names are manipulated to match reality -- and this is theoretically the most interesting sense. (Hansen, 1983: 67)

The social effect of the rectification could be found in almost every aspect of sociocultural life in imperial China. One example was the inferior social position of women as defined by the language and the classics. Chinese idiographic written language was itself ideological. Guisso finds that many of the characters with the woman radical in the

Shuo-wen chieh-tzu, the earliest dictionary, were biased against women, such as:

1) jealous and envious (e.g. tu)

2) cunning and artful of tongue (e.g. ning)

3) willful, disobedient and obstructive (e.g. fang)

4) ambitious and avaricious (e.g. Ian)

5) weak, timid and lazy (e.g. la/)

6) emotionally unstable and lascivious (e.g. yin)" (Guisso, 1981: 51)

Richard Smith (1983) finds that the rich repertoire of Chinese kinship terminology was also ideologically biased against women. The Erh-ya contained over one hundred

Chapter 4 102 specialized kinship terms, most of which have no counterpart in English. They reveal

power relations of the male line and female line within a family structure. The former was

placed in the centre through the terms like nei-ch'in (lit., inner relationship), and the female line in the periphery through the terms like wai-ch'in (lit., outer relationship). Smith

argues: "Chinese kinship terminology underscores the importance of social distinctions

based on age and sex." (Smith, 1983: 89) In such a linguistic paradigm, women were

"naturally" categorized as outsiders, humble and subordinate. Based on the nature of their

names, the standard of women's social behaviour was clearly codified. For instance, a

girl over ten years old must cease to go out.

Her governess taught her the of pleasing speech and manners, to be docile and obedient, to handle the hempen fibres, to deal with the cocoons, to weave and form filets, to learn all woman's work; how to furnish garments, to watch the sacrifices, to supply the liquors and sauces, to fill the various stands and dishes with pickles and brine and to assist in setting forth the appurtenances for the ceremonies. (Guisso, 1981: 58)

In order to propagate the behaviourial code in the discourse of names, the state

made extensive use of book production. There were numerous books about the

rectification of women's names and their behaviourial code even before the start of

printing. In the Han Dynasty, there was literature about the concept of virtuous women

(lieh-nu), such as Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Shih Chi and Liu Hsiang's Lieh-nu chuan (Biographies

of Virtuous Women), that reinforced male superiority over women according Confucian

philosophy. Liu Hsiang's Lieh-nu chuan mentioned different kinds of women and provided

models of virtuous ones. As specific doctrines for women, the Four Books on Women (Nij

Ssu-shu) were edited, which includes Nu chieh, Nu Lun-yu, Nii hsun, and Nu fan chieh

lu. From the Han to the Ming dynasties, these four books were repeatedly supplemented

Chapter 4 103 and printed and were used as basic textbooks for women.

Another book worth mentioning was Women's Virtues (Nu chieh) written by a woman scholar Pan Chao (?-I16) in the Han dynasty. In codifying and explaining the rules of model behaviour for women, Pan Chao emphasized the Confucian San-tsJung principles - dependency upon the father before marriage; dependency upon the husband after marriage; and dependency upon the son after the death of the husband - and the four essential parts of women's mentality - fu-te (woman's moral virtue), fu-yen (woman's speech), fu-jung (woman's appearance), and fu-kung (woman's work). There were seven parts in the book: 1) Pei-juo (lowly and weak), 2) Fu-fu (husband and wife), 3) Ching-shen

(respect and care), 4) Fu-hsing (female behaviour), 5) Chuan-hsin (concentration), 6)

Ch'u-ts'ung (absolute obedience), and 7) Ho shu-mei (rapport with younger brothers and sisters-in-law). Each part included an aphorism quoted from earlier writings, usually

Confucian classics, Pan Chao's own commentary on the quotations, and rules for the practical application of the concept. This book became the textbook for women and the source book for many educational books for women in later times.

According to Confucianism, when the names were rectified, many social problems, such as the inequity of wealth distribution, could be easily solved. Confucius held that "the world state should be equally shared". (The Doctrine of the Mean. Liang, 1969: 41)

However, this equalness did not mean communism. It meant the equivalence of wealth to one's name, i.e. one's social position, and that one should abandon the desire to gain anything beyond it. An emperor should have more than his ministers, and a minister more than his subordinates. The father should have more than the sons, and the elder son

Chapter 4 104 more than his younger brothers. The symbolic order was to be commonly agreed upon through moral persuasion and coercive measures. When people could voluntarily match their names with the amount of wealth that they received or possessed, no social upheaval would occur.

Confucius' proposal was criticized by Legalists and Taoists. Legalists argued that because natural resources were always less than the population, people would disregard the codification of names and struggle to seize extra wealth. The only solution was to use coercion to force people to accept what they received. Taoists thought that the best way was to divert people's attention from material benefits to spiritual benefits. In pursuing virtue (teh), people would be led to silent obedience toward whatever the state gave them. Hsun-tzu, a student of Confucius, brought a successful union of Confucian rectification of names and symbolic order, the Legalists' coercion, and the Taoist pursuit of virtue. He proposed that the distribution of wealth should be connected with the service that people did for the state:

Each man is assigned a responsibility according to his ability, and is given remuneration according to his rank and responsibility... so that no one need feel embarrassed if he rules an empire or complain if he is a gatekeeper or a watchman. This may be called uniformity in variety, straightness out of crookedness, unity in multiplicity." (Hsun-tzu, Glory and Shame. Liang, 1969: 68)

He laid out five criteria for the differentiation of society: position, wealth, age, wisdom and ability. These determined the amount of wealth each man should have.

Those in possession of good wealth would keep their jen to the ruler for their gratitude and for the maintenance of their social status. Meanwhile, they set an example for the masses to imitate their ways. Those with little wealth would not complain, but would be

Chapter 4 105 motivated to follow the dominant discourse in order to win social distinction. His theory

was not accepted in his time, but it laid the theoretical foundation of the civil society in the Sung and was developed into neo-Confucianism. Through the civil-service

examination, people were given an opportunity to serve the state. By passing the

examination, they became scholar-officials and were awarded with a name and wealth

according to their loyalty and service to the state. They would remain loyal to the state

because of the state's appreciation of their education and service. Meanwhile, moral

education was extended to all people and the promotion of scholar-officials set an

example for people to follow. Thus popular consent could be won toward the state and

coercion could be minimized. The expectation was that the suppressed would regard the

dominant ideology as their own ideal and they eventually would become moral allies of

the dominant class.

The civil-service examination was a social mechanism for rewarding names and

wealth to those who fully dedicated themselves to education. According to Confucianism,

only through adequate education of the masses could the names be rectified, the

symbolic order be established, and the mentality of the masses be fundamentally

transformed. Confucius said:

If a king wants to control the formation of mental habits of his people, he must make them learn. A piece of jade cannot become a piece of art without carving and polishing; people cannot know the Tao without learning. Sages could establish their kingdoms, because they make education a priority." (Kuo, 1985: 32)

Hsun-tzu said:

When people are convinced, domination is achieved; when people are not convinced, domination is gone. The principle of rule is to convince. (Kuo,

Chapter 4 106 1985: 197)

Chu Hsi, a leading neo-Confucianist of the Sung, echoed Confucius:

Human nature is good by origin. There is a vast difference between good and evil personalities, because people are exposed to different social environments. Therefore, if the ruler emphasizes education, people will turn to good and abandon the evil. (Kuo, 1985: 32)

Through the mechanism of education, people were offered a route to bring themselves and their families out of their disadvantaged social conditions and attain symbolic glorification of their names. This was the basic concept of a "Chinese Dream". The price was the destruction of their own consciousness, a process of dehumanization through which they became both the mental and physical slaves of the imperial hierarchy. Some pursuers of the dream might have seen this danger, but once they were thrown into the struggle for the pursuit of symbolic glorification, there was no way out. Attracted by the promise of a bright future, they offered their consent in a voluntary and often a very eager way to the ruling class. No matter whether they succeeded or failed in their pursuit, they would actively persuade others to follow the same route, so that they could then become leaders to the newcomers. Generation after generation, this social mechanism swallowed millions of intelligent minds.

Because the men who were selected into officialdom by passing the examination were supposed to be well educated in philosophy and art, they were consequently called

"scholar-officials". According to the imperial social hierarchy, scholar-officials were at the top of the spectrum. Scholar-officials as a social entity had existed since the Han

Dynasty, but it was in the Sung Dynasty that the selection of scholar-officials was fundamentally shifted from the basis of family origin, hereditary privilege and personal

Chapter 4 107 wealth to scholarly and personal merit. The concept of scholar-oificials was different from that of our present-day scholars and experts. The scholar-officials did not regard the mastery of any specialized knowledge as a necessity for their missions, because the system did not require them to be experts in a particular trade or craft. What was required was a profound knowledge of the classics, which was the moral core of the system, a good mastery of music and rituals as the representations of the symbolic order, a thorough understanding of the rules of behaviour, and a skilful command of literary style, such as classical learning, prose, calligraphy, , seal carving and poetry. Their job was to carry out large-scale administrative work, organize huge numbers of human labourers for various projects, and undertake the task of educating the masses to abide by the rules of the imperial system. What they needed was worldly wisdom to command technicians, experts and specialists. For the purpose, the civil-service examination, the device whereby suitable administrators were selected, was designed to test a candidate's knowledge in the Confucian classics and arts.

THE CIVIL-SERVICE EXAMINATION AS A VEHICLE FOR

IDEOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION

The civil-service examination had its first appearance in a premature form in the Sui

Dynasty and became more important in the T'ang Dynasty with the gradual change in the formation of officialdom. According to Peter Bol, in 730, the early T'ang, only two and a half percent of 70,000 officials (kuan) were degree holders (chin-shih) from the examination and the percentage rose up to fifteen percent in the ninth century. In the

Chapter 4 108 Sung, the emperors made some fundamental changes in the process of selection.

Originally those who passed the examination had to wait for a long time for their appointment by the central government. The Sung emperors decided to award them official ranks with full status and income immediately after their fulfilment of the examination; appointment would follow very quickly. This policy received enthusiastic response from scholars. In 977 only some 5,000 men attended the examination; in 982 over 10,000 appeared, and in 992 over 17,000. (Bol, 1992: 54-55)

The civil-service examination had several levels. The bottom level was called sheng-yuan, literally meaning "student source", a degree similar to our modern-day undergraduate degree. The examination took place in counties or prefectures. The person who got the sheng-yuan degree could take a higher examination, but he had no opportunity for an official appointment. He also had to sit for periodic tests supervised by provincial education commissioners to demonstrate that he was still keeping up with his books. A degree of a similar level was called chien-sheng, meaning a student of the

Imperial Academy. In the Sung time, only students with sheng-yuan degree could be chien-sheng, but this rule changed in the Ming Dynasty so that a person without any academic background could enter the Academy directly. Although chien-sheng was not a sufficient title for formal appointment, chien-sheng enjoyed more privileges in the capital city than sheng-yuan in rural towns, such as use of the imperial library and the possibility of being appointed to low-rank positions. During the Ming Dynasty, the state started to sell chien-sheng title mainly to the children of wealthy families. Those who purchased the title did not need to study at the Academy and the title was merely for family honour. A

Chapter 4 109 degree slightly higher than sheng-yuan was kung-sheng, namely " student", which was close to our Honours B.A. Kung-sheng was obtained not on the basis of the examination, but on seniority or merits. Its holder was not subject to periodic tests and was entitled to a minor official appointment. The number of kung-sheng was always a fraction of the number of sheng-yuan, usually only one for every public school annually.

The next degree was chii-jen, literally meaning "established man", similar to Master of Arts, and its examination was held at the provincial level. The holder of chu-jen degree was entitled to an official appointment, such as director or subdirector of prefectural and county schools, or to sit for the examination for the top degree chin-shih. Chii-jen meant a significant change from a commoner to an official and it was an unusual honour to the family. Ping-ti Ho's story of Chang Shih-i shows how the image of chii-jen was valued among commoners. Chang was a successful merchant and he hired tutors for his two sons. When he heard his second son got chii-jen degree, he exclaimed in ecstasy: "Now we can get ourselves out of this trade business!" He was not so happy when his son got the sheng-yuan degree and later got chin-shih, the top degree. He wanted to be out of his business not because he did not make money. For him, his son's acquisition of chii- jen meant a rise in social status for the whole family and that he could change his lifestyle to that of a "gentleman". (Ho, 1962: 27)

The top degree was chin-shih, "advanced scholar", which could be won only by passing the metropolitan examination and the palace examination. Chin-shih is often compared with the modern doctoral degree. The degree holder was automatically in the middle stratum of officialdom and had the highest seniority. The Chin-shih examination

Chapter 4 110 took place once a year and often the emperor would personally give an oral test to the candidates. The first one in the examination was called chuang-yuan and his image was frequently the hero in popular dramas. Both chin-shih and chij-jen could enjoy symbolic glorification: a flagpole in the courtyard with a red silk flag on which the academic degree was written in gold. They could ride in certain kind of chariot, have a certain number of servants and guards, and wear certain kinds of garments.

The prestige of high-degree holders lured many people to study for years for the slightest chance of attaining officialdom. Because it was so difficult to reach the higher echelons, provincial and metropolitan degrees conferred immense social prestige. An early visitor from Europe, Alvarez Semedo, recorded the phenomenal examination his book Histoire universelle de la Chine devisee en trois parties in 1667:

One must assume that these examinations form the most important affair of the state, because they are concerned with posts of responsibility, with prestige, honour and riches. They are the one object watched by all with attention, to which all give the greatest care and thought." (Llasera, 1987: 24)

The upper scholars (chu-jen and chin-shih) were noticeably distinguished from lower degree holders (sheng-yuan) who were often referred to as 'scholar commoners' (shih- min). Only a handful of men ever became metropolitan scholars and their names were famous throughout the empire. So honoured was the title that many families made their long-term economic arrangements around the examination, for which one family member was preparing. Yuan Ts'ai, a county magistrate in Wen-chou in the Sung time, mentions the future career of a scholar:

If the sons and younger brothers of an official have no hereditary stipends by which they may be maintained and no landed property on which they

Chapter 4 111 may depend, and they want some way of serving their parents and caring for their dependents, the best thing for them to do is to become Confucian scholars. Those of them who are endowed with outstanding talents and able to pursue the calling of a scholar fitting himself for appointment to office will, if of the first quality, gain riches and honours through success in the examinations, and if of the second quality, give instruction to disciples and receive the offering due to a master; while those who are not able to pursue the calling of a scholar fitting himself for appointment to office will, if of the first quality, be able to fulfil the tasks of writing letters and drawing up documents for others, and if of the second quality, be able to give primary instruction to boys in the arts of punctuating and reading. Those who are not capable of being Confucian scholars may make their living without disgracing their ancestors by working as spirit-mediums, doctors, Buddhists, Taoists, farmers, merchants or experts of some sort. It is the greatest disgrace to the ancestors if sons or younger brothers degenerated into beggars or thieves ... (Shiba, 1975: 45-46)

However, the examination was not a fair competition as some Western scholars, such as Max Weber, once thought and it would be a mistake to regard it as a democratic procedure. Since officials continued to be selected rather than elected, the chances of being received into officialdom were not based on the extent that people agreed to a candidate's ideas, but on the extent that the state appreciated a candidate's affinity toward state ideology. It was true that people of new blood - people whose immediate ancestors had never held a degree or had no connections with distinguished clans - jumped into the top level of the social hierarchy through the examination. Yet political economy was heavily involved in the participation of the examination. It took money to

Pass the examination; tutors were expensive, and the average peasant family could hardly afford to spare the labour of one of its members in the vague hope that studying

Would bring reward in the long run. Only well-off families could sustain their members' education for over thirty years with only an unknown chance of success and reward. Ping- ti Ho gives specific figures to show that in the Northern Sung period, most scholar-officials

Chapter 4 112 were from either wealthy or scholarly family backgrounds. Among the biographies of scholar-officials of the Northern Sung, 23.6 percent out of 1,194 cases were from the families of high-ranking officials, 28 percent from the families of less prominent officials and local magnates, 48.6 per cent from families whose statuses were unspecified but presumed to be plebeian, and 3.3 per cent from peasant families and families with no fixed profession or residence. (Ho, 1968: 91) Nonetheless, Ho argues that these figures only show the economic status of officials, and that poor families were not necessarily without considerable scholastic tradition. He claims:

I have yet to discover a prominent Sung Official whose family was originally truly poor and also lacking that vital scholastic tradition. (Ho, 1968: 91)

Furthermore, some wealth and social status had to precede the formal acquisition of a degree and the office; it was hard to imagine a family with bureaucratic connections and political influence whose origins were among beggars, butchers and gamblers. For the candidates without any name, such as the son of a tenant farmer or the child of a country inn keeper, they had to win patronage from the local elite and establish themselves with a proper cultural standing, such as the student of a well-known scholar, before they could expect to be given adequate attention in the examination. As David Johnson describes:

We read of impoverished scholars, of course - poor village schoolmasters and the like - but most men with classical educations must have come from well-to-do families, or at least have had patrons who were comfortably off (in village terms). (Johnson, 1985: 58)

To prepare for the examinations meant many years of work studying the Confucian

~lassics,various commentaries on the classics, standard histories that showed the validity of Confucian theories through the rise and fall of dynasties, and the literary way of

Chapter 4 113 presenting one's understanding of the theories. Wakeman gives a timetable for the endeavour of passing the examinations from five to thirty-six:

A better-than-average apprenticeship for the examinations meant beginning to learn to write characters at the age of 5, memorizing the Four Books and the Five Classics by the age of 11, mastering poetry composition at age 12, and studying pa-ku essay style thereafter. If a student could maintain this rigorous schedule without flagging, he would make a first experimental try at passing the prefectural exams when he reached 15. These he almost invariably failed at the first sitting, but by dint of repetition, he might be able to bring honour to himself and his family by acquiring the sheng-yuan degree at the relatively tender age of 21. Most people actually did not pass the prefectural level until the age of 24, while the average chu-jen was 31, and the average chin-shih 36. (Wakeman, 1975a: 23)

The basic books for the education were the Trimetrical classic, originally written in the Sung, with 356 lines of three characters each; the Thousand Character Classic, complied in the sixth century, with a thousand different characters organized into eight- character couplets, designed for ease in chanting and hence memorization; and the

Hundred names, consisting of four hundred family surnames. They were the so-called

"San, Pai, Ch'ien". Educational expansion brought more boys into schools, where they memorized the primers; and the development of printing technology, a technical response to the cultural demand, produced a large number of San, Pai, Ch'ien and many other primers. The Trimetrical Classic and the Thousand Character Classic taught Confucian doctrines: faith in the perfectibility of human nature, stress on education as essential to the development of man's goodness, presentation of social roles (Three Bonds, Five

Relationships) central to Confucian society, and the values appropriate to the chiin-tzu, or perfect man jen (human-heartedness), i (righteousness), li (rites), chih (moral knowledge), and hsin (good faith). In the words of the Trimetrical Classic, "Make a name

Chapter 4 114 for yourselves, glorify your father and mother, shed lustre on your ancestors, and enrich your posterity." The basic concept was that a student should fully concentrate on his books and not bother with anything outside his study; his diligence would certainly generate reward. As the proverb goes: "There is a house of gold in books."

According to Confucianist ideology, the word education (chiao) meant not only teaching and schooling, but also instilling and perpetuating a moral standard of social order. The moral values taught in the classroom were further reinforced in a large social environment, through imperially sponsored programs such as the village lectures (hsiang- yueh) and the literati's efforts in their promotion of moral education among ordinary citizens. The school curriculum and textbooks were under intense scrutiny and formal and informal regulations were set up for the unification of the elementary curriculum. Officials and literati frequently espoused production and distribution of the proper primers, and local officials even provided free texts to charitable schools in their districts. At a higher level, the students would study the canons in the original versions.

The scriptural sources were also well defined. They were (1) the Confucian

Classics: Shih-ching (The Book of Poetry), Shu-ching (The Book of History), I-ching (The

Book of Changes), Li-chi (The Book of Rites), Ch'un-ch'iu (Spring and Autumn Annals), and Hsiao-ching (The Book of Filial Piety); (2) the Four Books: Lun-yu (The Analects of

Confucius), Meng-tzu (Works of Mencius), Ta-hsueh (The Great Learning), and Chung-

Yung (The Doctrine of the Mean); and (3) the commentaries on these works by the leading masters of the Sung, of whom Chu Hsi (1 130-1200) and Ch'eng brothers, Ch'eng

Hao (1032-85) and Ch'eng 1 (1033-1 107), were the most revered. The major books were

Chapter 4 115 the Book of Changes () with commentaries by Chu Hsi, the

(Shu ching) with commentaries by Wang An-shih and Su Shih, the Book of Poetry (Shih ching) with commentaries by Chu Hsi, the Rituals of Chou (Chou 11) with commentaries by Wang An-shih, The Spring and Autumn Annals (Ch'un-ch'iu) with commentaries by

Sun Fu (992-1057), Wang An-shih and Chu Hsi.

There were also books for supplementary reading on self-improvement, such as books on the proper volition and aspirations of scholars, children's education, family instruction and discipline, kinship relations and their organizational regulations, daily and annual schedules of progress for Confucian studies, running local administration or how to be a good magistrate, and tutoring the prince. Since the coming of the neo-

Confucianism, there were more books on self-cultivation and internalized discipline and their publication received the affirmation of state orthodoxy.

The content of the examinations consisted of two parts: a test for memorization and understanding of the classics and a test for the candidate's use of his knowledge in

Policy matters. The whole concept was to test candidates' knowledge of Confucian classics, stereotyped theories of administration, and literary attainments. The first test, t'ieh, required the candidate to write down from memory ten passages from the Four

Books and Five Classics. The candidate had several words as clues to aid recall and could pass the test if he wrote five or more passages accurately from each cksic. Then the candidate needed to write his interpretation of the passages to demonstrate his understanding and he could pass if he was sixty percent correct. The second test, ts'e, was in essay form. The candidate wrote three to five essays, addressing different

Chapter 4 questions regarding current affairs and administration, such as "how to make people pay tax voluntarily," or "the basic principles for the maintenance of social order." The candidate was not expected to give a list of the actions that the state should take.

Instead, he must use classical knowledge, i.e. Confucian classics and standard histories, to demonstrate why this question was valid and important, from what moral perspective the question should be examined, what were the basic elements for an answer, how such an issue could be approached, and so on. Often the candidate was required to write, in addition to the essays, a piece of rhymed prose (fu) or a poem to demonstrate his literary accomplishment. These tests, of course, could not guarantee the candidate's administrative ability as an official, but they could show how much the candidate had understood the essence of Confucianist political philosophy and to what extent the state could rely on him without worrying about his ideological deviation. As Chang Chun-shu points out:

The ultimate goal of the court was to see that the were edified by one common educational curriculum, bound by one unitary cultural perspective, and functioned with a totalistic weltanschauung and monolithic of intellectual conscience. This was the key to stable political order. For only the intellectuals so cultivated would believe that the purpose of their life was to serve the ruler and the state with the utmost devotion and without consideration of their own interests. (Chang, 1992: 338-339)

The examination system attracted and, eventually, fundamentally transformed scholars according to imperial ideology. No matter how different their regional or social backgrounds were, all scholar-officials wrote in universally understood and had educated themselves with an identical set of Confucian texts. This shared high

Culture distinguished scholars from commoners who could not read classical Chinese,

Chapter 4 117 write elegant calligraphy, or understand the essence of Confucian canons. Such sharing

of values and ideas also went across social and geographic boundaries and slowly they

diffused into the daily language of large numbers of people. Furthermore, the examination

projected to all members of the society a sense of common values. By studying the

sages' books, a person could become a man above men. Seeing some successful cases

of scholar-officials, many people started to imitate them. Scholars, whether participating

and succeeding in the examination or not, would actively propagate Confucian ideals to their countrymen and therefore a network for ideological education became tangible. They

wrote large amounts of popular literature and thus extended Confucianist education to all

corners of the empire. As Wright (1964) points out, the examination system had a dual

purpose.

One was to give the central government a reservoir of trained men so that the ruler need not be dependent on the few entrenched families which had long monopolized public office. The second was to promote social and intellectual conformity by rewards of place and prestige to those who excelled in Confucian scholarship and displayed Confucian principles in their personal behaviour. (Wright, 1964: 91)

Another mechanism of the examination system was that it provided a restraint on the growth of the political power of scholar-officials. The Sung emperors were well aware

of the danger that scholar-officials would form great new clans and bring political and

cultural threat to the ruler. As long as the examination kept bringing new people with no

family background or wealth into officialdom, the political influence of the established

scholar-officials could be undermined. As civil positions were always limited compared to

the number of candidates for the examination, established officials had to constantly worry

that they would be replaced by new people if any of their actions were unsatisfactory to

Chapter 4 118 the emperor. The emperor was also concerned with the examination procedure. Since the examinations were designed and supervised by established scholar-officials, there was the possibility that they could use the examination to build up their own patronage network by recruiting their favourite candidates, which could eventually lead to the political decentralization from the emperor. This concern gave rise to the institutionalization of the

Palace Examination in 973, in which the emperor had the prerogative of deciding who would pass. The Palace Examination was expressly intended to establish that degrees were received from the emperor, so that those who thus became eligible for promotion to higher civil positions would know that the emperor was their patron, not the chief examiner or any civil ministers. By showing imperial favour to individual scholars, the award of a degree and off ice would further consolidate scholar-officials' loyalty toward the emperor.

In the process of the entrenchment of Confucianist education and the examination

System, book reading played an important role. Book studies meant not only a quick route to officialdom, but also a symbolic mark of a family's social status. For many people,

Preparation for the examination was an end in itself. Preparation for the examination could show that they aspired to office, at least in name, and it could distinguish a family's literati tradition from those who were merely rich. From the state's perspective, books were one of the most effective means for the propagation of imperial ideology. Consequently, book

Writing and production received attention and patronage from both the state and the

Populace. Woodblock printing, the technical advantage of which was virtually unlimited reprints of the same text over a long period of time, was a powerful aid to the

Chapter 4 119 materialization and perpetuation of Confucian ideological education. It was expected that through mass book production, standardized texts of the classics would make high culture stable and allow Confucianist ideals to permeate into every corner of the country.

Chapter 4 CHAPTER 5

STATE BOOK PRODUCTION

As we have seen in the first chapter, the birth of printing was never regarded by the

state as a technological revolution, but merely as a more convenient way of reproducing standardized texts. As Gernet points out:

Printing from woodblocks was itself given its first great impetus by government primarily as a means of authentication of the classic texts. Preservation of these from corruption was now regarded as a duty involving dynastic prestige. (Gernet, 1961: 62)

Therefore, in official histories compiled by the state, which are often called standard histories, only the documents which were duplicated and disseminated as the hallmark of dynastic contributions to Confucianist education were recorded, and there were few hints about the technical means through which books were produced. This made it difficult to identify the exact time of the start of printing.

The first official record that mentioned the use of printing was in the early T'ang

Dynasty. When Empress Chang-Sun died in A.D. 636, the grieving Emperor T'ai-tsung ordered the printing of her book Rules for Women (Nu-tse).In the standard history of the

T'ang Dynasty about this happening, there was only one character that indicated the use of woodblock printing: tzu, meaning catalpa tree. The words in the history ran "my order is given to put the book in catalpa for distribution," and it is inferred that catalpa meant

Woodblock (Chang, 1988: 32-33). In this ten-volume book, Chang-sun listed and explained the virtues that a woman should have in her attitude toward her husband, her

Chapter 5 husband's family and her husband's peers. According to the imperial order, this book

was propagated throughout the empire for males to educate their wives and daughters.

From the fact that the emperor could give an order for a book that was very important

for him to be printed, it may be conjectured that printing had existed before this time and

it had developed to such a degree that there was already no technical difficulty to

produce a book of great length (Chang, 1988: 32-33). This book was both the first

recorded event of printing and the first printing project undertaken by the state. As there

is no other record about printing practices before this event, the start of printing is

synonymous with state printing.

Nonetheless, state printing in the T'ang was largely limited to Buddhist scriptures

and imperial calendars, such as the Diamond Sutra found in Tun-huang. Printing was

mainly a practice in the populace and the products were mostly civil calendars, fortune-

telling books, dream interpretation and some basic reading books for children.

Unfortunately we do not have any detailed data of these book productions, because they

were regarded as unimportant by the state editors and were consequently not recorded

in their standard histories. The first recorded large-scale state printing was Feng Tao's

Project in the Five Dynasties (907-960) and it produced nine Confucian classics.

Because of the establishment of a civil society and the institutionalization of the civil

service-examination system, the Sung Dynasty witnessed the first mass state printings.

Since then, the state has been the largest printer throughout the imperial time. Rawski

notes:

The government had long been a large publisher of official documents, historical records, and Confucian texts. Its concern for the authenticity of

Chapter 5 122 the Confucian classics was a primary stimulus in the development of the printing industry. All levels of agencies, from the Imperial Household down to the county yamen (administration office), acted as publishers and printers. (Rawski, 1985: 22)

Elvin thinks that the printing projects of the Sung state covered not only Confucian texts, but also books of science and technology, which were the products of civil sectors:

The Sung government pursued a policy of editing and printing the standard texts on mathematics, medicine, agriculture and warfare, besides of course the Confucian scriptures, the dynastic histories, law codes and writings of more important philosophers. (Elvin, 1973: 180)

The change of the state's attitude toward printing from indifference and banning in the

T'ang to its full employment in the Sung indicated a fundamental change of the sociocultural structure from a "medieval" type to a civil society.

THE SCALE OF STATE PUBLISHING

Some Chinese publishing researchers, such as Wei Yin-ju (1988), Chang Hsiu-min

(1988) and Lee Chi-chung (1991), divide printing in the imperial time into three categories by ownership : state printing, commercial printing and literati printing. State

Printing means that the state invested in and controlled the entire publishing process from editing to printing and distribution. Commercial printing means that private printers

Published books at their own expense for the purpose of making profit. Literati printing was, by its name, performed by literati who edited and printed books, often not for profit but for their cultural diversion and cultural image. However, categorization by ownership may not be appropriate for an examination of printing in terms of audience. As we will see, the Sung state regularly commissioned books from commercial printers, especially

Chapter 5 123 the textbooks for the examination. Commercial printers also took their own initiative and

printed such books by borrowing the state woodblocks or simply copying the state's

versions. This "copyright piracy" was encouraged by the copyright holder, i.e., the state,

for the state's purpose in book production was not to make a profit, but to promote its

cultural hegemony through book education. Literati, although less frequently engaged in

the production of textbooks, such as the primers and canons, published many new

explanations and supplementary readings written by established scholars and scholar-

officials, and their books were often absorbed into state printing projects after they had

been tested in schools. In fact, as the initial cost of book printing was so low, ownership

may not be as significant a parameter in a study of book production in imperial China.

Because the subject content of publications by all kinds of printers was basically the

same, to divide general printing practice on the basis of ownership will disguise the state

mandate behind civil publishing activities. An over-emphasis on ownership will obscure

the cultural impact of the mass production of standardized texts, which helped maintain

the cultural integrity of the whole country.

Although there are no statistics on the quantity of book production in the Sung

Dynasty, the structure of state printing was indeed substantial. One example was the

mass printing of Buddhist and Taoist scriptures in the early Sung. The first Sung emperor

was interested neither in Buddhism nor in Taoism. However, after he had conquered the

Princely states of south China, he found that Buddhism was very popular both among

the literati and among the populace. In 971, ten years after he established the Sung

empire, he ordered woodblock carving of Buddhist scriptures in 5,048 volumes with

Chapter 5 124 130,000 woodblocks (Wei, 1988: 60). That project was the largest printing project in history at the time. His successors, although more actively engaged in Confucian studies and the examination, continued his policy by advocating that Buddhism was in line with

Confucianism. They maintained that Confucianism and Buddhism were heading for the same end through different tracks. Large printings of ensued: 6,434 volumes of scriptures were carved and printed in a temple of Fukien from 1080 to 1103,

6,117 volumes in another temple of Fukien from 11 13 to 1172, 5,480 volumes were carved and printed in Hou-chou in 1132, 5,704 volumes in An-chi-chou in 1175, and

6,362 volumes in P'ing-chiang in 1231 (Wei, 1988: 60). The Sung empire lasted 319 years, six complete sets of Buddhist scriptures were carved and printed in that time,

35,181 volumes in total.

With the promotion of religious books, the population of monks and nuns

increased rapidly to 458,000 in the fifty years after the founding of the Sung (Sung,

1991: 93-94). Meanwhile, the scriptures of Taoism, a popular religion especially in north

China, enjoyed the same glorification. The founding emperor and his ~uccessorstried every means to collect and edit Taoist scriptures. In the 11 IOs, Emperor Hui-tsung ordered the governor of Fu-chou to carve and print the complete set of Taoist scriptures in 5,387 volumes (Lai, 1990: 206). This was the first time in history that Taoist scriptures were organized into a complete body and all later printings of Taoist literature was based on this edition.

Buddhist and Taoist book printing was, after all, a temporary strategy of the state.

The largest state printing force was employed to propagate the ruling ideology -

Chapter 5 125 Confucianism. For Confucian scriptures, book production did not take place in temples,

but in government offices and schools. State printing organs could be roughly divided

into state government printing and state school printing, and further into central

government printing and local government printing. The central government had three

major publishing houses: one was the lnstitute of Literary Respect (Ch'ung-wen yuan)

in the inner court of the imperial palace (Nei-fu). In the , it was transferred to the State Book Administration. The other was the Imperial Academy (Guo-tzu-chien),

and the third was the State Book Administration (Mi-shu-sheng). Both the Institute of

Literary Respect and the Imperial Academy were responsible for the editing and

production of standardized Confucian textbooks, commentaries, standard histories,

religious scriptures, law books, and some scientific books, especially farming and

medical books. The quantity of production was immense. In 1005, Emperor Chen-tsung

visited the Imperial Academy and asked the principal how many woodblocks had been

carved for printing. The principal replied:

At the start of the dynasty I9601 we had less than four thousand woodblocks. Now there are over one hundred thousand, covering classics, biographies and commentaries. When I was a student, only a couple out of one hundred Confucian scholars could own a book of classics, because scribing was very time-consuming. Now we have the woodblocks of many titles and every family, no matter officials or commoners, can own their books. This is unprecedented in history and is really fortunate for scholars." (Lee, 1991 : 58)

This huge amount of woodblock carving and printing was not solely administered by the

Imperial Academy and the Institute of Literary Respect. The Academy also

commissioned private printers, especially those in Hang-chou, to do the carving and

Printing and it supplied authorized . Wang Kuo-wei of the Ch'ing Dynasty

Chapter 5 126 made a short list of major printing projects of the Imperial Academy's editions (chien pen)

by commercial printers at Hang-chou in one hundred years:

994: Shih-chi in 130 volumes, the in 120 volumes, and the Book of Late Han in 90 volumes. 1001: Rituals of Chou with Commentaries (Chou li shu) in 50 volumes, Ceremonies with Commentaries (I li shu) in 50 volumes, Spring and Autumn Kung-yang with Commentaries in 30 volumes, Spring and Autumn Ku-liang with Commentaries in 12 volumes, Fialty Classic with Commentaries (Hsiao ching cheng I) in 3 volumes, Analects with Commentaries in 10 volumes, and Ehr ya with Commentaries in 10 volumes. 1060: The Book of T'ang in 225 volumes. 1065: The Sung History in 100 volumes, the Book of South Ch'i in 59 volumes, the in 56 volumes, the Book of Chen in 36 volumes, the in 114 volumes, and Book of North Ch'i in 50 volumes, and the Book of Late Chou in 50 volumes. 1069: Popular Medical Prescriptions ( Wai t'ai mi yao fang) in 40 volumes. 1075: Shang Shu with Commentaries (Shu I) in 13 volumes, Shih Ching with New Commentaries in 30 volumes, and Rituals of Chou with New Commentaries in 22 volumes. 1086: Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government (Tzu-chi-t'ung-chien) in 294 volumes, its index in 30 volumes, and Textual Criticisms to the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government (K'ao I) in 30 volumes. (Ku, 1987: 12)

Parallel to the Institute of Literary Respect and the Imperial Academy for book

Production was the State Book Administration, first established in A.D. 159 in the Eastern

Han Dynasty. It was mainly an administrative body of book production and it was one of the six ministries of the state, the other five being Personnel, Revenue, Rites, Defense and Justice. It also undertook book production, largely state documents, calendars and astronomy books. As we will see in the next chapter, calendars and astronomy were

Politicized in the imperial time to such a degree that their standardization, propagation and censorship were a major task of the central government. The Book Administration

Chapter 5 had three editors for calendars, two editors for book categorization, and six editors for copy-editing of the books to be printed by the Administration (Lai, 1990: 191). When there were large projects or urgent jobs and more editorial expertise was required, the

Administration would commission the work to the scholars in the Imperial Academy or to other state departments. On such occasions, the emperor would personally give a banquet for the editors in honour of their contribution before the project started. The products of the Administration, the lnstitute and the Academy were called imperial editions, "supervised editions (chien-pen) or "editions of supreme clearance" (T'ai-chJing pen). They were printed on yellow paper and the cover was wrapped with yellow silk.

They were kept in the lnstitute of Literary Respect and the Secret Pavilion (Mi-ko) in the inner court of the imperial palace (Lai, 1990: 190-194).

The major function of the printing institutions of the central government was not to produce huge quantities of books to supply the whole country, but to produce standardized texts for local publishers - both the state ones and the civil ones - to reprint for their regions. In a way the Institute of Literary Respect, the Book Administration and the Imperial Academy were like the People's Publishing House in the contemporary

Chinese publishing industry. The People's Publishing House produces standardized texts in letterpress stereotype or film and the People's Publishing House of each province reprints them for the supply of that province. In the Sung, when a province needed

Particular books and they had no inventory of their own, they would ask for help from the

Imperial Academy or the Book Administration. The Academy and the Administration

Would provide the books from their collections if they had them, or print new books to meet local requests if they did not have ready copies. For instance, the Popular Medical

Prescriptions that was commissioned in Hang-chou, was printed because of such a

request. There had been a plague in the southern provinces thousands of people had

died. Local officials asked the Academy to print these books so that they could deal with this emergency.

The second part of state printing was by local governments. Local governments,

from the regional level down to the county level, were all engaged in book production.

They mainly reprinted the books passed down from the central government and occasionally originated their own titles as a supplement. In the level immediately below the central government were fifteen regional governments called Routes (Lu), each

responsible for a number of provinces. A regional government had several departments,

Such as An-fu ssu for military and civil affairs, chuan-yun ssu for transportation and taxation, t'i-hsing ssu for criminal affairs, chi-t'ai ssu for accounting and auditing, and

ch'a-yen ssu for the trade of tea and salt. Almost every department was engaged in book

Production. For instance, the ch'a-yen ssuof Che-chiang Region printed Comprehensive

Mirror for Aid in Government in 294 volumes, Commentary to the Book of Change

(Chou-i-chu-shu) in 13 volumes, Commentary to Chou-li (Chou-li-shu)in 50 volumes, the

Book of T'ang (T'ang-shu) in 200 volumes, and many other titles during the Northern

Sung. The chuang-yon ssu of Hai-nan Region published Explanations to Shih-chi (Shih- chi tJi-chieh) in 130 volumes, the chi-t'ai ssu of Chiang-hsi Region published

Commentaries on Hsun-tzu (Hsun-tzu chu) in 20 volumes, and so on (Lee, 1991: 61-64).

Many of these books are now preserved in the National Library at Peking.

Chapter 5 Under the regional level were provinces and counties and their products were also

mainly classics and standard histories in standardized versions. Some of the printing

projects were ordered by the emperor. For instance, the provincial government of Hang- chou was commissioned to print the New Book of T'ang in 250 volumes in 1060 and

Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government in 294 volumes in 1086 (Lee, 199 1: 60).

Some projects were the initiative of local government, such as the massive printing of the "seven histories" in Ssu-ch'iian in 1144: the Sung History in 100 volumes, Book of

Wei in 140 volumes, Book of Liang in 56 volumes, Book of Southern Chi in 59 volumes,

Book of Northern Chi in 50 volumes, Book of Chou in 50 volumes, and Book of Chen in

36 volumes (Hsiao, 1991: 37-38). These seven standard histories were repeatedly reprinted in later dynasties and nowadays they can be readily found in many libraries in

China.

One department that deserves some special attention is kung-shih-k'u, a government inn that received and accommodated officials travelling through that place.

As a government business, it used its power to charge various fees to local businessmen and thus accumulated large amounts of wealth. It used the money to print books, such as the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government in 294 volumes (Lee, 1991: 63). For the department, book printing was not a profit-making endeavour, but an investment in their cultural image. If any of the travelling official-scholars mentioned to the higher-level government the kung-shih-k'ds dedication to Confucian education, the officials of the kung-shih-k'u would likely be promoted. In fact, this was a common psychology among the officials who advocated book printing. When all neighbouring departments or

Chapter 5 governments were printing books, it would be embarrassing not to be engaged in it. This could explain why even the offices for salt and tea were busy printing Confucian books.

The following table shows state book publishing of 2,482 titles both by the central government and by provinces in the Sung, Yuan and early Ming dynasties.

State Involvement in Printing

Institutions Titles Percentage Central government: Inner Court (Nei-fu) 83 Ministry of Ritual (Li-pu) 5 Ministry of Defense (Ping-pu) 4 Ministry of Revenue (Kung-pu) 1 Bureau of Censorship (Tou-ch'a-yuan) 33 Bureau of Astronomy (Ch'in-t'ien-chien 1 Bureau of Education (Ti-hsueh-ch'a-yuan) 1 Imperial Academy (Kuo-tzu-chien) 4 1 Imperial Academy at Nanking 273 Imperial Hospital (T'ai-i-yuan) 3 Lung-fu-ssu 2 Total of central government 447

Provinces: North Chih-li South Chih-li Che-chiang Chiang-hsi Fukien Hu-kuang Hu-nan Shan-tung Shan-hsi Shaan-hsi Ssu-ch'uan Kuang-tung Kuang-hsi Yun-nan Kuei-chou Total of provinces 82% (Hsiao, 1991: 139-140)

Chapter 5 131 Because of the "not-for-material-profit" psychology, the books printed by local state governments were widely distributed on the market. They were also usually

Preserved in a state library whose function was to exhibit books rather than lend books to readers. Almost all governors at each level liked to keep such a library in order to enhance their cultural image to visiting high-ranking officials and to members of the local elite. Because various local governments protected and preserved their libraries, many books have survived. In fact, it was the imperial editions that were frequently destroyed in wars and fires and the books manufactured by local governments that often survived.

Nonetheless, the products of local governments were only a small portion of state book

Printing. When we say that the state printing was overwhelming, we do not just mean these symbolic printings, but also another publishing structure, state school printing.

State schools had already appeared in the Sung at the level of metropolitan,

Provincial, and county. These schools often owned farmland and received venue from crop harvests. They also had abundant human resources, i.e. Confucian scholars and students, to edit books. Furthermore, the publication of books gave a school prestige.

Thus schools became important centres of book publishing. Schools for the preliminary and undergraduate levels would print mostly basic books, including textbooks, collections of famous essays, and history books. The books would be purchased by students and sometimes were sold on the market. The production quantity was large1 but the titles were mainly old ones.

New titles were often designed by graduate level d~ools(shu-~uan) where

Scholars rectified the texts of classics, brought new explanations to the texts, and made new comments for understanding. Shu-yuan had two forms, one established by the

state, and the other established by well-known scholars and sponsored by the state.

They had two things in common: the masters were Confucian scholars and the subject of research was Confucianism. Chu Hsi, for instance, started over ten such shu-yuan in

Chien Yang county, Fukien Province, which attracted thousands of students from different parts of the empire. These students constituted a tremendous market for books, and book publishing grew rapidly in this area, making Chien Yang one of the largest

Publishing centres in the Sung (Fang, 1991: 79-80). Many of the titles written In such shu-yuan were scholarly books for the consumption of scholars, but this did not mean the books only circulated among scholars. Non-scholars, such as wealthy rm'chants who had no degree, also liked to own and display such books to show their cultural taste. In fact, many books that were originally produced in shu-yuan were later reprinted by commercial printers and widely sold on the market.

EDITORIAL POLICY AND PRACTICE OF THE STATE

The state was not only a huge printing house, but also a massive editorial organ

Producing new standardized texts year after year. In addition to editing and standardizing

Confucian classics, producing explanations and commentaries to the classics and

Printing calendars and religious scriptures, a major task was the compilation of

Historiography included basic annals (pen-shih), standard histories

(cheng-shih), biographies (lieh-chum), monographs (chih), genealogies, historical novels,

.I histories, historica,I topics about ritual and administrative affairs, and encyclopedias. They were typically written by scholar-officials for other scholar-officials

and would-be scholar-officials. The reader and the writer had experienced a similar education, had a common framework of scholarly reference, enjoyed the same cultural tastes and interests, played or would play the same kind of function in the government and society, and held the same outlook about the world. Therefore, they had no problem with communication via such a treatise.

At the core of book-printing projects was the desire to use history for the purpose of moral education. For the imperial rulers, history was much more than a record of past events. History was used to teach people to abide by moral values that would bring

Prosperity; their violation would bring ruin to the empire. At the same time1 history books had to be objective, as least in appearance. Comments and artificial evaluations were kept to a minimum and the purpose of education should be achieved mainly through a narration of historical events. Abstract words were avoided and the reader was expected to conceptualize the moral principles of history from the detailed descriptions of happenings and sayings. For this purpose, the selection and editing of historical records became the primary task for the compilation of

The basic book of the was the Annals, which recorded the daily affairs of the court and the empire. The Annals were largely a bare string of events,

Official appointments and court happenings, and they were useful in the main for establishing a chronology. or the compilation of the Annals, an organizational mechanism was set up to record the happenings: the court diaries (chJi-huchu), inner

Palace diaries (neich'i-cho chu), the record of administrative affairs (shih-cheng chi), the

Chapter 5 134 daily calendar Cjih-I/), and the biographies of each person inside the court. These records

were compiled into the Veritable Records (Shih-lu) and the National History (Kuo shih)

by a large group of imperial editors. They were the basis for the Annals. The daily work

of ministries was also recorded and was compiled into administrative books (cheng-shu).

Administrative books were mainly memorials, summaries of institutional events, case

books on law and jurisprudence, and so on, such as Compendium on Relief

Administration (Huang-cheng ch'uang-shu), Compendium on Agricultural Administration

(Nung-cheng ch'uan-shu) and Book on Famine Relief and Lifesaving (Shiu-huan huo-

ming shu). Their purpose was to provide cases of past experience for the reference of

Present policy makers. During all the stages of examination, compilation and editing of the records, there was comparatively little new writing and abstract generalization. It was basically a process of selection, condensation and deletion in the Confucian tradition of

"repeating but not authoring" (shu-erh-pu-fso).

However, the repeating was ideological. The purpose of history was by no means an impersonal, impartial and objective record, but was conceived of as a judgmental activity. Although the editors' views were rarely expressed explicitly, except in the

"conclusion" at the end of chapters, they were expressed in subtle ways throughout the editorial process. Twitchett has found that the whole record had obvious emphasis on central government and on decision making at the highest level by the emperor. Much

Of the routine functioning of the central government, which had to include many

"ferences to local governments, such as their reports and visits, and most events in the

Provinces, were deliberately excluded or disregarded (Twitchett, 1992: 199-200). The aim

Chapter 5 135 was to give future generations a record of the exercise of dynastic power in a positive

sense rather than to represent what was actually happening in the communications

between the central government and the local. The editors were required to decide with

extreme care and diligence what was to be included and to what degree of detail.

Although it could be a serious mistake to delete what should be preserved, it could be

a crime to preserve what should be deleted. When unfavourable things could not be

deleted entirely, editorial intelligence was required. For instance, an episode that might

throw a bad light on an emperor or his ministers could be mentioned only obhquely in

the Basic Annals and the detail, which was also manipulated in favour of the emperor,

might be recorded separately in the biography of one of the participants in the event, so

that a reader could not associate the throne with any blame or misrule (Twitchett, 1992:

199-200). Meanwhile, the interests of scholar-officials were cleverly embedded into the

compilation. Editorial bias against other social groups in the court, such as eunuchs,

military generals and financial officials, could be effectively expressed by simple omission

of any mention about them except in a negative context. In some cases the editors might

deliberately distort the account of events and hence leave unsolvable mysteries for future

researchers. Editors managed to twist the record beyond straightening and no

independent evidence survived to resolve any discrepancies.

On the basis of the Annals, the Veritable Records and the National History,

Standard histories were created as the official explanation of history- Any other histories,

Which were either different from or not included in the standard histories, were regarded

as Unorthodox literature and hence would be banned. The test for knowledge of the standard histories was a significant part of the civil-service examination and every scholar-official was supposed to be an expert in these histories. Before the Sung, history books were mainly written by individual scholars, such as Ssu-ma Chien's Shih chih and

Pan Ku's Han History. Although they were equally sponsored by the state and writers

Were by no means free from the imperial ideological manipulation, they still had a certain kind of freedom to express their own views through their historical narration. In the Sung, the state started to use collective efforts for history writing and individuals had less and less room for their own thoughts. What they could do was follow general guidelines and editorial principles and their work was more mechanical than creative. This tradition lasted throughout the imperial time and had a strong impact on modern history writing.

From the T'ang to the Ming (618-1644) there were only nine standard histories, many of which were created collectively

Standard Histories in Imperial China

Standard Period Number of Time of Histories covered volumes compilation

Old Book of T'ang 6 18-906 (Chiu T'ang-shu) New Book of T'ang 6 18-960 (kin Tang-shu) Old Five-Dynasty History 907-59 (Chiu Wu-tai shih) New Five-Dynasty History 907-59 (kin wu-tai shih) Sung History (Sung-shih) 960-1278 Liao History (Liao-shih) 916-1 125 Chin History (Chin-shih) 1 115-1 234 Yuan History (Yiian-shih) 1206-1368 Ming History (Ming-shih) 1368- 1644 (Wang, 1991: 11) We can see from the table the difference between the years covered by each standard history and the time in which the histories were composed. These differences show that the standard histories were not written by the people of that age, but by the

People in later generations or even later dynasties. The stories they wrote down were based on past imperial records. As the historiographers were dealing with the distant

Past, the figures of that dynasty could be praised or condemned at will according to

Confucian moral values without embarrassment to any living person. According to the logic of Confucianism, a dynasty could fall because the emperor was decadent and the

'mandate of heaven" was removed from him. Therefore, any criticisms in regard to the

Previous dynasty would be justified in order to demonstrate in contrast how the existing dynasty, which had replaced the previous one, was entrusted with the "mandate of heaven". When every dynasty depicted the previous one in such a way, the historical

Pattern became one of stereotyping: the founding emperor controlled the "mandate" so that he could overthrow the previous dynasty. His successors indulged themselves in luxury, violated Confucian morals and gradually lost the "mandate". Consequently a new

Person would come up with the "mandate" and establish a new dynasty.

The first four standard histories in the chart covered the T'ang dynasty and the

Five Dynasties, with the New ones replacing the Old ones. The Old T'ang history was written in the chaotic years of the Five Dynasties and was rewritten in the Sung time about one hundred years after the old version was completed. The first version of the history and the new version had clear ideological differences. For example, in the Old

800k of T'ang, Emperor ~ao-tzu'smistakes were pointed out in detail and criticised, and T'ai-tsung's success was due to the efforts of his generals and ministers. Empress Wu he-t'ien was condemned, yet her political ability was also recognised. In the New Book

of Tang, written by Ou-yang Hsiu, Emperor Kao-tsu was evaluated largely in the discourse of the "mandate of heaven" as the founder of a new dynasty and his mistakes

Were avoided. Emperor Tai-tsung was depicted as a most exceptional ruler and his ministers' feats were described in far less detail in order to emphasize the emperor's ability. Wu Tse-t'ien's political feats were almost totally omitted and her ascendance to the throne was depicted as a symbol of evil retribution for the empire's loss of morality.

On the other hand, the was better than the Old in its literary style.

Although the new version was less than half the length of the old version and the editorial comments were proportionately fewer, it was superior in literary quality and

Stronger in moral education through historical accounts. The change in the New Five-

History followed a similar pattern, emphasising how the rulers of the five

lost Confucian morals in their pursuit of power and why the establishment of the Sung was justified for its restoration of the morals (Wang. 1991: 16).

There were time overlaps in the Nine Histories. The Chin History overlapped

with the Sung History, and the Liao History overlapped partly with the two

Five-~ynastyhistories and partly with the Sung History. This was because there was more than one dynasty claiming legitimacy in that time period and official

thought they should be treated separately. The compilation of the histories of Sung Liao and Chin was done by the scholar-officials of the Han nationality

the Ming dynasty and they revealed obvious ideological prejudices against the nomads

Chapter 5 from the north (Wang, 1991: 18). It was a difficult task, because though the Sung was

a loser, its failure had to be morally justified. In their depiction, Chao K'uang-yin, the first

emperor of the Sung, was represented as a classical sage-emperor with the "mandate

of heaven". In contrast, in the Liao History and the Chin History, the first emperors,

Apaochi and Akuta, were famous merely for their military leadership and immoral

ambitions. The fall of the Sung was depicted as being based on its excessive

humaneness, rites, grace and kindness. The Sung's failure revealed how unwise it was for an empire to show these qualities to barbarians who just took advantage of imperial generosity and pursued material benefits. In the preface of the Sung History, it states that there were repeated unnatural phenomena in the Southern Sung because of its errors in its practice of generosity toward nomads, but these portents were not taken seriously. Meanwhile, some evil astrologers conjured negative harms on the empire and gradually deprived the emperor of the mandate of heaven. Eventually excessive humaneness and the evil manipulation of supernatural power gave the throne to the

Yijan. However, the Liao and Chin empires, although militarily strong, did not have the mandate of heaven. The Liao History only depicts the feats and errors of the

Liao emperors and deliberately neglects its political smartness in policy making and military control. The Chin History, in the same pattern, passes over the question of the mandate by dealing almost exclusively with the ups and downs of the dynasty's military

Strength and the power of the throne with an emphasis on its inevitable decline and fall to the Yuan (Wang. 1991: 18).

In the writing of the histories, historiographers did not summarize the records, but

Chapter 5 140 quoted them selectively. They did not use any words of their own, but tried to select extracts from the original texts so that the finished historiography would appear faithful to the original records. Balazs notices in his studies of Chinese historiography that if three peasant rebellions happened at the same time, the historiographer would not summarize them at an abstract level, for example, "three rebellions happened in a certain period of time", but would state them one by one.

He will say: "On the day dof the month rn of the nth year of the period p-r, Chang X, son of Chang Y, captured the subprefect Z," and then the same thing for Li and for Wang. (Balazs, 1968: 131)

According to Walter Ong's paradigm (Ong, 1988: 41), the lack of abstraction is a typical

an oral-culture characteristic was done with clear political purposes. Although tedious facts were quoted without abstract generalizations, the selection, which could hardly be

by the reader, was highly ideological and pragmatic. One masurement for the length of selection was the degree of success of a particular figure. Emperors and high- level officials who held their office for a long time deserved detailed quotations for their

while those whose political struggles for the throne failed or who failed against their Peers would have fewer quotations. A person's name, together with his contribution to literature or scholarly research, could be omitted completely because of his embarrassing failure in politics and that part of history would totally disappear. This characteristic also has an obvious residue of oral culture according to Ong's paradigms

Of "agonistical tones" and 'empathetic and participatory'. (We will COfTlment in detail On this in Chapter Ten.) However, as the historiographers selected extracts from original records and quoted them quasi-faithfully, it was easy to give a reader the impression that

the historiographical text was the original document and could be relied on for its

accuracy and faithfulness.

We should mention two figures in historiography compilation in the Sung time: Ou-

Yang Hsiu (1 007-1 072) and Ssu-ma Kuang (1019-1 068). Their mention is made not only

because their books have become an important part of Chinese cultural repertoire, but also because they started new trends in history-book writing. Ou-yang Hsiu was a

Pioneering figure in historiography compilation. He found that the official histories of the

T'ang and the Five Dynasties were unsatisfactory and he rewrote the histories by himself. Unprecedentedly, these individual works were granted the Status of official

and became a designated canon for the civil-service examination. Although

Ou-yang Hsiu has been criticized for his manipulation of the original records in his data selection, his attempt started a trend that historiographies could be criticized and

Improved. After him, various minor monographs pointed out the mistakes in official

including Ou-yangls versions, and these books were often called

"correction of errorsn (chiu-miu or cheng-wu).These corrections were almost exclusively the "textual criticisms" of the factual accounts in the standard histories, such as the time that a person became a minister and whether someone had really been to a particular

Place or not. If the corrections were accepted in the revision of the standard histories, the Person who raised the correction would enjoy a good name. As Gardner describes;

"Glorification is a motive which has actuated many private as well as official historians, in China as in the West." (Gardner, 1961: 14) There were few, if not none. of the corrections that were oriented toward ideological bias or basic methodology of the

compilation of the standard histories. The methodology of traditional Chinese

historiography was not without problems. For instance, there was a "cult of words" in

historical research that meant that any written records were believed to be true unless

there was another text that differed. This research methodology remained unchanged

throughout the imperial time.

Whereas Western scientific method accepts as proved only those facts which are attested by two or more independent sources, the traditional Chinese historian assumes that every documentary source is entitled to respect as a sincere attempt at truthful record, which presumably does not venture beyond reliable information. (Gardner, 1961: 64)

This methodology provided an opportunity for the state to manipulate history. When

many old books had been lost or destroyed in constant wars, the standard histories

became the only source of the old documents and this methodology allowed the reader

fully believe whatever was written in the histories. The new trend started by Ou-yang

brought some textual criticisms to the imperial editions for minor mistakes, yet we have

record of any "corrections" to challenge the basic principles of historiography

cOm~osition.Such criticisms would certainly be rejected by imperial editors, if there were

and would not be recorded in the standard history.

Ss U-ma Kuang's Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government ( Tzu-chih-t'ung-

chien) was another monument. It was a chronological history with an emphasis on drawing lessons from history for the reference of contemporary rulers. As one of the greatest national histories of China only second to Shih chi, the book encompassed the

of nearly a millennium and a half (403 B.C. - A.D.959). SSU-~~was careful in his data search and strict in his testing for accuracy. If there were unsolvable problems in the sources, he would insert a note of his own to explain the reason. His book started a new genre of historical books, books of historical comments (shih-p'ing). Although no

later books of such historical commentary could be compared to Ssu-ma's book in terms of quality, this genre provided a new vehicle of moral education through history teaching.

Most of the commentaries were written by neo-Confucianists who attempted to advocate

moral points by using over-simplified versions of historical accounts for mass education.

From the viewpoint of the audience, these books were easier for non-literati to

understand than the standard histories; the simplified versions of historical stories made

monotonous moral education interesting and persuasive. From a literary perspective, this

genre laid a foundation for the development of historical novels which demanded a

straight-forward story line to attract an audience. Through the adaptation of the historical

commentaries into fiction, the ideological bias in the standard histories were naturally

transfused into popular literature.

Ssu-ma Kuang's book was the first of such historical commentary and it was also

an ideological work. A. Fang in his The Chronicles of the gives

numerous examples of how he manipulated original records in his compilation of the

Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government. Ssu-ma followed the chronological

histories of the three-kingdom period for his book and basically copied the original texts.

However, in places he made almost unnoticeable changes according to the orthodox

standing favouring against all other kingdoms. One instance where he did this

was when the emperor of the Han gave his throne to the king of the Wei. The original

Chapter 5 144 history book, History of the Three Kingdoms (San-kuo ch~),says:

On the day of ping-wu, the King of Wei reached Chu-li. The Han Emperor, since the general opinion was in favour of Wei, summoned all the officials of his Court, reported to the Ancestral Temple, and had Chang Yin, who was concurrently invested as yu-shih ta-fu [Acting Supervisor of Works], carrying the Tally, bring the imperial seal and announce his abdication. (Fang, 1952: 37)

Ssu-ma changed the tone of this passage to:

The Han Emperor reported to the temple of his ancestors and had the Acting Supervisor of Works, Chang Yin, carrying the Ordinary Plenipotentiary Tally, bring to the King of Wei the Imperial seal and a rescript announcing his voluntary abdication of the imperial throne in favour of the King of Wei. (Fang, 1952: 10)

Through this change, the emperor of the Han was presented as volunteering to abdicate

rather than being forced by political trend to give up his throne because the Han had lost

its "mandate". At another place in the same book, there is a depiction of two generals

of Shu Han, Shen I and Shen Tan, who betrayed Shu Han to the Wei. San-kuo chi said:

Shen I revolted against ; Liu Feng was defeated and returned to Ch'eng-tu [the capital of Shu Han]. Shen Tan surrendered to the Wei. The Wei gave Shen Tan the title of Huai-shuigeneral and moved him to Nan- yang; they appointed Shen I to be the governor of Wei-hsing and entitled him Lord of Chen-hsiang, stationing him at Hsun-k'ou. (Fang, 1952: 31)

Ssu-ma shortened the passage to:

The Prefect of Shang-yung Shen Tan rose against Liu Feng and gave himself over to the Wei. Liu Feng suffered defeat and returned to Ch'eng- tu. (Fang, 1952: 8)

The enemy's reward to Shen I for his betrayal against Shu Han is omitted to avoid giving

a reader the impression that betrayal against the orthodox could end up with good

results. Ssu-ma was also cautious about the rectification of names. In the descriptions

of Liu Pei, the emperor of Shu Han, San-kuo chi called him "the Former Sovereign",

Chapter 5 145 indicating that he died early in his reign and Shu Han finished under the rule of his son,

the "Latter Sovereign". Ssu-ma changed Liu's title to the "Sovereign of Han",

emphasizing his orthodox position as an emperor of the Han Dynasty. (Fang, 1952: 49-

50) For the sake of the rectification, literary style could be sacrificed. After Sun Chijan

claimed that he was the head of Kingdom Wu, Ssu-ma immediately changed his name

and began to call him the "Sovereign of Wu", although the histories that he was quoting

continued to call Sun Chijan by his name. (Fang, 1952: 334) After the king of Kingdom

Wei received the throne from the Han emperor, Ssu-ma renamed him "Emperor" in his

writing, whereas all the histories that he was following still called him "the king of Wei"

(Fang, 1952: 93). Ssu-ma's renaming leaders in the middle of the narration could easily

confuse a reader, but for Ssu-ma an emperor should be called emperor despite any

inconvenience this gave to readers. This sudden change of names was carried over in

the popular literature The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Another genre of history-writing was called monographs (chih). Monographs

provided guidelines to administrative practice through particular historical events. Such

administrative guidelines included the hierarchy of officials and the military system, the

avenues to power, the conditions and methods of selection, appointment and promotion

of officials, the of a region in general, transportation and canals, legal

institutions, fiscal and judicial matters, and the examination system. Monographs

represented the whole body of knowledge that an educated person must acquire in his

Profession as a government official. The style of monographs was designed with this

political purpose clearly in mind. It was not meant to present an argument or capture an

Chapter 5 146 historical event for research, but to inoculate someone with an established doctrine. Its

purpose was not to convince the reader through persuasive argument, but to direct the

reader's thinking toward a pre-established discourse. This purpose demanded the form

of a be very different from that of a Western work. The introductory part of

a monograph would not deal with the topic of discussion in an exhaustive way, but would

give a summary of the classics and orthodox philosophy relative to the topic as eternal

truths.

The presentation of these eternal truths was not for discussion, but to provide a

foreground upon which the author would elaborate how the eternal truths would be put

into practice. The main body of a monograph was an outline of the rules to follow,

illustrated by many historical examples. These examples would further demonstrate how

the eternal truths had been proved in history and were therefore "eternal". The examples

were usually direct quotes from standard histories. Generalization or summarization was

seldom used, because this would decrease the validity of the examples. This was

another example of the practice of the Confucian doctrine "repeating but not authoring".

When some quotations were repeatedly used in well-known monographs, they would

become classics and be included in the examinations. It was not rare for an original

classical text, such as Confucius' Shu Ching, to be lost. Restoration of the text was

entirely based on quotations in various monographs. The concluding part of a

monograph was a reinforcement of the introduction, which simply repeated how and why

Certain rules must be followed according to the eternal truths.

Bibliography was a kind of monograph, giving the lists of the books in the imperial

Chapter 5 147 library. The largest bibliography was the General Bibliography of the Institute of Literary

Respect (Ch'ung-wen tsung-mu) with Ou-yang Hsiu as the chief compiler. In over sixty

volumes, it listed 3,669 volumes of books, each with a short bibliographic note covering

the main points about each volume. Ten years later, Ou-yang compiled another

bibliography The Bibliography of Literary Books in the Tang (Hsin T'ang-shu i-wen-chih)

covering 28,469 volumes of books as a supplement to his New Book of Tang (Lai, 1990:

201). From an examination of these , we can find a gradual change of

state cultural policies toward Confucianist moral education. In a sociological study of

bibliographies from the Han to the Sung dynasties, Balazs finds that there was a trend

toward emphasising rituals (rites, ceremonial, music, liturgy, sacrifices, insignia, costume)

and neglecting science (calendar, astronomy-astrology, unusual phenomena and

cataclysms) in state book production. Of the total space of the imperial collection, as

understood from the bibliographies, only 16.5% was given to volumes dealing with rituals

according to the record in the Book of Han, compared to 35.2% in the Sung History.

Science books occupied 44% in the Book of Han, but only 22.8% in Sung History and

20% in Ming History (Balazs, 1964: 139).

Monographs were important textbooks for advanced students who aspired to

officialdom through the civil-service examination. They taught the students how to fit the

classics into their essays and how to organize their essays in the desired style. However,

with the expansion of monograph topics and quotations, an examination candidate found

it more and more difficult to identify the core texts and collect all of them. This provided

a commercial opportunity for private printers: they would find the texts that were often

Chapter 5 quoted in monographs, carve woodblocks, print them and sell the books to the students.

However, their reproductions were often inaccurate and the anthenicity of the texts that they were copying were also highly doubtful. There was an intellectual and political demand for an authorized collection of all the texts that the students should follow for their examinations and this gave rise to encyclopedias. The proliferation of encyclopedia compilation started in the T'ang dynasty, when woodblock printing began to develop and the state bureaucratic system was being established. An encyclopedia contained classified information on all subjects that should be known by a scholar-official, such as lexicons for literary composition, manuals of political science and collections of monographs. It was regarded as a storehouse of knowledge; the extent of one's mastery of encyclopedic knowledge marked the level of one's qualifications for office.

The Chinese term for encyclopedia was lei-shu, meaning "books of classification".

The name implies an enthusiastic passion for quotation and classification. The first encyclopedia, now lost, was called "Government Institutions" (Cheng-tien), in 35 volumes and it was completed in 740. Sixty years later, in 801, Tu Yu wrote his encyclopedia

Comprehensive Compendium (T'ung-tien), which became the basis for the format of

later encyclopedias. It had nine parts: state politics, examination, officials, rites, music, army, laws, administrative geography and border regions. He placed government

institutions in the first priority and omitted science. With the development of bureaucratization in the Sung dynasty, encyclopedias began to devote more space to

entries about government institutions. Balazs finds that the space for entries about state administration increased from 22.8% in rung-tien to 41 % in the Economic and Political

Chapter 5 149 System of the Sung (Sung hui-ao) compiled in 1044-1242. The space for economy

increased from 5.9% to 21.5%. Meanwhile, the space for rites and customs decreased

from 50.2% to 22.5% and the space for sciences increased from zero to only loh

(Balazs, 1964: 147).

The Sung's compilation of encyclopedias exceeded previous dynasties both in

quantity and in quality. A majority of the authors and compilers were scholar-officials who

were commissioned by the state; a small number of them, also scholars, chose to

compile as professionals, yet their works had to win official approval before they were

made public. In the early Northern Sung, the emperors ordered the compilation of four

encyclopedias, which was a monumental undertaking in Chinese history. In the reign of

Sung T'ai-tsung (976-997), three encyclopedias were compiled. The first was the

Imperial Reader for Peaceful Reign (T'ai-p'ing yu-Ian), a collection of monographs and

essays of previous dynasties in one thousand volumes categorized into fifty-five parts.

The emperor himself took one year to read through the finished book and give final

approval. The second was Miscellaneous Records of Peaceful Reign (T'ai-ping kuang-

chi), a collection of popular stories and novels in five hundred volumes, edited by the

same editorial staff for the Imperial Reader. The third was the Masterpieces of Literary

Garden ( Wen-yuan -hua), a collection of 20,000 pieces of prose and poetry by 2,200

writers of the Liang, Chen, Sui and T'ang dynasties in one thousand volumes. The next

emperor Chen-tsung ordered the compilation of the Prime Indicators of Government Files

(We-fu yuan-kue~),a record of governmental policies in history. In Chen-tsung's words,

it contained "political achievements of emperors and ministers, useful policies for state

Chapter s 150 and family governing, the rules of ritual and music, the enforcement of law, the

suggestions of scholar-officials, and the response of the populace." (Lai, 1990: 21 3) The

methodology of the compilation was relatively simple, although very time-consuming for

the size of work. The editors selected from extant documents the books and essays that

were thought to be preservable for research and study. From the chosen ones, they

excerpted appropriate passages and put excerpts under previously-designed headings.

No criticism or annotations were needed and the editors' position was reflected through

their selection.

This methodology, although quite innocent in its original purpose, laid the

foundation for the literary inquisition in the Ch'ing Dynasty. When using this methodology

for the compilation of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries (Ssu-k'u ch'uan-shu),

the Ch'ing state divided the scanned literature into that which could be completely

preserved, that to be partly preserved, that which could be preserved only for the titles

and the content should be omitted, and that to be completely banned (Chang, 1992: 329-

330). In the Southern Sung period, some non-official scholars, dissatisfied with the

selection and the lack of annotation in the four encyclopedias, started to compile

encyclopedias of their own. They learned the model of Comprehensive Compendium

(T'ung-tien), which had been made in the T1ang dynasty and compiled Comprehensive

Records ( T'ung-chih) and Comprehensive Studies of Documentary Evidence ( Wen-hsien

t'ung-k'ao). These three works were later known as the set of "three comprehensives"

(San-flung), which, unlike the imperial encyclopedias, included research comments and

classifications that were more detailed and systematic.

Chapter 5 151 The book business for the state in the Sung was quite different from our conception of it today. As the state monopolized the production of knowledge, it had no competitors and the sales of its products were guaranteed. The state publisher held the only authentic versions upon which the state examinations were based, so the demand for their books was overwhelming. The state publisher could sit back and buyers would line up outside. A usual saying for the privileged position of state publishers was: "An emperor's daughter never worries about her marriage." For state publisher, no promotion was necessary, because the whole state mechanism, including the policies of tne civil

Society and the examination system, promoted their books. Culturally, state patronage made the publishers feel superior to their customers. When the publisher sold books to readers or to civil booksellers, he was not doing business, but was conferring a special favour on book buyers. Furthermore, as we have said earlier, state publishers did not look for profit in their publishing projects, but for enhancement of their reputation.

Publishing projects were always funded by the state and the publisher would not lose anything even if he just carved blocks and never printed books. This quasi-business tradition has been characteristic of the Chinese publishing industry fmm the imperial age to modern times.

THE SUNG'S IMPACT ON ITS NElGHBOURlNG EMPIRES

The state printing of the Sung had tremendous impact on neighbouring empires, especially Liao, Chin and Hsi Hsia. These empires imitated the Sung's cultural policy of

Confucianist moral education and soon became engaged in book production of this sort

Chapter 5 152 by using state labour. The proliferation of book education gradually brought the mentality of these empires close to that of the Han nationality. These empires learned the ritual system of the Han and established their government hierarchy after the Sung's patterns.

When they invaded China and eventually conquered China in the name of Empire Yuan, their rationale in policy making and strategy design was so Confucianist that they found little difficulty in propagating their policies to the Han people. In the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties when these empires were absorbed into Chinese territory, the Chinese state also found it easy to maintain their rules on the basis of Confucianism on the foreign land. Books were found to be more powerful than weapons.

The Liao was one of the strongest empires in between 916 and 1125 and its territory extended from the eastern coast to T'ien-shan to the border of Korea.

It was originally a completely oral culture - no written language and no technology of writing. The Liao created records by carving marks on wooden logs. They learned the written language of the Han people and created written scripts by reducing the strokes of . Their official written language was Chinese and their schools used Chinese textbooks, such as Confucian classics and Buddhist scriptures. At first they only imported books from the Sung. Gradually they learned printing techniques and started to copy Chinese books. The standard history had a record of an imperial order of the Liao in 1064 that "private printing is forbidden in the capital city" (Chang, 1991:

189), which showed that printing was already popular. The Liao state was the largest

Printer of the empire. Its largest printing project was the Buddhist scriptures in over five thousand volumes. Five complete copies were sent to the Korean court as gifts. They

Chapter 5 used Korean paper and ink which were well known for their delicacy and softness, and

used rice water to melt the ink. This new technique improved the printing quality. They

also translated and printed in Liao language some history books of the Sung, but none

of these books now exist.

The Chin Empire (1 115-1235) defeated the Liao and became the ruler of the territory north of the Great Wall. The Chin was also originally an oral culture and that acquired their written language from Chinese characters. In their schools, they used

Chinese textbooks of Confucian classics and standard versions were issued by their imperial academy. After it launched attacks on the Sung and captured the capital city

K'ai-feng, the Chin transported home all the books and woodblocks in the Sung imperial

library and the Imperial Academy as well as those in private printing shops. The quantity was so huge that a single trip to transport the books required eight thousand soldiers.

Many of the books and woodblocks were destroyed on the journey. The Chin also brought back woodblock carvers and printers. Soon they started their own printing projects, mainly Confucian classics, using the remaining woodblocks from the Sung and carving their own. With the increase of trade between the Sung and the Chin, some Chin books came to the Sung and thus it became difficult to distinguish between Sung and

Chin editions. Most of the Chin editions have been lost and no more than twenty Chin books have been preserved. The Chin was later conquered by a Mongolian tribe and established the Yuan empire.

The Hsi Hsia (1038-1227), an empire northwest to the Sung, also acquired its written language from Chinese characters. In the beginning, it bought Buddhist scriptures

Chapter 5 154 from the Sung, seventy horses for a complete set. Then the state started to carve

woodblocks and print its own scriptures and charms. It also translated and printed many

Confucian classics, Sung history books, military books and folk stories. Later it translated

its own version of Buddhist scriptures from the Tibetan language. Over 3,000 pieces of

print literature and over 2,000 pieces of woodblock have been found in the relics of the

Hsi Hsia capital the City of Water (Hei-shui ch'eng) and its neighbouring counties.

It is estimated that the Hsi Hsia produced over 100 titles; sixty percent of them were

printed (Kuang-ming Daily, 1984).

Chapter 5 CHAPTER 6

THE BANNING OF BOOKS

Although the term ideology did not exist in imperial China, as a concept describing the formation of a person's belief it was deeply rooted in traditional Chinese political philosophy. The classical expression was cheng-chiao, or "governing and education". The word cheng refers to the state and chiao refers to education and transformation of individuals. The combination of cheng and chiao means moral education by the government to the masses for their moral transformation according to the established

Political discourse.

The control of belief was regarded as a fundamental task of the authorities in

China. Munro (1977) argues that the rationale for the control of belief was the concept of "promptings to act", i.e. "a private mental occurrence has a high probability of becoming a publicly manifested act." (Munro, 1977: 16) This concept Was very different from that of Western liberalism which emphasized that ideas should be treated separately from actions so that an individual would be able to defend himself against state

Prosecution for what he thought. In Western liberalism, an individual is seen to have his

Private realm; this private realm does not affect others and should remain hmune from tampering by external agents. Society controls his public realm, i.e. actions which affect other people, but not his private realm.

Chapter 6 THE RATIONALE FOR THE CONTROL OF BELIEF

The Chinese concept is totally different. It holds that the mind is an internal lawgiver and it determines the duties that a person has to perform in his public conduct, such as obedience to the sovereignty of the state and the ability to differentiate right and wrong.

Since public actions are prompted by a person's mental operations and may affect other

People, the existence of his mind brings private beliefs into the pubic realm. Furthermore, a person's mental operations are made up of what he knows. If a person is frequently exposed to an environment of outlaws, his mind will be geared toward the moral values of outlaws and his action will become anti-social. On the contrary, if he receives correct education continuously, his thinking pattern will be set in such a way that his public conduct is always based on the correct standard. Thus beliefs are justifiably subject to direction by the agents who represent public morals and the interest that may be affected by the promptings of individuals, i.e. the ruling class. Directions include standardized education and control of the mediation of unwanted messages, transmitted in both verbal speech and in written form.

The concept of the causal relation between thought and action has had a long tradition. In Confucius' Great Learning, it is said: "what truly is within will be manifested

Without." (Munro, 1977: I 6) This concept was further developed by neoGonfucianism,

Which advocated self-cultivation, i.e. self-censorship of evil thought and intentions by actively developing one's moral knowing. Confucianism categorizes knowledge into different levels. When a man is born and is totally ignorant, he has a good personality.

His instincts can only lead him to acquire low levels of knowledge for his self-interest and

Chapter 6 157 that knowledge will lead him to evil conduct. A high-level knowledge with a focus on community interest gives him wisdom and restores his good personality, but he has to go through a long process of self-cultivation. The higher the level of knowledge, the greater the possibility that promptings will manifest themselves in the person's public conduct.

However, an understanding of high-level knowledge does not necessarily make the

Person behave in a moral way. He must know how to consciously combine the knowledge with his actions. The Book of History says: "It is not knowing but acting which is difficult."

According to Confucianism, a person with high-level knowledge, i.e. with good education, can have evil conduct, and a person with a low level of knowledge may do some good

Public deeds and win a good name. As a result, people tend to pay attention only to their outer behaviour and forget the thought behind their actions. Wang Yangming says:

The Teacher said, "You need to understand the basic purpose of my doctrine." In their learning people of today separate knowledge and action into two different things. Therefore when a thought is aroused, although it is evil, they do not stop it because it has not been translated into action. I advocate the unity of knowledge and action precisely because I want people to understand that when a thought is aroused, it is already action. (Munro, 1977: 19)

Confucianism believes that individuals' thought and beliefs as their promptings to act are based on social factors. If a person has deviant conduct, the intention behind the conduct is not his "free will", but the product of deviant social influence. In this sense, blame lies first with society if any evil conduct happens.

This philosophy was the theoretical basis of the thought-policing of the imperial state. Thought is action and the constitution of thought is formed by social environment.

In order to ensure that thought conforms to the correct route, correct social influence must

Chapter 6 158 enter a person's private realm. People's moral knowledge must be promoted continuously through various means of education so that evil promptings to act will be less likely to occur. Thus the state has the complete right to interfere with people's thought and beliefs.

It is the state's duty to foster the development of people's moral beliefs and create an ideal social atmosphere so that correct promptings can be instilled.

The inculcation of correct thought and moral values is not just spiritual. According to Confucianism, the inculation must be based on tangible social achievements. When

People see the positive outcome of experiencing the correct education process and see the negative example of those who have neglected their self-cultivation, they will take their own initiative to follow the desired route. As we have examined in previous chapters, the materialization of social achievement from education was represented in the symbolic order. For Confucianists, the actual achievement of social status is less important. The important thing is that through the pursuit of social achievement, proper moral education is given and accepted smoothly in the process and people's promptings to act are adjusted into the desired route. The nature of belief control is coercive and the state expects that a moral consensus can be reached through the coercion.

Since books are carriers of thoughts, they are logically under strict state supervision. It is believed that books mediate knowledge and create a cultural environment, which causes people's promptings to act. An avid reader of , a fictional account of a peasant rebellions in the Sung, will have the conviction that social

can only be resolved by violence and he will become an intruder in society. lf he

'@ads the Romance of Three Kingdoms too frequently, he will believe that political craft and cheating are the only way to success and he will abandon honesty. The state should have the responsibility to judge what books are good for the constitution of people's moral consciousness and eliminate those which can harm their moral constitution. When the source of evil promptings is removed, correct standards of behaviour will spread and social stability will be secured. This is the basic rationale for book-banning in China.

In the imperial time, the method of book-banning was usually the destruction of carved woodblocks and the burning of finished books. Woodblock was good for repeated reproduction once the initial carving was completed, but it was also good for complete elimination. A book would need dozens or hundreds of woodblocks and it demanded intensive labour for carving. Once the woodblock was destroyed, it meant that a book would no longer exist. Furthermore, unlike movable type which was easy to carry,

Woodblocks were heavy in weight and clumsy in size. A printer could not start his business unless he decided to set up at a particular place for a long time. When the state

Wanted to arrest him, he could run away, but there was no hope that he could bring his

Woodblocks. The lack of mobility for woodblock printers made the state detection of printing shops easy and fast and made clandestine publishing difficult. After the woodblocks were confiscated, they were usually chopped into pieces in public and onlookers would pick up the wood chips for their firewood. The official order for such actions usually consisted of only four words: chop the woodblocks and burn the books

(~'i-panfen-shu).

The emperors of every dynasty had their cultural policies for the control of book

Production and book banning was repeatedly used as a tool for the enforcement of the

Chapter 6 160 state's policies. Nonetheless, we should not over-estimate the moral standard of the imperial rulers. In fact, book bannings were often just for pragmatic and political purposes rather than for ideological ends. Many books were banned not because they were immoral in a general sense, but for a variety of other reasons, such as the authors lost imperial favour in the court, particular political situations could not tolerate the existence of certain books, some statements in books were not in complete agreement with court policies, book content touched some delicate nerve of the emperor or leading officials through a reference to their disreputable past, or from a superstitious perspective some content could bring detrimental effect on the imperial rule.

We should also understand that in Chinese history many emperors and kings were only heroes on horseback and their education in Confucianist political philosophy was far from what the court was propagating. Emperors did not have to take the civil service examination for their posts, nor did they have to demonstrate their talent in poetry and prose in order to legitimize their rule. After the emperor gave his orders, it was his well- trained Confucianist scholar-officials who tried every means to find proper words to rationalize the original purpose of the book banning-orders. Under the mask of the promotion of moral education, the rulers could forbid any books that were not to their taste. Meanwhile, the books that deserved to be banned according to modern standards, such as pornographic books, were often allowed to exist on the market.

Chapter 6 CONTROL OVER BOOK WRITING AND PRODUCTION

The first recorded book banning was in 356 B.C. in the State Ch'in of the Warring Period.

It was aimed at Confucian books. Confucianism had just been established and its basic doctrine favoured learning from previous rulers the way of governing and maintaining social stability by observing rituals. This was not appreciated by the prince of the Ch'in.

Facing a number of princely states each of which was planning to take over the other, the prince believed that the only way to survive and capture the other states was to have a strong army and a strong economy. The most efficient way to that end was not

benevolence, but the enforcement of the one-will and one-leader policy within the state.

Confucianism must be rejected, it was argued, because, according to its doctrine, people

could criticize the state if they thought the prince's policies or rituals deviated from those

of ancient sages. The prince therefore listed the clause "burning shih and shu to enforce the sovereignty of the state laws" in the overall policies of his totalitarian "political reform"

(An, 1990: 6). We have no record of the extent to which this policy was actually carried

out. What we know is that this policy seriously annoyed many civil officials in the court

who owed their present positions to the practice of Confucianist policies by the previous

ruler. After the death of this prince, these officials cruelly put to death the prime minister

who designed this anti-Confucianist policy.

The next book-banning was the notorious fen-shu k'eng-ju (burning books and

burying scholars alive) by Shih Huang-ti, the last prince of the State of Ch'in and the first

emperor of the Ch'in Empire, in 213 B.C. The reason was the same as that of the prince

of the Ch'in: if everyone could comment on the law according to whatever philosophy he

Chapter 6 162 had learned, the authority of the emperor would be undermined and anti-state gangs would proliferate. The main enemy was again Confucianism, but the scale was far larger than the previous ban. The imperial book-banning decree was specific and severe: 1) except histories written by State Ch'in, all other histories written by other princely states must be burned; 2) except specially authorized scholars, nobody should keep any book of Confucianism and all such books must be sent to local governments for burning; 3) persons talking about Confucianism would be executed in public, persons criticizing imperial policies would be executed with all their families, state employees who failed to report such crimes would be executed, and persons who did not burn their books within thirty days would be tattooed on the face and be made state slaves; 4) state officials were the only authorized teachers for students; in the civil sector, only medical, fortune-telling and tree-planting books could be preserved. The result was bloody and disastrous. In 212

B.C. over four hundred sixty scholars were buried alive in one execution. Huge quantities of Confucian books and history books were destroyed and scholars of later generations were left with the perpetual task of verifying which version of the remaining literature was more authentic (An, 1990: 7-10).

The Ch'in's cruel dictatorship did not last long. The next dynasty, Han, established

Confucianism as the ruling ideology and fortunately there appeared to have been no serious book-bannings in the Han. But after the Han was replaced by a series of wars between dozens of warlords, book-banning ensued. Although Confucianist studies continued to be promoted, the purpose was shifted from moral education to the maintenance of a political symbol for the warlords. The promotion of Confucianism was

Chapter 6 163 not conducted in a Confucianist way, but in the way of dictatorship. In 375 King Fu Chien of the Former Chlin State -banning to promote Confucianism. He first banned

Taoist books li ke Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. Readers and keepers of such books would be executed in public. Then he ordered that Confucianism must be studied in the court and among scholars. He personally selected Confucianist teachers and ordered his own son and the sons of his ministers to attend the class. Classes were also held for the army and military officials. He even ordered eunuchs and court concubines to supervise the students in his state academy and report to him about the students' progress (An, 1990:

17-19). Fu Chien's practice was regarded as a joke by later dynasties, but his rationale for book-banning was consistent with that of the Ch'in, i.e. silencing other voices for the consolidation of the position of one thought and one belief.

In the North and South Dynasties, the Sui and the T'ang, there were constant book-bannings of Buddhist and Taoist books, as we have seen in previous chapters. The reason for the banning was largely because either the books did not suit to the ruler's taste, or the political influence of religion was too strong and book-banning was one of the policies used to suppress religion. Meanwhile, the banning of another genre of books was becoming more and more serious: astronomy and astrology books. The first banning of astronomy and astrology books could be traced to the first emperor of the Chin

Dynasty in 268, who made a decree that any private holders of astronomy and astrology books would be put in jail for two years. The penalty gradually rose to capital punishment in the North and South Dynasties and the T'ang. Article Eight of the T'ang law code said that individuals who created books about astronomy, astrology and supernatural power

Chapter 6 164 would be hanged; the disseminator of such books or sayings was subject to the death penalty if they reached three people or more, subject to exile to three thousand li if they reached less than three people, subject to one hundred lashes if their words had no concern with current politics, subject to jail for two years if a person merely kept such a book, and subject to sixty lashes if the book he kept had nothing to do with politics. In

739, Hsuan-tsung of the T'ang issued another decree that all astronomy and astrology books, except those for choosing lucky days for marriages and funerals, must be banned.

Emperor Chou T'ai-tzu of the Five Dynasties ordered in 953 that all astronomy and astrology books be burned and private calendars be banned (An, 1990: 24-29).

Included in the banning of astronomy and astrology books was the banning of civil calendars. The censorship and banning of the printing and distribution of civil calendars were frequent occurrences in imperial China. On the one hand, the official calendars were designed by imperial astronomers and distributed in a uniform format to the whole country and the production of imperial calendars was institutionalized in the State Book

Administration. On the other hand, unofficial calendars were severely banned. The political reason for the state's organization of astronomy, astrology and calendar was based on the concept that the emperor was the "son of heaven". When the emperor received the "mandate of heaven" from his heavenly father (heaven itself), heaven would use its own language, i.e. the celestial changes, to inform him of the future of the empire and to convey its satisfaction or dissatisfaction with his son's rule. The heavenly messages were often expressed by way of unusual phenomena, such as the fall of a

meteor, the appearance of a comet, and the sudden change of weather. The astronomers

Chapter 6 I65 were regarded as interpreters of celestial signs and the calendar was the "book" that they read for their interpretations. The first imperial calendar was formed in the Han Dynasty.

The calendar was segmented into sexagenary days in a cyclic manner. For astronomers, it was good for indicating which action should or should not be taken on a given day according to the theory of the Five Elements. Therefore, astronomy, astrology and calendars became vital symbols of the legitimacy of the imperial rule. Any private investigation into astronomy, astrology and private changes to the calendar would mean a disturbance to the heavenly order and thus a threat to the throne.

The organization of the imperial calendar was also convenient to government operations. For bureaucrats, the lunar calendar enabled them to keep straight the correspondence between the days of the month and the days of the sexagenary cycle.

However, imperial calendars were not appreciated by farmers, because imperial calendars did not give agricultural production top priority, but rather the times for rituals to various gods who passed the "mandate of heaven" to the emperor.

Throughout the dynasties, the imperial calendar was a lunar calendar with solar adjustment. If a farmer planted his rice according to the lunar calendar, he could be either too late or too early for the season. The farmer would have preferred a solar calendar, but for the practitioner of rituals the lunar calendar made it easier to pinpoint the time for a ritual. Another reason that the imperial calendar was not appreciated by farmers was that the imperial calendar only recorded the rituals for the "official" gods, such as heaven,

earth, ancestors and grains, whereas "civil" gods, such as the gods of fire, door and

family fortune, were totally neglected. Naturally there was a popular demand from farmers

Chapter 6 166 for private calendars that would emphasize the farming schedule of the locale and its civil rituals. The imperial editors tried to compromise by including agricultural information and civil rituals as much as possible into the imperial calendar. However, the cardinal principle could not be moved: the imperial calendar was the only authentic one and no other calendars were allowed by the state.

Astronomy and astrology hereby became social institutions with discernible political

purposes. Calendars developed by non-court astronomers and scientists were regarded

as heresy and a potential danger to the empire. The circulation of unofficial calendars had to be disguised just as other unofficial books, such as the commentaries on the classics,

and were secretly sold on the market. Just as emperors used imperial calendars to justify their rule, peasant rebellions also used their own calendars to justify their actions against

the existing dynasty. Their claim was that the emperor's calendar was a false one; therefore, his rule was without the "mandate of heaven" and should be displaced. For

instance, the Yellow Turbans at the used their own calendar as

the means for their political persuasion and mass mobilization. When astronomy,

astrology and the calendar were heavily used for political purposes, astronomers bore

heavy political responsibilities. They could receive sponsorship from the court only when

they were politically loyal to the ruler. They had to be cautious about their new findings

in case they contradicted the existing calendar and thereby committed the crimes of

undermining the heavenly sovereignty of the court. Thus the scientists in astronomy were

more politically-oriented than scientifically-oriented. One of their jobs was to predict future

disasters through the study of astronomical changes, because, according to the "law of

Chapter 6 167 nature", heaven would let his son know in advance what heaven was going to do about the human world. Nonetheless, such predictions were not used for any attempt to

"control" nature, but would be examined in a dialectical way as a reflection of present changes that would influence the future, such as an enemy being born in the southeast or the heavenly blessing heading for a new person who would become an emperor.

Eberhard points out the imperial astronomers were not real scientists, because "the very interest they had in politics prevented them from developing a real science of correcting incorrect observations, redefining and sharpening their theories" (Eberhard, 1964: 70).

The production of unauthorized calendars in the civil sector increased rapidly after printing began to be used. Mark Elvin describes how they flooded the market before the

Sung:

Apart from Buddhist books, the most popular privately printed items in the early period of the art [of printing] were calendars; and this provoked an immediate clash with the government, which felt that the emperor's right, as the Son of Heaven, to regulate the relationships between the movements of the heavenly bodies and earthly affairs, was being impaired. In 835, Feng Su observed: In all the provinces of Szechwan and Huai-nan printed calendars are on sale in the markets. Every year, before the Imperial observatory has submitted the new calendar for approval and had it officially promulgated, these printed calendars have flooded the empire. This violates the principle that [the calendar] is a gift of His Majesty. (Elvin, 1973: 181)

The spread of printing in the Sung Dynasty brought the production and circulation of unofficial astronomy and astrology books and calendars to a larger scale and state control increased correspondingly. The Sung continued the policy of censoring astronomy and astrology books and, like the T'ang, made the policy part of its legal code. However, because the Sung emperor tried to avoid coercive measures in order to establish the

reputation of his civil government, his book-banning method was less harsh and more

Chapter 6 168 clever. One day, it was reported to him that a sixty-page of astronomy was on the market. The book predicted the change of dynasties and was selling widely.

People were using the book to predict how long the Sung Dynasty would last; it had to be immediately banned. Unexpectedly, the emperor dismissed the suggestion of banning and ordered the book to be printed by the state with an incorrect page sequence. The advantage of woodblock printing became manifest in this process; as each page was printed from one woodblock, the sequence of the woodblocks could be changed at will.

The state book soon flooded the market. Because the logic of the predictions became a mess when the page sequence was changed randomly, a reader could not make any sense of the book. Nor could he tell which version was authentic when all of a sudden dozens of versions appeared on the market, all with different sequences of pages. Very soon the enthusiasm for this book died down (An, 1990: 34).

However, this clever method was an exception. Like emperors and princes of previous dynasties, the Sung emperors regarded astronomy and astrology books as a primary genre for censorship, and coercive measures for banning astronomy and astrology books continued to be adopted, especially after the new dynasty became

entrenched. T'ai-tsung, the second emperor of the Sung, one month after he came on the throne in 976, ordered all unauthorized astronomers arrested and sent to the capital city

for custody. Some of the arrested astronomers expressed sincere loyalty to the throne

and were allowed to join the imperial astronomy institute as compilers of imperial

calendars. The rest were punished. They were tattooed and exiled to faraway islands.

The following year T'ai-tsung ordered astronomy, astrology and fortune-telling books,

Chapter 6 169 except those about Confucius' Book of Changes, not to be allowed to circulate among the populace. Holders of such books must hand them in to their local government in one month and violators would be subject to capital punishment. The third emperor, Chen- tsung, not only continued T'ai-tsung's policies, but also ordered astronomy and astrology books to be burned. Those who reported secret holders of such books to the authorities were rewarded with ten thousand strings of coins. In 1039, the fourth emperor, Jen-tsung, expanded the index of book-banning to all kinds of unauthorized calendar books (An,

1990: 34-37). He also listed a new genre for banning: military-craft books. From astronomy, astrology and military books, the state's index of censorship had expanded to all genres of books.

The banning of military craft books had obvious political reasons at that time. Since the first emperor of the Sung released military generals of their power with the famous cup of wine, it was always a serious concern for the emperors that secret local and military gangs might be formed against the central government. Books of military craft would be of great use to these potential rebels for their design of military strategies.

Another reason was that the military power of the northern empires, the Liao, the Chin and the Hsi Hsia, was rising rapidly and was already menacing the Sung empire. They must not be allowed to have any access to military books that could help them build their military forces. Emperor Jen-tsung issued a decree in 1040:

I have found through investigation that private printers in the capital city are printing literature about national defense and these books have gone abroad. I require the municipal government to investigate into this and to encourage reports. Report to me of the result. (Lee, 1991: 79-80)

After him, each emperor of the Sung made decrees for the control of military

Chapter 6 170 books. As military affairs were a substantial part of the political administration of the Sung,

books about concurrent state policies and affairs were naturally included on the list of titles to be banned. In Ying-tsung's reign in 1066, Chang Chien, a censor official, reported to the emperor:

I have heard that there are evil persons who libel the court, differentiate the people and puzzle popular understanding of court policies. Some even print false decrees and sell them on the market. I require that the municipality arrest these printers and booksellers. (Lee, 1991: 81)

The emperor agreed to the suggestion.

The next emperor Che-tsung expanded control to all kinds of books by civil printers

and made a detailed regulation for book writing and printing in 1090:

It is forbidden to write about current politics and military affairs. It is forbidden to print official records of this reign and to write any records of state affairs in private; violators are subject to jail for two years and reporters of such conduct will be awarded ten thousand strings of cash. All other printing projects must be examined by the selection official before the woodblock is carved and only those for the purpose of studies will be approved. Before printing starts, samples must be sent for examination by the Book Administration of the court. Pornographic literature is forbidden for printing and violators are subject to one hundred lashes. The administration of censorship at county and provincial levels and the Imperial Academy are responsible for the enforcement of the rules. (Lee, 1991: 81)

When the military threat from the northern empires became immediate, the banning of

military books and state policies was further tightened. Emperor Hui-tsung issued a

decree in 1108:

I have found through investigation that northern empires have many of our books, including books about national defense and foreign policies. I request that printing shops are inspected for their business. Those who print and sell unauthorized literature are to be arrested. Printing is forbidden in the provinces along the border. Smugglers of books are to be penalized according to the law of cash smuggling. (Lee, 1991: 81-82)

Chapter 6 After the fall of the Northern Sung, printing control and censorship in the Southern

Sung became more strict. Kuang-tsung issued a decree in 1193 that "any printing projects must be examined by provincial officials; officials must be strict in their examination and will be penalized for any negligence." (Lee, 1991: 82) The next emperor, Ning-tsung, introduced sections in the legal code for book printing:

Private printers of imperial decrees, government literature, literature of current politics and national defense will be subject to eighty lashes; reports are encouraged. Private printing without government approval will cost the printer one hundred lashes. Private printing of scholar-officials' submissions to the emperor will cost the printer eighty lashes. (Lee, 1991: 84)

In 1202, he made another order:

Any printing dealing with state policies and national defense must be examined by provincial officials. Printing without approval will be punished and the woodblocks immediately destroyed. Garrison troops along the border must keep close checking of export books. When such books are found, the officials of the places where the books have been produced and sold will be punished. Local governments can issue arrest orders for the printers and booksellers. (Lee, 1991: 84-85)

These orders were issued when Ning-tsung was preparing a campaign against the Chin.

However, like previous campaigns, this one also ended in defeat; the Sung had to sign another humiliating treaty with the Chin. The emperor issued a new order to ban military books. This time he was not worried about his military secrets, because he had no secrets to conceal. He was worried that the publication of military books might offend the

Chin and cause them to launch new attacks on the Sung. One day he received a report that "there are books like Suggestions for Northern Expedition and Methods for State

Security by Kung Jih-chang and Hau Yueh on the market. They talk about military affairs.

Although these are trivial matters, their consequences are huge. The woodblocks should

Chapter 6 172 be destroyed and the sold books burned." The emperor immediately approved the suggestion (Lee, 1991: 84-85).

THE LITERARY INQUISITION

Astronomy, astrology, military and current politics were not the only genres of books that the Sung banned. While the Sung was famous for its literary achievements, its literary

inquisition was more forceful than any that had been seen. The literary inquisition amounted to the accusation and persecution of writers, editors, printers, booksellers, book

readers and anyone else believed to be involved, if it could be shown that a book or a

portion of a book was disloyal to the emperor or the dynasty. The first case of the literary

inquisition in the Sung originated from imperial economic reform in the Northern Sung.

Seeing that the empire was suffering from military weakness and general poverty among

farmers, Emperor Shen-tsung used Wang An-shih in 1069 to design and practise a series

of economic reform policies, including the replacement of state compulsory labour with

taxation, state control of the salt trade, a reform of the civil examination by testing the

candidates' understanding of legal codes, and state loans to farmers for their spring

planting.

There were voices among scholar-officials against the reform; political persecution

ensued when the different opinions were interpreted in terms of loyalty to the emperor.

The literary inquisition was one of the methods the emperor and his officials used to get

rid of their political enemies. The first victim of the literary inquisition was Su Shih, a weli-

known writer and poet. When he was a judge of the supreme court, he submitted a

Chapter 6 173 number of pleas that criticized the reform policies for their defects. Receiving no reply from the emperor, he resigned his post and went to be a local official in south China. His criticism of the reform policies was regarded by officials who supported the reforms as a challenge to their political loyalty. To ensure their political survival, they had to justify themselves by proving that it was Su Shih who was disloyal to the throne and that evidence of his disloyalty could be found in his literary writings. Ho Ta-cheng, a chief official in the imperial censorship administration, reported to the emperor that Su's letter of acceptance to his appointment in Hu-chou expressed his hatred of the imperial court.

The letter said, "I am not aware of the political trends and cannot follow the newcomers; but as an old man perhaps I can still raise the worthless people." It meant an accusation of the emperor for not taking care of the people.

Seeing that the emperor did not take this report seriously, Shu Tan, another official of the administration, submitted a detailed report about Su's disloyalty based on his poetry. Su wrote that "children of farmers' families have acquired better speaking skills and can say a few words in the urban accent." It indicated that the state loan to farmers for spring planting did nothing but provide some pocket money for farmers' children to have fun in the city. Su wrote that "ancient saints were ignorant, for they did not learn the law." This was a bold attack on the examination reform which planned to make legal

Studies part of the examination. Su wrote that "if Eastern Sea was clever enough, it would change salty water to farming land." This ridiculed the imperial project of irrigation construction. He also wrote that "if you want to know about a life without flavour, try three

Chapter 6 months without salt." This was obviously disrespectful of the state control of the salt trade

(An, 1990: 38-40).

Following suit, some other officials accused Su Shih and finally the emperor decided that Su was to be put under arrest in 1079. Extensive research of Su's writings was conducted to find more evidence of his crime. In his poem for Ssu-ma Kuang, another opponent to the reform policies, Su wrote, "You are so capable that people of four directions expect your governance. Even children and servants are well aware of your name. Now you are laughed at, for your voice is not heard." This was an encouragement to Ssu-ma for his disagreement with the court. In his letter of reply to a scholar of the Imperial Academy, Huang T'ing-chien, who complained that he was not appropriately used, Su wrote, "Good crops are exposed to rain, while bad crops are preserved", indicating that the emperor was blind in his selection of officials. When the evidence was prepared, Su was brought to trial. The trial lasted several months. Because of Su Shih's reputation among the literati, the emperor did not put him in jail immediately.

Su was merely demoted from his post; his books were not banned and continued to circulate (An, 1990: 39-41)

However, after the death of Emperor Shen-tsung, the persecution of Su Shih began anew. The next emperor (Che-tsung) deprived Ssu-ma Kuang of his posthumous title and completeLY deprived Su Shih of his official position. The subsequent emperor

(Hui-tsung) even made a list of the "disloyal gang" (about one hundred and twenty names in total), including Ssu-ma Kuang, Su Shih, his father Su Hsun, his brother Su Ch'e, and his students Huang Tying-chien,Chang Lei, Ch'ao Pu-chih and Ch'in Kuan. On April 27,

Chapter 6 175 1 103, Hui-tsung gave a book-banning order:

Burn the woodblocks of all the works by Su Hsun, Su Shih, Su Ch'e, Huang T'ing-chien, Chang Lei, Ch'ao Pu-chih, Ch'in Kuan, Ma Chuan's Collection, Fan Tzu-yu's Lessons of the T'ang, Fan Chen's Stories of the Eastern Room, Liu P'an's On Poetry, and Seng Wen-ying's Unorthodox Records at Hsiang-shan. (An, 1990: 40-41)

In 1123, upon hearing that some of Su Shih and Huang T'ing-chien's books were still secretly printed in Fukien, Hui-tsung gave another order:

Su and Huang are prime criminals of the Sung court and cannot bear the same heaven with me. Any of their literature must be destroyed. Any violation will be regarded as a serious offense to the emperor. (An, 1990: 42)

This was called the "poetry case of the Crow Platform" (Wu-t'ai shih-an) "Crow Platform" was a colloquial name for the censorship administration, based on a legend that there used to be thousands of crows in the trees in front of the office building of the censorship administration in drought seasons in the Han dynasty.

The reason for the banning was complicated. According to the official explanation,

Su Shih and his "gang's" books expressed disloyalty. It was argued further that the spread of their writings would prompt people to action against the dynasty. However, there were other reasons for the banning that involved court politics. Both Che-tsung and

Hui-tsung came to the throne at a young age and the real power was in the hands of the , who was against reform. When they were old enough to take over power from her, both of the emperors immediately changed their political standing to support reform as a symbol of the establishment of their own authority. The persecution of Su Shih and his "gang" was an attempt on their part to demonstrate their political power to the empress dowager. Another reason was that Hui-tsung himself was a poet,

Chapter 6 176 painter and writer. He could hardly be seen to tolerate the work other literati that differed from his "orthodox" style. His jealousy of Su Shih's talent and style was one of the motives for the banning.

Politically, the persecution of Su Shih was a warning to other talented literati. With the general atmosphere of a tolerant society and the proliferation of schools and printing, the literati had more freedom to write than in previous dynasties. Yet they needed to be kept aware that their freedom was not limitless. While imperial favour meant instant fame for some writers, imperial condemnation meant a tragic end to a literary career. Because prose and poetry were important symbols of social distinction for the literati, the ruin of one's literary career was the ruin of one's life. Su Shih's involvement in state politics as a state official also contributed to his demise. Chinese literati had a tradition of involving themselves in state politics, for that was the most significant way for them to attain scholar-official status. However, when they were involved, they were as likely to be victims as victors in the political machinations of the court.

The literary inquisition and banning of the Collection of Folk Poetry (Chiang-hu ch~) in the Southern Sung was even more ridiculous. The victim was a civil printer who was completely outside state politics and the book's content was apolitical. The political background of the banning was complicated. After Emperor Ning-tsung's death in 1224, prime minister Shih Ming-yuan forced the successor to abdicate the throne in favour of his cousin who was under Shih Ming-yuan's control. Then he managed to murder the abdicated emperor. This aroused great resentment among the literati and Shih Ming-yuan used coercive measures to suppress them. A large number of scholar-officials who

Chapter 6 177 condemned Shih Ming-yuan's plot were punished and some were killed. Shih Ming-yuan was afraid that the story of his undoing might spread in popular literature and he ordered a search for such literature.

As a result of this search, the Folk Poetry, which was published almost at the same time that Shih Ming-yuan was secretly plotting his murder, was condemned. Its woodblocks were destroyed, finished books were burned, and the publisher, Ch'en Chi, was arrested and exiled. We still do not know exactly why this poetry anthology was selected for censure. All the poetry was written years before the abdicated emperor was murdered and Chen Chi was a commoner from outside the state realm; he had no way of knowing what Shih Ming-yuan was doing. Also, none of the poetry had anything to do with Shih Ming-yuan's murder. The condemnation of the book was perhaps accountable to two reasons. First, one of the poetry writers, Liu K'o-chuang, was the son of the former prime minister who had been murdered by Shih Mi-yuan some ten years previously. Shih

Ming-yuan might have wanted to erase all members of the Liu's family from public record.

Second, there were four short poems that indicated in an abstract sense that the empire would suffer when evil persons became officials. It may have been that Shih Ming-yuan was seeking only to warn the literati who condemned him and he did not care whether the punishment was appropriate or not. Soon after the banning, Shih Ming-yuan issued another order banning the writing of all poetry in an attempt to silence any possible dissenting voice. His order was not taken seriously by local officials and poetry-writing continued. However, the burning of the poetry anthology buried the names and talents of many scholar-commoners forever (An, 1990: 52-55).

Chapter 6 As explained previously, according to the logic of Confucianism, if a person was immoral in his personality, his conduct and writing would be equally immoral. Su Shih and his "gang" were condemned because they were in disagreement with the emperor; consequently, their books were banned. Ch'en Chi was punished because he printed the poetry of the son of a political enemy of a leading official. Confucianist logic was also applied to a person's moral character; if a person's writing was "immoral" in any sense, his personality should also be suspected. The result was that the writer, together with printers, booksellers, readers and their families, were punished. Punishment meant not only the banning of a book from the list of officially sanctioned titles but also the death penalty. The most outstanding case in the Sung was Ch'eng Yu's Explanations to the

Analects, for which the writer was persecuted. The punishment of the writer was intended to uproot the source of such writings and serve as an example to other book writers.

The burning of the Explanations was carried out in the Southern Sung in 1154. As a distinguished scholar of the Imperial Academy, Chleng Yu was selected as a chief negotiator with the Chin and later was appointed minister of defense. But due to his failure in court politics, he was soon demoted to be the governor of Chi-chou. Being frustrated with his political career, he turned to scholarly work and started his

Explanations. This was fine until he began to put his own political views into his explanations; many of his views were uncomplimentary to the ruling officials of the court.

in his explanation to Confucius' words "arrows do not shoot home-going birds," he argued that the phrase meant not to libel others from behind, indicating that those who had

caused his political failure by libelling him could not be justified by Confucianist values.

Chapter 6 179 The Analects had a passage: "A saintly king does not neglect his family members, does not fail his credit to his ministers, does not abandon old friends and subordinates who have made no serious mistakes, and does not demand perfection of others." Ch'eng's comment was that this passage moved him when he first read it. Hung Hsing-tzu, the governor of Ch'eng's hometown Jao-chou, had also been demoted because of lies told about him in the court. When he read the manuscript, he was so amazed by Ch'eng's comments that he wrote a preface, praising in particular his "arrows" and his four "does nots" of the saintly emperor. Another official (Wei An-hsing), the deputy officer of the transportation department of Ching-hsi Region, even used government funds to print several thousand copies of the book and sold them on the market.

Emperor Kao-tsung soon received a report about this book from Wang Min, an advisor to the court. In addition to accusations against Ch'eng's comments in his

Explanations, the report raised the issue of political disloyalty to the emperor. Wang wrote:

With Hung Hsing-tzu writing a preface and Wei An-hsing printing the book, an evil conspiracy has reached an unprecedented level. I heard Wei used government funds for his printing and nobody knows how much money was spent. After the printing was completed, Wei gave them to friends and took home over one thousand copies ....l know your Majesty is knowledgeable in Confucianist learning and advocates studies of Confucian classics. But Ch'eng Yu dares spread heretical views in the name of classic learning and persons like Wei follow him. I am afraid if these heresies are not stopped immediately, they will damage state education and puzzle the populace. The disaster will be more serious than that caused by Shao Cheng-mao, Yang Chu and Mo Chia in the Warring Period. I earnestly hope that your Majesty will issue a decree to destroy the woodblock of the Explanations and order Wei to pay back what has been spent for the printing. Maybe other local governments are also printing heretical books without asking for approval from the court and such books should also be banned. (An, 1990: 50)

Chapter 6 180 Kao-tsung took action immediately. The Explanations was burned. Hung and Wei were exiled to remote provinces. Since Ch'eng Yu was already dead, his punishment was passed down to his children. His two sons and two grandsons, all of whom had achieved government titles through the examination, were deprived of their qualifications and sent home. Meanwhile, all printing projects of local governments were put under scrutiny and many books were destroyed. New projects had to be reported to the court for approval.

The next emperor Hsiao-tsung even issued a decree that private printers were not allowed to print any new books unless they had received formal permission from local governments (An, 1990: 48-52).

The literary inquisitions were not only oriented toward individual writers and books, but also could be oriented toward a whole genre of books, especially history books. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the compilation of standard histories was regarded by the court as one of the primary tasks for the legitimization of its existing rule.

Consequently, unofficial histories were not allowed to exist. Unofficial history meant not only the unofficial compilation of historical records, but also private records of what was witnessed. The recorded banning of private histories started in the Sui dynasty. Wen-ti issued a decree in 593 that it was forbidden for any private individuals to write history, especially the history of the existing dynasty, or to comment on the figures of the court.

In the Sung Dynasty, the banned unofficial histories were largely those that recorded the face-losing defeat of the Northern Sung in the wars with the Chin.

After the Northern Sung was conquered, there were a lot of stories circulating in the society about how the defeat happened and how the last emperor of the Northern

Chapter 6 181 Sung resigned. For the emperors of the Southern Sung, it would be disgraceful if these stories were passed down to later generations; therefore, they had to be banned before they could spread widely. This was the start of a literary inquisition of history books of the

Southern Sung. This time the imperial strategy was different. If the banning of Su Shih's books, Chen Chi's poetry anthology and Ch'eng Yu's Explanations was a suppression from above, the banning of the unofficial histories of the Northern Sung was a "mass movement" from below. All levels of government and the populace, especially literati, were mobilized to report against one another the writing and dissemination of any sort of histories. It soon became a political movement. Sons accused their fathers, students accused their teachers, and subordinates accused their supervisors. Once a report was confirmed and the accused found guilty, as anyone accused usually was, the reporter was rewarded with money and a civil position.

In 1145, Ssu-ma Chi, a low-ranking official in Che-chiang, turned in to Kao-tsung, the first emperor of the Southern Sung, his great grandfather, Ssu-ma Kuang's book

Records at Su-shui (Su-shui chi-wen). This book recorded many details of the Northern

Sung, including humiliating defeats on the battlefield. Ssu-ma Chi was clever in his accusation by alleging that the book was not written by his great grandfather, but by an unknown person using his name. Kao-tsung immediately ordered the governor of Che- chiang to search and destroy any copies and any other similar works. This book was actually the notes that Ssu-ma Kuang had taken for his writing of the Comprehensive

Mirror for Aid in Government and he did not have time to use it before he died. The burning of this book was a substantial loss to the historical research of later generations,

Chapter 6 182 but it was good for Ssu-ma Kuang's great grandson. He received his promotion to a

higher rank as the emperor had promised (An, 1990: 45-46).

Another victim was Li Kuang who was a chief official of the Justice Ministry when the Sung signed the surrender treaty with the Chin. Because he did not agree with the surrender, he was demoted to be a local official and he started to write down what he had

witnessed. His son Li Meng, proud of his father's uprightness, told his friends what his

father was doing and one of his friends, Lu Sheng-chi, immediately reported to the

regional official. Emperor Kao-tsung soon received the report and wrote a comment: "Li

Kuang agreed to the surrender at the beginning and I liked him for his uprightness, but

he soon changed his stand after he was appointed an executive officer. I once asked him

face-to-face why he was so capricious. I know he is a despicable person and all he has

done for the court is worthless." He did not give any orders, but his officials knew what

the emperor expected and did it accordingly. Li Kuang was deprived of his office and was

exiled to Ch'ang-hua under the accusation that he libelled the court in his unauthorized

historical account. His son Li Meng also lost his title and was exiled to Hsia-chou, for he

had read his father's manuscript and, influenced by his father's libellous comments, would

further spread it to other people. The manuscript was, of course, destroyed (An, 1990:

44-47).

The above examples give some sense of the increasing amount of book

Censorship and banning with the development of printing and more sophisticated politics

and strategies for dealing with printed books. In the Sung, as book printing expanded to

an unprecedented level so book-banning rose parallel to its expansion. If we look forward

Chapter 6 183 to the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties, in which printing was further developed, book-banning was even more frequent and cruel. In the beginning of the Ch'ing, seventy people lost their heads just for one book, A Draft History of the Ming (Ming Shih Kao) (Goodrich,

1966: 80) From the seriousness of book-banning, we can further understand how important printing as a social institution was to the imperial rulers. At the same time, we need to note that books, no matter whether promoted or banned, appreciated or condemned by the imperial rulers, were all created, printed, read and propagated to the masses by the literati. Literati were used by the state as an apparatus for the enforcement of a moral education. Without the literati's support, imperial cultural policies could not have materialized and practised.

Chapter 6 CHAPTER 7

LITERATI AND LITERATI CULTURE

Literati culture consisted of both the mainstream state and popular culture in the Sung

Dynasty. It was the content for the development of printing and was the sociocultural foundation for the establishment of a civil society. Literati culture was an overwhelming network encompassing the thought patterns of all sectors of society and it allowed the achievement of a nationwide moral consensus.

The formation of literati culture was a product of imperial cultural policies. The ruling class had tried through the Legalist laws, military society and religious culture to develop an all-encompassing cultural perspective. However, either because of their tyrannical impositions on the general populace or because the court could not tolerate its unchecked growth, none of them survived for very long. Literati culture, which had existed for a long time prior to the Sung Dynasty, saw its unprecedented promotion and expansion in the Sung. History soon proved that literati culture and civil society were the most ideal policies for the rule of China and all later dynasties, including the Yuan and

Ch'ing which were ruled by the "barbarians", carried forward these policies to some extent. Every ruler knew that a move away from literati culture could be detrimental to

imperial rule and could invite challenge from the military, aristocrats or capitalists. Even

in modern times, both Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung continued this culture, although they changed its political orientation in their promotion of this culture.

Chapter 7 THE DEFINITION OF THE LITERATI

In order to understand literati culture, we need to know who the literati were. The word

"literati" is often ambiguous. In some works of Chinese history, literati is synonymous with scholar-officials (Esherick, 1990: 4-5). According to the imperial ideology, scholar-officials were part of the top level of the social hierarchy. To be a scholar-official meant that one maintained a social distance from commoners and the attempt to become a scholar- official was regarded as an endeavour to be a "man above men" (jen shang jen). Scholar- officials belonged to the elite (shih) rather than the commonality (shu) or the populace

(min). Their function was to serve in government rather than to farm the land, to work as craftsmen, or to be engaged in a trade. Since the time of Confucius, scholars had been appointed to civil posts. In the Sung Dynasty, with the change of the overall state policy, scholars became entrenched as officials with real power over the making and administration of laws, civil affairs and military command. It appeared that scholars became the ruling class. The state conferred on them elite status through the examination system, which was open to all with virtually no regard to wealth or family pedigree.

Scholar-officialism dominated the complete social spectrum. The rise and fall of individual scholar-officials, no matter whether upright or evil as depicted in various accounts, was so dramatic that no history book about China could afford to neglect these stories. The power of the state was almost always controlled by this group of people and never shifted to any other social group after the Sung. Balazc calls the scholar-officials a "class" because of their common economic basis (salaries and ownership of land) and their particular lifestyle, which was often expressed as the elite culture. As a class they

Chapter 7 186 share a traditional outlook, including the strict observation of ritual, similar notions of symbolic honour, as well as their political status in the empire. As a single, culturally homogeneous elite group, they were closely tied to the imperial state and they were supposed to have the education and talent necessary to serve in government and to guide society. They were all experts of Confucian virtues, including ethical conduct (te- hsing), speech (yen-yu), affairs of government (cheng-shih), and cultural learning (wen- hsueh).

However, there is a problem in trying to classify scholar-officials as a culturally homogenous group. Scholar-officials normally refer only to those who spent years in

Confucianist studies, passed the civil-service examination and became officials. Officials who had studied the classics and passed the examination were only a fraction of the scholarly population. As Johnson describes:

Some classically educated men enjoyed gentry status, while others were ordinary commoners. All had undergone the same kind of indoctrination, and had the same degree of access to the literary tradition, but only a few had passed the examination. (Johnson, 1985: 61)

Members of the literati included candidates in the examinations who failed in their attempts and never became officials, students of Confucian education who later did not

90 to the examination but were engaged in farming, commerce or other trade instead, scholars who were not interested in civil service and were only committed to writing and other literary hobbies, persons who had been officials but left their posts for retirement or because they lost imperial favour, and the families of all the above people, such as their wives and children, who had the same or similar education but never had a chance to pursue a career. These were the scholar-commoners, who were well educated in

Chapter 7 187 Confucianism but did not become officials. Scholar-commoners could be anybody from poets to writers, from schoolmasters in the village to private tutors for the children of rich families.

Many scholar-commoners were, at the same time, merchants, and some merchants also obtained the status of scholar-commoners by buying a degree or by demonstrating some outstanding literary hobby. We need to note that although merchants were listed as the bottom level of the social hierarchy according to state ideology, the status of merchants in reality was higher than that of farmers and artisans. The artificial upgrading of farmers' social status was only an imperial ruling strategy to win the consent of the rural eighty percent of the population. Thus scholar-commoners far outnumbered scholar-officials. Although the political influence of scholar-commoners was small compared to scholar-officials in the government, they were primarily responsible for carrying on the literary tradition. Many of those who failed the examinations were great writers and the names of scholar-commoners appear much more frequently than the names of scholar-officials in the history of . Politically, because they were removed from government politics, they had more freedom to express their own views through their poetry, prose and novels, and they were more willing to listen

Sympathetically to the voice of the people and advocate ideas or beliefs that were not

Orthodoxically correct.

In terms of publishing, many printers were scholar-commoners, as we will see in the next chapter. Scholar-commoners were both the main producers and consumers of

Printed texts. They published expensive poetry and prose collections that were purchased

Chapter 7 188 by other scholar-commoners. They even edited encyclopedias of their own, which were both supplements to and preparations for the state encyclopedias. Without the rapid expansion of this social group in the Sung, the proliferation of printing would have been impossible. The scholarly population as a whole took the lead position within the empire politically, culturally, economically, morally and intellectually for over one thousand years.

Meanwhile, there were large numbers of people who were educated but did not reach the standard for the examination. These people included the rural gentry, government clerks, military men, folk artists, such as storytellers, some merchants, and tradespeople such as printers and booksellers, fortune-tellers and scribes. This category contained both men and women, including high-level courtesans who played music and wrote poetry to entertain emperors and scholar-officials. Although the courtesans were not regarded as literati by the scholars, their profession demanded that they be familiar with literati culture. The population of this adjunct group was even larger than the scholarly population. Because there was only one discourse of education, i.e. Confucianist doctrines, their education was the same as that for scholars. The only difference was one of degree. Like the scholars, they too studied Confucian texts in the classical style, a literary style vastly different from daily language, such as San Pai Ch'ien, and learned some basic rules of poetry composition and social ritual. As Weber points out: "Only this difference in the level of education and not differences in the kind of education set these circles off from the bureaucracy (Gerth, 1958: 438). From a sociological viewpoint, those who were educated but were not scholars were always subordinate to the ruling scholars; however, from a cultural perspective, they shared a common background and in cultural

Chapter 7 practice they acted as an extension of elite culture within the populace. When we talk about printing as a social institution, this adjunct group of educated non-scholars must be included, because it was mainly through them, in government and in the marketplace, that books were manufactured and disseminated. More importantly, it was mainly through them that communications between high culture and popular culture were established.

Therefore, for the purpose of our research, the term "literati" refers to all educated people mentioned above regardless of their level of education, including scholar-officials, scholar-commoners, and some non-scholars. Although this categorization disguises to some extent the power relations within this social group, it is useful in approaching the issue of mass communications in imperial China, because this social group as a whole was the motivating force. They shared a common characteristic as being, according to

Wakeman, "exactly the ones to rely upon the persuading the people to follow the instructions of the officials." (Wakeman, 1975: 25) To exclude scholar-officials, scholar-

Commoners or non-scholars would render the picture incomplete. To some extent, the notion of "literati" is parallel to the traditional Chinese concept of "literate" - the ability to read and write in the classical style. It does not include those who could only read and sometimes write in the vernacular. People who could not read and write in the classical style were simply regarded as "illiterate" according to the traditional standard. (We will come to the issue of literacy in imperial China in Chapter Ten.)

Another term close in meaning to literati is "intelligentsia" (chi-shih fen-tzu).

According to its modern usage in China, intelligentsia refers to all people who have reached the college level. When applied to the imperial time, it refers to the people with

Chapter 7 190 standard Confucianist educations. We do not use this term, because it can be confused with the Western usage, where its meaning applies to a considerably smaller group than the Chinese concept. Recently, the term "shih", a phonetic translation of the Chinese term, has been frequently used in order to categorize scholar-officials and scholar- commoners as a whole. However, the original meaning of shih was scholars or the persons who were involved in scholarship, so it could be misleading in certain contexts.

The Chinese equivalent to "literati" is "men of texts" (wen jen). Their social and literary status in general was lower than "men of letters" in the Western sense, but all members of this social group had connections with books. No matter how they diversified in profession, personality, origin or birth, the possession of wealth or social status, book reading and possession were their common characteristics. Literati culture means the culture of the men of texts, but its influence extended far beyond the literati population.

The identity of literati as a whole changed with shifts in the sociopolitical environment throughout history. In and before the T'ang Dynasty, literati referred mostly to the members of aristocratic clans of illustrious pedigree, who could afford education and who had access to power because of their families' hereditary privileges. These

People actually could not be called "scholars" in the sense of the Sung Dynasty, because their education in general was less adequate than Sung scholars and many of them obtained their office largely not because of their learning, but because of their political craft and family background. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, when people of a non- aristocratic background could also be recruited into the civil bureaucracy, the literati became a name for scholar-officials whose education had been appreciated by the state

Chapter 7 191 and those who wanted to become scholar-officials. After the Southern Sung, with the development of civil society, the official-scholars started to build up their own clans and develop their hereditary privileges. Their children could get honourable titles from the state without sitting for any examinations and their wealth accumulated rapidly not only in cities, but also in rural areas. Therefore, literati referred not only to the small group of people who had obtained official recognition or position through the civil-service examination, but also to the members of their extended families. Gradually the image of literati extended to the families that had no scholar-officials or degree holders, but were still keeping symbolically the tradition of the literati, such as the possession of books and brush-pens and the ability to read and write in the classical style. These families had thus won respect from the local community for their literary accomplishments. Even people who had nothing to do with scholarship, such as folk performers and masters of martial art and courtesans, tried to possess these things in order to show that they were part of the literati culture. Literati therefore became a self-styled mark of a person's or a family's cultural status; it was a socially constructed idea. In the Yuan, Ming and Ch'ing dynasties, the definition of literati further expanded to non-scholars as a whole and literati culture continued to be the mainstream of the society.

All literati had an ability to read and write in the classical style, although their abilities might vary greatly. Their sociocultural status was largely decided by their command of words, which seemed mystical to the illiterate masses. One well-informed foreign observer during the late Ch'ing wrote:

[the Chinese] literally worship their letters i.e. characters. When letters were invented, they say, heaven rejoiced and hell trembled. Not for any

Chapter 7 consideration will they tread on a piece of lettered paper; and to foster this reverence, literary associations employ agents to go about tl le street, collect waste paper, and burn it on an altar with the solemnity of a sacrifice. (Smith, 1983:82).

In response to this quotation are needed a few words about why the written word had mystic power and how this power was related to the literati. In traditional Chinese society, it was believed that written words were the language of heaven and the knowledge of words meant a privileged position of personal communication with heaven. The birth of

Chinese written language has it that Huang-ti, a legendary saint king, ordered Ts'ang

Chieh to create words. When he did so, heaven cried because it could no longer hold any secrets from human beings. Thus the "mandate of heaven" was passed to those who could read heavenly meanings. In this myth, the patronage of a wise ruler was regarded as a fundamental factor in the development of a civilization; a scholar was the person needed to facilitate the process. Without a scholar, the king could have no

Communications with heaven; yet without the king giving the order a scholar could never start his work. The scholar interpreted heavenly meaning for the king according to the king's wise order; heavenly meaning could then be correctly reflected in the ruling policies made by the king. Thereby the world under heaven was governed in accordance with heavenly morals. The relationship between the ruler, the scholar and heaven was thus manifest through the use of written words.

Books were the vehicle through which to convey heavenly meanings. Books were written by the literati and for the literati, so the literati became a privileged sector of society because of their linguistic ability. This privileged position made it possible for the literati virtually to monopolise the whole realm of knowledge production and dissemination.

Chapter 7 193 This does not mean they were the inventors and designers of everything; far from it.

However, almost all ideas, crafts and lyrics that were invented or designed were first screened by the literati before they could be recorded, scrutinized, recognized, preserved, spread and used beyond the time and space limitations of the locale. Their moral

Standing was as the first censor in the process of knowledge production and their decision

in the selection and modification of text could determine whether knowledge would be

long-lived or short-lived. Book writing, editing and reading were their exclusive territory,

privilege, hallmark of social status, and their cage -- a cage which on the one hand

constrained their freedom of thought and action, and on the other hand provided them the

Security of their sociocultural status.

THE SOCIOPOLITICAL STANDING OF THE LITERATI

The sociopolitical status of the literati was promoted by the imperial ruling class, as we

have seen in previous chapters. However, this promotion was not a free gift. The formation of literati culture was a product of the sociopolitical condition. Seeing that the

aristocratic clans would never be willing slaves to the court, the emperor had to look for

newer, capable slaves. As past experience had shown, military men were useful for

coercive suppression, but they could be a potential danger to the throne when they

controlled too much power. Persons from great clans bound their loyalty to their rr~ters

through personal connection; assigning them to govern an empire meant using the

retainers of others. Furthermore, the continued use of locally powerful personnel as

Prefectural officials in their native places, a common practice during the Five Dynasties

Chapter 7 194 period, had the potential to lead to new localism, which would threaten the central power.

The emperor chose literati for the government administration, because they were people with talents but without a power base. When they were recruited, they were assigned to places far away from their hometowns so that the central government was the only source of their political power. By using literati as civil officials, the emperor succeeded in moving the power of governance from the control of autonomous aristocratic clans into

his own hands.

Who chose to be literati as a career? Of course people with some standing in terms of scholarship, wealth and politics. For these people, to be members of the literati group was not their only choice of a profession. Here we do not mean profession in the sense of choosing to be a merchants, a master of a certain trade or even a courtesan; these are already included in our definition for literati. The other choice of profession was a military career (Rowe, 1990: 61). Before the Sung, a military career was a more distinguished profession than that of a literatus. Even in the Sung, a time in which military

Prestige had been considerably lowered, a military career was still admirable to many

People. For example, Yueh Fei, a patriotic hero whom we will talk about in Chapter Eight, acquired a good scholarly background but chose to pursue a military career. In the eyes of many ordinary people of the Sung, which was at constant war with neighbouring empires year after year, a military career was a quick way to fame. A person, if he was

Physically strong, learned martial arts and was lucky enough not to be killed in his first

foray onto the battlefield, would be guaranteed honour and promotion. This was especially

true for those whose families had members from several generations in the army, or

Chapter 7 195 otherwise had many connections in the army. Also, to be an soldier meant an immediate supply of food, clothing and shelter; a soldier could possibly send a few dollars home every month to assist his parents or his family.

The career of a literatus was different. Not only was instant fame impossible for a new person, but also tens of years of hard work did not necessarily guarantee any obvious award. Even if a person was lucky enough to pass the examination, he would not get a good post if his family did not have strong connections with the court. For many literary students, the chance to enter officialdom was slim and pursuing studies was just an excuse to be away from work. Literary students were often physically weak and

Socially inexperienced. They were only of use to men with power, such as the men who

Commanded the army, who needed their literary talent for report-writing and log-recording.

Aspiring to be a literatus as a career option was thought to be for those who lacked bravery, the spirit of adventure, or family power for their establishment so that they relied on books for their glorification. It was a synonym for political weakness. Therefore not every person with a scholarly background wanted to pursue a literati career. Those who did, if they were sincere about their intentions, had to be prepared for many misunderstandings and a great deal of societal pressure before they entered officialdom or established themselves as a scholars.

The congenital weakness of this social group is the basis for claiming that literati

Would volunteer to be the imperial slaves if they were given a chance and they fully understood what that chance meant for the glorification of their names. The imperial appreciation and recommendation of their years of hard work created the "restitution

Chapter 7 196 psychology" (pao), a traditional virtue to be held the literati. They knew that without the emperor's insight and policy they would be perpetual victims in a hopeless struggle. They understood that to realize their political ambitions and protect their newly gained social position, they must maintain the imperial structure and rely on the continuance of imperial authority. Thus they were willing to devote all their efforts to the emperor for his personal favour, which was won through the successful fulfilment of the civil-service examination, and the spread of the emperor's "benevolence" to the populace through their hands. As restitution for the imperial favour of putting them at the apex of the social hierarchy, they brought to their duties a commitment to the imperial hierarchy and the maintenance of civil culture, both of which were invaluable for the institutionalization of central authority by the emperor. Among all political elements, the literati's interests became closest to the emperor's interests: both believed they would benefit from the centralization of authority and the maintenance of civil society. Hsiao-t'ung Fei describes the process by which literati surrendered themselves to the imperial monarchy:

In the beginning they [the gentry or literati] were separated from practical politics; they were regarded as maintainers of the ethical way but not as positively effective in government. In the process of the concentration of monarchical power, this same class was unable to protect its own interest; its members turned to religious sanctions in the hope that divine authority, in controlling the monarch, would at the same time offer them protection. But the divine sanctions were not effective, and thus the only alternatives came to be either to rebel or to surrender. Since the scholar class were never in any sense revolutionary, they chose the latter course, becoming officials. And they even degraded themselves by becoming utterly subservient to the emperor. This is the historical process which determined the later position of the gentry in the social structure. They did not themselves attempt to take over political power but found security by subordinating themselves to the mercy of the imperial court. In the power structure of traditional China the gentry were a distinctly noncom bative element. (Fei, 1953: 58)

Chapter 7 However, if literati were merely the running-dogs of the emperor, Chinese

despotism would have been utterly tyrannical, the imperial ideology of consent would only

have been a dream, and the literati could never have formed any culture of their own. Nor

would there have been any cultural necessity for printing, as we have seen in the

situations before the Sung Dynasty, because books could have only enjoyed prestige in

a civil society in which some sort of independent thinking was allowed and encouraged.

In fact, the literati's dependence on the emperor for their economic and political survival

was only one side of their character. They also had another side - using "heavenly" rules which they obtained from books to judge and criticize imperial practice. Although literati

Were originally weak in political, economic and military power, they had a weapon of their own, the books which carried the heavenly message and the moral standards of ancient sages. They used this weapon to gain economic and political power from the sociopolitical structure and set limitations on the emperor. Printing was actually a materialization of their

Power. On the one hand it was a tool for the indoctrination of imperial ideology, but on the other hand it was a vehicle for literati to make their own voice heard through the

Publication of their essays, poetry and popular literature.

The limitation of the emperor was institutionalized in the court. The structure of civil society made imperial Chinese despotism different from that of ancient in which the

Pharaoh was god and controlled all social and natural forces, or in the sense of the

Islamic world in which the ruler was subject to moral checks in religion but no institutional framework could bother him. Imperial China can be compared to medieval Europe. In

medieval Europe, the Bible provided moral standards and Christian kings had to abide

Chapter 7 198 by the rules "by the grace of God". The Church could be a counterforce as an institution because it had the power and prestige to criticize a ruler who failed to obey the rules.

Individual church administrators could enter state politics as an autonomous force to limit the ruler in his action. In imperial China, religious institutions never attained such power in state politics. In fact there were no autonomous institutions outside the imperial court that could confront the emperor as an equal. However, the emperor, who claimed to be the "son of heaven", could not conduct his rule as Islamic and Egyptian rulers did. The concept of "heaven" was not an abstract term with empty meaning. It referred to the ancestors of the legendary noble clans which had ruled China and these ancestors

Passed down the "mandate of heaven" onto the existing ruler just as a father passes down his property to his son. Mencius claims that the "son of heaven" was only a symbolic form to show that the ruler had received a mandate to be a ruler. This mandate could be given to another person if the ancestor's expectations were not fulfilled. In this case, a rebellion would be justified to bring about a change of ruler. The criteria for the fulfilment of the job were based on "public opinions", i.e. the educated elite who helped with governance.

Although neo-Confucianism in the Sung dismissed Mencius's philosophy by insisting on absolute dominant-subordinate relations, it was merely to strengthen the symbolic order of the social hierarchy. It still fell short of elevating the position of ruler to a Supreme level beyond control. The institutionalization of this political philosophy was the establishment of a censorship institution in the T'ang-Sung period; this was a government office to check the practicability of imperial policies and to report to the emperor any

Chapter 7 199 public opinions so that the "mandate" could be correctly used. Consequently, the scholar- officials became the institutional check upon the emperor's behaviour.

Codified laws were another means that defined the political position of scholar-

officials. Codified laws started in the Chou Dynasty. After that, no new emperor created a new law according to his will, but accepted the code which had been developed by his predecessors. He could only modify or enlarge the law as far as might be necessary, but

he could not rewrite the law arbitrarily. K. Bunger (1952) thinks that the codified law was not a one-sided action of the ruler, but an act of agreement between the ruler and the

ruled. The modifications and enlargement of the law were done by Confucianist scholars on the basis of the moral system of Confucianism and the emperor was supposed to conduct his ruling in its line. It codified Confucian doctrine and when the standard of behaviour was accepted by both the ruler and the ruled, the reconstitution of a stable state would be accomplished. The checking function of the scholars became explicit in this paradigm and they were justified in their task of commenting on the imperial rule.

According to the codified law, scholars were entitled to submit concerns in writing or talk face-to-face to the emperor, telling him why his decisions or conduct were wrong according to the public opinion and what he was expected to do. Thus literati as a weak

Political group started to gain substantial political power in the governing of the empire.

In order to win consent of public opinion, emperors had to be patient with literati and tolerate, to a certain degree, their criticisms and suggestions.

The checking and commenting were not democratic procedures as is thought by

some Western scholars. The checking was launched in a particular discourse called chijn-

Chapter 7 200 tzu, or "gentlemanly" way, which was not supposed to be on the behalf of the "people", but on the behalf of the "rivers and mountains of the empire" (chiang-shan she-ch~).The ultimate goal of the checking was to ensure that the existing imperial family would be long-lasting. This orientation was based on the fundamental interests shared both by the emperor and the scholar-officials. While the throne was stable, their own benefits would be secured. This characteristic of the scholar-officials determined that they could not truly speak on behalf of the people, as some scholars, such as Lin Yu-tang, have argued. In fact, the concept of "people" in the Western sense never existed in imperial China.

"People" was the opposite of officials and was seen neither as an independent political category nor as individual human beings. The "people" (min) bore a negative connotation and referred to the majority of the population who were not officials. It was true that there were various historical stories about the officials who risked their lives telling the emperor the realities that were contrary to what the emperor thought and suggesting to him policies that would invalidate the emperor's plans. Nonetheless, so-called "public-opinion" was primarily the opinion of bureaucrats, literati and other privileged members of the society. When they held a petition on behalf of the "people", they were actually representing only the social class of their own category.

Now that the literati were entrusted with such fundamental powers - the control of book production, the institutional check of imperial policies, the control of the whole educational system, and the administration of the government, the emperor needed to be sure that the literati maintained their loyalty to him, but not to their own social group or to any other social classes. His worry was not without reason: he found himself gradually

Chapter 7 20 1 buried and manipulated by the bureaucratic system that he had created. The reports the emperor received for his decisions were composed by bureaucrats who had already manipulated the discourse of the reports according to their own standing and judgement; their suggestions for imperial policies based on the reports appeared so flawless that the emperor could do nothing but give approval. As their Confucianist learning was usually more sophisticated than the emperor's, they could use many classical examples and

Confucianist theories to justify their suggestions. When the emperor disagreed, their approach to the emperor, although respectful and obedient in tone, was actually like giving a lecture to a student. The emperor had to depend on the bureaucrats for governance. He just wanted them to take the responsibility without claiming any power.

The bureaucrats, being of two kinds, had two approaches. One kind was career-minded, accepting the terms of the emperor in exchange for personal and family privileges. The other kind was idealistic, demanding power in the name of Confucian principles, to which even the emperor should be subservient. The second kind of bureaucrat was the main source of political wrestling in the imperial court. and in this struggle, the emperor felt himself losing direct control over the bureaucracy.

There was another threat to the emperor - the growth of the literati's independent cultural power within their localities. In order to maintain their social status and their momentum for officialdom, the literati, including those with and without official titles, kept up their families' literati tradition and education. Gradually, by the end of the twelfth century, the relatively powerless and dependent literati grew to be a far more independent and powerful social group within their region than they had been at the start of the Sung

Chapter 7 202 Dynasty. Although their independence was not as direct a threat to sovereignty as the independence of the great aristocratic clans had been, it meant that imperial political institutions were undermined in their leverage over local affairs. In places outside the capital city, the family members of high-ranking officials would not show any respect to local officials who were assigned to their posts by the emperor. Sometimes they would even treat local officials the way they treated their servants.

Meanwhile, the local literati, although without official titles, controlled the economic and cultural power of the locality and the local officials sent by the court had to rely on them for governance. If they felt that a certain local official was intruding into their cultural dominance, they could use various means to defame him and eventually force him to leave in disgrace. Conversely, if a local official could win the favour of local literati, he would not only establish his rule smoothly, but also have more chances for promotion because of good "public opinion". In the end, local officials shifted their loyalty from the emperor to local literati. Although local literati did not control military power and did not have large amounts of wealth to confront the court, their cultural influence made their localities small empires within a big empire.

The position of a local literatus was usually maintained by four factors: demonstration of a cultured taste; the possession of property, usually farmland; social connections with government officials and other local elites; and a leading position in the community, like the head of a clan, the master of a local school or the chief of a village.

Many of them acted as "cultural experts" in village rituals, such as the "people's cult"

(min-ssu) of civil gods (shen) that was not recorded in the imperial calendar. In this

Chapter 7 203 regard, there were two kinds of cults in the civil sector, one for official gods and the other for civil gods. While the official cults (kuan ssu) of gods were mainly for spiritual exemplars who were said to uphold literary tradition, military strength, government, agriculture, arts and crafts, and moral goodness, the civil cults had their own gods of worship for private blessings: prosperity, good health, protection from spectres, etc. Of the many temples in most Chinese villages, only a few belonged to the official cults. They were erected from tax money at the direction of the magistrate, such as the god of soil

(She). The rituals for official cults were directed by local officials and ordinary farmers could only be onlookers.

Temples belonging to the civil cult were built from money raised by private subscription. The number of temples for civil cults in a village might reach a ratio as high as one out of every ten families. For the people of the community, civil rituals were more than religious. The time of worship was often an instance to reduce the tensions of mutual suspicion between villagers, especially between the poor and the rich, and literati were highly respected on these occasions for their understanding of rituals, their command of mystical words, and their ability to appease the hidden conflicts between community members. Therefore, literati as the organizers of these activities were naturally regarded as heroes. Their popular image was quite different from that of local officials. Villagers would fear punishment from officials, but would both fear and love literati for their cultural dominance and for their protection of the community.

How to make literati keep their loyalty to the emperor was a perpetual question in every dynasty. Controlling their political and literary careers was one way, but it was

Chapter 7 204 basically coercive by nature. For the emperor, it was more important to win the literati's hearts rather than their temporary actions. Therefore, the ideological transformation of the literati was regarded as a primary task for the imperial rulers and its degree of success was essential to the survival of the rule.

The education of the literati took many forms. Imperial decrees were issued and personal favour was bestowed by the emperor on those who complied. There were regular meetings, private talks, book and document study and the setting up of negative exemplars who failed to adapt their thinking into the predetermined discourse. The chief purpose was to make the literati fully understand three things. First, without the emperor they were simply nothing and their social status would vanish. Second, no matter how particular imperial policies were modified according to the literati's suggestions, the rule of the imperial family was the cardinal principle and could never be changed. Third, the survival of the literati's career depended on their leadership position over the masses and this leadership position was given by the emperor and must be practised in line with basic imperial policies. Based on these understandings, the emperor could tolerate a temporary offense to the throne by the literati so long as the offense was made on the basis of sincere loyalty to the emperor. But any disloyalty, whether explicit or implicit, must be

punished even when the literati claimed they were loyal to the throne. For the emperor,

any claim of loyalty to the dynasty or the empire was invalid if the person was disloyal to the emperor, because the emperor was the owner of the country and all political

strategies and policies were in the end for the protection of his family's rule rather than

for an abstract concept.

Chapter 7 In addition to moral transformation, the emperor adopted various political strategies to control the literati. The most frequently used and most effective one was differentiation among literati by using the psychology of the "cult of poverty" and mutual jealousy. As government positions were always fewer than the number of aspiring literati, any person's advance was at the expense of his peers. Ambitious literati would defame others for their own benefit and the emperor used this tendency to maintain his political balance. Inside the bureaucracy, conflicts were of two types: those between the ultimate power of the emperor and the derivative power entrusted to the bureaucracy, and those among the bureaucrats themselves. When the emperor's pressure on the bureaucrats was strong, the bureaucrats would temporarily put aside the conflicts between themselves and unite to confront the emperor. But when the emperor appeared lax in his control, members of the bureaucracy would resume their mutual struggles for their positions in the court. They formed into various groups and when one group succeeded in the struggle against other groups and undermined their influence or drove them out of the court politics, new groups would appear within the victorious group and new political struggles would ensue. The emperor fully realized the political advantage of the struggles, as each group would naturally turn to the emperor to gain support in their confrontation with other groups.

Another strategy was to use eunuchs as a political power against literati. Eunuchs were usually illiterate and were the real servants of the emperor. They could not be relied on for government administration, but their involvement in politics could offset the literati's influence in the court. The fight between bureaucrats and eunuchs was constant and fierce. It was ironic that serious fights happened between the experts of philosophy and

Chapter 7 206 the illiterate whose real role was to clean rooms and sweep tne courtyard, but in many cases the emperor deliberately declared the eunuchs the winner in order to remind the bureaucrats of their own position - they were imperial slaves just like the eunuchs.

Through a combination of carrot and stick, the literati could be tamed and trained to be loyal guardians of the imperial rule. As to the local literati, the imperial policy was mainly favourism. The court recognized the elite status and leadership position of local literati in their locality and awarded them various honorific titles. Meanwhile, negative exemplars were set up as a warning. Pao Ch'eng's stories of punishing the family members of court officials were examples to remind local literati that their political and cultural status did not mean that they could be exempted from state punishment. The establishment of the pao-chia system, a system of mutual supervision in villages, was another coercive measure. This system made the people of the locality responsible for the conduct of their neighbours and they would be punished if their neighbours committed crimes or committed any offensive actions toward the court. This was to tell local literati that the imperial recognition of their leadership position was based on their political responsibility, i.e. helping officials maintain the social stability of the locality.

The social requirement for literati had substantial changes in the T'ang-Sung period. In the T'ang Dynasty, the tradition was still that a scholar should know the virtues, but the practice and the knowledge of virtue could be separated. In the Sung, according to the doctrine of neo-Confucianism, a scholar's conduct and his learning were combined into one entity. His learning represented his moral values and vice versa. Scholar-officials represented the top level of social achievement, the best literary style, the best

Chapter 7 207 accomplishment of art, the best knowledge of classical learning, and the best exemplar of moral conduct. Other literati outside officialdom would follow the scholar-officials in their world views and their literary styles because they identified themselves culturally with scholar-officials. They would adopt the scholar-officials' way of thinking, remember their sayings as mottos for life guidance, and imitate their style of poetry composition and calligraphy. Their ideological transformation was largely a voluntary act, for they were not directly subject to imperial manipulation as the scholar-officials in the court. They actively tried to adapt their thinking to the imperial discourse so that they would feel themselves insiders of the culture.

When the literati were fundamentally aligned with the emperor, they were effective mediators of imperial ideology to the populace. Being subject to various moral and administrative controls, the literati's loyalty toward the emperor was consolidated. This position meant that they were never truly representative of the voice of the people. When speaking in the name of people, they were simply using bargaining with the emperor for better political and economic deals. They quickly forgot what they had said on behalf of the "people" when their demands were satisfied. In their depiction of the "people" in their writings, they modified or edited the "people's" image according to the imagery of officialdom and according to their own political standing. When they propagated ideas through popular literature to the masses, the modified representation of the people's

reactions toward imperial policies cloaked imperial ideology in a quasi-public discourse, such as the story of the Water Margin (Shui hu chuan). Even the hero, Sung Chiang, the

leader of the peasant rebels, was cloaked in the trappings of literati. He was an

Chapter 7 208 accomplished poet and had a good knowledge of social rituals; his basic reason for rebelling was to defeat several evil officials, but not the emperor. In the words of the populace, books like the Water Margin "offered immense help to the ruler through small condemnations of petty things" (hsiao ma ta pang mang). Herbert Franke points out:

My personal opinion is, contrary to that of some scholars, that the value of literary fiction must not be overrated, particularly because of the high degree of stylization even in those works where admittedly an anti- governmental attitude or social criticism is displayed. The real voice of the "people" has, to my knowledge, never been recorded, and we simply do not know how a peasant or artisan of, say the Ming period, expressed himself. Everything we know has already been filtered in some way through a literary medium. (Ho, 1968: 48)

Meanwhile, in their literary writing, such as dramas and novels, the literati would depict themselves as the representative of the "people" rather than the slaves of the emperor. They claimed the trust of society and offered their guidance. Because they controlled printing, they flooded the market with books propagating literati culture, including their prose, poetry, their reading notes, and their rules for family education.

Through the joint effort of scholar-officials, scholar-commoners and non-scholars, literati culture was consistently promoted. The glorified image of the literati in popular literature also encouraged the populace to imitate them as exemplars of model thought and conduct. As Creel describes:

People tended to identify themselves with scholars and with popular officials, much as some Americans identify themselves with movie stars or television personalities. (Ho, 1968: 69)

Through such a process, the literati's leadership position was further secured among the populace. The literati were transformed ideologically by the imperial rulers and in turn the literati transformed the masses to think in the same discourse.

Chapter 7 THE FORMATION OF LITERATI CULTURE

Although the literati were able to establish their culture, they could not propagate it

entirely on their own. Outside the realm of the literati, there were vast numbers of people who could not read or write in the classical style, but who possessed such skills as

bookkeeping and calendar-reading. They were not literati, for they were only functionally

literate and, indeed, were regarded as "illiterate" by the traditional standard. Such people

lived close to the illiterate peasants and town workers, often earned their living in similar

ways, and probably enjoyed similar entertainments. Yet they could read and hence were

able to have direct access to at least part of the realm of the written word. They were

often comfortably off but not wealthy and they constituted an important market for books,

such as cheap editions of the classics with simple commentaries, almanacs, popular

literature, ballad broadsheets and pamphlets like the "wooden-fish books" of Kuang-tung.

Culturally they were situated between the literati culture and folk culture. Largely through

these functionally literate people, the literati culture spread to the illiterate masses in both

rural and urban areas.

An important segment of the functionally literate were women. Women were always

excluded from the exam ination and schooling, yet their contribution to the constitution of

literati culture cannot be overestimated. As mothers, grandmothers, sisters and wives,

they gave enlightened education to future literati. They might not be experts in the

classics, but through daily talks and storytelling, mothers naturally instilled elements of

literati culture into the consciousness of their sons, and when these boys grew up, their

wives and concubines continued to ensure that they did not forget what they had learned

Chapter 7 210 at their mothers' knees. The stories they could tell the would-be-literati for the celebration of literati culture were abundant, such as how a poor boy saved his beloved sweetheart from misery after he became a scholar-official and how a son glorified the family by passing the examination while his brothers lost all their money in business trade.

Similarly, in rich families, servants played the same role by reminding the future literati how pleasant life was for degree-holders. When the wives of literati husbands and the servants of established literati families went back to their own homes, they would tell their families the stories of the success of their husbands or masters and these families would further spread the stories, with some variations of their own, to their neighbours or fellow-villagers. Long-distance traders would bring to remote villages the of who was number one in the palace examination, restaurant keepers would write their literati guests' poetry on the wall as a marketing strategy, and ferrymen would tell their passengers what his literati passengers had said to him about the empire's future. Such mutual interaction between classically educated and non-educated people created a mechanism of cultural

integration around the literati culture.

Even the completely illiterate masses were not homogeneous in their lack of

interaction with literati culture. For instance, many illiterate women were to be found in the families of the middle and even upper ranges of the social hierarchy. Although they

could not read or write, they were heavily influenced by literati culture and they were even

regarded as representatives of literati culture in the eyes of non-literati families. In the

same fashion, not all illiterate men were poor agricultural labourers or coolies. Many

undoubtedly owned enough land to support their own families and some owned

Chapter 7 21 1 considerably more than that. The mentality of such landowning illiterates differed substantially from that of the truly poor, even though the world of the written word was equally closed to all of them. They knew that people with knowledge of words could be officials, riding in sedans and living in beautiful mansions, and they would encourage their sons to go to school and get an education. There are abundant folk stories about how a family saved every penny for their sons' schooling.

Propertyless peasants had no money to send their children to school, but they did have time to take them to towns for storytelling and theatrical performances which were invariably representations of literati culture. They were also participants of local rituals, such as the sacrifice for the civil gods and the ceremonies of rich families. In such rituals, the mystic power of words was transmitted to them through the reading of ritual texts in the classical style and the procedure of the rituals was an introduction to literati culture itself. Thereby, literati culture was omnipresent in every corner of society.

The spread of literati culture into society at large was also made possible by direct contact between scholars and the illiterate. Scholars, both officials and commoners, were geographically and culturally mixed with the populace. This mixture was a by-product of the concentration of land ownership in the Sung time. The T'ang and Sung dynasties witnessed a consistent policy of concentration of land ownership. According to Mencius' characterization of the "Ching system", a land reform took place in the Five Dynasties and each family was allocated a certain amount of farmland for raising their family. This policy

continued in the early T'ang Dynasty. Women, adolescents, widows and the old could

also enjoy a small piece of land. The moral principle was that the equal distribution of

Chapter 7 21 2 land would allow the independent peasant to preserve a minimum subsistence level and thus he would be able to pay his taxes and fulfil his military obligations. Officials were entitled to more land according to their rank and they could also have part of the government-owned land (kung-chieh-t'ien). As the state policy did not allow scholar- officials to cultivate land by themselves, they rented the land to tenant farmers or hired agricultural labourers to farm for them. After the official died, his family could inherit the land and continue to rent it to tenant farmers. The privileged families were exempt from tax and labour service and their wealth accumulated rapidly. At the same time, independent farmers, being subject to more and more tax and the corvee, they found themselves in heavy debt to the state in terms of taxes and had nothing left for their own, despite their whole year of labour in the farmland. In order to have food to eat after a year's work, they sold their land to the scholar-officials, local elite or religious monasteries and became tenant farmers for them.

The poverty of farmers provided an ideal environment for the establishment of private villas by scholar-officials. This started in the late T'ang and continued throughout the Sung dynasty. The officials, serving in urban areas, would buy vast pieces of land in the country, build a garden for their retreat, and rent the land to tenants or hire people to farm. The owner was often absent and a bailiff, often an expert in farming operations, was employed to manage the farming. The decrease of religious power also provided an opportunity for the literati to acquire land. When Buddhist monasteries and Taoist temples aroused the state's hostility with their rapid gains in land and wealth, the T'ang Dynasty launched a number of suppressions. Their land was confiscated by the state and sold at

Chapter 7 213 a cheap price to local people, most of whom were the literati.

The settlement of scholars in rural areas brought literati culture from the cities to the villages. According to Richard Smith, by the time of the Ch'ing Dynasty, only twenty- five percent of literati had permanent urban residences (Smith, 1983: 75). Thus a cultural continuum was formed from urban to rural areas and popular culture in any part of the empire was necessarily influenced and manipulated by high culture. Through economic and cultural dominance, the literati established themselves as the leadership of the locale, especially in the villages, and their dominance was strengthened by the political system.

They enjoyed legal privileges and were allowed to handle disputes among villagers. They took the lead in community activities, such as rituals and donations. Through them, urban culture was brought to the countryside. No significant differences existed between urban and rural elites in basic family structure, housing, dress, eating and drinking habits, transport, and general cultural style. "Differences that did exist were differences in degree or intensity rather than kind." (Smith, 1983: 75) Many famous centres of learning were located in rural areas, such as shu-yuan, libraries and printing shops. Gradually, literati culture became institutionalized in rural areas.

Thus a whole network of literati culture was formed, with the imperial rulers and scholar-officials at the top and the illiterate masses at the bottom. This culture, which originated in the literati, had an impact far beyond the literati itself as a social group. It was never an independent culture of any particular social class or group and its extension was not a natural process according to a set of shared moral values and beliefs amongst court officials and poor villagers who had little in common. It was heavily manipulated by

Chapter 7 214 imperial ideology and gradually it became aligned with imperial cultural policies. It was artificially promoted through the system of civil society and the civil-service examination.

Its consolidation was through clear political orientations echoing particular sociopolitical needs. Printing as a product of this culture attained its ideological bias from this beginning and acted as the materialization of literati culture within the imperial discourse. Printing was consistently controlled by the literati. Throughout the imperial history, there was no political struggle for control of the mass media as happened in Europe, because there was no foreground for the struggle. When printing helped to change literati culture to a mass culture, the entire cultural atmosphere of the empire took on the trappings and perspectives of the ruling class. This does not mean that all sub-cultures were invalidated.

Sub-cultures of particular social classes or groups, such as trade clans, medical doctors, fortune-tellers and areas of special dialects, continued to exist and their cultures were recognized and respected by state officials. However, literati culture took overall leadership. It could absorb any subculture into its network and modify it according to its own discourse. Trade clans held Confucianist rituals in their ceremonies, potters painted literati images on their products, people in remote areas used their own ways to worship heaven and earth, and fortune-tellers used classically styled words to serve their customers. Consequently, the promotion of literati culture became a successful strategy for winning consent from the majority of the whole population. In Chapter Four, we have seen that many ancient philosophers placed the winning of consent as the primary task of the government and they proposed moral education as the methodology. However, their educational scheme was still largely based on coercive methods and it failed

Chapter 7 21 5 repeatedly throughout the Han to the T'ang dynasties. It was only in the Sung Dynasty that moral education was smoothly embedded in the promotion of literati culture and its ideals started to bear fruit. The hegemonic result of the promotion of literati culture was not completely foreseen by the imperial rulers, just as the result of mass culture was not foreseen when the court started to use printing. Its social effects, however, were long- lasting. Even nowadays, literati culture is still the basis of communication between

Chinese all over the world. It is termed "Chinese culture" and its symbolic forms include dragons, Buddhist images, herbal medicines, and, most importantly Chinese characters and calligraphy. Chinese in different parts of world are much more diverse than those in the Sung Dynasty, but they continue to be united culturally under the same network.

In concluding this chapter, we will have a brief look at what happened to literati culture after the Sung. Although literati culture was basically formed in the Sung, its spread was hindered by the difference between the local cultures of north and south

China. In Chapter Two we mentioned the large-scale migration from north to south because of the warfare and natural disasters in northern provinces. This migration brought a concentration of literati culture to south China and left the notion of a society based on military dominance to the empires in the north. The immigrants from the north felt culturally rootless in their new territory and the material comforts of life never entirely offset the atmosphere of impermanence. The merging of the and Yangtze

River cultures and the further promotion of literati culture had to wait till the Yuan

Dynasty, a time in which south China was reinfused with northern ideas and a relative unification of the cultures of the north and the south was achieved. Those notions about

Chapter 7 21 6 the military organization of society and the management of the economy, originally formed in the T'ang and disinherited by the Sung, were passed down to the Liao and the Chin and finally brought back by the Yuan. The Yuan tried to force northern culture on the south; meanwhile, it was itself fundamentally influenced by southern culture.

Through this process, the difference between the local cultures of the north and south started to diminish and a more receptive environment was formed for further penetration of literati culture throughout the empire. Although in the Yuan the Chinese came to an end and military coercion again became the chief policy of the state, the influence of the Sung's civil society and literati culture was still visible from the court to the villages. In the Ming Dynasty, when the civil society was restored, literati culture developed on a larger scale.

Chapter 7 CHAPTER 8

CIVIL BOOK PRINTING AND COLLECTING

The large-scale formation of literati culture took place almost at the same time that woodblock printing was spreading widely and movable type was being invented. Between

600 and 1200 printing technique developed from seals to woodblocks and from books of only a few pages to books of hundreds of pages. The definition of literati also shifted gradually from origin of birth to office-holding through examination. By 1200, literati culture took precedence in the achievement of status in civil society. The change in the social setting gave books and book learning unprecedented prestige. Books carried knowledge from ancestors; office-holders in the government were required to have book knowledge.

The name, literati, signified the upper spectrum of the social hierarchy, and the sociopolitical existence of this group depended on its access to books. Thus, books became the symbolic mark of sociocultural status.

CULTURAL PRESTIGE OF BOOKS

Books were not the only symbolic mark of the literati's status. Poetry, calligraphy, painting and seal carving also marked the position of this group. A writer or a poet could not attain a respectable name without excellent calligraphic skills. Almost all writers were skilled in the use of the brush and could write their poems in calligraphy that had aesthetic value and that conveyed to the connoisseur whatever degree it might have of verve, imagination, order and balance. Calligraphy was intended not for the reading of the text,

Chapter 8 218 but for the presentation of an artistic style as a reflection of the calligrapher's cultural cultivation. For a beginner, texts written with stylish calligraphy were simply unrecognizable. Consequently the ability to read calligraphy was a touchstone for group membership. The poet was half a painter in his command of lines and his visual sensibility through his practice of calligraphy. Thus good calligraphers could usually do some painting. Traditional Chinese painting was also drastically different from painting in the West. A painting was not regarded as an artistic rendering of the real world, but a visual and philosophical reflection of the painter's inner world. Tranquil scenes of mountains and rivers were the usual subjects of Sung painters, through which painters wanted to express their longing for a return to nature. A good painting was not evaluated in terms of the painter's mastery of difficult techniques, but for the philosophical associations it could arouse in an audience that shared a common cultural background with the painter. A painting was often accompanied by a poem, written in calligraphy, which provided a clue to the subject and expressed the same idea in another medium.

A seal with the painter's name in red was a necessary component of a painting. Like calligraphy, the characters on a seal were not intended for reading. The quality of the seal stone, the style of calligraphy for the characters, the artistic organization of the seal image, and the decoration of the seal stone, all reflected the cultural accomplishment of the painter. Like poetry writing, the art of painting, calligraphy and seal carving were not regarded as crafts by literati, but as the necessary means for the cultivation of their personalities. Therefore, a person's level of painting, calligraphy and seal carving were the hallmark of his nurturance of literati culture.

Chapter 8 Woodblock printing as an art combined literary learning, calligraphy, painting and seal carving into a whole and was naturally chosen by literati as a favourable means for the demonstration of their cultural taste. Book printing was not just a medium for texts, but a showcase of all these arts. First of all, undertaking a printing project signified wealth and the endeavour by itself was a token of a person's social and economic standing.

Before printing could start, the printer had to decide what book to print. The task of reviewing suitable manuscripts was similar to that undertaken by modern editors, but the orientation was not to the general reader, but to seek appreciation from fellow literati. The title could be an old one, such as a Confucian canon, or a new one, such as commentaries by a contemporary scholar. It could be a serious philosophical monograph, or a lively poetry book, or an account of how to educate family members. The purpose of the printing project was to create cultural prestige. After a title was chosen, the next thing was editing. The mere copying of an old version would not show much cultural taste. Even when the chosen version was already perfect, the editor would add a preface or a postscript, often with a lot of empty words and a repetition of the content in a stylish manner. Preface and postscript have been a substantial part of Chinese literature. Many established literati, who did not or could not compose any serious writings of their own, died with a large number of prefaces and postscripts as their life's achievement. After the editing was complete, the printing process would start. The qualities of a good edition included beautiful calligraphy, elegant layout, fine carving, perfect printing on good paper, and a neat style of binding. The product should be a piece of art by itself. It was expected that when the book was given to fellow literati, they would be amazed by its aesthetic

Chapter 8 effect and display it on their bookshelfs rather than throwing it under the bed.

The prestige of book production can be seen from the use of book trade jargon.

The jargon, though technical in essence, was so literary that an amateur would be easily confused about actual meanings. To cite several examples:

Butterfly binding (hu tieh chuang) was like modern saddle stitch, but the pages were glued together on the middle of the cover. The book looked like a butterfly when it opened. However, the sheets, when folded and glued, were easily broken when the pages were turned quickly.

Whirlwind binding (hsuan feng chuang) meant the was a complete sheet of paper, not two separated sheets for the front and back covers. The latter was called "stitch binding (hsian chuang)".

Heavenly head (t'ien t'ou), the top margin.

Earthly foot (ti chiao), the bottom margin.

Book brain (shu nao), the margin for binding.

Book quality (shu p'in), the size format.

White text (pai wen), an original text without the publisher's explanations and comments.

Black mouth (hei k'ou), a black line in the middle of an opening to separate the left and right pages. An opening without the black line was called "white mouth" (p'ai k'ou).

Gold decorated with jade (chih hsiang yu) meant using a new piece of paper to patch an old sheet in book repair. The phrase derived from the fact that the paper of the old book was usually yellow and the new paper was white.

Chapter 8 Helping hands (pang shou), the preface, postscripts, printers seal or

acknowledgement, etc., that could help a book collector identify the year of publication.

Because printing and possession of books were marks of cultural distinction and

woodblock printing was found to be the best means to achieve such effects, there was

a reluctance in the use of movable type. While in block printing each character and line

was suitably designed on a woodblock to ensure the aritistic quality of a whole page, the

assembly of separately made types into one page in movable type printing would

undermine a book's artistic value and thus an important element of the social significance

of the book was lost. For one thing, when a calligrapher was copying text for woodblock

carving, he could adjust the length of strokes for each character in relation to the

characters before and after it. This variety would be lost in movable type because of its

standard typefaces. As characters for movable type were individually written, all strokes

would be the same without any regard to neighbouring characters; this would make the

style of calligraphy monotonous and boring. Second, as movable typesetting was a kind

of mechanical production, it conveyed in the layout a feel of simple workmanship and therefore a cheapness in quality. Last but not least, movable type was not good for

reprinting. When literati readers wanted to have a particular edition, they were not only

looking at the content, but also the artistic value of the book. They expected their edition to be exactly the same as the one that they had seen or heard about with regard to its

calligraphy, layout, etc. When movable type was used to reprint a book, exactness could

not be guaranteed. Because the production and marketing of an artistically tasteless book

Would degrade their cultural image, literati were reluctant to use movable type for their

Chapter 8 222 book production. Even commercial printers regarded movable type as unsuitable for them,

because cultured readers would refuse to purchase such books. In this sense, the literati

culture became a market imperative in book production. Book manufacturers were active

in catering to the market by sticking to woodblock printing and their competition was

mainly for the elegance of editions rather than for the variety and speed of production.

Even when movable type was used, the printer would try every means to make his

product appear as if it were made from woodblock.

BOOK PRINTING AND COLLECTING AS AN INVESTMENT

There were socioeconomic reasons for the preference toward woodblock printing. For the

literati, books were probably the most secure means for the preservation of their cultural

status. This was not because other resources were unavailable. On the contrary, the

Sung was possibly the most developed country in the world at that time and it was

famous for its extravagance, such as beautiful villas, large private gardens, countless

objects of gold and silver, expensive restaurants and brothels, and large pieces of

farmland for private ownership. The masters and regular customers of these luxuries

were, needless to say, mainly literati who were at the top of the social hierarchy. They

also had expensive hobbies, such as horse racing and travelling to faraway places. A

cultural requirement for the literati was to "read ten thousand volumes of books and travel ten thousand miles." Book printing and collecting was an expensive hobby, which involved

materials, such as good woodblocks and paper, and workers such as carvers, printers

and binders. All these things were the cultural mark for the literati tradition. However, the

Chapter 8 223 literati were subject to the limitations of the symbolic order codified in law, as were all other sectors of society. Although many activities were possible, only persons who had achieved a certain rank were entitled to use them. Consequently the literati's pursuit of their cultural image was greatly constrained. The violation of these rules would not only bring official punishment, but would also arouse the jealousy and resentment of the community because of the cult of poverty. Thanks to the tolerance of emperors, books were not listed among the goods for the symbolic order - anybody could produce and possess books to whatever extent he pleased. Also, due to the spread of literati culture, extravagance in book production and collection was not an offense to the community but won a certain respect for its cultural prestige. Many literati therefore chose books as their cultural investment and printing was the best way to exemplify their taste.

In addition to the symbolic order, there was another reason for the insistence on woodblock printing: books were an ideal means for the preservation of the family fortune.

This reason was closely related to the Chinese legal philosophy. The concept of law in imperial China was very different from that of the West after the Enlightenment. Chinese law was regarded entirely as a tool for imperial rule rather than a means of protection for and an agreement between various sectors of the society. In China, the law was subject to moral and ideological judgement from an imperial perspective. Traditional Chinese law was confined mostly to administrative and penal law, which was convenient for authoritarian rule. However, there was no law protecting individual rights. Private property was never protected by law, because by law every inch of land belonged to the emperor.

Any recognition of private property would mean a material confrontation between the

Chapter 8 224 emperor and a private individual on an equal level. The instability of private property caused downward social mobility. Large investments in farming and business were politically dangerous because the state could not tolerate substantial amounts of wealth outside its domain. Therefore, in the imperial social and political structure, there were no institutionalized channels for investment. Also, for the literati, investment in trade and crafts would mean an association with local guilds, which were at the bottom level of the social hierarchy and it would downgrade their cultural image.

As there were no safeguards for material fortunes even for a scholar-official, people tended to spend their money on extravagances when they had any surplus. This made the variety of Chinese food and restaurants probably the best in the world and the enjoyment of food and wine was also a symbol of literati culture. Meanwhile, they tried to find ways to preserve their fame and property. Book editing, printing and collecting were thought to be the best ones. Books were commodities and had market value. Good editions of books were like cheques that could be readily cashed in the marketplace.

When woodblocks were carved, it meant the establishment of a source of wealth. Later generations could use the woodblocks to print books and sell them on the market as a source of income. It was not rare for literati to list their woodblocks as an asset in their wills and pass them down to the eldest son or divide them among the children if there were woodblocks for several books.

The investment in book production could not bring a quick return, but it would bring profits over the long term. By hiring experts to edit, copy, carve and print books, a literatus could both demonstrate his cultural taste to his peers and secure a fortune to his

Chapter 8 225 children. Book collecting had a similar effect. The literati didn't collect ordinary books, but collected rare editions, books by distinguished scholars and books with high artistic value.

They could be displayed as symbolic indicators of merit and could be resold on the market at a higher price. ~ustlike antiques, old books were always worth more. When they read the books, they had the habit of adding explanations, comments, critiques and corrections in the margin. The literati did this probably just for their own scholarly research, but once they became famous in literati circles, books that they had owned and written comments in were even more valuable and would often become the chosen texts for literati printers.

The use of book printing and collecting as a cultural mark was not only a strategy for literati to distinguish themselves from other social sectors such as merchants and military, but also a strategy for self-protection. As they had no great clans to rely on or a brilliant military history to show off, a self-labelled literati status was the only thing they

Could sell (Bol, 1992: 51-52). A family with one member as a literatus would claim to be a literati family and the literati families in a locality would claim themselves to be a literati class. However, literati culture was largely intangible. It did not have the wealth of merchants, or the honourable medals of military men, or the power of officials. Because of the proliferation of printing, books flooded the market at a cheap price and everybody could own books. Because "literati" was basically a self-declared title, the holder of literati status could be easily challenged and his claim could be dismissed by other members of the community. Therefore, it was necessary for a literatus to build up a circle of like- minded associates to defend his status. They would read the same kinds of books, write

Chapter 8 the same style of calligraphy, play the same chess and music, compose poetry on the same subjects, and decorate their gardens in the same way.

Book printing and collecting was one of the strategies for the establishment of a ring of supporters. Many petty things in book production, such as a tiny change in binding style, the width of the line surrounding the text, the layout of the preface, and the variety of "" in the text, were the hallmark of literati cultural taste. They were also eager to express appreciation to one another in order to demonstrate to the non-literati that they belonged to the same cultural group. This circle had to be exclusive, for they knew that the fewer the member of people inside the circle, the more chances they would have to be chosen for the officialdom or receive attentions and favours from officials. The insiders effectively used the literary knowledge they had acquired to keep newcomers out. People who wanted to enter the circle had to first show respect for them as masters and be their students - an elevated designation that meant a combination of spiritual slave and daily servant - for a number of years. A student became an apprentice and learned to write in the classical style, compose poetry, calligraphy and painting. When other new people came in, the students would become masters, but they would always remain students in relation to their own masters. The Chinese saying for this tradition, "a master for one day means a father for the rest of life" (ijih wei shih, chung jih wei fu) aptly defines the power relations inside the hierarchy of literati culture, which is based on Confucian doctrine

"father like father, son like son."

The symbolic power of cultural production not only effectively protected literati from the intrusion of other sectors of society, but also acted as a cultural coercion to constrain

Chapter 8 227 the power of local officials on the literati circle. There was a general belief among the populace that to be a literatus meant having an affinity with government. We have said earlier that scholar-officials were usually assigned to posts far away from their hometowns. Although local officials had to rely on the imperial court for political support, the court was geographically far away and their daily rule had to depend on the influence of local literati. The scholar-officials had no other choice, because they had no common background with other social groups or classes. As officials, they did not have to call local literati masters. But at least they had to show respect for their cultural status and make friends with them. Through the mediation of local officials, the literati's political ambitions, which had been frustrated by their failure in the examinations, had an opportunity to be realized. They would help local officials design strategies for dealing with farmers and artisans and they would be actively engaged in anything concerning state politics. Their advice and suggestions were valuable because the officials did not know much about the

Particular situation within a locale. The officials were the ones who had to make decisions,

Yet they were often less experienced in dealing with the court than local literati.

The growth of the literati's power in a locality brought a monopoly of entry to the government. The goal of a literati family, once one member had gained office, was to ensure that there would be more officials in later generations. It was customary in the

Sung's funerary writing and grave inscriptions to identify the family's ancestors who had held office in the government with an expectation that later generations would bring the same fame to the family. Although the imperial policy was that office holding should not be passed down to later generations as an hereditary right, people generally believed that

Chapter 8 228 children of scholar-officials' families had a better environment to develop their talents and

therefore, were more able to rule than the children of other social classes. The results of the examination supported this perception. Literati families as a small group within

communities always dominated the prefectural examinations. Through their success in the examinations, the literati's social status was further consolidated. Therefore, the

preservation of the literati tradition, especially when the family had nobody serving in the

government, was regarded as a primary task among the literati. Wang An-shih defined the importance of the literati tradition in a funerary biography to his friend:

[The gentleman] had three sons ...none of whom he would let work at [agricultural] production. He said, "To be poor yet a literati is better than being an artisan or merchant but rich." All three sons passed the local qualifying examination, and Shen became the judge of T'ai-p'ing prefecture. (Bol, 1992: 71)

During the first century of the Northern Sung it was still possible for families that had not produced officials in recent memory to establish themselves as literati. But as time went on, the pool of literati families succeeded in shutting out newcomers to a considerable extent. A search for officials as ancestors, as evidence of literati ancestry, continued the traditional practice of great clans and aristocracy. Among various means for erecting and maintaining sociocultural status of the literati, book printing and collecting were effective ones and were most frequently used.

The literati's printing and collecting of books also had an impact on popular culture.

Their preference, of course, was primarily in those of high culture - canons, standard histories, poetry, prose and encyclopedias. Nonetheless, they often had an interest in other genres of books which could be categorized into popular culture - storytellers'

Chapter 8 229 prompt books, romance, novels, popular historical tales, popular lyrics and plays. The

literati would collect and edit them as a pastime. Sometimes they would print their versions or let commercial printers print them. Unlike the "high culture" books that were

originated by scholars, the content of "popular culture" books was usually first formed in the lower and middle classes and literati printers acted as the mediator for the spread of content both in the popular sector and in the scholarly sector. Like their production of

"high culture" books, their mediation of the popular books equally manifested their own ideological standing. In the next chapter we will examine how they manipulated popular

literature into imperial discourse and how they naturalized imperial ideology and made it acceptable to the populace through their editing and publishing of these books.

SOME EXAMPLES OF BOOK PRINTING AND COLLECTING BY THE LITERATI

Book editing and collecting had been a form of cultural property for scholars even before

Confucius' time, but book printing as a cultural symbol was mainly established in the

Sung time. Unlike state and commercial printing, literati did not like to print many of the classics and standardized commentaries. Nor were they interested in producing books for the mass market, such as the primers, basic fortune-telling books, calendars and the manuals of a craft. These books were left to commercial printers - those who made a living by printing books. Instead, literati liked to print collections of essays and poetry written by the contemporary elite. Even when they printed the classics, they would sponsor annotated editions. Some of the book titles printed by literati in the Sung are still

Preserved in the Peking Library: San Su: A Collecfion of Essay in 70 volumes, New

Chapter 8 230 Anecdotes of Su Tung-po's Poetry in 25 volumes, Essays of Feng I in one volume (1 176),

Essays of Lao-chuan with Anecdotes by 'bung Lai in 12 volumes (1 193), Essays of Chao

Ching-hsien-kung in 16 volumes (1260), Chang Li's Essays in 40 volumes (1265), and

Chang Li's Biography Rectified by Chu-tzu in one volume (1265). Some wealthy merchant families would hire scholars to edit and print books and later show-off to their peers their cultural accomplishments. Because many merchants were poorly educated in classics, the scholars had to choose for them titles that were new in literary style in order to convey literary prestige and traditional in content so that the merchants would know what the books were talking about. This is a short list of some of the titles that are preserved in the Peking Library: A Collection of Explanations of ConfuciusJSpring and Autumn in

30 volumes, A Glossary to Shih-chi in 130 volumes, Commentaries to the Book of the

Han in 100 volumes, LuJs Collection of Explanations to Tzu-chi-tung-chien in 120 volumes, Lao-tzu's Tao-teh-ching in 4 volumes, and The Styles of Letter Writing in 16 volumes (Lee, 1991: 67-68). These books were originally intended to cater to the demand for books by merchants, but instead they started a new tradition. Before the Sung, classics and commentaries were printed separately. The commentary of each person was also a separate book and readers had to buy around for this kind of book by himself. The new tradition combined the commentaries of many established scholars and the original classic. This made research and study more convenient. With the participation merchants in literati culture, book editing and printing became more market-oriented.

We have discussed the persecution by the state of book writers and printers in

Chapter Five. But the political risk of book writing and printing was double-edged. It could

Chapter 8 231 bring troubles in the form of literary inquisitions, but could also bring a quick reward if the book was appreciated by any high-ranking officials or by the emperor. Hung Mails story was an example of the lucky side. He wrote in the preface of his book A Continuation of

Notes in the Jung Chamber (Jung chai hsu PI) a bout how his first book Notes in the Jung

Chamber (Jung chai sui PI) was appreciated by Emperor Hsiao-tsung:

My first book has sixteen volumes. When I went to the court in August of the fourteenth year of Ch'un-heng Reign [I1871, 1 had an opportunity to meet the emperor. As we spoke at our leisure, the emperor suddenly said, "I recently read a book called Notes in a certain Chamber." I was surprised and replied, "That is my book Notes in Rung Chamber and it is not wonny your attention." The emperor said, "It has interesting remarks." I rose up and gave my thanks. Later I found that my book had been printed in Wu Nu County and was sold on the market. The court officials bought it back so that the emperor could see it. This was an extreme honour for a scholar. (Ku, 1987: 19)

Although such an honour was rare in history, it was the dream of many book writers, editors, printers and collectors in their dedication to book production and collection.

A good collection of books was likely to win favour from officials and even emperors. In almost every dynasty emperors would issue decrees for book donations from the civil sector and donors would be amply rewarded. For instance, when Kao-tsung ordered books to be donated for his collection in 1135, Chu-ko Hsing-jen, a scholar with no official titles, contributed 8,546 volumes of books to the court and was given a title.

Chou Ch'i-ming, a scholar of the Northern Sung, built up his library by hand-copying thousands of volumes, many of which he could recite. His name was soon known among literati and he was chosen to be a tutor for local schools. Gradually he rose in the hierarchy and became an official in the Book Administration. Shen Ssu and his son Shen hieh were rich merchants. They bought all the titles printed by the Imperial Academy

Chapter 8 232 and were soon famous in the literati circle for their cultivated hobby of "scattering gold for books" (Ku, 1987: 26-41). More importantly, with the possession of books, a family could keep its literary tradition and later generations would be able to catch the authorities' attention more easily in their struggle for officialdom. Thus, book editing, printing and collecting became a favourite hobby for literati, especially those who had no official ranks, because it offered a way to preserve and protect their cultural and material property.

Many well-known book collectors were at the same time scholar-officials. Their collections included rare editions of the classics, history, prose and poetry. Because they

Were busy with administrative work, their contribution to the literary tradition was comparatively less than the literati who held no rank. Their book collections showed to their peers that they were still within the literati tradition and were not buried completely in government documents. Even if their children did not attain officialdom, their book collection continued to show the family tradition. A book collector usually had at least several thousand volumes in his library and many had several tens of thousands of volumes. They exchanged books among themselves and sometimes gave books as valuable gifts to their fellow literati. Many book collectors compiled indexes for their books.

Tung Hui of the Northern Sung, for instance, compiled an index of his book collection in

26 volumes (Lai, 1990: 203). As all indexes of private collections have been lost, we have no exact record about their inventory. But from the imperial record of private donations to the court, we can have a rough idea about the size of such collections. In the Southern

Sung, Ho Chu donated 5,000 volumes, Ts'eng Wen donated 2,100 volumes, Chu-cho Jen donated 11,515 volumes, including a complete set of the encyclopedia Prime Indicators

Chapter 8 233 of Government Files, Lin Lii donated 2,120 volumes of books, etc (Lai, 1990: 217).

In addition to being a literary hobby, book collecting was because of another psychological reason: many of the famous book collectors were not happy with the ruling policies or with their careers under court politics and they turned to book collecting as a diversion. For instance, Shih Kung-pi, a holder of the chin-shih degree, was famous for his book collection in his "Comprehensive Classic House" (po ku t'ang). He was once the minister of defence in the court in the Northern Sung and had conflicts with the prime minister Ts'ai Ching. After that, he spent his time and savings to build up his "House". Li

Kuang (1077-1 159), a court official whom we mentioned in Chapter Six, turned to book collecting after he was demoted for his argument with Chin Hui, the prime minister. He had a good collection of history books and his son Li Meng-ch'uan (1 126-1219) carried on this avocation. After he was accused of writing private history with the intent of defaming the court, his books were destroyed. The reason was that their existence might offend the Chin (Ku, 1987: 39-40). Book collecting was often passed down from generation to generation and gradually the family could win its name in the literati circle and be recorded in local history books. It was quite common for a family tradition of book collecting to last for five or eight generations.

One outstanding example was Lu Yu (1 125-1210), a well-known poet of the

Southern Sung. His family was famous for both book printing and book collecting for four generations. His grandfather Lu Tien was a scholar. He collected a large number of books and edited quite a few classics. His father Lu Tsai (?-I148) was a scholar-official and acted as deputy director of the transportation department of Huai Nan and Ching Hsi

Chapter 8 234 Routes. During the invasion of the Chin, he had fierce arguments with the court about the imperial appeasement policies and advocated resistance. His strong patriotism was described by Lu Yu as "his eyes opened widely to be broken and his teeth gnashed to pieces when he talked about the invasion". Seeing that the court had no intention to consider his suggestions, he retreated to his home village and dedicated himself to literary writing and book collecting. He built a private library at home and called it the

"Chamber of Double Cleanness" (shuang ch'ing t'ang), meaning he was clean with regard to both his conscience and his conduct as an official. He had thousands of volumes in his collecting and his own edition of the History of the Sung received appreciation from fellow literati. When the court issued orders to collect books in 1143, Emperor Kao-tsung sent special people to Lu's house and copied thirteen thousand volumes of books. Lu Yu started reading from an early age. He wrote in his autobiography:

When I was thirteen or fourteen years old, I lived in the south part of the city. One day I found T'ao Yuan-rning's poetry book on a bed and started reading it. I was so absorbed that I did not notice the sun had set. My family called me to eat, but I refused and kept reading till midnight. It seems to me it just happened yesterday. (Ku, 1987: 32) when he acted as scholar-official at Ssu-ch'uan, he carved woodblocks for printing, bought other printers' woodblocks, and searched for rare books. Later he was assigned to posts in Fukien and Chiang-hsi, printing centres of the Sung, and again he bought many woodblocks and books. He recalled that once he saw a copyist sleeping with a pile of Paper under his head. He found there was the manuscript of a prose book in the pile and he immediately bought it with one hundred strings of cash. In his reign as a local

he printed the History of Southern Dynasties in 80 volumes, his own poetry book

Chapter 8 235 Chien nan shih kao in 20 volumes, and a collection of reports to the emperor by Chiang

Kung-wang, an official-scholar he admired. When he retired, he brought home a large library and huge numbers of woodblocks. He called his study "Old Learning Ward" (lao hsueh an) and devoted the rest of his life to book editing. His son Lu Tzu-jui was influenced by his father and became a publisher. Many of his titles were the explanations of classics composed by his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father. According to the local history, that region printed eighty titles of books in the Southern Sung and twenty- three of them were from the Lu's family (Ku, 1987: 31-38).

COMMERCIAL PRINTERS

Unlike literati, for whom book editing and printing were not for profit but were a literary hobby and a demonstration of their social status and cultural taste, commercial printers

Produced books primarily as commodities to be sold. They would evaluate the market need, find the market niche, search for titles, hire experts to do the editing, and invest in

Printing for profit. But these commercial printers were by no means like Fust and

Gutenberg. Commercial printers were also literati or at least highly functionally literate.

They did not or could not go through the examination and their modest economic background meant that they could not afford to print books simply as a hobby. They started their book business not from purely entrepreneurial intention, but from an orientation toward literati culture. Book printing was not a very profitable trade compared to other trades, such as raising tea, running a restaurant or manufacturing hardware.

However, for those who had no ability to attain literati status at the moment, but wanted to be culturally close to literati culture so that some members of the family would one day enter the circle, commercial book printing was an ideal profession.

The presses of Ch'en Ch'i and Ch'en Ssu were examples. Both of them were situated in Hang-chou, the largest printing centre in the Sung time. Ch'en Ch'i, the person who was persecuted for his poetry anthology, passed the basic level of the examination in his youth, but failed to pass the next level and could not become a scholar-official.

According to local history, he had all the virtues of a Confucian scholar: he was devoted to his mother and was a good friend to his neighbours. Through book printing, he was associated with many of the local elite; we know about his life from the many poems written about him. Wu Wen-ying, a poet, described in his Poetry Beside My Dreaming

Window that Ch'en "carved water on ice block", indicating his diligence in book

Production. Cheng Ssu-li wrote a poem for Ch'en, praising him "reading with poetic interest and publishing for his friends' joy." Hsu Pei wrote to Ch'en that "For twenty springs since your engagement in printing, you stand up with the boring work for the sake of students ....Please send me your new books and I will always remember you at the time of festivals." Ch'en published many contemporary poetry books and he wrote in his own

Poem: "Musical instruments are best played in front of good friends; poems are best organized with the help of a smart literary tailor." Because of his own background, he had

Particular sympathy for poor literati and often gave them free books. Huang Yuan-i wrote in his poem that "Ch'en is a real gentleman, who gives books without asking for

Payment.' Although he was later persecuted by the state literary inquisition, he continued to be remembered by later generations not as a businessman but as a literatus - his

Chapter 8 aspiration for a membership in the literati culture was eventually realised.

Ch'en Ssu, another non-degree-holder, was both a printer and a writer of several

books about the history of book writing. He was a person with some entrepreneurship.

He had a literati family background. Suffering from poor economic conditions, he had to

sell the book collection of his family in order to make his living. He set up a booth in the

marketplace and started his business. During his selling, he found some good books

being sold by other people. He purchased them, read them and resold them at his own

booth. Through this constant buying and selling, he started to think of reprinting some

rare books that many book buyers had asked for. In order to collect rare books, he went to visit literati families who had fallen on hard times and were selling their inventory for living. He purchased their books, selected the ones that would sell and reprinted them.

He soon became famous among literati who came to him regularly for rare books.

Through his search and printing of rare books, he gained a knowledge of such books and started to write about the histories of rare books and their authors. He did not stop this business on this level. Soon he found that storytelling was a popular entertainment on the market, but most stories were old ones and storytellers were looking for new things to attract their audience. He then started to search for and print storytellers' prompt books.

Prompt books preserved many folktales and because of the efforts of Ch'en Ssu and his fellow printers prompt books developed into new genres of popular culture in the Ming and ChJing dynasties, such as novels and romance. Nonetheless, Ch'en Ssu did not

become a capitalist by hiring more workers and expanding his business. His scale of

Production remained basically a one-man operation and he personally sold books on the

Chapter 8 238 market. He was remembered not for his entrepreneurship, but for the rare books that he

had printed and the scholarship he had shown in his writing about rare (Ku,

1987: 183-1 87).

Any history book of Chinese printing cannot neglect the printing press of the Yu

family in Chien Yang, Fukien. This family business started in the Sung and continued for

41 generations in over eight hundred years till the end of the Ch'ing Dynasty when

Western mechanical movable type became the major printing technology. According to

research of existing books made by the Yu family and records in local history books, the family produced a total of 213 titles. This is a small number by modern standards, but when we consider the years of work needed for editing, woodblock carving and the length of the books, usually dozens or even hundreds in volumes, this number is amazing. As woodblocks could be repeatedly used for reprints for many years, the total quantity of

Production was tremendous. The origin of Yu's family was from Yang-chou. They moved to Ho-nan Province first and then to Fukien in 530. In the tenth century, YU Tzu-t'ung, a thirteenth generation descendant, was appointed the governor of Kuang-hsi Route. Being made a high-level scholar-official shows that the Yu family had a renowned literati tradition. After his retirement from office, Yu Tzu-tlung returned to Fukien and started to

Print Confucian books as a pastime. His children turned his printing hobby into business.

They printed 11 Confucian classics, two encyclopedias, three medical books and one anthology of poetry in the Sung. The business reached its peak level in the Ming Dynasty when Yu Hsiang-tou was in charge.

Yu ~siang-tau was a Confucian scholar. After repeated failures in the examination,

Chapter 8 he turned to book publishing and made it his life career for over thirty years. In one year he carved and printed over a dozen books, including the classics Shih-chi, Book of the

Han and some popular novels. In the Ming, this family published 95 titles, 26 of which were classics and 22 were histories and biographies (Hsiao, 1991: 127). Their classics were popular on the market, for their editions were not only accurate, but also fresh with new picture illustrations and new explanations. This shows they had close relations with scholars and could regularly update their Confucian textbooks. The Yu family's illustrated version of Biographies of Virtuous Women was regarded as a masterpiece in book production. Many Yu imprints of popular fictions, such as the Popular Romance of the

Northern Sung and Biographies of the Heroes for Sung's Restoration became the basis for the contemporary editions of the Romance of the Yang Family and the Complete

Biography of Yueh Fei. As the printing base was far away from the capital city Peking and wealthy scholar-officials were comparatively few, they targeted their market to the literati who had no official status. Individual purchasing power was limited, but the literati's general purchasing power was substantial. Considering buyers' economic circumstances, the Yu reduced the space between lines and the margin space to make their books

cheaper. This kind of format was not regarded as "elegant" by scholar-officials, but they

were welcomed by readers of that area and regular customers were established.

Ku Chih-hsing lists some well-known printers in Che-chiang Province in the

Southern Sung. They had been recorded in local histories not for their official ranks or

entrepreneurship, but for their literary taste in their title decisions and the quality of their

books: Meng Chi, a holder of the chin-shih degree, and his family printed Yao Hsuan's

Chapter 8 240 Excerpts of Masterpieces (Wen ts'ul) in 100 volumes in 1039 and recarved the woodblocks for a new edition in 1139. Wang Shu-pien and his family printed the Han

History in 100 volumes and the Later Han History in 100 volumes. His editions carried an acknowledgement: "This family has carefully rectified the two books of the Han and printed them in large characters. We expect appreciation from book collectors." Shih

Yuan-chih printed Collection of Su Tzu-mei in 15 volumes in 1171, printed The New

Astronomical Observatory by Su Sung, an astronomer of the imperial court, three volumes in 1172, and participated in the state printing projects on the History of the Five

Dynasties and the Outline of the History of the Five Dynasties. The Chiang's family printed Li chi with Explanations in twenty volumes and a deluxe edition (hsiang chin pen)

under the imprint "House for Intellectual Respect" (Ch'ung chih t'ang) (Ku, 1987: 18-19).

Before we close the chapter, we will have a few words about the low-level commercial printers - those who were outside the literati culture and who produced books

sheerly for profit-making. Unfortunately, we do not have any detailed record of these

printers in official histories. We know that their products were basically the primers,

fortune-telling books, various unofficial calendars, picture books of low taste, religious

charms, and any books that had a market value. Their variety and the quantity of

production could be at least parallel with, if not more than, those by the state printers and

literati printers. Nonetheless, because these products were neither in line with the imperial

policies nor had anything to do with literary prestige, they could not be recorded in official

histories. Our knowledge of the existence of such books is mainly from court orders that

ordered them banned and criticism by literati. For instance, Ma Sha, a town in Fukien, was a large printing centre in the Sung, but we have no record of how many printers there were, how many titles each of thern produced, the scale of production of each printer, the average sales of each title, etc. What we do know, according to the official histories, is that their price was cheap, paper quality was bad, typographical mistakes were many, the style of book format was vulgar, their versions were unreliable for any serious purpose, and literati regarded the possession of Ma Sha editions as a disgraceful act, at least according to literati opinion of the day. Probably we can find from the civil records of that area some detailed information about their printing practice, and from the books on the popular market we know more about the folk culture and civil life of that time. A lot of work is needed, but without a full-length description of these printers, any history of Chinese printing and publishing is incomplete.

Chapter 8 CHAPTER 9

THE "CHINESE DREAM" IN POPULAR LITERATURE

The Chinese had a dream: endure hardship and become a "man above men". The pursuit of the Chinese Dream had profound meanings. It embodied the whole set of moral qualities that a pursuer should acquire through his experience of hardship, including years of work for the examination, unthinkably difficult living conditions, unfair treatment by his authorities, misunderstanding by his peers, and even the sacrifice of his life. These moral qualities were so important for the constitution of a man with the responsibility of governance that even emperors were not exempted from the pursuit.

The Chinese Dream was promoted by the whole sociocultural mechanism,

including the political structure, the socioeconomic hierarchy and the promotion of book

reading. In its pursuit, passing the civil service examination was always the worthiest of all routes for social achievement and the key to success and happiness. By preparing for the examination, a person acquired all the necessary moral qualities. Although the

chances of succeeding in the civil service examination were slim when we think of the

enormous number of candidates versus the handful of civil positions, the change of

lifestyle from toiling on the farm to controlling seals in the office bore an irresistible

attraction for millions of Chinese. There were many other routes, such as a loyal

swordsman for the emperor, a dedicated clerk in the government, a hard-working farmer

in the village, a diligent tradesman with his craft, an honest merchant on the market, and

an upright martial arts boxer. They all had the chance of attaining a position as a "man

Chapter 9 243 above men" on the condition that they followed the correct route for their pursuit of the

Chinese Dream. Popular literature was a main channel through which the populace was taught what the Chinese Dream was and how to pursue it.

A CHANGE IN POETIC STYLE

In the Sung dynasty, though the majority of print literature was Confucianist textbooks for the examination, standard histories and calendars, the printing of popular literature gradually became an independent genre. First, prose and poetry started to be enjoyed by the non-scholarly sector. Second, popular fiction witnessed its first rapid growth in history and expanded from the circle of literati to vast numbers of non-literati in urban and

rural areas. Like "serious" writing, popular literature was also composed and mediated by

literati. Although the non-literati participated in the consumption of popular literature through oral discourse, such as storytelling, the literati continued to be their critical consumers and literary judges.

Due to their monopoly of the production of popular literature, the moral orientation

of popular literature was unavoidably from the literati's standing and imperial ideology

became dominant. But unlike "serious" writing, popular literature naturalized the imperial

ideology through its use of popular language and norms and made it part of the moral

consciousness of ordinary people. The encouragement of the pursuit of the Chinese

Dream was the most important element and a commonly used vehicle to win public

acceptance for and hence to stabilize the imperial social hierarchy. In this cultural

hegemonic scheme, the literati played the role of both organizer and propagator.

Chapter 9 The literati drew from standard histories and various other official literature the plots and inspirations for their literary compositions. They spread their writings to non-

literati through oral discourse, such as storytelling and theatrical performance, so that the

people without training in classics could equally share the moral values of high culture.

When their classical style proved problematic for their audience's understanding, they

actively changed or rewrote their versions by using more vernacular and slang. When their versions received appreciation from the masses and became standard repertoire for

public performance in marketplaces, they then propagated these popular versions throughout the country by using the printing press. Although the large-scale spread of

popular literature in print form did not take place until the Ming Dynasty in the fourteenth to sixteen centuries, the Sung laid its literary and moral foundations.

The development of popular literature started with the change of literati culture.

Before the Sung, scholars and members of aristocratic clans monopolised high culture;

they regarded literary composition as a means to distinguish themselves from other social

sectors. Their purpose in literary writing was not to convey textual meaning, but to

demonstrate their mastery of literary rules which, as a group, they had deliberately

created to protect their monopoly. The format of an essay, for instance, was rigid in terms

of sentence length, rhythm for the combination of words in each sentence, and choice of

words with particular "elegant" connotations. Writing an essay, therefore, was less an

expression of ideas than linguistic play.

This situation changed in the Sung, when large numbers of scholar-commoners

and non-scholars joined the literati. In order to establish their own literary status and

Chapter 9 thereby distinguish themselves from clan members, they graaually simplified the T'ang's style and brought in some elements of popular culture to their writing. For their own political and cultural needs, the literati started to leave the traditional realm of high culture and act as a bridge for the communications between high culture and popular culture. The establishment of a civil society, the rapid development of the marketplace and the spread of urban commercial culture provided an ideal environment for these communications.

However, the literati did not have any sincere intentions in their development of popular culture. For them, popular culture was merely something that they could use and manipulate through their literary dominance and their control of printing; their standing was seen in terms of high culture.

One of the first changes in literary style was in poetry. Chinese poetry originally started from folk lyrics, such as those that Confucius had recorded in his Shih-ching.

Since the Han Dynasty, poetry became the exclusive property of officials and its strict format prevented popular participation. This style reached its apex in the T'ang, when

T'ang poetry, shih, was famous for its tone pattern complexities. According to the format, a poem must be in regular five-word or seven-word lines stacked in quatrains, the tone in both the normal two-stanza form and the single stanza variant. The composition of poetry was not to express the writer's emotions, but to show his intellectual cultivation and his mastery of words to his fellow officials. Because the regulated poetry was strict in format, poets were pushed by the pressure of intense competition for complicated tropes, metaphors, allegories and links with other parts of the poem or other poems. The better the literary style was, the more difficult it was to write, the more difficult for a reader to

Chapter 9 246 understand, and the more distinguished the poet from other social classes.

The endless refinement of poetic style brought about its decline by the end of the

T'ang, as James Liu points out: "this development reflected growth beyond maturity into over-ripeness." (Liu, 1988: 23) Seeing that the continuation of the T'ang's style was at a dead end, the Sung literati started to look for other venues of expression that could avoid the rigidness of the regulated poetry. They broke the disciplines of the shih and produced two new styles of poetry: poetic songs (tz'u), poetry written to certain tunes with tonal patterns and rhyme schemes, and poetic prose (fu), descriptive prose interspersed with verse. A common characteristic of the two styles was that they were freer in format and were therefore good for emotional expression. With the coming of the two styles, literary composition shifted from a pure demonstration of intellectual and linguistic talent to a demonstration of sentiment and emotions.

The poetic song first appeared in the T'ang Dynasty, but its full development was in the Sung. Poetic prose, a style derived from the poetic song and designed to be sung, was almost unknown in the T'ang and was a product of the Sung. The two poetic styles gained their lives from an association with popular culture in their use of colloquial expressions from daily life. The form of poetic songs was borrowed from popular entertainers who performed songs in the marketplace or the theatre. These songs were usually accompanied by music. When poets adopted this form, they abandoned musical accompaniment but abided by musical rules by transcribing tunes into phonetic patterns.

As poetic songs were not restricted in line length or the length of the whole text as the regulated poetry was, they were longer and the length of lines varied according to the

Chapter 9 247 necessary twists and turns of the musical rule.

An important characteristic was that the poetic song was composed not for the writer's self appreciation or for showing his talent for esoteric literary skills, but for the pleasure of the audience. Therefore, the language of poetic songs was more colloquial and more vivid so that they would be understood instantly by fellow literati when the poems were read aloud or sung. This style spread quickly among the literati, because as a new-born social group, they knew that it was more important to emphasize the different levels of skill and status within their group. The poetic song was a minor literary genre in the literati circle in the early Sung, but it became a major one in the twelfth century. Lu

Yu, the publisher mentioned in the previous chapter, was famous for his poetic songs.

The following is one of his most famous poetic songs; it expresses strong emotions about the Chin's invasion and the Sung's weakness. From the song we can see that the use of words and the structure were quite relaxed and that the emphasis was on the expression of meaning.

Song: Taking Up Residence at Lung-hsing Temple

The Central Plain is forsaken, the long peace broken; In flames of war barbarians have taken both our capitals. An aged retainer, following his lord in a ten thousand-league retreat, Arrived here in the winter cold and listened to the sounds of the Yangtze. (Hucker, 1975: 399)

Compared to poetic songs, the style of poetic prose was less popular. It was originally based on the parallel prose (p'ien-wen) of the T'ang period. Parallel prose demanded that formal text be arranged in a pattern of parallel sentences in the sequence of 4-6-4-6 words in each sentence. This was called "four-six composition." Writing so

Chapter 9 248 composed had parallel and rhymed sentences with the same number of words in the same or a similar semantic order and each word had to be matched, compounded, contrasted or related to the meaning of the corresponding word in the other sentence.

This style was not abandoned in the Sung, although its use was less common. In the civil service examination, candidates continued to be tested for their ability to write prose in this rigid format. Poetic prose contained many of the qualities of traditional prose, although it gained some freedom in its use of words and line length. In other words, it only used some elements from popular culture on top of the traditional format, but its basic orientation was still a linguistic game. A writer of poetic prose usually started by learning traditional prose to cultivate a sense of the rhymes and parallels. No established writer of poetic prose was inexpert in the techniques of traditional prose. This relaxed style, although limited in degree, was a prelude to popular fiction.

By the employment of popular culture, the new literati established their reputation as poets of distinction. They expected that the new style would distinguish their poetry from the style of old clan members and officials and from the non-literati, but it never occurred to them that the change in style would contribute to the development of popular

literature. Beyond their expectation, their efforts in the modification of poetic style started to demystify poetry and to make it accessible territory for ordinary people. From the Sung

period forward, poetry began to appear in the public reading of popular fiction as a means

of literary decoration; even the illiterate learned to recite one or two lines of the most-

quoted poems. Poetic songs and poetic prose were first nurtured by popular culture. Then

they became a medium that brought elements of high culture into popular literature.

Chapter 9 249 STORYTELLING VS. FICTION WRITING

The change in poetic style was the first step in the communication between high culture and popular culture, but it was a small step compared to the popularization of fiction that happened at almost the same time. We will mainly talk about fiction in this chapter, because its development in the Sung laid the literary foundation for many other genres of popular literature in later dynasties, such as drama and novels, and it was mainly through popular fiction that the Chinese Dream was propagated.

Fiction was originally written by literati for consumption in their circle. Before the

Sung, the literati commonly found their basic plots from history books, added their own imagination, changed the style to a limited extent from the classical to the vernacular and thus created "romanticized" historical stories to entertain their friends. In the Sung, many of the imaginative tales written by the scholars of the T'ang and the Five Dynasties were collected in anthologies and published. Like the change of poetic style, the growth of fiction writing was a result of the expansion of the literati membership to scholar- commoners and non-scholars. The new members brought some elements of popular culture into the high culture. The change in poetic style meant that many people who

adopted the new styles were scholar-officials of both low and high rank, but fiction writing developed largely outside of officialdom. It is understandable. The bureaucrats were

buried in their administrative work and locked themselves inside the realm of high culture.

They had neither the time nor adequate sources for their story writing. Furthermore, their

Chinese Dream had already been realized and they were confronted with a bureaucratic

reality that was far less romantic than the Dream. Therefore, they had considerably less

Chapter 9 250 enthusiasm in talking about the Dream. By contrast, for the literati outside officialdom, the

Chinese Dream was still real and fiction writing provided a setting where they could let their dreams take shape. As they lived close to non-literati, they were influenced by non- literati language, norms and ways of thinking. They were also eager to show their non- literati neighbours why their pursuit of the Chinese Dream was important for life and why literati should take the lead in its pursuit. When they wrote about the Chinese Dream in fiction, they unavoidably used a language and style different from the high-culture discourse so that their neighbours could understand.

A genre of popular culture directly related to fiction was storytelling. The tradition of storytelling came from public moral education to the masses by Confucianist scholars and religious priests. In order to keep an audience, the speaker had to use vernacular

language and stories to explain his points. Gradually the proportion of theoretical explanations decreased and the storytelling element increased. In the Sung, with the rapid development of market towns, various forms of popular entertainment appeared and

storytelling became one of them. Nonetheless, the tradition of moral education continued to be embedded in commercial storytelling. Two kinds of commercial storytelling can be

identified. One was only interested in entertaining with no intention of moral education.

These stories were often vulgar. Few literati would care to record these stories and their

popularity was limited.

The second kind had strong moralizing tendency in Confucianist codes. Their

stories had distinct good and bad sides. The good were always rewarded eventually,

either in their lifetime or in heaven, and the bad were always punished in real life or in

Chapter 9 25 1 heaven or condemned by later generations. These stories were most widely told both in towns and in villages and enjoyed high popularity. The subjects of storytelling had mainly six categories: ghosts and supernatural things, which were based on the ch'i-kwaistories of the sixth century; Buddhist stories; love and aspects of daily life; crimes and detection; feats of strength and courage; and historical tales of great men and the founding and collapse of dynasties. Each category was handled by a specialized guild, such as fortune- tellers, monks, schoolmasters and professional storytellers. The last category, the historical stories, had the most popularity and dignity.

Storytellers for historical tales were mostly literati and their source books were both the classics and fictional works. Although most storytellers were not degree-holders, they had been trained to a considerable extent in classical studies. Non-literati could not do the job of storytelling, because knowledge of classic style and content was required for reading fiction and history books. Their audience was usually non-literati, mostly peasants, artisans, shopkeepers and merchants with their womenfolk and children. In their regular visits to the marketplace, these common people would go to teahouses to listen to storytellers, puppeteers and singing girls, or gather before crude wooden platforms of open-air theatres to watch the actors. Storytellers were not just found in urban areas. They often wandered from place to place and even went to villages that were far away from main roads. Those who had heard the stories would retell them to others who had not and the stories would spread far and wide.

In the beginning, the spread of historical stories was largely a one-way flow where high culture mediated the popular sector through the writing and storytelling of literati. The

Chapter 9 252 method of mediation was straightforward. First, literati drew inspiration from standard

histories and official documents; they combined these stories with elements of their own

imagination and composed new stories where they changed the literary style from the

purely classical to a combination of classical and vernacular. The literati then printed their

"romanticized" stories and read them to the public. For the literati, this paradigm was

ideal. They had a vast social space for the consumption of their literary energy and for the propagation of the Chinese Dream, and they could establish and maintain their

cultural leadership to non-literati. However, the picture soon changed to a two-way flow

when the non-literati joined the storytellers' team and storytellers joined in the fiction

writers' team. The storytellers would not just read popularized classics. They felt that the

style of the fiction was not colloquial enough and the narration of stories was boring for

the audience.

When the literati wrote fiction, they tended to use abstract terms and saved some

of the detailed descriptions to impress their fellow literati. But when the stories were

presented in oral form, there was no time for the audience to appreciate such niceties.

Therefore, details were elaborated and coloured so that the audience could understand

and follow the narration. For instance, the term "an impressive looking man" was not

enough to attract the audience. The storyteller would add some explanation, such as big

ears, long arms, amazing height and the strength to lift a stone of one thousand pounds.

Storytellers would learn the basic plots from the classical fiction and edit the stories

before the performance by simplifying the formal style of presentation, adding substantial

passages such as dialogues and descriptions of settings, and using some things from the

Chapter 9 local culture, such as local jokes and slang, to explain the moral of stories so that their audience would not feel alienated. They took notes when they were editing fiction for their use in performance and in the end they would make a new version of the same story with a different style. This version was called the "talking book" (hua pen) and was used as the prompt book for the storyteller. When there were many "talking books" for the same story, someone would edit them, keep the good changes made by the storyteilers, correct mistakes according to the standard histories and official documents, and make a new edition. The new edition would then be used and modified by other storytellers and a new basis for another new edition would follow. Eventually nobody cared about the original versions and everyone was looking for new editions that carried the best changes by fellow storytellers. Thus, through the imperative of the marketplace, fiction became both the basis for and the product of popular storytelling.

That was not all. The formation of fiction was also influenced by non-literati culture through non-literati storytellers. Like book printing and , storytelling was often

a family business passed down from generation to generation. The first generation of a

storyteller's family was usually literati and some of them were even low-rank degree-

holders. They became storytellers because they did not attain officialdom and had to

choose a profession for their living. Their children or apprentices might not be literati; they

were just "functionally literate" with no education in classical studies. They joined the

storytellers by memorizing the stories from their fathers or masters. The transmission of

the repertory from fathers to sons or from masters to apprentices was in two steps. The

learner would first memorize the prompt books and then learn the skills of performance.

Chapter 9 When they became masters, they would edit the prompt books according to their professional experience and establish a new version of their "family edition". When literati collected various "family editions" for their fiction writing, the changes made by the non- literati were equally absorbed. As the non-literati storytellers were culturally influenced by literati culture but socially outside the realm of literati, their participation in the composition of fiction, although limited in scale, brought strong popular discourse into high culture.

Through the repeated transitions from written form to oral form and back to written form, the authorship of any piece of fiction was collective and multi-cultural. When one version became popular in an area and there was a demand for it by the storytellers and readers of other areas, private printers would come in to edit, print and sell it on the market. In the Southern Sung, various versions of similar stories flooded the popular book market and nobody could tell which version was more authentic than the other. The market required that there should be one version that absorbed all merits of various editions for a particular story and at this time imperial editors would intervene for the establishment of a standardized version. The standardized version was, of course, subject to ideological manipulation, but the way of presentation was a combination of official documents, literati's writing and the modifications by non-literati. One example was oral discourse in fiction. The social demand for reading aloud made literati adopt an oral style in their composition and this was the beginning of "plain speech fiction" (pai hua hsiao shuo). These pieces presented themselves with an intrusive narrator. For instance, each chapter would begin with a repetition of the ending of the previous chapter as a reminder to the reader. Chapters typically ended on a suspenseful note with the author saying: "If

Chapter 9 255 you want to learn how So-and-so gets out of trouble, you must wait until we start the next session." Hucker comments that through this oral discourse, "The reader is constantly called on to imagine himself listening to a storyteller who in such ways lures his audience back for the next day's performance or wheedles a few cash from the listeners as an inducement to carry on." (Hucker, 1975: 405) This oral discourse was not derived from official documents or from the early versions of fiction composed by literati, but was based on storytellers' influence. However, because of the participation of the literati and non- literati in the popular sectors, the old style was transfused into the standardized versions of fiction.

The involvement of popular culture into the mainstream high culture was only in the manner of presentation. The basic content remained unchanged. Literati could tolerate non-literati's involvement in literary composition, because they knew it would be useful for the dissemination of the Chinese Dream to the non-literati. The imperial editors also welcomed non-literati involvement, for they had learned that the best method of moral education for the masses was to use the masses' own language and style. We have seen from Chapter Six that history writing was firmly controlled by the ruling class for the legitimization of its rule and an educational means to propagate imperial moral values. No private persons were allowed to write history without the approval of the court. However, standard histories were consumed only within the realm of the literati and their classical

style and boring narration prevented non-literati from participating in that form of

education. Meanwhile, there was popular curiosity and enthusiasm for historical stories.

The masses were fascinated by heroes and heroic deeds and tended to identify with the

Chapter 9 256 heroes of the past in the way that some Western youngsters like to identify themselves

with movie stars. Seeing that a social basis for historical education was already formed

and that popular fiction provided an ideal medium, the ruling class immediately packaged

the propagation of historical stories into its hegemonic policies.

Storytelling in the market provided evidence to the court that if stubbornly stuck to

its standard histories, it would lose the opportunity to educate the majority of the

population. In Sung storytelling, historical stories were presented in two ways: historical

narration (chiang-shih) and dramatic plots (shuo-shu). Historical narration was about

particular happenings in history and followed the outline of the standard histories. As it

had little plot and the description of events and people was monotonous, it was

insufficiently exciting to the audience. The narration of dramatic plots was based on the

1 historical narration, but it used a chain of individual stories to describe a historical event. I I The stories the personalities of historical figures were presented vividly. The two styles

catered to different audiences. Historical narration was mainly for literati and the people

who enthusiastically admired literati culture. They felt they could learn some "serious"

I i knowledge from the boring narration of historical events. The audience for dramatic plots was largely non-literati, including many illiterate

people. They went to the storytelling not for self-education, but entirely for entertainment.

In the marketplace, storytellers of both styles competed against each other for audience.

Historical narrators criticized the storytellers of dramatic plots for their manipulation of

history for entertainment purposes and their lack of initiative in moral education. I Nonetheless, the style of dramatic plots soon achieved a dominant position in terms of

Chapter 9 257 audience attendance. Teahouse owners and innkeepers liked to hire the storytellers who used dramatic plots, because they could bring in regular customers as long as their stories continued. When a famous storyteller of dramatic plots went to a market town, it would be a phenomenal event in the locale and people would walk many miles from their villages in order to attend his performance. The popularity of dramatic plots proved to the ruling class that their standard histories were unsuitable and that popular fiction was an important vehicle for mass education.

There was another political reason for the ruling class to interfere with the formation of popular historical stories. Unlike historical narrations, the storytellers of dramatic plots used both standard histories and a lot of anecdotes and unofficial histories in their stories; the official history was the skeleton and the unofficial history was the flesh.

Unofficial histories were from folk stories, unauthorized books published by civil printers, plus the imagination of the storyteller (Chang, 1990: 13-14). A common description of dramatic plots was "seventy percent truth and thirty percent falsehood," meaning that seventy percent of the stories had reliable sources from the imperial record and thirty percent were not reliable and were just for entertainment. Nonetheless, the storyteller would not tell his audience which part of his story was from official records, which part was based on folk stories and which part was entirely his own imagination. Truth and falsehood were totally mixed together and the audience had no way to distinguish them.

For the illiterate audience, the difference between truth and falsehood was not important so long as the stories were entertaining. However, for the ruling class, the free manipulation of history could have a negative impact on the audience's moral

Chapter 9 258 consciousness. Also, when we think of the ideological bias in the selection and editing of historiographies by imperial editors, the seventy percent truth was problematic. For in the thirty percent falsehood might be formed some truth that had been deleted by the imperial editors for ideological reasons. The unofficial histories and historical comments based on them were often insightful and many later scholars would try to verify them in order to restore the real face of history. In this sense, storytelling had an important contribution to the preservation of historical records that might otherwise have become non-existent.

For the ruling class, the storytellers brought back what had been officially omitted and it certainly could not be tolerated. Thus there were constant book bannings of popular fiction in the Ming and the Chling dynasties and one important reason was their inclusion of unofficial histories.

IDEOLOGICAL MANIPULATION IN POPULAR LITERATURE

The ruling class did not have to forbid completely the use of unofficial histories in dramatic plots, because the literati, as the composer and disseminator of the stories, were already censoring the content on their own initiatives. Although they used unofficial histories in their stories, their moral orientation for using them remained consistent with the ruling ideology. Because of their sociopolitical status in society, they could not shift their moral standing to one that ran counter to the state. Moreover, the unorthodox views expressed in their historical commentaries were nothing but "offering a great deal of assistance to the ruler through small condemnations of petty things". In many cases, such as the stories of Yueh Fei and the Yang Family, the use of unofficial histories was

Chapter 9 259 offensive to the Sung rulers. However, it was found to be highly useful by later dynasties

for the perpetuation of imperial ideology within the popular sector in the long run. Though

the stories presented negative images of Sung rulers in their persecution of patriotic

generals in the wars against the Chin invasion, the unmovable loyalty of the generals

toward the throne and the empire, despite the persecutions they suffered, were positive

moral examples for the masses to follow.

In the dramatic plots of Yueh Fei and the Yang family, many parts were based on

folk stories or simply on the writers' own imaginations, but they were accepted by the

imperial editors in their standardization. For educational purposes. they did not mind

unofficial changes of the standard histories in popular fiction. So long as political

correctness was guaranteed, historical correctness could be sacrificed.

The stories of the Three Kingdoms were an example of how the standard histories

were allowed to be manipulated for the sake of moral education. The history of the Three

Kingdoms (A.D.220-80) was first recorded by an imperial historiographer, Chen Chou

(233-297). Although his selection and omission of historical data was based on prevailing

imperial policies, his mode of narration showed no particular favour for one kingdom over

another. However, in later stories of the Three Kingdoms, for example San-kuo chih P'ing-

hua and San-kuo chih Yen-i, and many ballads and plays favoured the Kingdom of Shu

as a model of Confucianist humanism in contrast to the negative images of the Kingdom i of Wu as militant but lacking in morality, and the Kingdom of Wei was depicted as evil and wicked. Ts'ao Ts'ao, the head of the strongest kingdom, the Wei, was depicted as

an unregenerate and sometimes slow-witted villain, for he had been the most powerful

1 Chapter 9 260 opponent of the Kingdom of Shu, the "good side" of the war. This prejudice was accepted and further promoted by the Sung court, when Chu Hsi and other political theorists determined that the Kingdom of Shu was the legitimate dynasty because of its benevolence to the people. Su Shih, the scholar we have seen in the previous chapter, noted that during his time the storytellers of the Three Kingdoms stories were already sympathetic toward Liu Pei, the king of the Kingdom of Shu, and were hostile to Ts'ao

Ts'ao. Eugene Eoyang has thus described the moral orientation of this prejudice:

When oral stories shape and mould the moral sensibility of an audience by re-creating events of the San-kuo chih, they perform the same role that Ssu-ma Ch'ien, the Han historian, saw for the Shih chi: To censure evil and to exalt virtue. Far from being morally frivolous, the popularization of history was an effective means of teaching the untaught, of instructing the illiterate. (Plaks, 1977: 57)

In order to demonstrate the moral conduct of good people in contrast with that of evil people, the literati added a lot of details, many of them from their imagination, in their stories that made them appear as if they were really from history. Then they gave their interpretive comments on the histories that they had created. Under their pen, even similar conduct, when undertaken by different persons, would bear different meanings.

When Liu Pei showed his concern for people's interest, he was expressing a kingly benevolence. But when Ts'ao Ts'ao did the same thing, such as cutting off his own hair as a self-punishment when his horse crushed some farmers' crops, he was portrayed as a hypocrite and his purpose was to warn his soldiers that nobody could ever disobey his orders.

Among the many characters in the stories of the Three Kingdoms, Kuan YO, an

Chapter 9 26 1 oath-brother of Liu Pei, was one of the personalities deliberately chosen as a symbol of

good moral conduct. Kuan Yij's biography was written about fifty years after his death by

Chen Shou, in which his life was not presented as anything unusual. He was originally

I an outlaw, an enemy of the state. Later on he found a job as bodyguard of Liu Pei, a

warlord at that time. Because of his bravery on the battlefield, he was promoted to be a

general and the governor of a province. Finally he died in a battle. The only colourful

thing in his life was his unshakable loyalty to his lord Liu Pei. He was once captured and

refused to surrender when offered lavish presents. Beginning in the T'ang time, stories,

fiction and poetry magnified his deeds and created a myth of his life. His outlaw origin

was rationalized by a story of the righteous homicide of an evil landlord. His relationship

with Liu Pei changed from that of servant and master to oath-brother. His resistance to

the temptations of the enemy was greatly colourized and even his capture was glorified:

he voluntarily accepted the humiliation of being a prisoner because he wanted to protect

his oath-brother's family. A lot of other stories were added, such as his "lone sword"

meeting with the men of the Kingdom of Wu, his swift killing of an enemy general before

a cup of warm wine had time to cool, and his benevolent release of an enemy general

Huang Chung. His tragic death was not his fault, but was because traitors in his camp

sold information and his allies were bought over by the enemy against him. Originally a

military muscleman, he had all the qualities of literati: reading, writing and conscious

observation of Confucianist rituals. After he was captured, Ts'ao Ts'ao viciously arranged

for him to sleep in the same suite with Liu Pei's wives, who were captured at the same

time, expecting that Kuan Yij would ignore the Confucian rituals for the relationship

Chapter 9 262 between in-laws. Kuan Yu let Liu's wives sleep in the bedroom and he sat in the sitting room reading Confucian books throughout the night without any sleep. Ts'ao Ts'ao then admired him: "General Kuan is a man of heaven (shen jen)." Kuan's moral conduct conquered his enemy and the next day Ts'ao Ts'ao arranged a separate suite for him.

Such stories about Kuan Yu increased year after year in storytelling and repeated editing of the "talking books". Finally, a perfect heroic image was established. Kuan Yu's image also appeared in the theatre from the Sung time. His unusual heroic status was reflected through his colourful makeup, extravagant costumes, long pieces of songs and lines, and an extraordinarily elaborate system of hand, sleeve, sword and facial expressions. Still not satisfied with a hero in literary forms, the literati raised Kuan Yu to the status of god representing the moral conduct of Confucianist rituals and loyalty to the ruler. Temples of Kuan Yu (Kuan-ti miao) were erected in every county and many villages and farmers went to the temples for their worship. The cultural effect of Kuan Yu soon attracted the attention of the imperial court who turned the worship of Kuan Yu from civil cult to official cult. From the Sung Dynasty, Kuan Yu was awarded posthumous titles - ducal, princely and imperial - and from the Yuan time he replaced Chiang T'ai-kung as the official god of warriors. The Ch'ing emperors listed Kuan Yu as an official god who must be worshipped regularly throughout the country and held him up as the incarnation of loyalty. From the K'ang-hsi reign onward, official committees of scholars compiled successive editions of Kuan Yu's hagiography and literature which revealed how "loyalty"

(chung) and "filial piety" (hsiao) could be successfully combined according to neo-

Confucian paradigm.

Chapter 9 Another interesting example was Yueh Fei's story. Yueh Fei was a military general fighting bravely against the invasion of the Chin and his motto "give us back our rivers and mountains!" (huan wo ho shan) became a battlecry of Chinese patriots in the anti-

Japanese war in the twentieth century. In the fiction of Yueh Fei, Yueh tattooed on his back before he left on a critical campaign: "a perfect fidelity to repay our country" (ching chung pao kuo). He was depicted as a perfect filial son, a loyal citizen, a loving officer to his subordinates, a well-educated scholar with remarkable talent in poetry, a kind but strict father, which was an ideal model of Confucianism, and a shrewd military strategist and fighter. He was always successful in his battles against the enemy; he was murdered by the treacherous intrigues of Ch'in Hui, the prime minister. In the fictional account, he knew Ch'in was a traitor and that the enemy wanted to kill him through Ch'in's hand.

Ch'in recalled Yueh from the military front in the name of the emperor, and Yueh returned, ignoring all the kind advice of his men. He walked into Chin's trap and faced his death resolutely in the Dungeon of Wind and Waves. When he was murdered, there came a heavy rainfall as if heaven were shedding tears at the injustice.

Hellmut Wilhelm (1965) reveals that the real Yueh Fei was quite different from the fictional character, He was a bodyguard in his youth for a rich family and his job included fighting against marauding bands on the family property. He could have pursued a scholarly career, but instead chose to be a soldier in anticipation of quick promotion. He received promotions for his successful suppression of peasant rebellions and gradually developed into a warlord by building an independent army of his own. He called his army the "Yueh family army" (Yueh-chia-chun). He established very strict discipline in the army

Chapter 9 and meted out heavy punishments even for inadvertent mistakes. All recognition, rewards and grants of responsibility only came to those who lived up to Yueh's personal expectations. In a retreat forced by the Ch'in's attacks, he left his mother and wife behind, even though he had the time and ability to move them to a safer place. As a result, his mother experienced real hardship and his wife abandoned him. But when his mother died

in 1136, Yueh immediately left his camp for the prescribed mourning despite the tense

military situation. A number of imperial messages recalling him to active duty went

unheeded and only repeated pressure from his officers "to substitute loyalty for piety"

brought him back to the front. In 1134, Yueh's army joined in a massive campaign against the Chin and by 1140 he drove the Ch'in from the to the Yellow River. By this time, he received urgent orders from the emperor to withdraw. It was said that the

emperor sent twelve orders in one day. Yueh disobeyed first, because he did not want to lose a good opportunity to establish his fame. But seeing that other armies were already withdrawing, he started to follow them and he knew that was the end of his

dream. Coming back to the capital, he was awarded a high civil position but was stripped

of his military command. Soon the subcommanders of Yueh's army, Chang Hsien and

Yueh Fei's son Yueh Yun, were arrested under the charge of plotting a revolt. Later they

were publicly executed. Yueh Fei was accused of being involved in the conspiracy and

his execution was secretly done in prison.

According to popular fiction, Yueh Fei's tragedy was carried down by a treacherous

intrigue of Ch'in Hui, but the true story, according to Wilhelm (1965) was different. After

the fall of the Northern Sung, the Southern Sung emperor had a choice of two policies.

Chapter 9 265 One was to restore the lost territory at the price of giving his generals the freedom of military action, which would possibly end with military dominance over civil authorities after the reunion of the country. The second choice was retrenchment, which had the potential to avoid the emergence of military gangs. After the six-year campaign, the Chin had suffered from heavy losses in its army and supplies and it was a good time for negotiation. Emperor Kao-tsung offered all territories north of the Huai River to the Chin in return for peace and the Ch'in, already exhausted by the war, were only too glad to accept. The emperor's policy was clear: military leaders could not be left with the impression that they were indispensable and strict civil control was more important than the loss of territories. As Wilhelm points out, "It is inconsequential whether or not the death of Yueh Fei was one of the secret conditions laid down by the Chin in treaty negotiations. It is also inconsequential whether Ch'in Hui had Yueh Fei murdered on his own initiative or in collusion with the emperor." (Wilhelm, 1965: 225-226) Yueh Fei was a victim of the imperial policies.

But in popular fiction, as Wilhelm argues, history was changed. Yueh Fei received good Confucianist education in his childhood, which laid down the "correct route" for him to be a decent man. Throughout the fictional accounts, he was depicted as more of a scholar than a swordsman. He extended kindness and benevolence to his soldiers and even to prisoners and he won over many talented people. His army was never an independent militia, but was a part of the regular troops of the court. The name "Yueh's family army" was not invented by him, but by the local people because of his repeated victories. His irresponsible behaviour to his family was certainly omitted and his trip home

Chapter 9 at his mother's death was extensively colourized to show his filial piety. He committed no actions of disobedience to the court. When he received the twelve orders telling him to go back, he started his trip immediately although he knew it was a political plot against him. His death was not a result of the emperor's policy, but a conspiracy of Ch'in Hui with the Chin behind the emperor. It meant the emperor was muddle-headed to allow his general to be killed, but was never evil. Thus Yueh died not as a victim, but as a loyal hero, who readily submitted to his own execution when he thought his emperor wanted it. Chu Hsi praised Yueh Fei as the unsurpassed hero of his time.

STEREOTYPES FOR EMPERORS AND SCHOLARS IN FICTION

Both the fictional images of Kuan YU and Yueh Fei were model exemplars of the pursuit for the Chinese Dream. Their conduct showed the masses what actions should be taken in the pursuit of the Dream and their fame ensured that they would be adequately rewarded by the society. In order to set up more examples of moral pursuit, the literati used stereotypes in their fiction composition. The stories might vary and the heroes adventures might be different, but they all headed for the same direction and tried to acquire the same moral qualities. The variety of stories and characters showed to the masses that they could choose from a number of routes toward their Chinese Dream, yet they would experience the same hardship and learn the same qualities. Because of this purpose, the fictional accounts did not allow the characters to have complicated personalities.

There were only two kinds of people in fiction: good and bad. The good side

Chapter 9 represented Confucianist moral values, whi!e the bad side were invariably immoral in almost everything they did. Good people were moral examples for the public to learn from; bad people were negative examples to arouse people's caution. A good person could have an endearing weakness. For instance, Chang Fei, the other oath-brother of

Liu Pei, was good because he was loyal to the ruler and brave on the battlefield, but he was quick-tempered and alcoholic. Kuan Yii was, of course, the hero of the good side, but he had the weakness of self-pride. However, these weaknesses did not cast any negative aspersions on the heroes' pursuit of their Chinese Dream. On the contrary, they made the heroic images more believable and plausible. If a person abandoned his pursuit of Confucianist moral, his image would be totally negative, even if he had other merits.

The audience of the story could easily identify which side a character was on by looking at his title, such as "loving father" (ci fu), "filial son" (hsiao tzu), "decent official" (ch'ing k'uan) and "virtuous women" (lieh nu) on the good side, and "cruel official" (k'u 111,

"muddle-headed official" (hun k'uan), "traitor official" (chien ch'en), and "ungrateful son"

(ni tzu) on the bad side. As the formation of stereotypes was controlled by the literati and standardized by imperial editors, the orientation of its ideological bias was obvious.

Through stereotyping, the Chinese Dream was successfully represented. Now we will examine some major characters in historical stories and see how they were ideologically stereotyped.

Emperors were represented in many historical works of fiction. Not every emperor was good, because not everyone could have the "mandate of heaven". Good emperors would say and do exactly what was expected of them with identical phrases and attitudes.

Chapter 9 268 They were men with bold spirits like European hero-kings. They burned their own bridges so that no one could expect to retreat from the battlefield, and they knew clearly that while success meant the glorious inauguration of a new dynasty, failure meant a cruel and ignominious death as a rebel. In the Sung, the popular heroes were Liu Pang, Liu

Pei, Li Shih-min and Chao K'uang-yin who started the Han, Shu Han, T'ang and Sung dynasties respectively. In fiction, all of them experienced the same stages on their way to power. At the time of their birth, their mothers had prophetic dreams of their high destiny. They started out as strong men charged with the protection of their local community in a period of anarchy and disorder. Their tiny bands of followers snowballed into an army; their charisma won them spontaneous support from scholars, military men and villagers. They faced many dangers in their pursuit of power, but they were always miraculously protected. In times of crises, people would follow them and even sacrifice their lives for them, echoing the Mencian image of people flocking to a sagacious king.

They took over provinces first and finally won the whole country through battle and negotiation.

Usually the last emperors of dynasties were bad by nature and the empire fell while in their hands. The reason was that they abandoned their pursuit of the Chinese

Dream and indulged themselves in luxury and power abuse. Arthur Wright generalizes a typology of the stereotype of the bad last ruler according to the references in Shu-ching and Shih-chi:

A. Tyranny (the abuse of supreme political power) 1. neglect or abuse of upright officials 2. favouritism toward sycophants and corrupt officials 3. callousness toward the suffering of the masses

Chapter 9 a. unreasonable and unseasonable exactions of taxes and labour b. harsh laws and cruel punishments c. the flouting of good laws Self-indulgence (unrestrained use of supreme power and wealth for self- gratification) 1. drunkenness 2. passion for rare and expensive goods, clothing, food, etc. 3. elaborate and extravagant construction: palaces, pleasure pavilions, gardens, carriages, boats, etc. 4. pleasure before work, sloth. Licentiousness (sex-linked behaviour of disapproved kinds) 1. lust, sexual overindulgence 2. orgies,"unnatural" sex acts 3. sadism 4. promotion of lascivious music 5. blind infatuation with a favour Lack of personal virtue (i.e., flouting of established norms of interpersonal relations and of relations with supernatural powers) 1. unfilial behaviour 2. unbrotherly behaviour 3. improper conduct toward wife 4. improper treatment of paternal and maternal relatives 5. lack of ceremonial respect to Heaven, the spirits, and ancestors 6. addition to sorcery and "heretical" religious practices.

(Wright, 1965: 173):

The really attractive figures in historical fiction were not the founding emperors but their advisors - the scholar-officials - and fiction writers would go to considerable length to show the emperors' hopelessness when they did not receive aid from scholars. Liu

Pang relied almost entirely on Chang Liang for his design of military strategies. Liu Pei let his men plan and fight for him. When he was without the help of Chu-ko Liang in his expedition to the Kingdom of Wu after the death of his oath-brothers, he was badly defeated and escaped death because of an advance plan made by Chu-ko. Chao K'uang- yin, after winning the entire country, did not dare to claim the throne and was pushed to

Chapter 9 270 be the emperor by his advisors. According to the plan of a scholar, his men made him drunk and dressed him in imperial robes and caps. When Chao woke up, he was surprised to find that he was wearing such clothes; it was only through the urgings of by his advisors that he finally accepted the fact with reluctance. This story showed on the one hand that Chao took the throne according to "public opinion", but on the other hand it meant that he could only be the emperor because his scholars wanted him to be.

Under the pen of the literati, the emperor or prince was fundamentally a weak personality, dissolute, hypocritical and something of a figurehead. By contrast, the literati depicted themselves in fiction as heroes - intelligent, strong-minded, daring and courageous. They were the exemplary pursuers of the Chinese Dream. A true scholar was not just a man of letters. He was also a man of war and his weapons were his intelligence and tongue. He would assess situations, map out plans, and advise the ruler.

His formalized behaviour embodied norms of an orderly state and society. He could use men smoothly for his own ends while diplomatically letting them think they were deciding matters for themselves. They invented ruses to extricate themselves from dangerous predicaments and turned defeat into victory. Su Ch'in, an itinerant politician of the fourth century B.C., cleverly intrigued for the alliance of six states against the State Ch'in; Yen- tzu the Dwarf entered the capital of the State Ch'u through the main gate, shamed into silence a rude king and with two peaches killed three giants (Ruhlmann, 1960: 162).

The scholars' personal histories and political success showed the correctness of

Confucian morals. They were almost always from families with no official background and were selected wisely by sage-kings or emperors. Later they helped the kings or emperors

Chapter 9 27 1 bring social order to the entire country according to Confucian moral standards. Shun

(variously a farmer, potter or fisherman) was raised up by Yao. Yi Yin (a cook or recluse) was attracted by T1angand helped him establish the Shang Dynasty. Chiang Tzu-ya (a fisherman, boatman, or recluse) was found by Wen Wang and helped his son Wu Wang defeat the Shang and establish the Chou Dynasty. Chu-ko Liang (a farmer) was visited three times by Liu Pei before he decided to take office and help Liu build up the Kingdom of Shu. The ruler raised the sage from poverty and made him a minister. As a minister, he was a wise political and military strategist who brought forth a period of peace and justice to the empire (Raphals, 1992: 161).

Wu Yung and Chu-ko Liang were well-known scholar-heroes in historical fiction.

Wu Yung was the strategist for a peasant rebellion in Water Margin. The author, Shih

Nai-an, made his name sound like "good for nothing" when it is uttered, but in the fiction he was a wise scholar. Never dismayed by difficult situations, he always had a plan - simple, elegant and efficient. He trapped enemies in snow-covered pits, tricked all kinds of useful people into joining his band, and was a master of tactics and the use of spies.

Chu-ko Liang's name is still used proverbially as a synonym for intelligence. At the age of twenty-seven, he conceived a tripartition of China by exploiting the rivalry between the

Kingdom of Wei and the Kingdom of Wu, which would allow Ssu-ch'uan to exist as an independent "third force" and later, hopefully, to restore the Han Dynasty. He persuaded the Kingdom of Wu to commit its strength against the Kingdom of Wei. In a "battle of tongues" with dozens of scholars of the Wu, all of whom were self-confident, hostile and experienced in politics, Chu-ko, alternately moralistic, provocative, disdainful, persuasive

Chapter 9 272 and ironic, was always superbly aware of each opponent's background and character and refuted all objections and opposition to the idea of an alliance against the Wei. On the battlefield, he could anticipate his enemies' every move and get the best from his own warriors by flattery and provocation. In a campaign against the aborigines in the fever- ridden mountains of the Southwest, he captured their chieftain seven times. Six times the chief claimed that he had been caught in an unfair situation; each time Chu-ko released the chief. The seventh time, the chief surrendered and was overcome by Chu-ko's generosity and benevolence. Once Chu-ko found himself trapped in an almost defenceless fortress because of his generals' unexpected defeat and he had only a few old and wounded soldiers to face a huge enemy army. He knew there was no chance to flee and the only way out was to make the enemy believe the fortress was full of troops so that they would not enter. He ordered the four gates opened wide and he sat on the wall playing a lute in front of thousands of enemy troops. His masterly lute playing impressed and misled the enemy; no one could convey such ease of mind through music unless he felt absolutely safe about his situation. The trick worked; the enemy suspected a trap and fled.

The scholar-heroes had more than intellectual strength. They were also endowed with supernatural powers. They could interpret dreams, deal with the other world and master the forces of nature. By performing a mysterious ceremony in front of a black altar, Chu-ko Liang could conjure an east wind that would propel his incendiary boats against the enemy fleet. Pao Ch'eng was a judge of the Sung court in the daytime and a judge for King Yen, the Chinese Yama in Hades, at night. They were also capable of

Chapter 9 self-control. Neither good news nor bad news affected their composure and they would display neither hatred nor affection when faced with either compliments or insults. A usual description of their self-control was: "No slightest expression of surprise when the T'ai

Mount is landsliding in the front, and no smallest move of the body when the Yellow River bursts at the back." They could hide quick and intense sensitivity under a mask of relaxed self-confidence and this impassivity was regarded as a traditional virtue for fathers, judges and administrators. They watched and interpreted others' actions, but seldom revealed their own feelings. They could prepare and wait for twenty years to take revenge and in the meantime smile and talk courteously to the enemy. Moreover, they were moral exemplars for the populace; they were loyal to the emperor even when they had received ill treatment and caring about the pains and sufferings of the populace on behalf of the emperor.

In fiction, good scholars were born with the spirit of patriotism and evil scholars with the contrary. A common saying for good scholars was "incorruptible with luxuries and unbeatable by force." Such historical stories were many. Ch'u Yuan, a statesman and poet of the Warring Period, drowned himself in the river when his country, the Ch'u State, was going to fall. He was proclaimed race on the fifth of May in the lunar calendar was a traditional ceremony in his honour. Su Wu of the Han Dynasty was sent by the emperor as ambassador to the northern "barbarians", Hsiung-nu, and was held prisoner for nineteen years. Though he suffered all kinds of torture and humiliation, he never surrendered. Once he was thrown into a pit and left to die of hunger, he managed to keep himself alive by eating snow. Later he was sent to a remote land as a shepherd.

Chapter 9 Wherever he went, he held the "ambassador's stick" to show his loyalty to his country.

Several times he was offered honourable posts, but he always refused. Eventually he

returned to the Han as the symbol of patriotism.

Patriotism added substantial charisma to literati in the eyes of the populace. The

ruling class fully understood the advantage that they could take from the propagation of patriotism. As the country was like an extended family and the emperor was its head, patriotism meant loyalty to the emperor. The populace might not be happy with and loyal to the rule of a particular imperial family, but they must be taught to be ioyal to the country. In doing so, they had to protect the position of the emperor as the symbol of the country and their support of the throne was voluntary.

The literati echoed the imperial position and they placed patriotism as a top quality in popular fiction. Their political persuasion was that if a person demonstrated patriotic actions, his previous offense to the state could be forgiven. In the Water Margin, when the rebels surrendered themselves to the court, they were sent to the front to fight against the Liao. As heroes of patriotism, their crime of rebellion was forgiven and they were

rewarded with civil posts. Although they were later persecuted, it was because of the emperor's policies, but was the decision of evil officials.

The images of evil scholar-officials were like carbon copies of one another. Their faces on the performing stage were whitened. They promoted worthless men, dismissed good officials and had them put to death, and often plotted for the throne. They double- crossed military generals on the frontiers, deprived them of supplies and reinforcements, then accused them of deliberately losing battles. They even conducted treacherous

Chapter 9 negotiations with the enemy. Their family members were equally evil in morals. Their daughters were sent to stay in the imperial harem and spied for their fathers about the emperor's decisions and attitudes. Their sons roamed around the street with bodyguards and looked for women to seize. Evil scholars, although cunning in political craft, lacked intelligence in serious policy making. Their armies were often far larger than those of their opponents, but they were always the losers, indicating that their moral inferiority always caused them to make bad decisions. A good scholar's work was to unmask the villain, awaken the emperor to the hidden dangers around him and, if the emperoi refused to listen, face death resolutely (Ruhlmann, 1960: 149). This image of scholar-heroes expressed the ideals and dreams of the literati. They wanted the emperor to listen to them, to use them to replace the officials in power and to give them an opportunity to show their loyalty and talent.

THE IMAGES OF SWORDSMEN AND WOMEN

Compared with scholar-officials, swordsmen were only useful auxiliaries. They had their own charisma: lifting heavy weights of several hundred pounds without being flushed or out of breath and killing wild animals with simple weapons or even their bare hands. Their powerful muscles immediately attracted attention and respect from the audience. Chang

Fei, once acting as the rear guard for a retreat, faced thousands of enemy troops alone.

He shouted, "Here is Chang I-te! Who wants to fight to death with me?" Suspecting a trap and scared by Chang's voice, the enemy fled with many men killed or wounded under their own galloping horses. Wu Sung, a hero in the Water Margin, killed a fierce tiger with

Chapter 9 his fists when his fighting stick had broken. However, a man who made his living by

selling his muscles and bravery was, in the eyes of the literati, only "a piece of armour wrapped around a fighting man" (i chieh wu fu) and in fiction their real attractiveness lay

in their self-cultivation and the pursuit of the Chinese Dream in line with literati culture.

They acquired through imitation some humour and intelligence and thus gained some

literati qualities.

In the story of the Three Kingdoms, there were accounts of how Chang Fei, "a piece of armour" by origin, learned to use ruses to capture the enemy and take over cites.

Once his ruse even fooled his emperor Liu Pei, and was immediately appreciated by Chu-

ko Liang. After days of unsuccessful attacks on a city, Chang Fei asked for wine from the headquarters. Liu Pei was worried, because Chang's alcoholism had made his missions fail before. But Chu-ko said: "I bet we will soon hear from General Chang of his victory."

Without hesitation, Chu-ko ordered much wine to be sent to Chang's camp and, sure enough, Chang captured the city in three days. This story not only showed a scholar's superior intelligence compared to the emperor, but also the mutual understanding between a scholar and a man who had been influenced by literati qualities. Kuan Yij once had his surgeon cut open his arm and scrape the bone to cure a wound from a poisoned arrow. Without taking anaesthesia, he continued talking and playing chess while the surgery took place as if nothing special was happening. His calmness and self-control reflected a scholar's quality under adverse circumstances.

Pao Ch'eng, an honest but cruel judge who sat in his yamen tribunal and decreed beatings and torture, was depicted as being talented in art and fond of Confucianist book

Chapter 9 277 reading. Wu Sung and Lu Ta, illiterate musclemen, were influenced by literati culture in their rebels' camp, left the battlefield and went to ponder on the Tao in temples. Even Li

K'uei, a ruthless and ignorant man totally outside literati culture, followed his literati oath- brother Sung Chiang in suicide. These are only some extreme examples of men who had no education at all. In fiction, many swordsmen received good education from the beginning, such as Chao Yun, Huang Chung, Ma Ch'ao, Chang Liao, Chou Yu of the

Three Kingdoms, and Hua Jung, Lin Ch'ung, Hu-yen Shuo, Lu Tsun-i and Yang Chi in

Water Margin.

In fiction, the morals of swordsmen appeared different from that of scholars. While scholars regarded loyalty to the empire as the highest obligation, a swordsman would regard loyalty to trusted friends (i ch'~)as the top obligation (Ruhlmann, 1960: 168). For their friends they could do anything and even give their lives. If we categorize scholars' loyalty as "vertical", the swordsmen's loyalty would be "horizontal". Probably this difference was socially true, but under the literati's pen, the "horizontal" loyalty changed its orientation. Swordsmen would not be loyal to everybody who wanted them on their side, but were only loyal to the people with good Confucianist education. Kuan Yu and

Chang Fei would die for Liu Pei, who obviously had better education than them. Li K'uei made up his mind to die for Sung Chiang when they first met, because he was deeply impressed by Sung's model practice of Confucianist morals. Huang T'ien-pa was loyal to his master Shih Kung not just because of his master's martial arts, but because Shih taught him how to be a decent man according to Confucianist doctrines. SSU-maCh'ien wrote in his ''Biography of Meng Ch'ang Chun" in Shih Chi that a good swordsman could

Chapter 9 not be bought for money, but would die for a person who appreciated his personality and entrusted him with a task that had substantial moral significance. From fiction, a reader could easily come to a conclusion that swordsmen were remembered not for their bravery and martial art, but for their loyalty toward Confucianist morals which were embodied in the images of scholars. Thus the difference between a good swordsman and a bad swordsman was clear: a good swordsman understood Confucianist morals and fought for the practice of the morals, while a bad swordsman, though equally accomplished in the martial arts, fought for whomever paid him with no regard to morals. Bad swordsmen were eventually defeated by good swordsmen.

Women's images were also stereotyped in fiction. In the Sung, neo-Confucianism placed more moral fetters on women and popular fiction reflected its moral values. For

instance, remarriage was absolutely immoral under any circumstances. Ch'eng I aphorized on the matter of a widow's remarriage: "To die of hunger is a trifling matter, to lose chastity is a grave matter." This ideology was manifest in many historical stories.

Unlike the Chinese Dream for men, the Dream for women was not to bring any fame to themselves, but to their husbands or their families. The Yang family had twelve widows, but none of them attempted a second marriage. When the enemy, the Liao, launched another invasion and the court had no generals to lead the army, the twelve widows went to the battlefield and won the victory. After that, they retreated to their kitchen, continued their filial duty toward their mother-in-law and won good names for their dead husbands.

When Liu Pei's wife heard that her husband was killed on the battlefield, she threw

herself in a river in memory of her husband. In the stories of outlaws (hsia), women

Chapter 9 279 outlaws were often superior to their men, whom they sponsored both in martial arts and in literary talent. But when their men became scholar-officials or established martial arts experts, the women outlaws would always abandon their talent and become obedient housewives. On the contrary, if a woman failed to follow the commandments, she would leave a bad name in history. Empress Wu Tse-t'ien of the Tang dynasty was on the throne for sixteen years. She broke with the bonds of the traditional "virtuous-woman

(lieh-nu)" model, taking many husbands and male concubines and appearing freely in public situations. She had remarkable political and literary achievements, but they could not outweigh her immoral conduct in her personal life. In both official histories and popular fictions, she was always depicted as a "lustful woman" (tang fu).

In the traditional Chinese moral paradigm, women were remembered for what they suffered and for their loyalty to their fathers and brothers, their husbands and their husbands' families. The celebration of women's suffering and sacrifice was also found not only in fiction, but also in other genres of popular literature. Daniel Overmyer gives an example in a popular religious book Hsiang-shan pao-chiian. This story first appeared in

667 and became well known in about 1100. The publication date of this pao-chijan was

1103. In the story, a woman sacrificed her body to show her filialty to her father.

Overmyer describes:

Princess Miao-shan is the third daughter of a king with no sons, who tries to force her to marry in order to provide him with a son-in-law and descendants. She, however, decides to become a nun, for which after much bitterness she is eventually executed. However, she is resurrected by the gods and proceeds to heal her father of a loathsome illness by donating her own eyes and arms to make medicine for him. In the end she saves her whole family and is revealed to be the bodhisattva Kuan-yin. Thus, though at one level she is unfilial because she refuses to obey her parents'

Chapter 9 injunction to marry, at another level this disobedience becomes an essential precondition for her own enlightenment, which in turn gives her the power to deliver others. (Overmyer, 1985: 224)

But women's sacrifices did not make them into heroines, but to demonstrate that the women's families were well-educated in making them do so. The twelve widows of the Yang family sacrificed their youth; their mother-in-law, She T'ai-chun, enjoyed the fame of successful moral management of the family. In the Ming time, more symbolic forms were established to celebrate the families who made their women act according to

Confucianist moral standards. Emperor T'ai-tzu of the Ming issued a special edict:

"Widows younger than thirty, who remain in their homes maintaining the house and fulfilling their familial responsibilities, if upon reaching fifty years of age have thus maintained themselves, then their families will be honoured and male members of their households will be excepted from government service." (Guisso, 1981: 72) Honourable arches were constructed in villages and towns to memorize the families in which the widows never committed to a second marriage.

The characters in supernatural stories were equally stereotyped. Supernatural stories provided a means of escape for the populace, where dreams that could never be realized in reality would come true. The supernatural world was no heaven. It had a hierarchial structure that resembled the human world and injustice happened frequently.

Again, it was scholar-ghosts who were the heroes and they saved ghost-commoners from the hand of evil ghost-governors.

In fiction, even the heroes' physical complexion and shape were stereotyped: they always had unusual features different from ordinary people (fei-ch'ang or fei-fan). Liu Pei

Chapter 9 28 1 was eight feet fall, the lobes of his ears touched his shoulders, his hands hung down below his knees, and his eyes were so wide-set that he was able to see his ears. His oath-brothers Chang Fei and Kuan YO also had unusual physical shapes. Chu-ko Liang, the brain of the oath-brothers, was eight feet tall and his behaviourial style was exactly like a divine man (hsian jen). These physical details signified to the audience their greatness even before a storyteller told audience anything about their words and deeds, and such descriptions were repeated many times throughout the story as reminders.

The stereotyping made the names of outstanding figures in popular fiction the tags for specific attributes or virtues. A man of loyalty and intelligence was called a "Chu-ko

Liang", a man of unwavering fidelity to his lord was called a "Kuan Yij", an incorruptible judge was called a "Pao Kung", a man with impetuous courage was called a "Chang Fei", a faithful minister who had been misunderstood by his emperor but continued his loyalty was called a "Ch'O Yuan", and a woman who had shown extraordinary skill and courage on the battlefield and was also willing to be a housewife was called a "Mu Kuei-ying", one of the twelve widows of the Yang family. Hence the Confucianist virtues no longer remained at an abstract level, but were exemplified and personified. For the sake of the credibility of the "tags", these men were depicted as ingenuous and one-dimensional. In historical fiction, the process by which they acquired mental maturity was omitted; it

Seemed they were born to be heroes representing certain virtues. On an abstract level,

Such a hero was known as "great outstanding man" (ying-hsiung), a "great husband" (ta- chang-fu), a "heavenly man" (shenjen) or a plebian "good fellow" (hao-han). These words

Connoted unusual moral strength, devotion to a great cause and exceptional social

Chapter 9 282 achievements. Ruhlmann has made a comparison between the charisma of Chinese fiction heroes and these of the West:

Hercules, Chu-ko Liang, and Wu Sung perform superhuman labours assigned to them. Su Wu, Pao Ch'eng, and Joan of Arc remain faithful to voices heard in their youth. Hector and Achilles, Kuan YO, Chang Fei and Yueh Fei sacrifice their lives in service to their king, their country, their cause. Theseus and Jason, Ulysses and Alexander, Lu-lien, Hsuan-tsang, and San-pao confront the mysterious dangers of the other world, or of distant countries; not all come back alive, but all win everlasting glory. (Ruhlmann, 1965: 132)

The stereotyping echoed the sentiment of the populace. In the Sung: when the country suffered from misery, military defeat and wounded pride, the stories of intelligent scholars like Chu-ko Liang, military heroes like Kuan Yu and upright administrators like

Pao Ch'eng enjoyed tremendous popularity. The audience expected such men to relieve their suffering and rescue them from invasion, natural catastrophes and the abuse of authority. They liked Pao Ch'eng redressing wrongs regardless of the wrongdoers' eminence in the court and ordering the execution of a murderous brother-in-law of the emperor despite the pleas and threats of the empress and the empress dowager. They also liked "Lady Precious Stream" (Hung Tsung Lie Ma) in which a beggar married the prime minister's daughter, won battles and became emperor. Then he sentenced the villains who conspired against him and rewarded the deserving. The heroes' name tags became words of hope for the populace.

These stereotypes reflected the "correct routes" for the realization of the Chinese

Dream. Through popular literature, literati successfully conveyed the abstract concept of the Chinese Dream to the masses. As literati were close to the lives of non-literati, they hewthe fantasies and expectations of the populace and they used popular language and

Chapter 9 283 concepts for their persuasion. Their monopoly of printing provided the technical facility for the spread of their ideals. Because of the lack of data, we do not know to what extent popular fiction was printed in the Sung, but there are many records of such printing in the

Ming Dynasty. The Censorship Administration and the Ministry of Ritual printed the

Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms respectively, many civil printers in Fukien, such as the Yu's family, printed the biographical fiction of Yueh Fei, the fiction of Pao Ch'eng, the Water Margin, and so on (Han & Wang, 1987: 2-20). For ease of understanding, printers added pictures to the fiction (hsiu hsiang). By controlling both the pen and printing, the literati managed to extend their cultural influence to all genres of popular culture. Their stories showed various routes for the populace to achieve their Chinese

Dream in the form of stereotyped virtuous heroes and worthy characters. Through the literati's cultural leadership, the Confucianist ideals of hegemonic rule obtained the basis for their realization.

Chapter 9 CHAPTER 10

ORAL DISCOURSE IN PRINT LITERATURE

Through the control of pen and print, the literati monopolised the arena of knowledge production and this monopoly had the effect of suffocating the popular voice. The suffocation was made possible not only through manipulation and limitation of public venues, but also through the oral discourse by which the literati's written and printed literature was presented. Oral discourse made it possible to engender a mentality in the populace so that the populace would only echo and elaborate on established knowledge rather than challenge it. In this chapter, we will examine how an oral discourse was reflected in print literature, how it affected people's mentality, and how an oral mentality facilitated the establishment of "restricted literacy".

CHANTING AND MEMORIZATION

We have seen in the previous chapter that popular literature was substantially orally oriented, i.e. texts were written not just for silent reading, but for recitation or reading aloud. The text was designed in a colloquial format so that the audience, whether literate or illiterate, could immediately understand it when they heard the words. Popular literature was originally based on oral literature. Shelley Chang describes the process of the transition of fiction from oral to written form:

It was through the influence of oral artists that heroic sagas and folk legends left their imprints on historical novels. In this aspect oral tradition represents the influence of the common people in literature.... By the time

Chapter 10 285 these sagas and legends were compiled into written literature, all of the myths that were well entrenched in the writers' minds were incorporated into written forms, together with the added acquisitions of classic traditions and Confucian values contributed by Confucian-educated writers, poets, and playwrights. In a broad sense, the vernacular novels thus represent both the collective efforts and oral and performing artists on the one hand, and the individual contributions of educated writers, novelists, and playwrights on the other. (Chang, 1990: 16)

The literati learned the stories in oral form, wrote them down and produced fiction. Later on, fiction works were translated into oral form by storytellers in other locales and subsequently new written forms would be made by other literati. This process meant that print literature served as a bridge between oral communication in different regions.

Through this bridge, imperial ideology and literati culture were widely spread. Gernet is one of the first scholars to discuss the oral tradition of Chinese print literature at a theoretical level. He says:

The literature of the [Sung] period, partly still composed in the oral tradition and, even when written, intended to be heard rather than read, made great use of the spoken language, either that of the people or that of the upper classes. The storytellers, the professional dramatists and the puppeteers for both marionette and shadow plays produced a huge repertoire of fantastic stories, Buddhist tales, short crime stories, or romantic narratives set in the past, either in the period known as the Three Kingdoms, in the third century A.D., or in later periods, such as that of the Five Dynasties (tenth century) ....These tales were told in colloquial language (perhaps accompanied by a light musical accompaniment), but they also included some passages in verse, which were sung, at points where poetry seemed better suited to the circumstances, as, for instance, in the description of a pretty woman or of a landscape, or if the action had reached a specially crucial moment. (Gernet, 1962: 231 -232)

In the previous chapter, we saw many reflections of an oral tradition in popular literature, such as stereotyping and the closing sentences at the end of chapters. Not only

Was popular literature derived from an oral discourse, so was classical literature. This may

Chapter 10 286 seem strange, because classical literature, such as the Confucianist canons and standard histories, were clearly not designed for reading aloud on the market. However, to see the connections between the classics and oral tradition, we must realize that the composition of classical literature was, like that of popular literature, largely based on oral literature in the beginning. First there were stories and sayings circulating in oral form. Scholars wrote them down, raised them to an abstract level, composed them in a particular literary style, and made them into philosophies. Eoyang argues:

It is no coincidence that the first masterworks of literature in the West and in China, the lliadand Odyssey, identified with Homer, and the Shih Ching, identified with Confucius, were originally products of oral genius. An appreciation of the oral factor is not only an extension of the bounds of literature beyond the written word: it also enables us to recognize clearly the contributions made by word of mouth to words on paper. (Eoyang, 1977: 54)

In these compositions, a reflection of the original oral tradition could not be totally avoided. The Lun-yii of Confucius, for example, are, one should not forget, conversations involving Confucius, which the translation 'Analects' almost totally obscures in English.

(Eoyang, 1977: 54-55) The standard histories derived from the same roots. Although

Standard histories were not composed of "sayings", they were in the tradition of oral narration. As we have discussed in Chapter Five, standard histories did not allow generalization on an abstract level, but insisted that individual happenings must be narrated one by one monotonously. The original purpose was to make the standard histories consistent in appearance with the daily records of the court. In doing so, an oral discourse was unavoidably reflected. An obvious example was Tso chuan, a standard commentary on the history of the State of Lu by Tso Chiuming (Wang, 1977: 3-20).

Chapter 10 287 But this is not the only oral foundation of classical literature. Classical literature was designed primarily for ease of chanting and memorization. It was composed in a style that no one used in daily conversation. For students, especially pupils who were just learning basic characters, learning the classical style was not very different from learning a foreign language. However, the classical style was made accessible to beginners by rhythm, which facilitated memorization. The rhythm of the textual style was made possible by another characteristic of the Chinese written language: there was only one syllable for each word. The arrangement of the number of words and the combination of intonations in each sentence could be so designed that when it was read aloud the rhythm became highly impressive. Richard Smith argues that this kind of style made the formation of

Chinese classic texts basically oral: "The memorization of Chinese texts was facilitated by the rhythm and balance of the classical script ....Indeed, the succinctness, balance, and rhythm of the classical made it eminently well suited for popular proverbs, which helped bridge the gap between the mental world of the Confucian elite and the Chinese masses." (Smith, 1983: 85-88)

Memorization was a required learning technique for both new and advanced students. Children from a young age would learn to recite the primers by chanting; understanding the texts was not required. A characteristic of schools was the sound of loud reading for the purpose of memorization. Although the text was in classical style and the semantic signification of the language was well beyond the children's imagination, the same number of characters in each sentence and the tone of each sentence in a poetic rhythm made precise memorization of the texts attainable. Students would shake their

Chapter 10 288 heads and bodies in chanting as if they were singing jingles. Fairbank points out that "the

Chinese student traditionally memorized the classics before he understood them. Only after the characters were firmly established in the eye and ear, and in the muscular coordination of the hand in writing them, was their meaning studied and discussed

(Fairbank, 1962: 66). Ong has described the biopsychological function of memorization:

You have to do your thinking in mnemonic patterns, shaped for ready oral recurrence. Your thought must come into being in heavily rhythmic balanced patterns, in repetitions or antitheses, in alliterations and assonances, in epithetic and other formulary expression, in standard thematic settinss, in proverbs, or in other mnemonic form. Mnemonic needs determine even syntax. (Ong, 1982: 34)

When the children grew older, they would memorize the original versions as well as the comments, which were standardized by the authorities. They first repeated the lines with the teacher, then read aloud by themselves, and finally recited them and wrote them down without looking at the textbooks. The memorization of classical literature not only made the students "walking encyclopedias" of canons and standard histories, but also made them acquire a sense of rhythm in writing. In the examination, the candidate was expected to use as many related texts as possible according to the questions and the style should be organized in such a way that it would sound like powerful metal clicks when being read aloud - each word carrying all its weight in the rhythmic organization of the essay. In spite of these qualities, the texts so designed were often vague in meaning and difficult to understand. When learners memorized the texts, they acquired an ability to deal with the "form". Their understanding of the "content" was neither stressed nor fully learned. When they wrote their essays, they paid so much attention to the style and rhythm that their meanings were often not fully expressed.

Chapter I0 289 Even in the examinations, the need to be explicit in stating the meaning was not

a strict requirement for success. The candidate was expected to be successful in

demonstrating his philosophical charm. Straightforward statements were not regarded as

good style. This echoes David Olson's argument: "Oral language statements must be

poetized to be remembered, but in the process they lose some of their explicitness; they

require interpretation by a wise man, scribe, or cleric." (Olson, 1988: 179) The social function of this created difficulty of comprehension was to created a gap between the elite and the populace and facilitated the elite monopoly of knowledge. We will come back to this in the issue of "restricted literacy".

Like classical literature, the language of poetry, which formed a large body of print literature, was equally orally oriented and designed primarily for memorization and chanting. Chanting poetry was regarded as an elegant and exclusive style of the literati.

In poetry composition, greater emphasis was played on the literary charm that their poetry could bring to impress their fellow literati than on whether a particular emotion was accurately reflected in words or whether meaning was conveyed. The strictly formulated

Poetry in the T'ang was a typical example. Although new poetic styles were developed in the Sung, the same tradition was carried over. Gernet argues:

In the Sung period the old poetic forms were still cultivated: the regular poems with five or seven written characters to the line, and long descriptive poems that were both lyrical and erudite. But at the same time, the growing popularity of songs which were half popular and half erudite inspired the development of a new type of poetry. Poets in China were not tempted to be over-eloquent. Chinese is naturally concise and arrives at its meaning not by means of logical links, but by juxtapositions. Hence Western languages, although better suited than Chinese for exposition and argument, are not at all suited for rendering poetry of such a compact and allusive nature as is that of China. (Gernet, 1962: 235)

Chapter 10 290 This poetic tradition had a profound impact on popular literature. Daniel Overmyer finds in his examination of Pao-chuan, a kind of religious book, that its text was so well designed in a rhymed style that even illiterate people could follow the chanting. "In style, these texts alternate between prose and seven- or ten-character rhyming verse. The verses sum up each prose section and introduce the next." (Johnson, 1985: 219) In the pursuit of rhythm, the meaning of poems was often vague. Wang Ching-hsien used

Confucius' Shih ching as an example. It was composed of five or seven syllables and for the sake of rhyme the narration could be disturbed and the sentiment of the poem could be sacrificed. (Lin & Own, 1986: 233) Interestingly, poetry with vague meanings was always celebrated and was regarded as a treasure of Chinese literary repertoire. The meaning of the celebration was clear: poetry was the exclusive territory of literati and the entry of outsiders was denied.

FEATURES OF ORAL MENTALITY

What is the nature of oral discourse? Traditionally it has been assumed that oral culture and written culture represent a gap between primitive and modern, between simplicity and sophistication, backward and advanced, irrational and rational, etc. This approach has been criticized, for example, by Goody and Watt (1968)) for its ethnocentrism. They point out that even when writing technology has been in use for a long time, for instance, in

Western society, traces of oral culture can still be found. It means that oral and written cultures are not natural enemies and they can co-exist in the same society. Walter Ong calls it "oral residue", i.e. the features of oral culture inside a society that has a good

Chapter 10 29 1 command of writing technology.

For instance, for oral people, data processing and logic are alien concepts. While a society without such concepts does not represent a low-level civilization, neither will a society without these concepts can achieve modernization the way a literate society does.

The oral residues in a literate society equally wield a distinctive impact on human mentality, although the degree of the impact varies according to how strong the oral residues are. Ong identifies nine general features of the oral mentality: additive, aggregative, redundant, conservative, close to the human lifeworld, agonistical, empathetic, homeostatic, and situational. His generalization is based on societies in which there is no written language at all. However, he thinks that these features also exist in

Written societies and that they can be barriers to a society's attempts at modernization.

We have seen that there were strong oral roots in Chinese print literature; the texts were designed primarily for oral purposes and out of oral discourse. Using Ong's paradigm to examine some aspects of social life in imperial China, we can identify strong oral residues in Chinese culture.

1. Additive rather than subordinative. Meanings are built up cumulatively for the convenience of the speaker, often using "and" in a series, rather than "when", "thus",

"althoughM and "while" to provide a narrative flow with the analytic and reasoned

Subordination that characterizes writing. Ong's point is that in an oral culture, the listener feels comfortable following a linear narration connected by "and'; words like 'although" and "when" can hinder the continuation of his understanding. Frequent Use of "and" in linear narration can achieve instant understanding in oral communication. However, in oral

Chapter 10 292 communication there is an insistence on the need for the listener to analyze and reason,

for "and' can hardly express the complicated relations within a process where many

things are happening at the same time. Terms such as "although" and "when" are

acceptable to a written culture, because the reader can control the speed of reading.

Because these terms express more complicated relationships between statements, the

reader will slow down and ponder on the involved meanings. Thus the ability of reader

to think and reason is elevated and his ability to think with logic is increased.

In Chinese written language, although logically subordinate terms exist, their usage

is infrequent. Relations of logical subordination were often implied by the context rather

than by explicit words. Literarily, a statement like "when I was reading, he came in" is not

good style. It should be "I was reading and he came in," because the sequence of the two

actions is already clear in the sequence of the statement. AS to whether "I" or "he" should

bear the emphasis, the differentiation is expressed by the context rather than by the sentence structure. such a style met the needs of both literati and non-literati. For a classics expert, it was not difficult to see contextually defined subordinate relations between statements. A non-expert could still grasp the main meaning of the text without seeing these subtle relations. Subordinate terms were also omitted for ease of chanting and memorization, for instance, the primers San, Pail Ch'ien. It was enough for a student to remember the main body of the text; the subtle relations between statements could be explained by his master in oral instruction. In popular fiction, linear narration was the main

Style. The terms for complicated sentence relations, although occasionally used, were

avoided as much as possible. For instance, from the sentence "although person X knew

Chapter 10 that, he just continued on his way," the fiction writer would change it to: "Did person x know that? Of course he did. And he just continued on his way." The infrequent use of subordinate sentence structure facilitated memorization and chanting by the masses and, as a result, they were entertained. Culturally, it increased the difference in the way of thinking between literati and non-literati.

2. Aggregative rather than analytic. Because oral society relies on formulas to ease memorization, meanings are often expressed by set phrases. "Oral expression carries a load of epithets and other formulary baggage which high literacy rejects as cumbersome and tiresomely redundant because of its aggregative weight." (Ong, 1988: 33) Not a soldier, but a brave soldier; not a princess, but a beautiful princess; not a flower, but a fresh flower. Abundant examples can be found in the Chinese language where adjectives are placed before nouns as set phrases, such as "yung-shih" (brave soldier), "mei-ch'ieh"

(pretty mistress), "shih-tai-fi/' (scholar great man, i.e. scholar-official), "ch'ien-ch'iu ta-yeh"

(great cause of one thousand years), and "wan-sui-yeh" (grandfather of ten thousand

Years, a nickname for the emperor). In the previous chapter, we listed the terms for good

People and bad people which were stereotypes; they reflect the same tendency. But the set phrases were not just simple combinations of two or more words and concepts. They started to bear new meanings beyond the combination. "Yung-shih" was not just a description of a brave person on the battlefield; it indicated that the person was properly educated and he knew he was fighting for a noble cause. "Me;-ch'ieh" did not just refer to the mistress; it indicated the prestigious social status of the family that kept her. Thus the characteristic of the aggregative tendency was convenient for ideological

Chapter 10 294 manipulation. The sender of the message packaged his meaning in set phrases that were easy to memorize and he controlled the exclusive authority for the explanation. The receiver of the set phrases was drawn into the perspective of the sender. When we think that the literati were the controllers of writing and printing technology, the power relations between the sender and receiver were manifest. Idioms also belonged to this category.

Chinese idioms were usually composed of four characters with a rhythm. Some idioms were based on stories and other were just word combinations, such as "ch'ien- ch'iu ta-yeh," which indicated the ever-lasting rule of an imperial family. All of them could not be understood by the surface meaning of each word, for they had their own connotations. For instance, shu hsiang men ti (book fragrant door sequence) carries a positive meaning for scholars' families. Ta chia kueihsiu (big family daughter beauty) and hsiao chia pi yu (small family blue jade) equally referred to unmarried girls of literati families, but the former indicated a good classical education of the family's male members, and the latter meant that the family was not yet entirely within the literati culture. These connotations were specially learned and only people within the literati culture shared them. The set phrases were like tags with prescriptive effects on the constitution of general consciousness. Through the wide use of set phrases, people's

Perspectives were fixed within a particular discourse. Culturally they were inclined toward literati culture. Politically they were manipulated into accepting imperial frameworks for their social understanding.

3. Redundant or 'copiousM. Oral presentation requires repetition. As thought requires some sort of continuity and oral utterances vanish as soon as they are spoken,

Chapter 10 the speaker must move ahead more slowly, keeping close to the focus of attention of much of what has already been dealt with. 'Redundancy, repetition of the just-said, keeps both speaker and hearer surely on the track." (Ong, 1988: 34) Since there is no written record for reference in an oral society, repetition has to be used as the necessary way for the spread and continuation of knowledge. Ong argues that this feature exists even in a highly literate culture. "Concern with copia remains intense in Western culture so long as the culture sustains massive oral residue - which is roughly until the age of

Romanticism or even beyond." (Ong, 1988: 35) Repetition was well used in traditional

Chinese fiction and plays. We have seen that fictional works were designed primarily for being read aloud. Repetition, therefore, had to be employed as a special craft of writing,

So that the storyteller's audience could recall what had happened in previous story sessions. Repetition was also used to emphasize important plots or points. However, repetition was not boring. A variety of metaphors and indications were used artistically to make repetition interesting. In the play Hsiao Yao Chin, for instance, the emperor saw his loves massacred by Ts'ao Tslao, his prime minister, and his own day was doomed. In hopeless despair, he sang a passage to express his sadness. He repeated the same theme fifteen times, but each time he used a different metaphor: he was humiliated like a mouse in a cat's paw, like a bird in a cage, like a little boat on the Yangtze, etc.

Repetition was not just a craft for textual usage, but also a basic fm3hod in literary composition. In classical writing, repetition was the main principle. The traditional Chinese

Way of argumentation was to repeat and comment without extensive writing of one's own.

Although there were numerous writers in Chinese literary history, many of them were remembered for what they had repeated and commented rather than created; their

creation was embedded in their selection for repetition and commentary. Likewise, the

composition of popular literature was also a repetition of past works. Shelley Chang points

out:

Legends and tales were treated again and again in different ages, by different authors, and in different literary media, so that it became an established convention to revise or rewrite an extant plot instead of creating a completely new one. (Chang, 1990: 16)

There might be artistic variations in repetition, but the basic points and plots never

changed. When the masses were bombarded with the repetition of the same doctrines through a variety of forms - classical texts, fiction, drama, storytelling, religious books, civil

rituals, etc. - and with a variety of styles - classical language, vernacular, symbolic forms, dialects, body language and slang - their mentality was unavoidably influenced by the pre-

determined discourse and their judgement of right and wrong became consistent with the expectation of the ruling authorities. Even in the remotest villages, people knew that

loyalty to the throne was the highest virtue and book reading signified the highest social

Pursuit. Through deliberate reinforcement of repetition, the purpose of ideological transformation was systematically attempted.

4. Conservative or traditionalist. As oral societies have to repeat again and again what has been learned over the ages in order to preserve it, the mind has little space for new intellectual experimentation. Therefore, old people are always knowledgeable and respected and young people have to gain their knowledge from old people's memories.

BY comparison, a written culture can constitute a different mentality, because writing freezes the past and "the text frees the mind of conservative tasks, that is, of its memory

Chapter 10 297 work, and thus enables the mind to turn itself to new speculation." (Ong, 1988: 35) The result is, 'by storing knowledge outside the mind, writing and, even more, print downgrade the figures of the wise old man and the wise old woman, repeaters of the past, in favour of younger discoverers of something new." (Ong, 1988: 35) However, the availability of written language does not mean at all that the burden of memorization can be automatically eliminated. On the contrary, the availability of huge quantities of written texts can further increase the mnemonic load of an individual if the culture's educational

Procedures require it. In Ong's opinion, if a person is expected to contribute his brain to the development of new ideas, he must be freed from the burden of huge quantities of memorization.

We may add to Ong's thesis that if a person is not expected to develop independent thinking, he must be drowned in a sea of literature for memorization in order to consume his brain energy; he should be regularly tested for what he has memorized.

This was what happened in imperial China; where memorization was the primary means of learning. As we have seen, students from age five had to start memorizing the Four

Books and Five Classics. In the learning process, the student was not trained for any creative thinking and he was not given any opportunities to express his own opinions inconsistent with the orthodox. In classroom presentation and paper writing, he was required to demonstrate what he had remembered based on his textbooks and the teachefs explanations, but he was not expected to say what he thought of them.

This practice was not confined to classrooms. In trade and technology, the same

Oral tradition was easily visible. For instance, things like manuals of operation and how-to

Chapter 10 298 books were rare. The arts and crafts were passed down by word of mouth from master to apprentice or from father to son. If the master was dead and he had no apprentice, that art would be dead. In the learning process, it was offensive to the master if the student asked "why", because it meant he lacked confidence in the master's expertise.

The student was to just memorize and imitate what his master had shown him. Even the way of learning calligraphy and painting was the same. An apprentice followed his master through the practice of direct copy (mu), indirect copy (lin) and imitation (fang), and his achievement was marked by how close his calligraphy or painting was to his master's.

Scientific books were few in number in imperial China and their circulation was limited, in spite of the wide use of printing technique. Many experiments had to re-start from the beginning and the mechanism of technological build-up was never fully systemized until the nineteenth century. For instance, Chinese shipbuilding was advanced in the Sung and was probably the best in the world in the Ming, but the technique died down when the master shipbuilders disappeared with the imperial banning of ocean sails. Cannon building appeared in the Sung and reached a high level in the Ming. But after the Ch'ing government discontinued it for some time, the whole craft was forgotten and people had to relearn it from the beginning. Pi Sheng's invention of movable type was accidentally recorded in detail by Shen Kiuo as part of his literary hobby. After that, we have no detailed record of the movable type production process by other printers who used the

Same technique. This regulated the movable type technique to the same level of the Sung for several hundred years. This conservative feature was a major barrier to scientific development in imperial China.

Chapter 10 But the conservative tradition was effective for moral education, especially when it was combined with the "aggregative" and the "repetitive" features. Through an aggregative approach, meanings were simplified and condensed into set phrases; the correct understanding of the meanings depended on the explanations of experts. Masters would explain their understanding of the phrases to the students, literati would explain to the populace, etc. The explanations were largely repetitions. Only experienced and elder

people were qualified to give explanations, because their understanding was based on what their masters had told them and the earliest masters were the sages, such as

Confucius. Young people could only listen and remember what they were told. In such

a strict hierarchy of educational structure, students were allowed no room for the development of their own imagination and their reasoning was regarded as invalid if they

held a different opinion from their masters. When the conduct of the ancient sages was

erected as the only exemplifying model and the old people in the locale verified through their own experience the correct way to follow the ancient sages, young people were

completely excluded from the realm of knowledge production and their imaginations were

suppressed by the old memories. When the young people grew old, as an old saying

goes that "daughter-in-laws eventually become mother-in-laws", they would do the same to the younger generation. They would repeat the same things with the purpose of

forming the next generation in the way they had been formed with the expectation that

they would educate their children in the same manner. These features formed a

sociocultural mechanism that made the conservative mentality perpetuate itself generation

after generation.

Chapter 10 5. Close to the human lifeworld. As oral societies have no writing technology to categorize and structure knowledge at a distance from lived experience, "oral cultures must conceptualize and verbalize all their knowledge with more or less close reference to the human lifeworld, assimilating the alien, objective world to the more immediate, familiar interaction of human beings." (Ong, 1988: 36) Without writing technology, people of an oral culture cannot think in abstract and neutral terms and know few statistics or facts divorced from human or quasi-human activity. The mentality thus produced is not capable of abstract argumentation, generalization and speculation. An often-used example is that the Inuit have nine terms for different kinds of snow, but they do not have a word

"snow" on an abstract level, signifying all kinds of snow in a general sense. This kind of mentality is a barrier to the development of science and philosophy which demands high- level abstract conceptual thinking.

However, Ong tells only part of the story. Oral tradition has an advantage when it is used the other way around; by using connections to the human world, it can make abstract concepts understandable to the populace, convince them of the validity of the concepts, and make them follow them voluntarily. In Mao Tze-tung's words, the language of the masses should be used for the education of the masses. This was an educational strategy of the ruling authorities in the imperial time. Chinese philosophy never used the terms like "epistemology", for such terms would lead students into endless philosophical reasoning and neglect the political mission of philosophy, which was aimed at the cultivation of correct moral values. Chinese philosophy chose to use terms like "heaven" and "earth" to symbolize the body of knowledge, something that could be seen directly.

Chapter 10 30 1 For the ease of understanding, philosophy books were full of metaphors. Chuang-tzu used the story of a bird to explain his philosophy. Analects was largely a collection of

Confucius' stories and his philosophy was expressed through his comments on daily affairs. This feature was also widely used in political discourse. A minister would start his proposal to the emperor with a story that conveyed a moral and built his point on the basis of the story. A usual start of a proposal was: "I, a minister, have heard such a story that ... (ch'en wen ...) Popular fiction was, in essence, a means of mass education by using stories to bring abstract moral philosophies into the mind of populace. They made philosophy more accessible to the masses so that the masses would have little difficulty in understanding the imposed ideology. This feature of oral discourse confined the mentality of the masses to the concrete level, rendering them unable to produce any opposing ideologies to the court. History shows that in all peasant rebellions, revolt took place against a particular ruler, but never against the political system and social structure.

6. Agonistical tones. In an oral CuhNe, C~t'nm~ni~ati~nmeans personal interaction.

Whatever a person says, it represents his personality. "When all verbal communication must be direct word of mouth, involving in the give-and-take dynamics of sound, interpersonal relations are kept high - both attractions and, even more, antagonisms."

(Ong, 1988: 37-38) As there is no writing technology in an oral society to raise a thought or information to an abstract level, the knower and the known are regarded as one.

Knowledge cannot be impersonalised and disengaged from the arena of interpersonal struggles. If a thought is critical of somebody, it appears that the person with the thought is antagonistic to the other person. If a theory is condemned, the person who holds the

Chapter 10 302 theory should also be condemned because he must have an evil standing in launching the theory.

This feature was observable in the imperial Chinese culture. If a suggestion was not favoured by the emperor, it put the loyalty of the person who suggested it in question.

In Han-fei-tzu's words, it was not important what a person knew, but what, when and how he said or refused to say it. Such a culture made hypocrisy a political virtue and made the language probably the richest among all languages in the world for its flattery words of one's superiors. Emperors were described as Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, four sagely kings in legendary history. Officials were "parents" of their people (fu mu kuan). These expressions were designed by literati and were regarded as a token of their loyalty to the throne. As many emperors, especially the founding ones, won their empires by their bravery on the battlefield, a description of violence was always welcome in both classical and popular literature as a celebration of an emperor's heroic qualities. On the contrary, people whose opinions were not appreciated by the authorities would be condemned, as we have seen in Su Shihls case.

We should recognize that this practice was not entirely based on the policy of "one will" as proposed by Shih-huang-ti in 221 B.C. (see Chapter Two). Confucianist philosophy had many passages that opposing opinions often bore valuable insights and should be listened to. Many emperors also maintained a policy that the court was open to public criticism of its governance. But this oral residue remained as a means to promote hegemony of the court. The stated imperial policy was that people had the

"freedom of speech". However, through classical and popular literature the masses were

Chapter 10 303 taught that their words represented their moral standing and thus they should be cautious when speaking. The logic behind this oral residue was straightforward. As we have seen in Chapter Four, evil opinions could prompt evil behaviour and hence the source of the evil opinions, i.e. the individual, should be treated as an enemy of the public. This feature and the next one to be discussed were often employed in literary inquisition.

7. Empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced. If the previous feature agonistical tones means that a person is placed under suspicion when his knowledge is not accepted by the prevailing power structure, this feature means the reverse. When a person is under suspision, his knowledge is equally under suspicion; or oppositely when a person is honoured, whatever opinion he holds becomes right. "For an oral culture learning or knowing means achieving close, empathetic, communal identification with the known, 'getting with it'." (Ong, 1988: 38) In an oral culture, when a person has some knowledge, he will naturally regard himself as the living image of that knowledge. He cannot set up conditions for "objectivity"; he has no sense of personal disengagement or distancing from that knowledge. When the oldest person in the village says that there was a tree there seventy years ago, any denial of that tree means an accusation that the old person is cheating the public. Consequently, that old person will fight for the validity of his knowledge and regard criticism of his knowledge to be a challenge to his personality. The purpose of his fight is to protect his integrity as a

knowledge producer and hence his monopoly of knowledge production. The residue of this characteristic in a written culture can take a knowledge monopoly on an

overwhelming scale.

Chapter 10 In imperial China, literati, the controllers of the pen and printing, were regarded by the general public as the sole producers of knowledge. The literati thought themselves to be the symbol of philosophy, science, art and social morals. They should be privileged, for they were the personification of the civilization. They could hardly tolerate any challenge to their knowledge or opinions, because it was a challenge of their social status

and their personality. Similarly, the master craftsman, such as a calligrapher or a potter, would claim that he was the symbol of the craft and any challenge to that person would mean a contempt for the craft. Conversely, "evil" person's books could not be allowed to

circulate, no matter what the content of the book was, because the spread of their names

meant a recognition of their personalities, as we have seen in the banning of Ch'en Chi's poetry anthology.

This feature and the previous one, originally based on an oral culture, were

maintained and revered in China long after writing and printing technologies were

established. While many gifted men were jailed or killed for what they wrote and many

literary works were lost because of the political persecution to their authors. However in the main, these two features were used for the ideological control of the state in two ways. First, they were used as a strategy to eliminate political enemies and consolidate the centralized control of thought. Second, by propagating this mentality, the state mobilized the masses in its political campaigns against unorthodox views and those who

held them. When either the views or the persons were labelled "evil", the masses would take their own initiative in resisting the "evil" influence by supervising and reporting the

person's actions or by refusing to print, sell and read their literature.

Chapter 10 8. Homeostatic. Ong says, "Oral societies live very much in a present which keeps itself in equilibrium or homeostasis by sloughing off memories which no longer have present relevance." (Ong, 1988: 39) As there is no written record in oral societies, only the words and happenings that bear meaning in the present context are remembered.

Other things are to be forgotten to reduce the mnemonic load, including the original context for the words and happenings. The context cannot be preserved because sound is "rapid fading". "Sound exists only when it is going out of existence. It is not simply perishable but essentially evanescent, and it is sensed as evanescent." (Ong, 1988: 28)

A repetition, even if it is made immediately after the original statement has been uttered, is no longer based on the original context. When the context is changed, the meaning of the statement may generate a different understanding. This feature moves the examination of the past into the present situation. Goody and Watt (1968) call this phenomenon "direct semantic ratification", i.e. the meaning of a word is based on a real- life situation and will be altered or even vanish when it is no longer related to present, lived experience. Through the mix of the past and the present, the past is reified and what has happened in the past is regarded as the established guide to the future. People like to insist that a wise man has said such and such and we must do accordingly, despite the fact that the wise man lived in the distant past and we have no clues to the context of his sayings. The social effect is that the people who know the old sayings and experiences monopolize knowledge. They can selectively remember and also reconstruct the past and use it to justify current policies. If the masses believe that past experience is always valid, they will naturally accept anything that is cloaked with an aura of history.

Chapter 10 306 Homeostasis is an important characteristic of Chinese thinking and it is embedded in the linguistic structure. The Chinese language has a different verb tense structure from that of Western languages. It uses a number of adverbial words to indicate a difference in time, but they all indicate a relationship with the present time similar to the present perfect tense in English, i.e. he has walked. The lack of a past tense supports a strong continuum of past happenings to present situations. Feng Yu-Ian (1962) attributes this characteristic within the farmers' culture. Farmers have to rely on the weather for their harvest and the weather is often predictable through reference to the past. In the past a certain kind of cloud preceded a storm. When the same cloud appears, farmers must prepare for a storm. Quite often the prediction is accurate. Consequently the past, present and future are mixed in a cyclical manner.

This mentality is reflected in traditional political philosophy. From the political and philosophical perspective, the past is always the model for the future. Confucius wanted to restore the social rituals of the Chou Dynasty and believed they were the best model for state administration. In later dynasties, the restoration of the Chou's rituals became a political mandate and social disorders were regarded as failures in ritual practice. The use of past rituals was a strategy to maintain the status quo. Confucius, in his editing of histories, deleted what he thought unnecessary and elaborated what he felt important.

Then he moved the "edited" past into the present and used it for the legitimation of his political ideals and practice. This tradition continued in the political discourse of later dynasties. The imperial politicians frequently used past happenings and old sayings for the legitimation of their arguments. Their presentations often started with "I have heard

Chapter 10 307 such a story or such a saying that ..." (ch'en wen...) Such an opening was used not only to convince the emperor and fellow politicians, but also to convince the masses about state policies. For instance, through the mix of past, present and future, the masses were taught that good and tough times happened alternately and regularly, so that they should

accept their present living conditions and regard them as a necessary part of cyclical change.

The homeostatic nature of the oral dynamics of Chinese society had a fundamental

impact on the mentality of the literati. As candidates for the civil service examination, they were required to be experts in history from the time of their earliest schooling. They had to bury themselves in the past for the examination to the neglect of the present. They were called "retarded bookworms" (shu-tai-tzu)by non-literati. They did not know the price of a kilo of grain, but they knew the price three hundred years ago. When they became

policy makers, they sought solutions to present problems from their history books. They

did not learn from their training how to investigate Current situations and they shied away

from doing so. They were good at couching their ideas in historical precedent. If their

policies did not address the real situation, the problem lay not in their policies, but in the

situation. It meant that the situation needed to be adjusted or manipulated so that their

policies would work.

The weakness of the "retarded " was obvious and it was widely claimed

that the situation should be improved by changing the basic policies of education.

However, inherent in the logic of the policy/situation dynamic outlined above, was that the

tradition was carried on dynasty after dynasty and the political arena was always

Chapter 10 308 dominated by these "bookworms". The emperor benefited from this weakness for the convenience of his rule. First, it made the bureaucrats vulnerable in political practice and they had to rely on the emperor for support. Second, it left room for the emperor's own political manoeuvring. If policies formed on the basis of past experience were too harsh, the emperor could loosen them a bit as a token of his "benevolence" and he would be seen as even better than the sages. Third, the past could be used as a coercive symbol for the masses. Since the rationale for present policies had been established by past sages, it was unmovable and had to be accepted. Finally, it was highly useful for ideological control.

The mix of the past, present and future confined people's imagination. The constitution of the past was decided by the ruling elite through the standardization of histories, selection of canons and title decisions for printing. The limitation of the "past" was like a political and moral fetter that made the "freedom of thought and speech" an uncashable cheque. There were numerous occasions at which emperors advocated free speech for the general public, but since free speech had to be supported by the pre- determined "past", no anti-traditional ideals or policies could be imagined and designed.

The emancipation of consciousness had to wait until Western bourgeois liberalism and

Marxism brought new paradigms into the Chinese mentality.

9. Situational rather than abstract. This feature is related to the fifth feature. People in an oral society tend to rely on real situations for the understanding of abstract things.

Conversely, oral people tend to draw conceptual analogies from real situations and use them in other situations as standards. Ong notes: "Oral cultures tend to use concepts in

Chapter 10 309 situational, operational frames of reference that are minimally abstract in the sense that they remain close to the living human lifeworld." (Ong, 1988: 41) As there is no written record in an oral culture, oral people have no propensity to analyze the data that have been generated from past experience in a systematic way in order to determine rules on an abstract level. When they need general rules as a guide for their actions, they will recall individual happenings from particular moments and use them as a kind of universal truth. If in the past it rained on a certain day of a season and the rain continued for some time, they will conclude that the weather on that particular day decided the weather in future and base their actions on this rule.

In Ong's opinion, this kind of mentality makes rational thinking difficult to develop.

However, if people were not expected to develop any rational thinking, the constitution of this kind of mentality would be an effective policy. The use of situational cases as symbols of eternal truth has a long tradition in China. The imperial educators believed that to parlay or develop individual cases into moral truths made it easier for students to understand. This practice was somewhat different from that of an oral culture. In an oral culture, general rules are unknown and situational cases are treated as general rules. In other words, people want to find out general rules, but due to their weakness in abstract thinking, they mistakenly use individual cases to invoke general rules.

For imperial Chinese educators, the explanation of the veracity of general rules was suppressed in favour of a limited explanation in terms of situational cases that were taken to be prototypical examples of the correct general rules. When they taught youngsters the Trimetrical Classic and the Twenty-four Ways of Filial Piety (Erh-shih-ssu

Chapter 10 31 0 Hsiao), they would not explain in an abstract way why the percepts like "honour your father and mother" were fundamental for the constitution of a decent man. Instead, they let the youngsters read of Huang Hsiang who knew how to warm the bed of his parents at the age of nine, K'ung Jung who chose to have a small pear and give big pears to his elder brothers, and King Wen who, as a young crown prince, was loyal to his parents.

These men later became important persons in history and brought magnificent symbolic glorification to their families. Thus they personified the general rules by climbing social ladder. Students were not allowed to ask why parental respect and respect of elders were necessarily a precondition for an established man, nor were they allowed to question other rules. What they were expected to do was to practise the abstract concept of filial piety. This feature was also found in popular fiction. The masses were introduced to the general rules of the world by means of popular stories which they took as moral guidance for their actions. The use of situational cases discouraged questioning the validity of the general rules and encouraged people to regard the political principle behind the rules as an absolute truth. When asked why they should think in a particular way, they would provide numerous examples from various classical and popular literature as their support.

The notion of ideological manipulation through the selection and propagation of the situational cases never occurred to them.

LIMITED SPREAD OF LITERACY

Ong has describes the specific features of orality. In applying his paradigm to imperial

Chinese culture, we find that the nature and balance of oral and written discourse in this

Chapter 10 31 1 literate society served to maintain an established power structure. Hence, although strong oral residues caused the slow development of science and technology, they generated political benefits. Those political benefits stood in the way of the development of a full literacy in the sense of conceptual abstract logical linear thinking. Thus it can be argued that although oral and written discourses as different technologies may indeed facilitate different social outcomes, the use of the technologies to foster those outcomes is not inevitable, but is subject to human agency and the desire to bring about social change or, at least, a weak allegiance to maintain the status quo. In imperial China oral features had a sociocultural foundation. For example, nearly ninety percent of the population were farmers who, according to Fung Yu-Ian (1962), tended to think in a cyclical rather than logical manner and the idiographic written characters which were difficult to master; therefore, there was a low level of literacy. However, we should also recognize that there was no ideological foundation to challenge and hence no mechanism to reduce oral residues. On the contrary, these residues were repeatedly reinforced through the use to which writing and printing technologies were put and the manner in which writing (copying and commentary on ancient writings) and printing (woodblock) were organized.

The social effect of oral features was the same as it was for the use of writing and printing technologies, i.e. the monopoly of knowledge production. When the ruling elite propagated Confucius' doctrine that "those who toil with their mind will do the governing", they were not considering an equal competition of intelligence. The oral residues that were reinforced by the educational system achieved a social effect that originality was downgraded and secured leading positions of the elite in politics and culture by defining

Chapter 10 312 mental prowess as facility in applying an established set of ideas that had to be memorized to all manner of situations. The masses as components of the entire oral- residue network could rise in an armed resistance, but their oral-level thinking would not lead them to any new conceptualization of society. They might win an empire on horseback, but they would continue to be ruled by those who toiled with their mind.

The maintenance of oral thinking was dependent on the limited spread of literacy and conceptual thought, a condition Jack Goody (1987) calls "restricted literacy", meaning that the ability to read certain texts was restricted technically and culturally to only a fraction of the population. As part of this restricted literacy, written Chinese gained a mystical power among the population. We have said in Chapter Eight that the mystical power of written language was a constituent of the literati's charisma. The mystical power of written language can be traced to the very early days when it was first used. Smith describes its effect on the illiterate:

Chinese characters had a magical, mystical quality, presumably deriving from their ancient use as inscriptions on oracle bones or on bronze sacrificial vessels ....So venerated was the written word that anything with writing on it could not simply be thrown away but had to be ritually burned. (Smith, 1983: 82)

As written language signified a special relationship with supernatural powers, people worshipped written words and consequently those who knew the words. The idiographic characters also looked like mystical charms. They were seen to embody profound meanings, but only experts could interpret them, just as only religious practitioners could interpret charms. For instance, the word "one" (I), with only one horizontal stroke, carried a variety of meanings: a number, a sequence, the thoroughness,

Chapter 10 313 the uniformness, the original air when the world was first created, the concept of dialectics, the other, a musical note, etc. Even now, no Chinese dictionary has provided a complete definition for this word. The greater the knowledge of the reader, the greater the meaning that could be extracted, much like a literary work in Western literature and the whole school of modernizing art and criticism.

To learn a character was more than knowing which oral pronunciation it represented. It meant learning the whole body of semantic meanings embedded in it. In studying Confucian classics, for instance, the student did not just face the task of recognizing large numbers of characters; rather he was engaged in understanding the wealth of accumulated meanings and associations that a given term had acquired over time. His understanding of the same character would be vastly different from a person who had no classical training. An amateur only saw the word "one" as a quantitative measurement, but a scholar would regard it as the highest goal of spiritual pursuit - by reaching the "oneness" he was merged into nature, his learning became a part of his natural consciousness, etc. In this sense, as each written character had different chosen meanings defined by different sociocultural contexts, the acquisition of those characters was a socialization process. The expert had an understanding of all the semantic meanings associated with the characters and thus he was culturally superior to those who could not read them.

The mystical power of characters made the concept of literacy vastly different from our understanding today. It was much more akin to an Arnoldian sense of culture or the modernist conception of literature and art. Functional literacy, e.g. the ability to do

Chapter 10 31 4 bookkeeping or to read a letter, was not regarded as real literacy. Literacy meant more than being able to handle routine written documents. It meant the ability to read and write in classical style. A literate person was One who could compose literary works with a philosophical use of words, elegant style and with the purpose of the enrichment of literati culture. As we have argued, the two leading styles that a literatus had to master were regulated verse poetry and literary Prose. Other styles, such as informal narratives, miscellaneous notes, recorded tales, songs, folk lyrics and informal letters, were much less important and minor accomplishments of a literatus. Goody argues:

In Chinese writing a minimum of 3,000 such characters have to be learned before one can be reasonably literate and with a repertoire of some 50,000 characters to be mastered, it normally takes about twenty years to reach full literate proficiency. China, therefore, stands as an extreme example of how, when a virtually non-phonetic system of writing becomes sufficiently developed to express a large number of meanings explicitly, only a small and specially trained professional group in the total society can master it, and partake of the literate culture. (Goody, 1968: 36)

Thus the concept of literacy consolidated the monopoly of knowledge by the literati.

The classical style as the standard for literacy was only one of the reasons for the mystical power of Chinese written language. Another important factor was that "Chinese" as a language did not naturally exist. In officialdom and subsequently among the literati, there was a special style of speech. In English it was called "Mandarin", meaning a language spoken by the upper class. This language was not a dialect; it was not anyone's mother tongue. It had to be specially learned and the basis of its existence was the written script. In a way it was like Latin: both were a language that no one spoke as his native language. But in formal occasions and in writing, they were the only languages that were accepted. The pronunciation of Mandarin, although close to the dialect of ,

Chapter 10 315 was basically stipulated artificially and its linguistic structure was entirely based on the written script. The written characters and the Mandarin pronunciation acted as the trans- regional bridge for communications among People of various dialects. The written form of the language represented all kinds of dialects. Two people who had totally different pronunciational systems in their speech were able to understand each other through writing. The oral word and the character representing it embraced two systems, one on the daily conversational level and the other based on semantic significations.

In order to be literate, a person had to start by learning a new language, an artificial and official dialect if you like, and subsequently acquire the associated meanings embodied in this language. This language, wen yen as it was called, in contrast to dialects (fang yen) or "earthly parole" (t'u hua), was erected as the central core of the

Chinese language and only those who had acquired this language could be recognized as literate. As we have noted, a candidate aspiring for a civii position needed to be educated in this particular discourse. His success in mastering the characters in classical style was tested by the civil service examination. He was required to memorize the classical texts, all of which were in classical style, and use them to write out his own essays in the same style. Thus the education in the characters was not an attempt to promote the general ability to read. On the contrary, it was intended to draw a clear line between the elite and the populace and to increase the social distance between the ruling and the ruled. It excluded the participation of the majority and allowed its use only to the cultural elite.

With such a political and cultural orientation, writing and printing technologies bore social limitations. They were not intended for communications in a general sense, but for restricted communication through particular social channels. They were not designed to promote the thinking ability of people in general, but to widen the sociocultural difference between people in dominant positions and those in subordinate positions. lnnis (1962) points out the bias of the Chinese printing press:

With a limited number of words, about 1.500, it was used with extraordinary skill to serve as a medium for a great diversity of spoken languages. But its complexity emphasized the i~portanceof a learned class, the limited influence of public opinion, and the persistence of political and religious institutions. The importance of Confucianism and the classics and worship of the written word led to the invention of devices for accurate reproduction. (Innis, 1962: 18)

If we add the impact of the oral features as discourse into Innis's paradigm, we see a complete political and cultural environment used by the imperial ruling class for the domination of knowledge production. The achievement of literacy was distanced from the majority of the people, a vast space was created for the promotion of oral mentality.

Conversely, an oral mentality further widened the cultural and political distance between the ruling and the ruled. Without any mastery of literate discourse, the subordinates were deprived of the privilege of using writing and printing technologies for their own political and cultural purposes. They operated within an oral discourse and lacked access to a full literacy. Hence their thinking ability was restrained in the generation of new ideas. They worshipped words and books and attained their Chinese Dreams from storytelling, popular literature and classical stories. They never thought that they should take charge of their own consciousness, or construct their own meanings and discover their own voices. They were numb. In this process, printing made its contribution. If people were imprisoned,

Chapter 10 317 printing was one of the walls. As an imperial agent, it performed successful work for the emperor and the ruling elite; it helped monopolize knowledge production and maintain social stability.

Chapter 10 CHAPTER 11

A COMPARISON WITH THE EUROPEAN SITUATION

The fact that the Sung Dynasty witnessed unprecedented development of printing technology was by no means accidental. It was based on and conditioned by the general

social, political, cultural and economic environment. As Gernet points out:

It might well be said that printing came just at the right moment in China, the moment when ever-widening sections of society sought to improve themselves by learning, or perhaps simply hoped to derive from reading the pleasure they had found in listening to tales, anecdotes and poetry. It was in fact due to the rise of the merchant class and to the rapid growth of the lower class urban population that printing, in response to the new needs that resulted, came into such general use. Social change had supplied a justifiable purpose for an invention which might otherwise have passed unnoticed. (Gernet, 1962: 228)

But it seemed that this social environment was only suitable for woodblock printing and unsuitable for the development of movable type. In Mark Elvin's words (1978), the technological progress stopped well before a particular technical element became an

insurmountable obstacle for further development. In order to explore the reasons why

Chinese printing technology continued to rely on the woodblock even after movable type was invented, we will compare the context in which the printing press was invented and how its use began in Europe so as to identify the necessary social conditions for technological progress that were missing from the Chinese context.

LATIN VS. CLASSICAL STYLE

The social conditions in the high Middle Ages, i.e. the two centuries before Gutenberg's

Chapter 11 31 9 invention, and the social conditions in the T'ang and Sung dynasties had many things in

common. Books had appeared hundreds of years before; people were familiar with the

form of books and recognized it as a kind of commodity. A learned language with strict

formality dominated book literature. Book production was by scribal copying and the

extent of functional literacy in vernacular languages was increasing. Working inside

institutions, European medieval writers and scholars produced digests, anthologies and

florilegia in Latin just as their Chinese counterparts compiled encyclopedias, although the

authorization for their versions was not obtained from an emperor, but from the Church, the university or the state. The manuscript books copied by scribes and their mass

production can be traced to the time of Roman Empire. Marjorie Plant has thus describes

book copying in the Roman Empire:

the abundance of slaves specially trained for the work of copying manuscripts would have rendered the printing press unnecessary even had it been known, for it was claimed that a whole edition of a work could be finished within a day of the delivery. The edition ranged as a rule from five hundred to a thousand copies and the only expenses were for the provision of simple writing materials and for the bare maintenance of the slaves. (Plant, 1939: 17)

This scribal tradition continued till the end of the Middle Age in which thousands of friars sold their labour as book copiers in exchange for simple food and shelter. The

earliest form of book was not the Chinese bamboo tablet, but "vollumen" or a parchment or papyrus scroll with writing on only one side. The method of having the leaves held together in quires in the fashion of a modern book appeared in the second century AD., at about the same time that Chinese books took on the same format. Seals were used

in this time, but for over one thousand years no one seemed to have thought of

Chapter 11 320 expanding the seal surface to make a printing block.

AS in imperial China, book content in Europe was made up of standardized texts,

such as laws and religious literature, and the language used, Latin, was not a mother

tongue for any one. In the same way that the Chinese classical style was respected, Latin

was put forward as the only official language of the Church and learning; vernacular

languages were regarded as oral dialects and unsuitable for serious purposes. AS

Havelock points out: "While these vernaculars became the tongues of the common

people, Latin remained the international language of the educated, which meant to a

major extent the officialdom of the Church." (Havelock, 1976: 76) People in officialdom

had to learn at least two languages, one was their mother tongue and the other Latin:

Any member of the governing class reserved his vernacular, whatever it was, for oral use only. He had a second language as his literary language and devoted to this alone the prestige of inscription. (Havelock, 1976: 76)

When John Balliol, king of Scotland, rendered homage to Edward I of in 1292, his words had to be translated and recorded in Latin by the notarial instrument so that the

record could be officially recognized. (Clanchy, 1979: 160) In court trials in England, arguments could be presented in the vernacular, but the court record was taken in Latin.

Once the presentments, in both their French and English oral versions, were accepted by the court, they were recorded in the justices' plea rolls in Latin. Thus, between the justices' written questions being presented initially to the jurors and the final record of the plea roll, the language in use changed at least five times, although it begins and ends with writings in Latin. (Clanchy, 1979: 161)

Because of its authority, facility in Latin was the only criterion of literacy. Such a facility included the ability to read and write andfor the ability to issue documents in Latin.

To some extent, the European definition of literacy was wider than that of the Chinese.

Chapter 11 32 1 Although in both Europe and China literacy denoted a dignitied social status, the Chinese concept required some minimum level of education and that requirement rose to a higher level after the civil service examination was installed. In Europe, in contrast, the notion of literacy could be applied to an illiterate person with high social status, such as nobles and princes, who controlled the power to issue Latin documents but might not be able to read and write Latin themselves.

Like the classical style in China, Latin brought strong oral residues to written texts.

Letters were written primarily for reading aloud. Medieval letters were quasi-public literary documents, written to be collected and publicized in future and intended to be read aloud to more than one person. Model letters were established in formularies with an aim to make letter writing correct and elegant rather than original and spontaneous. Religious books were designed to ease oral preaching. Preachers read Latin text with expressive rhythm to an audience who knew nothing about the language; in doing so a holy atmosphere was conveyed. In monasteries, Latin texts were frequently recited and their rhythmic design facilitated memorization.

The reader and audience of a Latin text might not understand the exact meaning of every word, yet the sound of reading Latin would give them a kind of feeling which they could not obtain by reading in their own languages. The situation was very similar to that in China where reading classical language produced an atmosphere of elite culture, although the reader might not understand exactly what he was reading. Like the political arena in the Chinese imperial court, debates and arguments in monasteries were contests of memorization. Echoing Ong's description (1982) of an oral society, where "you know

Chapter 11 322 what you can recall," friars attempted to demonstrate their knowledge by reciting long passages of holy books. Monastic chronicles are largely the records of dramatic dialogues and speeches.

Traditional monastic reading in particular bore little relation to a modern literate's approach to a book. Lectio was "more a process of rumination rather than reading, directed towards savouring the divine wisdom within a book rather than finding new ideas or information". (Clanchy, 1979: 216-217)

The copying of Latin books was also oral in nature. Often a person read aloud the text and a number of copiers did the copying. Book copying was a demonstration of calligraphy and its process facilitated memorization.

Latin had very rigid formalities just like Chinese classical style, which were deliberately designed to frustrate learners. The difficulty was not only in spelling and grammar, but also, and largely, in the formulatic style. For instance, letter writing in Latin had to be in a specific discourse.

According to the artes dictaminis of the later Middle Ages, a letter should have five parts arranged in logical sequence: the salutation was followed by the exordium, which consisted of some commonplace generality, a proverb, or a scriptural quotation. Then came the narratio, namely, the statement of the particular purpose of the letter, the petitio, deduced from the exordium and narratio, and finally the phrases of conclusion. (Menache, 1990: 16)

This is very similar to the Chinese "eight-part essay" style (pa-ku-wen), the designated style for the civil-service examination, which had strict stipulations for the composition of each paragraph. Writers of Latin were restricted by a formalism similar to

Chinese classical prose (pien wen) writers; they had follow the discipline by fitting words into a pre-set format that did not encourage imagination, but encouraged rhythm and erudition. Chaytor thus describes poetry writing of that time:

Chapter 11 The rules for telling a story had been laid down by the rhetoricians and the composer of narrative poetry was expected to conform to them ....He could complicate his tale with incident and episode or adorn his lyric with ingenious turns of expression and unusual rimes. But genius could not run wild; poetry was a science and inspiration could not replace training and practice. (Chaytor, 1966: 140)

Like Chinese classical style, the dominant position of Latin restricted access to the control of knowledge production and dissemination to only a small group of people.

In China, the classical style was accessible by virtually everyone who wanted to learn. The state encouraged learning and the cost of writing materials was affordable to the ordinary farmer. Children first learned to read classical texts and then learned to compose their own texts in the same style. But in Europe, not everybody was qualified for Latin learning. Writing and reading were separate. Although reading was taught to commoners so that they could read laws and other required documents, writing was regarded as a highly valued craft and was only taught to selected individuals. Writing materials, such as parchment and feather pens, were made so expensive that commoners were economically prevented from entering this realm even if they had the motivation to do so. The imposition of Latin enforced a "restricted literacy" in which the masses were educated only for the sake of receiving knowledge and were excluded from the possibility of producing knowledge.

Like Chinese classical style, the dominance of Latin excluded participation of the populace in state affairs and politics. Latin was the common language for the political elite of different states; it facilitated their communications and isolated the populace within local spheres. The populace were exposed to a standardized education in the discourse of

Latin that attempted to prefigure their moral consciousness according to an established

Chapter 11 324 pattern. They had no opportunity to engage themselves in communications with the authorities or with the people in other geographical areas. Thus a centralized ruling structure was formed through the use of a learned language, in the same way that

Chinese classical style excluded the populace from political communication. As Menache argues:

Until the twelfth century, the use of Latin expressed the separatism inherent in medieval society, which needed an external language, unknown to large sectors of the population, for communication. (Menache, 1990: 11)

Because Latin was used as a solid wall to enforce one-way indoctrination, its collapse was almost instant when the popular voice found its outlet in the printing press.

Latin and the vernacular represented different political forces and there was antagonism between them. Latin was the means and the symbol of the Church's domination and the use of Latin in local kingdoms meant a subordination to the Church's rule. For their political su~ival,local kings and princes had to subdue the local language, because the

Church would regard the legitimation of a local language as a threat to political sovereignty.

After the fall of Rome, the Latin tongue upon the lips of the peoples of the Empire became gradually bowdlerized and broke up to the Romance languages of modern Europe. In Britain and the native speech, allowing for the retention of some common Latin words, displaced Latin altogether. (Havelock, 1976: 76)

Eisenstein thinks that the Bible in the vernacular was much more than a translation. It allowed the emancipation of the suppressed native languages and the consciousness of the people who spoke those languages.

Translation of the Bible into the vernacular languages lent them a new dignity and frequently became the starting point for the development of

Chapter 11 325 natural languages and . (Eisenstein, 1980: 358-359)

The struggle for the acceptance of the vernacular provided a desirable sociocultural condition for the proliferation of the printing press, which produced literature in vernacular languages and decreased the domination of Latin.

In the European context, the choice of language reflected an antagonism between the central power of the Church and local powers; however, that antagonism was obscured in the Chinese context. Since the entire Chinese empire was under one centralized ruler, there was no social space for the emergence or existence of other autonomous political forces each of which might have used its vernacular as a weapon for its legitimation. The vernacular was never recognized as a different "language", but as a string of unofficial pronunciations of the uniform written script. The government officials and local elite of all jurisdictions used the same learned language and it was commonly thought to be embarrassing and ill-bred to speak vernacular on serious occasions. Also, the linguistic similarity between the classical style and the vernacular made alternating between the two languages accessible and commonly done. For most people, the difference between mastery and ignorance of the classical style was like computer literacy and computer illiteracy in modern times.

The mastery of the classical style meant better education and job opportunities, but in the eyes of the people at that time, it did not involve the surrender of their political and cultural dignity. On the contrary, the people who knew the learned language were admired and were supposed to be socially rewarded for their efforts. Printing downgraded the social value of the vernacular by producing massive quantities of texts in classical

Chapter 11 326 style and fundamentally removed the ability to differentiate between the classical and the vernacular in written form. The continuous domination of the classical style perpetuated the authoritative status of the standardized texts in both the state and the civil sectors.

Continuous reproduction of the same texts made movable type an unsuitable, or at least non-advantageous, means of book production.

POLITICAL INSTABILITY

Printing started at a time of political instability in both Europe and China. In China, the struggle between the imperial court, the aristocratic clans, and powerful religious sects came to a fierce level. In Europe, the struggle between the Church, the monarchs, the popular class, and the new bourgeoisie was growing rapidly. Political instability drew each party into the struggle in order to make its voice heard. Printing was the earliest form of portable mass media and was certainly within people's means. In China, the clans compiled and printed genealogies to demonstrate their political background; religious temples printed scriptures and charms in order to attract people and take cultural leadership of the locale. The imperial court printed official histories and calendars for the legitimation of the rule of the new dynasty. The literati, a new social group brought forward by the political scheme of civil society, were busy consolidating their sociocultural status by printing prose, poetry and classics. In Europe, parallel events occurred. The printing of a vernacular Bible challenged the centralized power of the Church. The Stationers'

Company was established in Britain as a state organ to control printing; universities, especially those in France, launched various printing projects and invoked various controls

Chapter 11 327 on printing to maintain their sovereignty (Darnton, 1989). Clandestine publishing of new

1 bourgeois ideas flourished in places like Switzerland that were protected from orthodox I powers (Darnton, 1982).

Printing was a weapon that every political force wanted to control in order to

establish its own text as the most authoritative one, but the different political structures in

China and Europe determined that the outcomes would be different. In China, the state

was the only controlling power of the empire and all other political forces, unlike those in

1 Europe, existed at the pleasure of the state and were by no means autonomous. Politically

I they relied on the state for the legitimation of their status and their survival depended on

I their loyalty to the state. Economically they controlled their property only in name and the 1 emperor had the right to deprive them of everything in their possession if they were I I suspected of being disloyal. Their survival was also vulnerable to shifts in imperial policies. I Religious culture was particularly favoured by the emperors of the Sui and the T'ang who

used Buddhism and Taoism to win popular support. Literati culture assumed a leading

position when the policy of civil society was put in place and the civil examination system

was established. Furthermore, there was a strong moral consensus between the state and 1I I all other political forces, i.e. the masses must be persuaded through moral education or I I I forced by coercive measures to accept their subordinate positions voluntarily. Various political forces fought one another for power, but they were always united in dealing with

the subordinate classes for the consolidation of central rule. The outcome was that the

state gradually gained the full control of printing by using its supreme authority. Other

political forces became auxiliaries of the state and their printing was synthesized into a

Chapter 11 328 standardized voice that sang only the tunes set by the state. They produced the same textbooks, historiographies, religious literature and popular entertainment, and all of them reflected the same set of moral values. Thus printing did not push forward decentralization, but consolidated state centralization in the areas of politics, education, religion and culture. Through producing standardized texts, printing helped bring about stability.

In Europe, the different political forces that had access to the printing press were relatively autonomous. When King Edward Vlll of England authorized the English version of the Bible and Luther produced religious literature in the vernacular, they regarded their actions as a challenge toward the authority of the Church. Each autonomous political force attempted to establish its own standardized text as the Church had done. In religion, the standardized Bible, either in Latin or in the vernacular, was the chief text. In the secular world, the state used laws and regulations to censor unauthorized printing projects:

[Tlhe primary duty of the Stationers' Company was to aid the Government in stamping out sedition, and the Company was given a general right of search for this purpose. Twenty-four searchers were appointed in 1576 to make a weekly inspection of printing-houses and to note what every printer was printing, and for whom, how many apprentices and journeymen he kept, whether he employed any journeymen who were not freemen or brethren, and how many presses he had. Where any infringement of the rules was found, the officers of the Company were authorized to inflict fines and even to seize and destroy type. Twenty-four searchers must have been quite enough to maintain order when the total number of printing-houses did not exceed twenty-three! (Plant, 1939: 144)

Universities laid down various rules to resist the flow of non-standardized texts:

"The stationer who wished to issue a book was obliged to submit it to the university officials, who saw that it was correct and complete and fixed the price of sale." (Chaytor,

Chapter 11 329 1966: 136) But as there was no social mechanism similar to the Chinese civil-service examination to promote single standardized texts in the whole territory, the political decentralization provided opportunities for private printers to test boundaries and a variety of literature thus appeared. In fact, there was no single standardized dominant text. Even the Bible had more than one version because of the work of printers. Readers soon saw a variety of printed literature, such as popular stories, unauthorized religious readings, science, philosophies, poetry, etc, and each piece brought a package of moral values somewhat different from the orthodox. In a situation in which various autonomous political forces co-existed, the variety and quantity of print literature grew steadily and the territory of the standardized texts started to shrink in social, if not physical, space. For instance, universities gradually narrowed their control to only some genres of books:

The universities were not concerned with contemporary belles-lettres, and producers and sellers of these were probably not interfered with, as they did not infringe the monopoly of legal and theological publication. (Chaytor, 1966: 136)

The printing press pushed forward political decentralization and that decentralization led to more rapid development of book production in variety, speed and quality. With the help of the printing press, the political instability in Europe became more and more serious through which, as Eisenstein claims, democracy and freedom of the press started to be seen.

RELIGIOUS PUBLISHING

Both in Europe and China, the spread of printing was first used to spread religion and it went hand in hand with religious reform - the Buddhist reform in the Tang Dynasty and

Chapter 11 330 Luther's reform in Germany. Both reforms were followed by a widespread use of printing aimed at the popularization of religious scripts. Both used many pictures and large typeface to help the illiterate understand the content of the books. For the people outside

Chinese temples, religious books were not regarded as something to be read, but as a charm for worship and prayers. In Europe, broadsheets were the early printed form of religious texts and they included many pictures. Luther's catechism and devotional book were also intended largely for oral purposes. (Burke, 1978: 260) Tobin Nellhaus finds that

Western woodblock-printed books, which CO-existedwith movable type for some time, were basically the same in format as Chinese religious books. (Hindman, 1991: 294) Colin

Clair notes that in Europe "the aim of the early block-books was to make the teachings of the Church plain and profitable to illiterates and illustrations were the main feature...t he only reason such books survived was by reason of their cheapness." (Clair, 1976: 5-6)

However, the causal factors for the proliferation of religious literature in Europe were different. Christianity was the state religion in Europe and its impact penetrated political institutions, economic structures and cultural spheres. The Church was the centre of communications for politics and religion. Book production and distribution were centred in monasteries where books were secured with chains and locks to prevent public access.

This created immense public curiosity and demand for books. When the printing press addressed that demand by supplying thousands of copies of the Bible and many other religious readings, the Church's monopoly of knowledge was shattered and there was widespread public celebration of the freedom to possess books. The printing press thus became the key element in a communications revolution. In China, by contrast, religion

Chapter 11 33 1 was never as powerful as the European Church. Religion as a social institution was always subservient to the state; its ups and downs were almost entirely decided by imperial policies. Temples were never the main producer of religious books, nor centres of learning. When the state found that a religion was useful to its rule, it would use state resources to print its literature and disseminate it throughout the country. Religious books were never locked up and the public had free access to them.

When printers started to produce religious literature in huge quantities, whether

Buddhism or Taoism, the public took it as the blessing of the state; they were not surprised by the sudden proliferation of religious literature, because they had seen it and even possessed it in manuscript form. Thus we see two models for the spread of religious literature through printing. The European model derived from public curiosity and hunger for books. The demand for religious books in Europe can be seen as a public attempt to spiritual emancipation; however, in China the spread of religious texts in printed form in

China was a means of state propaganda and an imposition of mass education. Their social outcomes were different: the European events freed knowledge production from the monopoly of the Church and established a new mentality among the public, while in China the state authority further strengthened its control over knowledge production and helped maintain a docile public mentality.

The Chinese state did not loosen its control of textual literature when it disseminated large quantities of religious literature to the public. Control was not placed on the possession of books, but rather on the comprehension of books. Chinese religious literature in the classical style contained many strange strings of words, largely phonetic

Chapter 11 332 of Sanskrit, that only experts could understand. When the public could control only the physical book but not the Content, a worship of words was developed and a sense of mental inferiority was cultivated among the public. The more that books were printed and disseminated, the deeper such feelings were generated. Thus the state successfully used the spread of books to consolidate its spiritual monopoly. European religious literature was different. The Bible was basically a series of stories and advice; the public had little difficulty in understanding them once the Bible was printed in their vernacular languages. The only defences the Church had to protect its monopoly were the technology of book making and Latin. The monopoly was fundamentally undermined when the printing press spread to the secular populace and the authority of Latin was displaced by the vernacular. The religious literature published by the civil printing press, such as

Luther's catechism, was written in a simple style and thus received immediate public appreciatidn. The ease of comprehension provided an open space for free interpretation and use of religious literature.

INSTITUTIONAL PRINTING

In both Europe and China, printing started in the private sector and then became institutionalized. However, in Europe, institutional (i.e. state, church and university) and popular printing competed with each other, whereas in China state printing dominated the entire publishing spectrum. European printing shops started by producing the Bible and other religious readings. Fust, a merchant and the financial sponsor of Gutenberg's technique, tried to sell his Bible outside the university and barely escaped with his life.

Chapter 11 333 (Eisenstein, 1980: 49-50) Seeing the power of printing, institutions gradually shifted their policies from the mere banning of printing to establishing their own printing presses. The

Church, the university and the state began to adopt printing in order to produce their own documents. Propaganda wars among different institutions followed.

It was the same case in China. Although we have no official record of how printing started in private sector, it is assumed that printing first appeared in Ssu-ch'uan before the

T'ang Dynasty and the products were calendars and fortune-telling books. The imperial court first tried to ban civil printing practice, but gradually it realized that it could use printing for its own purposes. China, however, did not see a propaganda war. The state soon became the dominant publisher of the empire and contracted printing projects to the private sector. The scale of Chinese state publishing was far larger than that of European authorities. European authorities were largely concerned with the publication of their own areas, for example, religious scriptures, university textbooks and state documents. They limited their influence to mainly urban areas Burke, 1978: 159). Private printers were left with abundant markets, especially in vernacular languages, for their own books. Whereas

China was a unitary and monolithic political organization, in Europe, competitive nation- states created a de facto decentralization and multiplicity and rivalry of political power helped open up the possibilities for printing. Switzerland experienced a flourishing trade in printing books that had been banned in France (Darnton, 1982). Eisenstein describes the role of printing in Luther's Reformation:

The reformers were aware that the printing press was useful to their cause ... Luther, himself, describes printing as "God's highest and extremest act of grace, whereby the business of the Gospel is driven forward." (Eisenstein, 1980: 309)

Chapter 11 In contrast, the Chinese state's publishing apparatus encompassed almost all areas of literature. In the Sung, the imperial court categorized its books into twelve groups in the imperial index T'ung-chi-yi-wen-lueh, from which we can see the spectrum of state printing:

1. Classics: the four books and five classics. 2. Rituals and ceremonies. 3. Music: music theories, song books, art of various musical instruments, and dance. 4. Primary learning: rudimentary textbooks, dictionaries and explanations of the classics. 5. History: standard histories, chronologies, biographies, genealogies, , government hierarchies, daily records of the court, and criminal law. Philosophy: Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism, Motism, Ming, Shih, military philosophies, agriculture, and so on. Astronomy: astronomy, calendars and mathematics. Five Elements: Yin-yang, fortune-telling, and so on. Art: swordsmanship, horsemanship, painting, bibliography, and various games. Medicine: Diagnosis, prescription, treatment, internal organs, gynaecology, paediatrics, and so on. Encyclopedias. Literature: Literary anthologies, poetry, inscription, essays, prose, court proposals, commentaries, imperial decrees, government documents, law cases, etc. (Lu, 1986: 151-152)

Such wide coverage extended far beyond the role of the European state.

Furthermore, the Chinese state produced various social mechanisms, especially the civil- service examination, for the promotion of the state-produced books and it encouraged private printers to reproduce them. Private printers were basically branch plant operations of the state. They printed state title, because this meant guaranteed sales to schools and other institutions. They printed large quantities in the classical style and had no desire to develop texts in the vernacular spoken in their locale, because such books would not sell.

Chapter 11 335 The integration of private printers into the state mechanism helped to merge high culture and popular culture in rural areas. Private printers brought the state message to villagers and collected folk arts and stories for standardization by imperial editors. The popular class was not excluded from high culture. On the contrary, they were educated to appreciate poems, history and philosophy attending through oral readings. They were also encouraged to join high culture by taking up Confucian education for the civil-service examination and listening to historical stories. Books were never a rare commodity; almost every household in rural villages possessed printed matter. If the populace did not read, it was not because they were deprived of the right to read or because they could not afford books, but because they felt it a waste of time to learn to read if they did not intend to sit for the examination. With a minimum number of 5,000 characters to learn, plus various conventions of language, it was a time-consuming matter. Yet, even as non- readers, they were still influenced by state books by attending storytelling and theatrical performances in the marketplace, which were based on the standardized texts produced by either the state or private printers. Thus the shadow of state printing was omnipresent; there was no space for an individual printer to compete with the state publisher.

With the increase of publishing power of the authorities, much of the wisdoms of the past became lost. In medieval Europe, monasteries, universities and states as the only book producers acted as censors of knowledge production. Through their selection, editing and copying of books, only preferred knowledge was preserved. Eisenstein describes:

When one portion of antiquity was retrieved, another was likely to slip away. The effort to recover all of Aristotle, as well as Euclid, Galen, Ptolemy and Roman law was at the expense of other parts of antiquity. While Hellenistic astronomy was being discovered, the names and attributes of the Greek

Chapter 11 336 gods were being lost. (Eisenstein, 1980: 214)

The same happened in China, as we have seen in the chapter of state printing. However, in Europe the growth of private printing presses effectively resisted the authorities' intervention; hence, much lost wisdom was recovered and restored. Graff thus describes the Renaissance, in which the printing press played an important role:

Roman and Greek ideas interplayed with and challenged the Hebrew Scriptures and Christian New Testament. These elements also mixed with the scholarship and science of the Arab world.... Glosses and expounding on texts, with the conviction that a scholastic dialectic would lead them to the truth, were raised to an art. (Graff, 1987: 109)

This renaissance was obscured in the Sung Dynasty. Although the Sung saw a restoration of early Confucianism, the primary concern was not to produce a variety of texts for comparative study, but to establish new standardized texts in a more suitable framework. In doing so, some schools of Confucianist studies were preserved and others were buried; Confucianism was promoted and other philosophies were neglected. In the same way that the European medieval authorities conducted their active interference, the

Chinese state decided what would be preserved or ignored depending on the ideological purpose served. The use of printing technology made their screening and censorship more efficient. By following state policies, Chinese private printers helped bury officially unwanted ideas by flooding the market with standardized books. Their lack of political and cultural independence prevented their printing from making any significant contributions to social transformation.

Chapter 11 WOODBLOCK VERSUS MOVABLE TYPE

Both China and Europe started their printing technology from woodblock printing, but their

different sociopolitical situations encouraged different technological developments. In

woodblock printing, once a word was carved, it was difficult to remove or change it. We

have seen in previous chapters how the Chinese state used this advantage of woodblock

printing to propagate its texts. In Europe, woodblock printing was used primarily for

religious broadsheets - a kind of standardized text for the propagation of the Church's

doctrines. But, interestingly, we have no record that any attempt was made to produce the

Bible by woodblock printing in the way the Chinese state produced Confucianist classics.

The technical difficulty was that the Bible was more lengthy than and

letter-carving was probably more difficult than character-carving. But when we think of the

immense labour and financial control engaged in by the Church in book copying, the

difficulty was not insurmountable. The real reason was that the Church did not want the

public to have free access to the holy book; it expected that through the strict control of the availability of the book and the language used for the text, its monopoly as the

mediating institution between God and man would prevail. They too wished to preserve orality by restricting access to books.

In the same way that the Chinese state rejected movable type, the Church rejected woodblock printing technology equally for political purposes. But when secular printing began producing thousands of copies of the Bible in vernacular languages, the Church found all its efforts to control book supply futile and useless. However, we should not over- emphasize the contribution of printing technology to the collapse of the Church's

Chapter 11 338 monopoly. Even if the Church could have fully employed woodblock printing for the mass production of its standardized texts, such as the Bible, the political and social environment had decided that the Church's domination was bound to wane as a result of political and social trends in Europe. The rapid technological transition from woodblock printing to movable type in Europe and the persistence of woodblock printing in China were responses to social realities.

The changes in typefaces in Europe and in China reveal how the different realities of the two societies were catered to by printing. When printing started in China and

Europe, in both woodblock or movable type, the typeface was close to written script. In

Europe,

[tlhe first books (usually termed incunabula) looked just like manuscripts. Some have suggested that that was to deceive the buyer who distrusted the new mechanical process, or that it was an effort to 'pass off' printed books as manuscripts to avoid arousing the unwelcome attention of copyists and their guilds who feared for their monopolies. (Graff, 1987: 1 1 1)

Paul Heyer argues:

[Tlhe first printed books were attempts to recapture the content and form deployed in the previous manuscripts.... In the case of print, and with subsequent media as well, information was first processed along familiar and conventional lines that did not fully maximize the potential of the new technology. (Heyer, 1988: 150-151 )

But with the coming of industrialization and the growth of popular culture, classical typefaces were replaced by modern roman letters. Book buyers began to regard reading as the primary purpose of book purchasing and the need for typefaces that were legible gradually outweighed the prestige of the handwritten image. As early entrepreneurs, printers swiftly adapted their product to the new market demands and a number of new

Chapter 11 339 typefaces appeared fifty years after Gutenberg's invention, such as Bembo (1 493), Aldine

(1495), Granjon (1495) and Aldus (1499). In China, however, the tradition of the manuscript image continued until the nineteenth century. The characters of woodblocks and movable type were first handwritten by calligraphers and then carved. Therefore, the traditional Chinese printed books closely resembled manuscript books and printers put a high priority on the art of calligraphy in their book production. The basic reason for the continuation of handwritten style was its connection to high culture. It emphasized the book as a piece of art for the literati's appreciation rather than as a vehicle for textual communication.

The change in typeface reflected different aspects and attitudes toward book possession. In China and Europe, the possession of books was regarded as a symbol of a person's social and cultural status. Prestigious families would demonstrate their collection of beautifully-made books in the living room and, as book prices were expensive before printing was invented, the possession of a large quantity of books indicated considerable wealth. However, in Europe, the printing press gradually led to cheaper books and hence a wider audience and group of purchasers. Books ceased to be the exclusive possession of the socially privileged class and the mystique of the written word died down with the increase in the number of readers. Chartier thinks that there were two kinds of printed books, one for the wealthy and well-educated families and the other for the curiosity of the common people (Chartier, 1987: 818-1 99) It was a fact that publishers continued to produce deluxe editions to cater to rich buyers, but the printing press substantially altered the purpose of book purchasing from the demonstration of wealth to

Chapter 11 340 actual reading, thus weakening the symbolic element of book possession.

In China, however, printing in manuscript-book style further strengthened the

position of books within the realm of high culture. The literati regarded the possession of

books as the hallmark of their status. Local elites and merchants liked to demonstrate the

quantity and quality of their book collection as a status symbol and class icons. There

were books for the populace, such as calendars and religious charms, but these

publications were not real books and their social prestige was far lower than the classics

and historiographies with their elegant calligraphy and binding. The symbolic meaning of

classical books was not limited to their high cost, but included their mystical words and the aesthetics of their design. While the European printing press gradually promoted

reading and mass literacy, Chinese printing strengthened "restricted literacy" and further widened the gap between the elite and the populace.

Some Western scholars have categorized woodblock printed books as manuscript books and hence part of oral culture, because they were produced primarily not for silent reading, but for reading aloud. Clanchy thus describes the effect of European manuscript books and woodblock books:

As long as all writings were manuscripts, that is, as long as they were made exclusively by hand, old habits of mind persisted. Throughout the Middle Ages the writer remained a visual artist and the reader a specialist in the spoken work. Medieval reading (lectio) was primarily something heard rather than seen until the invention of printing, and writing (scriptura) often continued to be admired for its calligraphy rather than its textual accuracy. The laity were gradually coaxed towards literacy by ensuring that it changed the old ways of hearing and seeing as little as possible. (Clanchy, 1979: 230)

Because reading aloud allowed no time for the listener to contemplate the logic of

Chapter 11 34 1 arguments, many of the modern requirements for logical argumentation were superfluous.

This made scientific writing in the medieval ages largely unscientific - no index, no source

of reference, no clear methodology to support any facts, and many arbitrary assumptions.

McLuhan explains that this was because mnuscript books belonged to the producer-

oriented culture, i.e. books were written for the writer's own self-entertainment rather than

for serving readers. (McLuhan, 1962: 131) This unscientific tradition changed soon after

the printing press came into wide use. Readers of printed books learned to concentrate

more and more on silent reading; in their contemplation of the written word they were no

longer satisfied with groundless assumptions and arbitrary statements.

BY comparison, Chinese manuscript books had strong oral residues and large

numbers of assumptions were introduced without adequate explanation and support. This

tendency continued in woodblock and movable type printing. Printing spread this

unscientific tradition to wider territory and readers of printed books continued to regard the

text merely as a source for memorization and chanting. In other words, while the

European printing press helped society make the change from oral culture to written

culture, the Chinese printing press reinforced the oral tendency. The contrast between the

European and Chinese situations suggests that the social environment must be

considered and, indeed, must be given considerable weight in accounting for the evolution to literate culture.

Chapter 11 342 printing. For both, the primary concern was not to protect the euthor's interest but to use it as a method of controlling publishing. Without copyright, those who copied the text could add or delete anything as he copied; there was no payment to the author when the copied book was sold for a profit. Sometimes even the author's name was omitted and the reader only knew that the book was written by a certain monastery or temple. In an age when only a few "sages" dominated the whole realm of knowledge production, individual authorship was unimportant to the reader. In Britain, the statute of Anne in 1710 was originally intended to authorize the Stationers' Company to control book publication. The

Imperial Academy of the Sung issued decrees in the eleventh century that its editions should not be copied without permission from the Academy.

However, copyright protection in Europe gradually developed in the eighteenth century into the protection of an author's intellectual property with economic consequences. In China, protection continued to focus on the accuracy of reproduction.

The author's economic interest was neglected. This difference can be related to the difference in two social systems. In Europe, the printing press was established on the basis of a social system in which private property was recognised and protected by law.

The concept of material property laid the foundation for the respect of intellectual property.

When authors saw that their production of ideas in material form could generate profits in book form just as the producer of shoes did in the marketplace, they naturally asked for a share in the profits; it was not a surprise to the printer that payment should be made to the author, without whom the whole project was impossible. Gradually, this concept became a standard behaviourial code of trade and was legally codified in many countries

Chapter 11 343 soon afterwards.

In China, the concept of copyright paid no attention to the economic interests of the

author for two reasons. First, since everything under heaven belonged to the emperor,

nobody could claim absolute right to his private property and the lack of a concept of

property rights created a vacuum for chms for economic benefit from the production of

ideas. Second, under the policy of mass production of standardized texts, there was no

room for the recognition of individual idea production. An author started his career by receiving a standardized education. After learning all the teachings of ancient masters, he would synthesize them and provide his explanations in a pre-established discourse. Then his work would be scrutinized and polished by the imperial editors and the state would produce his book if it was thought worthwhile to be carved in woodblocks. His reward for his contribution to the development of standardized texts was government titles and good pensions, but he had no right to claim that he originated the ideas in his book and he deserved financial benefit from book sales.

Furthermore, the author was not supposed to bargain with the state like a businessman. His classical education was a privilege given by the state and his degree was the personal favour of the emperor. His position was to be grateful to the state for giving him the opportunity for education. The fruit of the education, i.e. his book, was a repayment to the state. Socially, his book was for the education of the public, i.e. for the

"community goodN, and his privileged position was based on the moral consensus achieved by the education system as a whole. Economically, scholarly writing was a duty of scholar-officials and his government salary had allowed him to write his book. In

Chapter 11 344 modern terms, we might be regard such a book as a salaried, sommissioned work. From a literary point of view, his book was a "collective" work. Since he did not pay for his extensive quotations and for the editors' efforts to standardize it, he should not be paid for other people using his book. Ac?ually,there was little incentive for the author to claim his economic right. Most authors were literati from well-off families and they were more concerned with the establishment of their names than payment for using their books. They were only too eager to let printers produce their books so that they would have a chance to win social appreciation; it would be foolish to stop publication because of limited economic interest from book sales. If a book could win an official title for an author, the reward would be far more substantial. What authors wanted was that their books should be accurately and elegantly produced, for a bad printing would harm their reputation.

From the state's perspective, the lack of copyright protection to authors was a cultural and legal necessity for the imperial policy. Respect for the author's rights would only generate political inconvenience - the state editors would not be able to change the text freely according to their political mandate. When standardized texts were established, the state expected the widest use of the texts and a fee to the author based on book sales would have been an unnecessary complication and meant an excessive financial load for potential book users. Thus history Saw two OU~CO~~Srelated to copyright protection. In Europe, the recognition of private intellectual property promoted the spread and variety of books and was associated with the rise of new concepts like individualism, capitalism, and democracy. In the Chinese context, the lack of protection was not a barrier to the production and dissemination of books. Rather it Was part of the imposition of a

Chapter 11 345 collective moral mentality and the centralized control of knowledge production through the empire.

THE SEPARATION BETWEEN PRINTER AND PUBLISHER

In both Europe and China, printing started as an enterprise that combined printing and publishing as the same person. The printer would choose his titles, do the editing, decide the print run, bear the cost, and take the financial risk. Also, both European and Chinese printing started to proliferate in a general atmosphere of commercialization and urbanization. Both stayed in or close to urban areas where men of letters concentrated.

Gutenberg's press was established in , a large commercial city at that time. After him many printing presses appeared in the cities of Germany, Italy, France and England.

Similarly, Chinese presses concentrated in or Were close to capital cities of the empire and of various provinces. In cities, printers could have better access to the source of manuscripts and potential customers.

In Europe, publishers and printers started to separate into two professions in the eighteenth century, while in China they remained amalgamated until the end of the last century. In Europe, when the demand for printing quality and speed increased, printing became an independent craft. A professional printer needed sophisticated knowledge of various technical aspects and needed capital for the employment of skilled workers and for printing equipment. At the same time, finding saleable manuscripts and making the financial commitment to new title development became a separate expertise. It required familiarity with current trends of public reading, the writing market and the network of

Chapter 11 346 bookselling. The publisher

adept in the handling of machines and marketing products even while editing texts, founding learned societies, promoting artists and authors, advancing new forms of data collection and diverse branches of erudite disciplines. (Eisenstein, 1980: 250)

With the expansion of readership and the scale of book production, a single person could

not undertake such diverse tasks. Thus a separation of the trade ensued; the publisher

became the investor in particular books and the printer became the investor in printing

equipment.

In China, the Sung Dynasty saw commercialization and a market economy similar

to that of Europe. Printing was developed into a special trade. However, publishers who

were responsible for investment in title development and booksale never emerged. The

main reason for this was that there was no need to search for authors and obtain new titles. The best-selling books were the textbooks for the examination and the text was already standardized by the imperial court. Once the woodblocks for a correct edition were made, the financial return was almost guaranteed. A printer's job was to take good care of his woodblocks, which could last over several generations. What a printer needed was a scholar who could tell him what editions of the classics were the best and where he could possibly find them to copy. Although some literati printers developed their own titles, they did not expect to make a living through book printing and it was largely an investment in their cultural image rather than in a market opportunity. In fact, the concepr of

"publisher" did not exist in China until modern times. In the imperial time, publishing meant publishing reprints with, at best, some editorial changes for the errors in previous editions.

As a result, although certain social and market conditions were similar as in Europe and

Chapter 11 347 China, such as similar printing technology and similar reader demand, other conditions, i.e., the nature of the market demand and the choice process in printing, prevented

Chinese printers from becoming capitalist publishers.

European and Chinese printing started in circumstances that had some elements in common, but because of their differences, the technology developed in different directions and therefore brought different social results. Bookmaking in both Europe and

China began as an extension of a monopoly of knowledge production. However, the attendant social conditions in Europe fostered its emancipation from the old regime.

Consequently a new era started.

In China, the established knowledge monopoly did not encounter the same challenge and thus printing extended the traditional organization of the existing monopoly.

In other words, different social contexts affected the use to which the technology was put and hence the impact of technological development. Whereas woodblock printing in China suited the organization of knowledge production and experienced rapid proliferation, movable type was relatively superfluous and languished for the next several hundred years. Looked at slightly differently, in Europe, woodblock printing was substantially neglected when it was first invented. Arguably, movable type might have been abandoned in the same way if it had been invented before the fifteenth century. The printing press was a creature of the social conditions of its time and produced a series of social outcomes that Gutenberg's generation could never foresee.

Chapter 11 CHAPTER 12

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION: PRINTING AS A SOCIOCULTURAL PRODUCT

A history of Chinese printing can be regarded as a history of the monopoly of knowledge production. A study of this history can lead us to the conclusion that in a given social context, the development of cornmunications technology fulfils the function of maintaining or even consolidating a monolithic regime. The case study of Chinese printing in the Sung

Dynasty shows that technological progress may not necessarily bring social progress. On the contrary, because technology is designed by human beings and its use is subject to human agency, it can bring the opposite outcome. When a technology is invented and is found unsuitable for the social conditions, such as movable type in China, it can be abandoned.

In the second chapter, we saw that imperial control over the monopoly of knowledge production was established and practised long before printing was invented.

The major device used to maintain this monopoly was the establishment of standardized texts, such as those carved on metal utensils and those carved on stone tablets. The state built a variety of institutions that enforced the use of standardized texts, including schools, rituals and calendars. The purpose of the propagation of the standardized texts was to facilitate ideological indoctrination. Printing, a technique derived from rubbing and seals, extended the use of technology to maintain the state's monopoly of knowledge.

Printing was not regarded as any kind of technical revolution, nor used for radically different purposes, but rather, in the eyes of imperial rulers and in the realities of China,

Chapter 12 349 a more convenient way for the spread of standardized texts.

In the third chapter, we explored why printing experienced a rapid development in the Sung Dynasty. The basic reason was that the state embraced a policy of developing a civil society in which civil officials rather than military men or hereditary clans were placed in control of the government. Civil society required that a large number of personnel, who were unencumbered by military or clan connections, should be recruited into the government hierarchy and hence an examination system was installed. The content of the examination was the standardized texts that were stipulated by the state.

The resulting demand for standardized educational texts in schools greatly spurred the development of printing and the state seized this opportunity to make itself the largest printer of the empire.

At the same time, the Sung Dynasty saw the unprecedented development of commerce, urbanization and popular culture. This allowed printers, both state and civil ones, to build their plants in cities and towns where schools and marketplaces were concentrated so that their financial return was somewhat guaranteed and their supplies and products could be transported in a timely fashion through the newly-constructed canals and roads. Although the technique of printing had appeared several hundred years before the Sung, it was in the Sung that an ideal environment was formed to facilitate its growth.

The fourth chapter explains why the Chinese ruling class took the establishment of standardized texts so seriously by examining the basic content and the basic role of the standardized texts, i.e. Confucianism, and the major channel through which the texts

Chapter 12 350 were institutionalized, i.e. the civil-service examination. Confucianism as a political philosophy and the state ideology advocated that an empire could not be ruled merely by coercion, but could be ruled by political persuasion and the moral education of the general populace. Confucian persuasion started with "love" Oen) and the "love" was embedded in the "way of nature" (Tao). The social relationship in the "love", which was only understood by the sages, created a familial structure with the sages at the top; they had the responsibility of educating people in how they should practise "love" according to pre-determined social relations. The standard of practice was codified in the

"rectification of names" (cheng ming). The essence of moral education was to let the masses consciously merge their thinking into the established discourse and the social reward for their moral adaptation was the rise in social status and consequently the enjoyment of a larger share of the wealth distribution through the civil-service examination. In the process of moral education of the populace, books such as the

"media of indoctrination" (Johnson, 1985: 47) played a fundamental role and printing as the means of book production necessarily received substantial attention from the state.

It can be said that book production was an integral part of the hegemonic plan of the ruling class.

Chapter Five explored the extent of state printing. The primary task of the state was to assume editorial control and decide what texts could be used and what changes or deletions should be made from the imperial political and educational perspectives. The editorial work was mainly undertaken by the central government and its major concerns were canons, commentaries, histories and calendars. The intent of this editorial function

Chapter 12 35 1 was to ensure that people would read designated canons, understand them from within a pre-determined discourse through the commentaries, and verify them through case histories that were chosen and manipulated by imperial editors. The Sung also included popular literature in its editorial list by compiling encyclopedias. With the immense state- printing apparatus, chosen texts flooded the market and unchosen ones were soon forgotten.

The state-printing apparatus consisted of not only central government, but also local governments that worked largely as reprinting centres for the texts that were standardized by the central government. Meanwhile, since only standardized texts were used in schools as the basis for preparation for the examination, market imperatives enticed civil printers to print standardized texts. The Sung state had a sense of "copyright" already, but it was not for economic purposes. The state's requirement for copying was " that civil printers would reproduce the standardized texts free on the condition that the reproduction was accurate. The propagation of standardized texts made woodblock printing an ideal means of production and movable type, though invented, was unsuitable for the market, because reprinting of established versions of texts was much preferred over the production of new texts. Based on the imperial publishing plan, book production throughout the empire was organized into a network in which a small number of people selected and edited the texts according to the imperial mandate. All printers, whether state or civil, undertook the reprinting.

When the state promoted some kinds of books, it necessarily prohibited other kinds of books. In the sixth chapter, we explored book banning from a historical perspective.

Chapter 12 352 In the millennium from the Ch'in Dynasty to the Sung Dynasty, book banning orders were frequent and it was largely from these orders that we know when printing techniques first started in China. The reasons for book banning were always political, no matter whether the books were scientific books, such as astronomy, or scholarly books, such as histories.

In the Sung, with the spread of printed books, a new kind of persecution appeared, i.e. the literary inquisition. A book could be banned because its author was thought to be disloyal to the court, or an author or printer could be persecuted because a book was thought to be detrimental to imperial rule. The rationale behind book banning was that the spread of an idea could prompt wrong actions. Books with unorthodox viewpoints had to be banned and their authors and printers prosecuted, because their existence was eternally harmful to the stability of imperial rule.

From this and the previous chapter, we can see how the imperial monopoly of book production was strategically organized. On the one hand, the state designed and printed in large quantities standardized texts and the examination system acted as a coercive force to impose these readings; on the other hand, the court used its editorial force to change or delete unwanted texts and used state power to ban such books in the marketplace. The court expected that through such a strategy, the Confucian ideal of moral education of the masses would be realized and the court's cultural leadership position would be maintained.

After an examination of the State control of book production, we turned in the seventh chapter to the people who undertook book writing and printing, i.e. the literati.

The literati included scholar-officials, scholar-commoners and some non-scholars. It was

Chapter 12 353 by them and for them that books were written and produced. eooks were an important symbolic mark of their cultural identity. The literati played a dual role of supporting and propagating the policies of the imperial class. Their political reliance on imperial rule for their political and cultural existence confirmed that their fundamental loyalty lay to the court and that their own voice was weak. They used Confucianist moral standards to check imperial policies and practice and, as a result, they acted as representatives of public opinion in the political arena. Their cultural products, i.e. books, reflected their dual role. They actively engaged in the standardization of texts for moral education of masses; meanwhile, they wrote and printed their own essays and prose to express their dissatisfaction with imperial rule. Because the "public opinion" that they represented was actually the opinion of fellow literati, they could not reflect the real voice of the general public and their books unavoidably favoured the ideology of the imperial court. When printing was almost entirely controlled by this group of people, the political discourse of books was pre-determined.

Literati as a new social group in the Sung Dynasty generated a new literati culture.

Book writing, printing and collection were, among other things, a materialization of this culture, as explained in Chapter Eight. Woodblock printing was preferred over movable type by the literati, because, from an artistic perspective, woodblock printing encompassed the arts of calligraphy, painting and seal carving and it better represented the values of literati culture. Through this materialization, literati could differentiate themselves from other social groups and therefore maintain their unique cultural identity.

For the literati families who had no degree holders, the possession of books could serve

Chapter 12 354 as an indicator that these families still remained within the litcrati circle and thus they could assume cultural leadership of the locality, such as conducting civil rituals and rudimentary schools. The literati were often willing to invest heavily in book production and collection. In addition to using books as a symbolic mark of their cultural identity, there were two other reasons. First, books were not forbidden in the imperial symbolic order in which the possession of material objects had to correspond to the social hierarchy, so that printing and collecting books were good ways to preserve private wealth. When the woodblocks of a canon were carved, they could be reused repeatedly and generate income. Rare books could have good market value and could be readily sold in the marketplace. Second, as the imperial court often issued edicts to collect books for the imperial library, donors of books were likely to receive imperial appreciation or even promotion.

Literati culture was not limited to literati. It permeated into all sectors of the society, including the illiterate and the people in remote places. An important channel for the dissemination of literati culture was pop~larliterature and books were an important vehicle in the process of that dissemination. In Chapter Nine, we examined the political discourse of popular literature in the paradigm of the "Chinese Dream" and the function of books in the spread of popular literature. Pop~larliterature, such as narratives and lyrics, was originally both written and consumed by literati. In the Sung Dynasty, with the rapid expansion of urban areas and marketplaces, popular entertainment became common.

Storytellers, most of them literati without degrees, read stories to illiterate audiences and theatrical groups performed the stories on the stage. Most of the stories were based on

Chapter 12 355 standard histories or other standardized texts and they all conveyed the same message:

endure hardship and become a man above men. Through popular entertainment, the

audience, whether literate or illiterate, was influenced by literati culture and was

indoctrinated with Confucianist ideals.

Popular literature also acted as a bridge between high culture and popular culture.

Through storytellers, history and poetry began to be appreciated by the populace; through

rewriting and standardization of popular literature by literati and imperial editors, elements

of popular culture were included in the book form. When printing enabled the production

of books in large quantities, the same stories in book form spread to every corner of the

empire. People might not know the name of the current emperor, but they knew the

loyalty of Kuan Yu and the charisma of Chu-ko Liang, two characters in the Romance of

Three Kingdoms. Thus the hegemonic cultural leadership of the imperial court was

maintained and the ideal of moral education of the populace was achieved.

After we examined the reason that book production was an important part of the

imperial regime, how the state controlled book production, who physically produced

books, the culture of books, and how imperial ideology penetrated popular sectors through the use of books, we examine how messages were represented in books in

Chapter Ten. We found that the discourse of book representation was largely oral. The texts of the books of high culture, such as standard histories, philosophical essays and

religious literature, were designed for memorization; the texts of popular literature, such as fiction and stories, were designed for reading aloud. Such a discourse encouraged an oral mentality that lacked the ability of independent thinking in a logical objective and

Chapter 12 356 uninvolved manner. The idiocratic characters of Chinese written Imguage further enforced

this tendency.

By monotonous memorization, a student might learn what sound each character

represented, but he had to depend on his teacher for the explanation of the semantic

meanings of the character. Such a process produced what Jack Goody (1968) calls

"restricted literacy", which enhanced the monopoly of knowledge production. From this

perspective, we claim that printed book production was not designed to spread

knowledge, but to tighten the control of knowledge dissemination and to strengthen the

ideological control of people's thinking patterns. Printing technology in China did not bring

any emancipation of public consciousness. Rather, it acted as a prison that locked up

people's consciousness in the walls of standardized texts in an oral discourse.

Having examined the social organization of printing in the Sung Dynasty, in which

movable type was invented, we return to the question raised in Chapter One: Why was

movable type invented but not used in China? Here we borrow Winner's concept of

technology (Winner, 1977: 1 1-12). Technology consists of three parts: hardware or

apparatus, skills or methods, and social organization or network. In Mumford's words, to

study the use of technologies, we must look at the ideological and social preparations for them and "explain the culture that was ready to use and profit by them so extensively."

(Mumford, 1962: 4) In China, while the hardware, i.e. movable type, and the skill, i.e. the ease of type setting, were present, the social organization required for its implementation was absent.

We have seen in Chapter One that the large number of characters in Chinese

Chapter 12 357 written language was not an insurmountable obstacle for the application of movable type.

The negligence of movable type was due to the fact that there was no social demand and

market imperative for it. When the cultural mandate was to reproduce standardized texts

in large quantities in a repeated manner, and it could easily be a political risk to publish

new texts that might contain errors and had no approval from the authorities, printers

naturally chose to use woodblock printing, which had obvious advantages for reprints.

Furthermore, the institutionalization of the civil-service examination made new or non-

standardized texts clearly unprofitable in the marketplace.

Thus we may conclude that movable type was not a timely invention in China - the

social conditions failed to nurture its development, just as the technology of paper making

did not spread in Europe during the medieval period. In the Chinese context, the social

organization of printing and publishing did not favour the development and use of

movable type, although it was invented. This explanation for the development of printing

in China, followed by a comparison with the development of printing in Europe in Chapter

Eleven, suggests that technology evolves and develops in particular social contexts and,

in turn, influences those social contexts within a broad set of social influences. In the same way that there are specific mechanisms in any technology that favour development along certain lines, so there are elements of society that favour social development and indeed technological development and usage.

This examination of Chinese printing history shows that book printing as a social institution played an important function in the maintenance of imperial social stability.

Woodblock printing was not a causal factor for the social stability in China. Rather its

Chapter 12 358 usage and development were products of a broad sociocultural context. Even if movable

type had been widely used, it would have had the same social function in the given

context. The way the technological dynamics were used and the impact it had on society

were designed by human beings. Printing locks words into position and fixes thought on

paper. When imperial rule was the only dominant political force in a monolithic system,

printing only contributed to a higher level of centralization. In addition to an even more

powerful control of politics, administration, agricultural production, transportation and

military force by the central government, printing helped extend official control to the

cultural arena for a consensus. The change of communications mode from manual

copying to printing did not bring any change in dialogue between the various social

sectors. Instead, it further strengthened the tradition of one-way indoctrination from the dominant social sector to the other sectors. The audience's participation was passive and they were left with no room for their own voice. It was not that the other social sectors did not control the printing technique. They controlled the hardware and the skill, but the whole sociocultural mechanism was set up in such as a way that their hardware and skill was subject to the social organization, which was imposed through an overwhelming institutionalized network.

In such a context, new technologies, such as movable type, could only grow to a stage where the imperial mandate was best expressed. Any development beyond this stage would be rejected not only by imperial mandate but also by the voluntary actions of civil users who were both mentally and institutionally geared to the imperial social organization. The social function of the Chinese printing press in the imperial time shows

Chapter 12 359 that technology cannot change the world by itself. A technolcgy can generate social

effects only on the condition that there is a suitable social environment.

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