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Home , Disciples of Confucius, Hereditary title, Jingwei, Li Qingzhao, Zhao Hengti, Zhao Mingcheng

Confucius Koˇ ngzıˇ ᄨᄤ

551–479 bce—Spring and Autumn period thinker

Alternate names: Koˇ ng Qiuˉ ᄨϬ; courtesy name: Zhòng Ní ӆሐ; offi cial title: Ko˘ngzı˘ ᄨᄤ (Master Kong) or Ko˘ngfuˉzı˘ ᄨ໿ᄤ (Reverend Master Kong)

Summary onfucius is perhaps the most infl u- Confucius was an early philosopher C ential Chinese person ever to have whose considerable infl uence on intel- lived. This remains true even if, as some lectual and social history has extended recent scholarship suggests, he actually • well beyond the boundaries of China. may never have lived at all but instead The legacy of Confucius survives was a kind of literary trope created by • ᄨᄤ through his teachings, recorded in the both classical Chinese scholars and early text known as the Analects. A sym- Western discoverers of Chinese tradi- bolic and controversial fi gure, his tion, such as sixteenth-century Jesuit philosophy is primarily moral and po- missionaries. Said to have been a low- litical in nature. Confucius claimed ranking member of the ancient Chinese that moral order is based upon Heav- social class known as shì ຿ (knights or en’s will, but that moralSample order must retainers who served higher-ranking aris- be brought about by human action. tocrats), Confucius apparently traveled Modern educational institutions, re- widely in the area that is now northeast- acting to the decimation of traditional ern China, teaching the sons of nobility values throughout most of the twenti- about antiquarian matters of ceremony eth century, have begun to reintroduce and literature as well as moral philoso- Confucian curricula for the purpose phies for ordering personal and social of moral instruction. After a century of life. He was not famous during his life- anti-Confucian campaigns, China seems time and never fulfi lled his ambition of poised once again to become the world’s becoming the cherished advisor to a most Confucian society. great ruler. In this respect, later depictions

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www.berkshirepublishing.com © 2014 Berkshire Publishing Group, all rights reserved. • Spring and Autumn & Warring States Periods • 770–476 bce & 475–221 bce • of Confucius as a powerful fi gure in the heart or mind, which sages could dis- events of his time and a well-known fi g- cover and wise men could understand. ure in early Chinese history are not faith- For Confucius, the dao was that of ful to the historical record. Confucius’s the Western Zhˉou ਼ dynasty (1045–771 teachings became widely known only bce), which he idealized as an alterna- after his death in the fi fth century bce, at tive to his own Spring and Autumn ᯹⾟ which time his disciples began to collect period (770–476 bce), a time of increas- and record them—a process that re- ing social disorder. Confucius saw quired centuries to complete, and one himself as a guardian of Western Zhou during which many elements that may traditions that could still have value in not have been part of the historical vi- his own time. He challenged his disci- sion of Confucius entered into what ples, most of who hoped to gain offi cial would become Confucian scripture. positions with various feudal states, to Confucius’s teachings are presented emulate the sages of the past and restore in the text known as the Analects (Lúnyuˇ the moral integrity of society. Most of 䆎䇁 or Collected Sayings). According to his ideas, as described in the Analects, Analects 7.1, Confucius “transmitted, have to do with Tiaˉn ໽ (Heaven, which but did not innovate.” What Confucius the ancient Chinese regarded as a deity • Confucius claimed to transmit was the dào 䘧 (the rather than as a destination in the after- Way), a concept shared by all early life), morality, and politics. These ideas, Chinese thinkers, although some may in turn, form the basis of what is popu- believe this to be more closely associat- larly considered Confucian thought. ed with Daoist (Taoist) traditions. In During his lifetime, however, neither early Chinese thought, dao signifi ed the Confucius nor his ideas were well Way in the sense of “the way things known. His disciples and their follow- a term originally) ۦ ought to be” in any arena of life. Wood- ers, known as rú carvers learned the dao of woodcarving used to describe ritual specialists at and thus came to understandSample the poten- early Chinese courts), preserved, ex- tial within a piece of wood, as well as to panded, and transmitted his teachings accept its limitations; rulers strove to for several hundred years after his master the dao of rulership, which was death, despite being ignored or perse- said to bring both prosperity to a people cuted by various regimes, including the and power to their ruler. By Confucius’s short-lived Qín ⾺ dynasty (221–206 bce). time, the concept of dao encompassed Confucius had aspirations for soci- these practical applications as well as a ety’s renewal on the appearance of a more abstract sense of dao as a funda- sage-ruler who would combine political mental cosmic pattern embroidered in power with moral wisdom, unify the both the natural world and the human fractured empire, and usher in a new

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Pages from the Analects.

age of harmony and prosperity. Accord- contemporaries understood in terms of ing to Confucius, “One who rules by conquest and coercion—as expressions morality may be compared to the North of a dao that relied on moral suasion and • ᄨᄤ Star—it occupies its place and all the instilled moral purpose in order to bring stars pay homage to it.” (Analects 2.1) unity out of division. But while Confu- Indeed, since the worship of both Tian cius’s disciples challenged rulers of and its predecessor, Shàngdì ϞᏱ, have feuding states to emulate the legendary their roots in the ancient Chinese cult of sage-kings of the Western Zhou and the North Star, Confucius may be said restore the moral integrity of the state, to have envisioned the idealSample ruler as one most of their contemporaries were in- who acted as a celestial deity on Earth. different to, or even sharply critical of, In his own time, the North Star was the Confucian vision. worshipped primarily by those who Since the teaching that claims him as sought its protection from violent death its founder fi rst gained state support in in battle and other hazards of life dur- 136 bce, when Confucianism became the ing the Spring and Autumn period and offi cial ideology of the Hàn ∝ dynasty later during the Warring States ៬೑ pe- (206 bce–220 ce), Confucius has come to riod (475–221 bce). Confucius evidently stand for many things, some of which sought to redefi ne both rulership contradict each other, both in China and and godhood—which most of his beyond. In the sixteenth century, Jesuits

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steeped in Renaissance humanism saw than about Confucius himself (Creel him as an ancient humanist; in the seven- 1949, 8). teenth and eighteenth centuries, German And yet the story of Confucius also thinkers such as Gottfried Wilhelm is the story of China itself, and thus Leibniz (1646–1716) or Christian Wolff it can tell us a great deal about how (1679–1754) praised him as an Enlighten- China has developed into a unifi ed, if ment sage (Kanemori 1997; Perkins 2004). diverse, culture that largely bears a (For this reason, perhaps, Confucius is Confucian stamp. Indeed, one measure included among the nine lawgivers of of Confucius’s infl uence—or the infl u- the pre-Christian era who are memorial- ence attributed to him—is the extent to ized in marble on the south wall of the which ideas, institutions, and practices US Supreme Court’s hearing room.) originally advocated by Confucius or In the nineteenth century, the German his disciples have come to be indistin- philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) guishable from Chinese culture in gen- condemned Confucius for exemplifying eral. To be Chinese, at least for the past those whom he saw as “the people thousand years, and for much of the without history.” Reformers and revolu- millennium before, is to be a child of

tionaries in the twentieth century, such as Confucius, in some very deep sense. As • Confucius *Luˇ Xùn 剕䖙 (1881–1936) and *Máo China greets the twenty-fi rst century Zédoˉng ↯⋑ϰ (1893–1976), castigated with both renewed national confi dence Confucius for, they claimed, imprisoning as well as a creeping sense of cultural China in a cage of feudal archaism and crisis, the equation of China with Con- oppression. Each of these commentators fucius seems stronger than ever. remade Confucius in his own image and for his own ends—a process that contin- ues throughout the modern era, creating Early Life great heat and little light where the his- According to the earliest biographies of torical Confucius himselfSample is concerned. Confucius (which were not written un- Each mythologizer has seen Confucius til the fi rst century bce), Confucius was as a symbol of whatever he loves or born in the mid-sixth century bce to the hates about China. As the US sinologist Koˇng ᄨ family in the state of Luˇ 剕 (in and philosopher H. G. Creel has stated, what now is central and southwestern once a fi gure like Confucius has become Shandong Province). Han dynasty com- a cultural hero, stories about him tell mentators emphasized the belief that us more about the values of the storytellers the family name Kong derives from the characters fú ᄮ (to brood eggs) and yàn ➩ *People marked with an asterisk have entries in this (the migratory dark swallow said to dictionary. be the “master of equinoxes,” since it

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was observed to arrive with the spring family managed to retain power and equinox and depart with the autumn ruled from their new eastern capital (at equinox), suggesting that Confucius, present-day Luoyang in modern Henan like all legendary Chinese sages, was Province) until 256 bce, they were never the product of a union between a virgin again able to match the achievements or mother and a deity in the form of a bird stability of their “Western” predecessors. who seduced her. The Zhou king’s authority increasingly At birth, Confucius was given the depended upon the support of bà 䴌 personal name of Qıˉu Ϭ. As he matured, (hegemons) who governed the sur- he assumed the courtesy name (zì ᄫ) rounding vassal states. Zhòng Ní ӆሐ. As Zhong Ni, Confucius As one or another state rose to prom- grew up in the capital city, Quˉfù ᳆䯰, of inence, alliances shifted and further un- a state that was some four hundred dermined the stability of Zhou rule. The years old at his birth, and whose found- old system of maintaining power through ers had close connections to the rulers stable lineage ties gradually was replaced of the Western Zhou dynasty. By Confu- by a new system of centralized bureau- cius’s time, however, Lu was in decline, cracy, whereby offi cials unrelated to the having struggled for centuries against king directly administered affairs of state its larger, more powerful neighbors and commanded vast armies. Market Qí 唤 and Chuˇ Ἦ (which eventually an- transactions began to supersede the old nexed Lu in 256 bce, just a few decades manorial network, in which local aristo- • ᄨᄤ prior to the Warring States’ unifi cation cratic landowners provided military under the Qin dynasty). protection and social welfare to peas- Although Confucius’s family be- ants and artisans in return for their pro- longed to the shi class and counted great duction of food, household wares, and warriors among its ancestors, his father weapons. An unprecedented degree of died during the boy’s early childhood, social mobility meant that commoners and Confucius was raisedSample by his mother could rise in the ministerial and military in poverty. China during this time of his ranks while aristocratic families fell on life was a culturally bankrupt, political- hard times. Eventually, life under the ly fractured, socially unstable, and Zhou disintegrated into a series of civil physically dangerous place. This was confl icts, in which various states com- due to the collapse of the Western Zhou peted for supremacy. When, in 323 bce, social order following the devastating the ruler of each vassal state claimed series of natural disasters, invasions, the Zhou title of wáng ⥟ (king) for and rebellions that culminated in the himself, it was clear that the Zhou were, assassination of the Western Zhou king for all practical purposes, fi nished as a in 771 bce. Although the Zhou ruling dynasty.

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Perhaps because he grew up as and its dao, the source of all life and or- a member of an impoverished social der in the universe. In framing his vi- group living in an imperiled state under sion of the Dao, Confucius relied on a the declining rule of a formerly great dy- number of Western Zhou sources, in- nasty, Confucius idealized the Western cluding historical documents, govern- Zhou for the rest of his life. Historically, mental decrees, poetry, and ritual texts his lifetime was bookended by the so- that were later given the title “classics” cial instability of the Spring and Au- or “scriptures” (jıˉng 㒣). Confucius used tumn period and the descent into Western Zhou culture to formulate a violence and chaos known as the War- challenge to his own times. ring States period. Shi such as Confu- The Western Zhou began as a small, cius and his kinsfolk became lordless weak ally of the more powerful Shaˉ ng ଚ anachronisms and fell into genteel pov- dynasty (1766–1045 bce). While tradi- erty and itinerancy. Their knowledge of tional Chinese histories use the term “dy- ancient aristocratic traditions, however, nasty” to refer to early regimes, they helped them reinvent themselves as an- probably are better defi ned as tribal king- tiquarian advisors to the competing rul- ships associated with the development of ers of the Warring States. Confucius bronze metalworking technology, and • Confucius himself is said to have held such a posi- the military superiority and social strat- tion, albeit only for a short time before ifi cation that came with that technology. withdrawing into retirement as a ru, a The Western Zhou performed elaborate ritual master and mentor to future court rites of divination and sacrifi ce related advisors. It was in this capacity that to their ancestors, spent enormous Confucius acquired the title of Ko˘ngzı˘ amounts on costly burial goods and ᄨᄤ (Master Kong) or Ko˘ngfuˉzı˘ ᄨ໿ᄤ monuments, combined political and re- (Reverend Master Kong, from which ligious authority in the person of the the Latinized name Confucius is de- king, used a logographic language (ex- rived). His students andSample their followers pressing meaning through signs), and later shaped Confucius’s teachings and relied upon a bureaucratic organization view of the Chinese past into what be- to sustain court life and society’s needs. came Confucianism. Each of these elements of early Chinese civilization exerted a profound infl u- ence on the development of Confucian Context thought, not to mention Chinese culture Like nearly every thinker of his time, in general. Confucius interpreted social disorder as After the Western Zhou had suc- evidence that human beings had lost a cessfully overthrown the Shang and es- once-harmonious relationship with Tian tablished themselves as the new rulers

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of the north-central Chinese plain, they their ancestors for guidance. Using developed a religious ideology to help “oracle bones” (jiaˇguˇ ⬆偼)—cattle bones explain their rise to power. According to and turtle shells heated over a fi re— Western Zhou thought, the Shang deity they posed questions to the royal dead, Shangdi once affi rmed the Shang king’s to which they also erected temples and high moral stature by allowing them to offered sacrifi ces. Ancient Chinese ven- rule. By proving themselves unworthy eration of Tian, ancestor worship, and of the god’s mandate (mìng ੑ), howev- divination practices shared a common er, the Shang lost their heavenly legiti- purpose: to maintain harmonious rela- macy and were forced to surrender to tions between this world and the next the virtuous founders of the Western for the benefi t of the human community. Zhou. Moreover, the Western Zhou In Analects 1.11, several sayings of equated Shangdi with their own god, Confucius on the importance of rever- Tian, and thus claimed that the same ence (jìng ᭀ) for one’s ancestors can be god worshipped by both the Shang and found: the Western Zhou had revoked its support from the former and granted it to Observe what a person has in the latter. Recent research indicates that mind to do when his father is the concept of the Mandate of Heaven alive, and then observe what he (tiaˉnmìng ໽ੑ), so fundamental to the does when his father is dead. If, thought of Confucius and his succes- for three years, he makes no • ᄨᄤ sors, originally was based on the con- changes to his father’s ways, he junction of the fi ve visible planets wu( ˇbù can be said to be a good son. Ѩℹ, wuˇxíngѨ㸠) observed in 1059 bce (just prior to the founding of the West- Similarly, Confucius credited Tian ern Zhou), later interpreted as a sign of as the source of his moral merit divine favor for the new dynasty (Pan- ( Analects 7.23). Confucius studied and kenier 1995). Sampletaught Western Zhou texts such as the Apart from manifesting its approval Classic of Poetry (Shıˉjıˉng 䆫㒣) and the or disapproval of earthly regimes through Classic of Changes (I Ching or Yìjıˉngᯧ㒣) signs and portents, however, Tian was because he believed that they rein- thought to be somewhat remote from forced these basic views and values. human affairs and to depend upon wor- Other Western Zhou texts, such as thy human agents to carry out its will. the Classic of Documents (Shuˉjıˉng к㒣 or Nearer to human beings than Tian were Shàngshuˉ ᇮк), tell the story of the dy- the recently deceased relatives of the liv- nasty’s rise and fall. The early years of ing, so Western Zhou kings and their the dynasty were plagued by civil war. Shang forerunners regularly consulted At the heart of this confl ict was the

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www.berkshirepublishing.com © 2014 Berkshire Publishing Group, all rights reserved. • Spring and Autumn & Warring States Periods • 770–476 bce & 475–221 bce • matter of royal succession. The brother Analects have concluded that he was an and chief minister of the dynastic agnostic or atheist. In fact, for Confucius founder, the *Duke of Zhoˉu ਼݀ (a na- and most other early Chinese (c. sixteenth tive of Confucius’s home state of Lu), ar- century bce), the world was controlled gued that Tian had bestowed its mandate by an all-powerful deity, Tian, who pre- on all of the Western Zhou people, espe- sided over a pantheon of numerous lesser cially the king’s ministers, rather than on deities, such as the Earth god, Shè ⼒ the royal lineage alone. Other factions at (whose worship is mentioned approv- court, however, countered that the king ingly in Analects 3.21). But by the time of alone was the recipient of divine author- Confucius, the concept of Tian appears to ity. Unsurprisingly, this argument pre- have changed slightly from its origins in vailed with Zhou kings. Yet the Duke of early Western Zhou religion. As an ex- Zhou’s view that Tian’s mandate is ample, the ritual complex of Zhou divin- gained and maintained by merit rather ers, which served to ascertain the will of than blood eventually became quite in- Tian for the benefi t of the Zhou king, had fl uential on Confucius and his followers begun to collapse along with Zhou rule much later. Confucians would come to itself. At the same time, the network of

see the Western Zhou’s collapse in 771 religious obligations to manifold divini- • Confucius bce as an act of Tian that signaled the loss ties, local spirits, and ancestors does not of the heavenly mandate to rule. The seem to have ceased with the fall of the story of the Western Zhou’s beginnings, Zhou, and Confucius appears to uphold however, convinced Confucians that just sacrifi ces to “gods and ghosts” as consis- as virtuous rulers once came to power tent with “transmitting” noble tradition. and brought prosperity and harmony, so For Confucius, discerning the will of Tian too could sage kings walk the Earth again and reconciling it with his own moral in their own time and order society with compass sometimes appears to have tradition, ritual, and virtue.Sample been a troubling exercise: If Tian is about to abandon this The Nature of Tian culture, those who die afterwards As a child of the late Zhou world, Con- will not get to share in it; if Tian fucius inherited a great many religious has not yet abandoned this culture, sensibilities, including theistic ones. what can [Confucius’s enemies] Confucius’s record of silence on the do to me? (Analects 9.5) subject of the divine is attested in several There is no one who recogniz- passages of the Analects (5.3; 7.21; 11.12). es me. . . . I neither resent Tian nor Because Confucius apparently did not blame humanity. In learning about discuss deities, later readers of the the lower I have understood the

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higher. The one who recognizes have endorsed his views, and it seems me—wouldn’t that be Tian? (Ana- that the fi rst few generations of his lects 14.35) disciples were more successful at pre- Tian has abandoned me! Tian serving their master’s teachings than has abandoned me! (Analects 11.9) propagating them in society. Confucius’s fi rst biographer, the Han dynasty histo- Confucius seems to have been of two rian *Sıˉmaˇ Qiaˉn ৌ偀䖕 (c. 145–86 bce), minds about Tian. At times, he is con- depicts him as an unpleasant and dis- vinced that he enjoys the personal protec- agreeable pedant who assumed his sa- tion and sanction of Tian, and thus defi es gacious nature when he grew older, his mortal opponents as he wages his when he fully accepted the extent of his campaign of moral instruction and re- personal failures. The vision he held of form. At other moments, however, he a society ordered by traditional ritual seems caught in the throes of existential and moral hierarchy apparently did not despair, wondering whether he has lost appeal either to Warring States rulers or his divine backer at last. Tian seems to their downtrodden subjects. The schol- participate in qualities of “fate” and ar Robert Eno has suggested that Con- “ nature” as well as those of “deity.” What fucius and his disciples were perceived remains consistent throughout Confu- as irritating countercultural fi gures who cius’s discourses on Tian is his threefold were obsessed with ancient ceremonies, assumption about this absolute power in dance, and music, and thus were dis- • ᄨᄤ the universe, specifi cally, its alignment missed as impractical and out of step with moral goodness, its dependence on with the needs of the times. human agents to actualize its will, and The most popular Warring States the variable, unpredictable nature of its teachings were those of *Mòzıˇ ๼ᄤ associations with mortal actors. Thus, to (c. 470–c. 391 bce), Yáng Zhuˉ ᴼᴅ the extent that the Confucius of the Ana- (440–360 bce), and a diverse set of views, lects is concerned with justifyingSample the ways collectively known as Huáng-Laˇo 咗㗕 of Tian to humanity, he tends to do so thought, attributed to both the legend- without questioning these three assump- ary sages Huáng Dì 咗Ᏹ (Yellow Em- tions about the nature of Tian, which peror) and *Laˇozı˘ 㗕ᄤ (Master Lao; fl . were rooted deep in Chinese history. 500 bce). The school of Mozi rejected the antiquarian elitism of Confucius and argued for the intrinsic moral value Recognition and Reputation of all human beings, whom one ought By most measures, Confucius could be to “love universally.” Just as deeply at considered a failure during his lifetime. odds with Confucius, but also with No Warring States court is known to Mozi, was the thought of Yang Zhu, who

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www.berkshirepublishing.com © 2014 Berkshire Publishing Group, all rights reserved. • Spring and Autumn & Warring States Periods • 770–476 bce & 475–221 bce • taught that one should look out for one- adopted Confucian thought as a tool self and not worry about anyone else. for legitimizing its power and control- Above all, Warring States courts seem ling its subjects. Although the early to have been attracted to Huang-Lao Han emperors, like their Qin prede- teachings that advocated the use of cessors, favored a blend of mystical wúwéi ᮴Ў (effortless action, attributed Huang-Lao wuwei and hard-fi sted Fa˘jıˉa to the sage-ruler Shùn 㟰 in Analects 15.5) ⊩ᆊ (Legalist) application of rules and by the ruler to control the state in a mys- regulations, evidently their grip on tical, covert fashion. power was not secure, and the seventh Nonetheless, it is likely that at least Han emperor, *Emperor Wuˇ ℺ (r. 140– some elements compatible with Mozi’s, 87 bce), relied on a Confucian-minded Yang Zhu’s, and Huang-Lao thought offi cial in his court, *Doˇ ng Zhòngshuˉ found their way into early Confucian 㨷ӆ㟦 (195–105 bce), for ideological teachings. The third-century bce writer help. *Hán Feˉi 䶽䴲 (c. 280–233 bce) attests to Dong directly invoked Confucius -or to shore up the foundations of Han im) ۦ the existence of eight separate rú Confucian) factions in his own day. Virtu- perial authority. Citing the Spring and ally all of the Chinese philosophical and Autumn Annals (Chuˉnqiuˉ ᯹⾟), a text • Confucius religious traditions that survived into the supposedly authored by Confucius Han dynasty, including Confucianism, that purportedly chronicles events in bear the marks of infl uence from all three his home state of Lu between the of these earlier movements. Indeed, the eighth and fi fth centuries bce, Dong circumstances of both Confucianism’s argued that Tian had worked closely early development and its later institution with various historical human beings as an offi cial ideology of the Chinese state (typically, virtuous rulers, moral min- are such that nothing like a “pure” Confu- isters, and other Confucian exemplars) cianism, handed down directly from Con- to keep the cosmos in balance by har- fucius through generationsSample of his disciples, monizing its constitutive powers and ever seems to have existed. Instead, mul- processes (such as yıˉn 䰈 and yáng 䰇). tiple infl uences from diverse traditions Although Dong worked very freely appear to have shaped both the view of with the alleged text of Confucius, Confucius transmitted from antiquity and in many ways he was faithful to the the views attributed to Confucius that spirit of the master’s call for a true ruler were promoted through offi cial doctrine who could exercise godlike moral au- during and after the Han dynasty. thority and thus restore order to Confucius’s image, not to mention the age. When one reads Dong’s de- Confucianism’s fortunes, changed dra- scription of the ideal ruler, it is not matically when the Han dynasty diffi cult to understand why Dong’s

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interpretation of Confucius’s thought with Sima Qian, Han writers included won imperial support: fantastic elements in their biographies of Confucius. In such tales, Confu- As for the one who appropriates cius’s birth was heralded by a qílín 呦味 the mean of Tian, Earth, and hu- (a unicorn-like creature) and dancing mankind and takes this as the dragons; he was born with the texts of thread that joins and connects the Western Zhou classics inscribed on them, if it is not one who acts as a his body, and he grew to be nine feet tall. king, then who can be equal to After his death, Confucius was alleged this task? (Queen 2000, 301) to have revealed himself in a glorifi ed state to his living disciples, who then re- Dong’s arguments convinced Em- ceived further esoteric teachings from peror Wu to terminate imperial spon- their apotheosized master. Eventually, sorship of non-Confucian traditions and perhaps inevitably, he was recog- and appoint Dong to various high of- nized as a deity and a cult organized it- fi ces. At Dong’s urging, Emperor Wu self around his worship. The image ordered the institution of a Confucian of Confucius was circulated widely canon consisting of fi ve Western Zhou throughout the empire in Confucian classics, the Five Classics (Wuˇjıˉng Ѩ㒣), temples (Koˇngmiào ᄨᑭ) endorsed by a state subsidy for Confucian scholars, the state, the fi rst of which was a temple and the establishment of the Grand built on the grounds of Confucius’s • ᄨᄤ Academy (Tài xúe ໾ᄺ), dedicated to home in Qufu after his death, which the training of Confucian bureaucrats became an offi cial state institution in for service in the imperial government. 153 bce. Between the Han dynasty and By the end of the fi rst century bce, ap- the Míng ᯢ (1368–1644) dynasty, this proximately three thousand students temple was renovated on several oc- were enrolled at this academy, and the casions. Among China’s historical pro- number exceeded thirtySample thousand by perties, the building is second in size the end of the Han dynasty. only to the Forbidden City, the Beijing Confucius thus became somewhat of residence of the Ming and Qıˉng ⏙ a “patron saint” of the Han imperial or- dynasty (1644–1911/1912) emperors. At der, an order that rapidly expanded to this and other Confucian temples, mem- become the largest Chinese state at the bers of the Kong family—descendants of time and endured for more than four Confucius, the foremost of whom fl ed hundred years, forever infl uencing how mainland China in the 1940s to settle in Chinese people (whose ethnic majority Taiwan—enjoyed the hereditary privi- and writing system still bear the name lege of maintaining temple grounds and Han) would see themselves. Beginning presiding over temple rituals.

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especially his most beloved student, Yán Huıˉ 买䕝. More rarely, he is pictured alongside his wife. One famous scene often depicted both in temple images and in secular art, is the meeting of Confucius with the legendary sage Laozi, who was supposed to have been an expert on Western Zhou ritual. For almost two thousand years, such images have attracted offerings and prayers from those who visit Confucian temples. Often these visitors are students seeking supernatural aid as they con- tend with the rigorous university entrance tests that are the last vestige of the old Confucian civil service examination system fi rst instituted by the Han

dynasty. • Confucius The endorsement of Confucianism by the Han state and the subsequent el- evation of Confucius to sainthood, even godhood, ensured that he became a

A statue of Confucius in front of the Confucius well-known fi gure far beyond his home Temple in Beijing. Photo by Marjolijn Kaiser. city of Qufu. Although Han China controlled portions of the Korean peninsula and the Vietnam region early in the Within this and other Confucian Common Era, by the year 1000, none of temples (which still maySample be visited to- China’s neighbors was under direct day), statues of Confucius and his dis- Chinese rule. Thus, the spread of Con- ciples were enshrined. Such images fucianism across East Asia was accom- usually depict Confucius and others in plished largely through voluntary and poses of meditative calm or in the act of consensual means, rather than by con- teaching, attired in the garb of imperial quest or conversion. The legacy of court ministers, and carrying formal Chinese regimes certainly included ex- tablets signifying their offi ces. Confu- tensive Chinese infl uence on the politi- cius himself is never depicted as any- cal, religious, and social development thing other than an elderly man, and he of non-Chinese cultures in East Asia, usually is accompanied by his disciples, especially in Vietnam and Korea. The

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diffusion of Confucianism from China restored its position as the preeminent to its neighbors led to the development intellectual tradition of Chinese elites. of distinctive regional Confucian tradi- Both the Suí 䱟 (581–618 ce) and the tions. Apart from China (including Táng ૤ (618–907 ce) dynasties, which Taiwan), the country with the largest unifi ed China once again, patronized number of Confucian temples today is Confucianism, reestablishing its canon South Korea, although several still exist as the basis for civil service examina- in Vietnam and Japan as well as in tions. Confucian ethics, with its “three Indonesia and Malaysia. These are the bonds” of obedience (ministers to rul- preeminent sites on which Confucius’s ers, sons to fathers, and wives to hus- birthday (28 September) is commemo- bands), continued to defi ne social rated, but, when not in formal ritual relationships among the educated. Con- use, most function as community librar- fucian ritual dominated all ceremonies ies, venues for traditional arts, and of public life and infl uenced religious gathering places for the elderly. practices among families as well as among extended communities such as Confucianism’s Confl icting villages. The most famous portrait of Confucius, attributed to the Tang dy- Legacy nasty artist Wú Dàozıˇ ਈ䘧ᄤ (680–740 In China itself, however, Confucius and ce), was produced during this period Confucianism did not remain in offi cial and widely reproduced later, especially • ᄨᄤ favor permanently. After the fall of in Confucian temples. Amidst the grow- the Han dynasty in 220 ce, Confucian ing antiforeign feeling that dominated thought fell out of approval when a se- the late Tang dynasty due to the *Aˉ n ries of warring factions struggled for Lùshaˉn ᅝ⽓ቅ uprising of 755–763 ce, control of China during the “Period of Confucius became a symbol of resistance Disunity” (220–589 ce). Foreign and in- to Buddhism. Confucian as well as Dao- digenous religious traditionsSample such as ist groups at the Tang court persuaded Buddhism and Daoism rivaled Confu- Emperor Wuˇzoˉng ℺ᅫ (r. 841–846 ce) to cianism for the attentions of the elite. In destroy Buddhist institutions, confi s- texts produced during this period, such cate Buddhist property, and secularize as the Daoist Lièzı˘ ߫ᄤ, Confucius often monks and nuns throughout his realm. appears as a spokesperson for non- After the Tang’s collapse, emperors of a Confucian teachings—for example, as a new dynasty, the Sòng ᅟ (960–1279 ce), mystical adept who teaches his disciples relied upon Confucian scholars to help to embrace wú ᮴ (nothingness). Confu- stabilize and legitimize their regime cian thought never retreated entirely, and gratefully embraced Confucianism, however, and subsequent dynasties continuing the anti-Buddhist policies of

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www.berkshirepublishing.com © 2014 Berkshire Publishing Group, all rights reserved. • Spring and Autumn & Warring States Periods • 770–476 bce & 475–221 bce • the late Tang. It was under Song rule China, however, and the last Chinese em- that Confucian sayings collected in the peror was deposed in 1912, just four Analects, along with three other texts as- years after her death. sociated with Confucius and his earliest On 4 May 1919, “the shop of Confu- disciples, replaced the Five Classics as cius’s family” was singled out for criti- the primary canonical Confucian scrip- cism by Chinese university students tures. Also during this time, a senior amassing in Beijing’s Tiaˉnaˉnmén ໽ᅝ䮼 male of the Kong family fi rst was given Square. Protesting provisions of the the hereditary title of Yaˇ nshèng Goˉng Treaty of Versailles (the agreement that 㸡㘪݀ (Duke for Perpetuating the Sage) ended World War I) that awarded and charged with promoting Confu- Chinese territory, including Confucius’s cius’s image, teachings, and worship birthplace, to Japan, this May Fourth throughout China—a position that ren- Movement (Wuˇ sì yùndòng Ѩಯ䖤ࡼ) dered its occupant the second-wealthiest campaigned for the wholesale abandon- person in China after the emperor, ex- ment of Confucianism as a necessary empt from taxation and immune to precondition for China’s modernization. prosecution except by its own special While some Chinese leaders, including court, which endured until 1935 (and *Sun Yat-sen ᄭЁቅ (1866–1925), the • Confucius which endures, in modifi ed form, in “Father of the Nation” and architect of Taiwan today). the post-imperial Chinese state, argued Ironically, the restoration of Confu- for the retention of Confucian values, cius to supremacy as a cultural and others—especially the Communist religious icon during the Song and later revolutionary *Máo Zédoˉ ng ↯⋑ϰ dynasties may have led to the persecu- (1893–1976)—insisted on the complete tion of Confucius as a symbol of China’s destruction of China’s feudal icons, par- degradation and backwardness during ticularly Confucius. For a time, the radi- the twentieth century. As China grew cal rejection of Confucius and his more powerless to resistSample colonial in- tradition prevailed in China, especially cursions by Western nations and the during the violent period of social dis- Japanese alike, Chinese rulers, reformers, ruption known as the Cultural Revolu- and revolutionaries targeted Confucian- tion ᭛࣪໻䴽ੑ (1966–1976). ism as they attempted to assert Chinese Until the 1990s, advocacy of Con- cultural and political independence. Al- fucianism by ethnic Chinese took place though the *Empress Dowager Cíxıˇ ᜜⽻ largely outside of mainland China, (1835–1908) abolished the millennia-old in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Confucian civil service examination sys- and among Chinese living elsewhere. tem in 1905, her reforms were unable to After the death of Mao, the reforms of turn the tide of anti-imperial fervor in his successor *Dèng Xia˘opíng 䙧ᇣᑇ

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(1904–1997), and the setbacks suffered from New Mexico in the United States to by the pro-democracy movement on New South Wales, Australia. After a cen- 4 June 1989, many Chinese began to wor- tury of anti-Confucian campaigns, China ry that the waning of Communist ideol- seems poised once again to become the ogy, preceded by the decimation of world’s most Confucian society. Yet, de- traditional values throughout most of spite these formal moves to rehabilitate the twentieth century, had created a and reclaim Confucius as a Chinese cul- moral vacuum in contemporary Chinese tural icon, his spirit may be most alive society, especially among young people. today as exemplifi ed in social reality, As a result, educational institutions from and not necessarily only in China. The elementary schools to universities have social vision of Confucius still explains a begun to reintroduce Confucian curricu- great many cultural experiences and ex- la for the purpose of moral instruction. pressions across East Asia, from Japa- In some of China’s largest cities, people nese baseball and Korean soap operas, to who are alarmed at China’s skyrocketing Vietnamese politics and Chinese social divorce rate have instituted Confucian media. marriage vow renewal ceremonies. Jeffrey L. RICHEY Books about Confucianism have become Berea College best sellers in China. The opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing featured quotations from the Further Reading • ᄨᄤ Analects as well as myriad Confucian im- agery (such as “disciples of Confucius” Brooks, E. Bruce, & Brooks, A. Taeko. (1998). holding up bamboo slips on which Con- The original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and fucian scriptures were inscribed, various his successors. New York: Columbia University expressions of the character hé ੠ or Press. “harmony,” and stylized movements il- Creel, H. G. (1949). Confucius and the Chinese way. lustrating the eight trigramsSample of the I Ch- New York: Harper and Row. ing). In 2009, the Chinese government subsidized the making of a US$15 mil- Confucius. (2003). Analects: With selections from lion fi lm biography of Confucius star- traditional commentaries (Edward Slingerland, Trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing ring popular Hong Kong martial arts Company. star, Chow Yun-fat (Zhoˉu Rùnfaˉ ਼⍺থ). All around the world, the Chinese gov- Dirlik, Arif. (1995). Confucius in the border- ernment sponsors partnerships with lo- lands: Global capitalism and the reinvention of cal universities that have resulted in Confucianism. Boundary, 22(3), 229–273. Confucius Institutes (Koˇngzıˇ xuéyuàn ᄨ Eno, Robert. (1990). The Confucian creation of Heaven. ᄤᄺ䰶) being constructed everywhere Albany: State University of New York Press.

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Fingarette, Herbert. (1972). Confucius: The secular Queen, Sarah (Trans.). (2000). The way of the as sacred. New York: HarperCollins. king penetrates three. In W. Theodore De Bary & Irene Bloom (Eds.), Sources of Chinese tradition: Jensen, Lionel M. (1998). Manufacturing Con- Vol. 1. From earliest times to 1600 (pp. 301–302). fucianism: Chinese traditions and universal civiliza- New York: Columbia University Press. tion. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kanemori, Shigenari. (1997). Christian Wolff’s Richey, Jeffrey L. (2013). Confucius in East Asia: speech on Confucianism: Confucius compared Confucianism’s history in China, Korea, Japan, and Viê·t with Wolff. European Journal of Law and Economics, Nam. Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Asian Studies. 4(2–3), 299–304. Sun, Anna Xiao Dong. (2005). The fate of Lu Wensheng, & Murray, Julia K. (2010). Con- Confucianism as a religion in socialist China: fucius: His life and legacy in art. New York: China Controversies and paradoxes. In Fenggang Yang Institute Gallery. & Joseph B. Tamney (Eds.), State, market and reli- gions in Chinese societies (pp. 228–253). Leiden, Makeham, John. (2008). Lost soul: “Confucianism” in The Netherlands: E. J. Brill. contemporary Chinese academic discourse. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Taylor, Rodney L. (1998). The religious character Nylan, Michael, & Wilson, Thomas. (2010). Lives of the Confucian tradition. Philosophy East and of Confucius: Civilization’s greatest sage through the West, 48(1), 80–107. • Confucius ages. New York: Doubleday Religion. Van Norden, Bryan W. (Ed.). (2002). Confucius Pankenier, David W. (1995). The cosmo-political and the Analects: New essays. New York: Oxford background of Heaven’s mandate. Early China, University Press. 20, 121–176.

Perkins, Franklin. (2004). Leibniz and China: A commerce of light. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sample

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1084–1151—Poet, calligrapher, and artist; China’s foremost female literary fi gure

Alternate name: style name: Yì’a¯n Ju¯shì ᯧᅝሙ຿ Statue of Li Qingzhao in Jinan Province.

Summary antiquarian, book and art collector, and even inventor of a new card game—such Li Qingzhao is considered by many to are the accomplishments of Li Qingzhao, be China’s foremost female literary fi g- China’s foremost historical female liter- • Lıˇ Qı¯ngzhào • ure, embodying the height of cultural ary fi gure. She lived and created during expression during the Song dynasty— the Sòng ᅟ dynasty (960–1279) when the three perfections of poetry, callig- much was changing and much was being raphy, and painting. Born and raised in violently destroyed. This change and a household where cultural and liter- violence would touch her life and com- ary activities were encouraged, Li’s tal- pel her to clarify the core themes of her ents developed under the watchful eye literary work—the ephemeral and poi- of many of the eras most famous schol- gnant quality of beauty, the unpredict- ars, writers, and artists. While her able demands of reality, the urgency of poetry refl ects the social context of Sampleart which lifts life beyond the mundane the eleventh century, it is also charac- and into the realm of ideals. The fall of a terized by a universal humanity that petal, the stirring of a breeze, the patter makes it appealing to readers of any of raindrops, the undulation of a song— time period. Her tranquil life of schol- such images she holds up in her poems arly pursuits was upended in 1127, as mirrors into which we may gaze, not when armies of the northern Jurchen for narcissistic satisfaction, but to gauge Jin invaded Song territories, quickly the verity and purpose of our own lives. overrunning them. Her poems, however, are not essays ainter, calligrapher, prose writer, expounding trite, predictable “lessons.” P poet famed in her own lifetime, Rather, she embodies that rarest of poetic

• 645 •

expression—transcendence, in that her esthetical sensibility that sought to blend work is not dated or parochial. Her can- personal emotion and intellect with the vas is vaster than the space and time world outside, especially the natural allotted to one particular life; her con- world. In this way, the arts became a cru- cern is humanity itself in that she truly cial endeavor in the Song period, in that understands those universal qualities they allowed the individual not only the that bind us all. This does not mean, ability to be refl ective but also to be edu- however, that she harkens back to a cated, that is, refi ned. And the highest Golden Age to which we must return. expression of refi nement was delicacy; She is thoroughly grounded in the here- thus each word, each note of music, each and-now, and she expresses great joy in hue spread by the paintbrush, each piece the present moment lived thoroughly— of ceramic had to express a soft tranquil- no matter if it evokes a tear, a sigh, a ity; an intimate, private stillness that was smile, or laughter. Thus, she also becomes serene and restrained and yet deeply, a profound commentator on beauty, quietly passionate. which she knows is mesmerizing It is in this context that Li Qingzhao, because it is fragile and fl eeting—and China’s greatest female poet, emerges, this beauty she understands to be life for not only was she the product of her

• itself. There is deep sadness in this time, but she was engaged in creating knowledge, but she overcomes this des- the very cultural identity of the Song olation with her poems, which become, era. Her poetry, her calligraphy, her

• ᴢ⏙✻ not monuments, but receptacles that painting, her commentary on antiquities hold some of the fugitive shimmer of and old books that she and her husband life. collected were seen, in her own lifetime, as encapsulating all that was highest and best in the arts of that age. She Historical Context embodied all that was deemed to be the The time of the Song dynastySample may best height of cultural expression—the three be described as one of immense innova- perfections of poetry, calligraphy and tion, during which social and cultural painting. The elegance of her expres- values were redefi ned to afford central- sion, the fl uidity with which she cap- ity to the individual. It was, therefore, a tured the ephemeral nature of beauty, time in which Neo-Confucianism grew made of her poems intense, concen- into prominence with its emphasis on trated “landscapes” of an inner world, a the individual whose social obligation world steeped in private emotions that was to nurture innate moral principles would then open out into the vastness of by way of education. This philosophi- universal ideas. This quality of passion- cal outlook encouraged a heightened ate privacy and forceful universality

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www.berkshirepublishing.com © 2014 Berkshire Publishing Group, all rights reserved. • Sòng Dynasty • 960–1279 ce • underlies and informs Li Qingzhao’s Life and Career art, so that her work becomes effortless because it moves by way of simplicity Although it is diffi cult to be precise, lit- into profundity. erary evidence suggests that Li Qingzhao Despite her importance in Chinese was born sometime in 1084 in the city of literary history, facts about her life are Jinan, in Shandong Province, and spent meager at best, and rest on the reliability her early years in that city. Her father, Lıˇ of her own comments, which are found Géfeˉi ᴢḐ䴲 (d. 1106), authored a trea- in her colophons (inscriptions at the tise, entitled A Chronicle of the Famous end of manuscripts) and descriptions Gardens of Luoyang (Luòyáng míngyuán jì appended to her catalogs of antiquities. ⋯䰇ৡು䆄), which he wrote sometime It is from such scant evidence that the after 1094 when he is known to have contours of her life may be traced. In purchased a garden in Luoyang. He effect, her life story is her own “self- was among the “latter four disciples” portrait”—for it is what she wished to of the poet-scholar *Su¯ Shì 㢣䕐 (1037– leave behind to posterity as a remem- 1101) and he therefore moved in the brance of her. It is of necessity, as it were, highest literary circles of the Song that the artist must vanish behind the period. He carried the style name of • Lıˇ Qı¯ngzhào • work; for it is the work alone that can be Wenshu. immortal, and not its all-too-human Li Qingzhao’s mother also came creator. from a learned family; her father was Her reputation as a great poet rests named Wáng Guì ⥟Ḗ (1019–1085) and on very few poems: just sixty extant her grandfather, named Wang Zhun, poems in all. These, however, are enough; was a zhuàngyuán ⢊ܗ (somebody who their like cannot be found in the work of achieves the highest score in the civil her near contemporaries, such as the service examinations). It is said that she female poets, Zhu¯ Shu¯ zheˉn ᴅ⎥ⳳ or was a poet in her own right who had Lady Huaˉruıˇ 㢅㬞. ThisSample is why the Song been taught by Wang Zhun; however, dynasty scholar *Zhu¯ Xı¯ ᴅ➍ (1130–1200) none of her poems have survived. considered Li Qingzhao to have drunk Recently, some scholars have suggested deeply at the well of great literary tradi- that Li Gefei was married for the second tion. It is also why she fashioned her time to a granddaughter of the poet own niche in the tremendous ferment of and essayist Wáng Goˇngchén ⥟ᣅ䖄 the Song period. (1012–1085). The household into which Li Qingzhao was born and raised was *People marked with an asterisk have entries in this one in which books, painting, and dictionary. music were readily present and greatly

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valued. At literary gatherings, poets and strictures of tonality, and gave rises to thinkers shared their ideas and discussed verses (lü`shı¯ ᕟ䆫) and quatrains (juéjù 㒱 the craft and discipline of writing. Her হ), each line of which had a specifi c syl- father did not exclude Li Qingzhao, but labic count—either pentasyllabic or encouraged her to actively participate in heptasyllabic. The ci form as poetry these discussions. It is likely that in such came into prominence during the Song get-togethers, she began to write verses era and is a lyrical genre, divided by and recite them before prominent writ- way of length—the short lyic (xiaˇolìng ers of her day. It is also likely that her tal- ᇣҸ) and the long lyric (màncí ᜶䆡). ent fl ourished under the guidance of The genius of Li Qingzhao consists in both her father and Su Shi, as it is known the fact that she made important poetic that she gained a reputation for the qual- contributions within the intricate ity of her verse while she was still in her parameters of such genres. teenage years. Her reputation as a great In 1101, at the age of seventeen or poet was assured when she wrote two eighteen, she was married to Zhào shi poems in which she outdid the famed Míngchéng 䍉ᯢ䆮 (1081–1129), who poet Zha¯ng Leˇi ᓴ㗦 (1054–1114), who was a friend of her father. Perhaps the was also known as Wenqian, or Master two became familiar with each other

• Wangqiu. She mastered both the earlier through the many literary gatherings shi form and the more current ci form of that were a regular event in her paternal poetry, and her verses enjoyed wide cir- home. Zhao was born in Zhucheng, in

• ᴢ⏙✻ culation in the capital, which was the the province of Shandong. He was the hub of Song literary activity. son of Zhào Tıˇngzhıˉ 䍉ᤎП (1040–1107), By the time of Li Qingzhao, the com- the prime minister and censor under plex shi genre of poetry was a distin- Emperor Huizong (1082–1135; r. 1100– guished literary tradition, stretching 1126). Zhao Mingcheng grew up in the back two millennia up until the Tang capital city of Bianjing, where he entered dynasty. The shi form, in itsSample earliest form the academy to study the classics. was tetrasyllabic and consisted of hymns Zhao Mingcheng was still a student (sòng 乖), airs (feˉng 亢), and odes (yaˇ 䲙). when the marriage took place, but it Later, the genre became more regulated was a much-celebrated event in the regarding tone, which led to a twofold Song intellectual community, for both division into “old-form shi” (guˇtıˇ shı¯ সԧ the Li and Zhao families were promi- 䆫, guˇshı¯ স䆫), which included the vari- nent. The couple took up residence in ous sub-styles that did not follow partic- Zhucheng. The marriage was a very ular tonal guidelines and were largely happy one, for not only were they pentatonic, and the “new-form shi” (jìntıˇ deeply in love, but theirs was also a true shı¯ 䖥ԧ䆫), which adhered to the marriage of minds.

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Husband and Wife at Work sheds on things antiquarian, but because of the history and insights it provides for Li Qingzhao matched her husband’s important buildings and temples, infor- deep love of the past and she was his mation which might otherwise have able partner in his eventual scholarly been lost. work as antiquarian and epigrapher. The This work of her husband’s was also study of ancient ritual practices was of immense interest to Li Qingzhao, for it being actively encouraged by the royal appealed to her sensibility which saw in court. It was thus with offi cial sanction things a lineage, a process, a signifi cance; that Zhao focused his attention on jıˉnshí and she became an eager partner as xué 䞥⷇ᄺ, or epigraphy: the discovery, together they sought out old books, paint- cataloging, and description of inscrip- ings, rubbings of inscriptions, ceramics, tions found on metal and stone. This and sculpture. She relates that in their antiquarian work involved extensive early years, while Zhao was still a stu- research so that the historical contexts of dent and with little money in his pocket, these various ancient inscriptions might he would pawn a few pieces of clothing be validated and therefore established. and with the proceedings purchase a In effect, Zhao was carefully providing stone rubbing or two. These he would • Lıˇ Qı¯ngzhào • artifacts with provenance, and establish- bring back home and, together with Li ing some very important methodologies Qingzhao, spend many happy hours for historiography. He stipulated that over some wine or tea examining and classical historical texts were often writ- studying the inscription. They valued the ten much later than the events they same things and derived immense plea- described, and therefore the assertions sure in cultural and literary pursuits. found in them had to be verifi ed before In 1103, Zhao graduated and took a they could be accepted. He also demon- post with the government in the city of strated that epigraphical records should Kaifeng. The new post saw an improve- take precedence over classicalSample texts since ment in the couple’s monetary situation, they were contemporary witnesses. Even- and they were now able to work carefully tually he would write a thirty-volume in expanding their collections to include catalog of the various inscriptions he had paintings and antique bronzes and discovered, copied, and explained. After ceramics. Several rooms in their house his death, Li Qingzhao would edit, col- were devoted to housing their ever- late, and publish these volumes, to which growing acquisitions. They expressed she would append her famous “Post- their joy in the objects they obtained by script,” which described her life. inventing a game in which each would Zhao’s work has proved to be of question the other about the new pur- immense value not only for the light it chase. The winner would get a cup of tea

• 649 •

or wine. Li Qingzhao later recalled that During one of her husband’s offi cial by the end of the game both would be absences from home, Li Qingzhao wrote laughing so much that the cup would a poem on a silken handkerchief and overturn in the lap of the winner, who sent it to him. This is the famous poem, got not a sip. Both of them greatly “Sorrow of Separation,” which was com- admired the paintings of Xu Xi, who posed to be sung to the tune, “A Sprig lived in the Five Dynasties and Ten King- of Plum Blossom” (“Yı¯ jiaˇn méi” ϔ࠾ṙ), doms Ѩҷक೑ (907–960 ce) era, and The story goes that when Zhao received they held in highest regard the poems of the poem, he was much taken by its deli- Táo Yuaˉnmíng 䱊⏞ᯢ (365–427 ce who cacy and excellence, and he sought to fl ourished during the Six Dynasties excel it by writing verses of his own in period (220–589 ce). This admiration was the same meter and tune. After either fi f- so great that they named the room in teen or fi fty attempts (records differ), he which they played their sport of knowl- showed his efforts to a friend, and he edge, “Returning home” (“Guiqu lai xi included Li Qingzhao’s original among ci”), which was the title of a celebrated them. After much consideration, the poem by Tao Yuanming. Later, in 1114, friend said that the best of the lot was a when Li Qingzhao’s portrait was painted, couplet that ended Li Qingzhao’s poem:

• Zhao would inscribe it with a colophon that was the fi rst line from this poem. This sorrow cannot ℸᚙ᮴䅵 Zhao’s work as a government offi cial be held back ৃ⍜䰸 • ᴢ⏙✻ often took him away to various cities and as soon as it fades ᠡϟⳝ༈ towns, and these separations fi lled Li from the brow Qingzhao with feelings of extreme loneli- it eats away at ैϞᖗ༈ ness and longing. It appears that Zhao the heart was similarly affl icted, for his preference was to spend time with his antiques and This couplet was so often repeated his wife rather than tend Sampleto government that it would soon take on aphoristic sta- business. The couple would never have tus. Before long, her poems gained a children, whose presence might have larger readership and greater admiration, blunted these feelings. But these separa- for they perfectly embodied musicality tions gave Li Qingzhao occasion to write and waˇnyueˉ ဝ㋘ or “delicate restraint.” poems that became profound medita- tions on separation, on the ephemeral nature of joy, and on the true quality of Political Turmoil love which unites distant lovers. These happy, carefree years were not A famous episode is associated with entirely trouble-free, however. The court this early period of their marriage. was a place of factionalism, where

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www.berkshirepublishing.com © 2014 Berkshire Publishing Group, all rights reserved. • Sòng Dynasty • 960–1279 ce • rivalries were bitterly fought by sup- ear acquired power, which meant that porters of Minister of Revenue Cài Jı¯ng things could always drastically change. 㫵Ҁ and those who opposed him. Li In 1107, Zhao Tingzhi grew out of favor Qingzhao’s father, Li Gefei, supported and was then banished from the capital. Cai Jing, while Zhao Mingcheng’s father He was a broken man and he would die (Zhao Tingzhi) opposed him. Eventually, the same year. Zhao Tingzhi’s faction won, and Emperor The privilege that Li Qingzhao and Huizong impeached Cai Jing in 1102 and her husband enjoyed because of his banished all his supporters. During this father suddenly vanished. Added to this time, Zhao Mingcheng himself was was the fact that the entire Zhao family briefl y arrested and later released for was held in contempt at the court. This lack of evidence. Li Qingzhao wrote made life diffi cult, and the couple many letters and poems to Zhao Tingzhi, decided to leave the capital and head who now held the post of deputy prime south, where Zhao Mingcheng took minister, on behalf of her father. She did work as a judicial offi cer, fi rst in the city not succeed in having her father’s ban- of Laizhou, and then in Qingzhou. They ishment rescinded. Family members of eventually settled in Itu, in Shandong the two rival factions were also forbid- Province, where they bought a house • Lıˇ Qı¯ngzhào • den to marry; this decree made her own large enough to hold their books and marriage to Zhao Mingcheng technically antiquities. Here, the couple spent the illegal. With all the rival factions gone next ten years, continuing to collect, dis- from the capital, Zhao Tingzhi eventually cuss, and write. Despite the political cli- became prime minister. mate, Li Qingzhao’s poems were still The couple supported each other eagerly read and highly praised. She also through this turmoil and continued their wrote prose works on literary, political, antiquarian and epigraphical work while and historical subjects. Zhao Mingching Zhao Mingcheng looked after his gov- worked on completing his massive and ernmental responsibilities.Sample In 1105, the monumental work on epigraphy. emperor lifted her father’s banishment, which allowed Li Gefei to return to his home in Jinan, although he would never Move to the South regain his position at court. The old bit- With the Zhao family still out of favor at terness between the two families was court, Zhao Mingcheng was sent alone eventually forgotten and life returned to in 1126 as governor of Qinan city, also in its previous peaceful and happy mode. Shandong Province. This was shattering This, however, was short-lived. Much of for Li Qingzhao, because they had to court life depended on the whims of the be separated and live apart. Then, in emperor, and those who had the royal 1127, Zhao Mingcheng’s mother died in

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Nanjing. This would prove to be a fateful ordered to proceed as judicial offi cer to year for the couple and for the Song era, Jiaxing in Zhejiang Province. Li Qingzhao for it was also when the Jingkang Inci- traveled on to Gaixia in Anhui Province, dent took place. Armies of the northern where she stayed. Jurchen Jin (Nüˇ zhe¯n Jıˉn 䞥ཇⳳ) invaded Tragedy struck in 1128 when Zhao Song territories and quickly overran and Mingcheng became sick at Nanjing destroyed the capital city of Kaifeng. (either of malaria or dysentery). Gravely They captured Emperor Qıˉnzoˉng 䩺ᅫ, weakened, he sent for Li Qingzhao. She along with his father, the retired emperor found him at an inn; his last words to her Huizong, stripped them of their royal were to ask for a brush because he rank, and then exiled them to Manchuria wanted to write her a poem. He died in to live as commoners under humiliating her arms at the age of forty-eight. She circumstances. Most of the rest of the was only forty-fi ve. imperial family, as well as prominent Devastated, she fell ill and remained courtiers, managed to fl ee south to sick for many months. When she recov- Zhejiang Province and established them- ered, she was a different woman; the selves in Hangzhou, where the ninth son poems she wrote were darker and qui- of the old emperor Huizong, Ga¯ozoˉng eter. Perhaps it was writing that gave her

• 催ᅫ (1107–1187), became the fi rst comfort and courage to continue with emperor of the newly established South- her life. She moved to Hangzhou, the ern Song dynasty (1127–1279). Southern Song capital. She still had Zhao

• ᴢ⏙✻ Months of bloodshed and cruelty fol- Mingcheng’s work, and this she set lowed as the Jurchen spread through the about organizing and editing, and even- north. In the spring of 1128, they struck tually publishing with a “Postscript” Shandong Province. Refugees streamed that described how her happiness was to the south looking for safety. Among gone forever. them was Li Qingzhao, who was alone, The Jurchen threat was still omni- since her husband was stillSample in Qinan. She present, however, and this meant that had to abandon their house in Itu and she had to fl ee their raids again. As if this fl ee with whatever she could easily carry. hardship were not enough, there was a When the Jurchen attacked Itu, their rumor that she had sent a jade fl ask to a house was burned down, where books Jurchen general. The rumor came to alone fi lled a dozen rooms. She edfl to Emperor Gaozong’s attention, and it was Gianxian, in Jiangxi Province, with noth- offi cially seen as an act of treason, since ing but a few belongings, along with the Zhao family was still not rehabili- her poems and her husband’s work on tated and actions by its family members, epigraphy. She eagerly waited for Zhao even those through marriage, were Mingcheng to join her, but he was again suspect. To avoid problems, she left

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Hangzhou. This was a timely decision, have come down through the ages: a for the Jurchen attacked Hangzhou soon “Postscript” (“Hòuxù” ৢᑣ) to her hus- thereafter and captured the city. She had band’s study of ancient inscriptions found no time to secure her remaining books, on metal and stone; the Lan ci, which is a and they were all destroyed when the discourse on the ci-form; and a single let- city was put to the torch. ter to the scholar Qí Chónglıˇ ㍺ዛ⼐ She eventually made her way to her (1083–1142). Brief as these remnants are, brother’s home in Jinhua, in Zhejiang they are enough to validate her position Province, where she took up residence as the foremost female poet in Chinese and found a measure of peace after so literature. much chaos and misfortune. She continued to write exquisite poems, transform- Nirmal DASS ing her sorrow into a grand, universal Wilfrid Laurier University theme of the indomitable human spirit that must endure and overcome the calam- Further Reading ity and heartbreak that life always brings. She also continued to study and write

Chao Ho, Lucy. (1968). More gracile than yellow • Lıˇ Qı¯ngzhào • about antiques. She retained a zest for life, fl owers. The life and works of Li Ch’ing-chao. Hong and even invented a new card game called Kong: Mayfair Press. dama (“driving horses”). The poems Cryer, James. (Trans.). (1984). Plum Blossom: Poems from this period refl ect that life is bitter- of Li Ch’ing-chao. Durham, NC: Carolina Wren Press. sweet, and the burden she was destined to carry must be borne with courage— Hu, P’in-ch’ing. (1966). Li Ch’ing-chao. New York: Twayne Publishers. sorrow must not be allowed to stifl e life. In 1141, Li Qingzhao died in her brother’s Pannam, Clifford L. (2009). Music from a jade fl ute: home at the age of fi fty-seven. The ci poems of Li Qingzhao. Ormond, Victoria, Australia: Hybrid Publishers. SampleRexroth, Kenneth, & Chung, Ling. (Trans.). (1979). Li Qingzhao’s Legacy Li Ch’ing-chao. Complete poems. New York: New During her lifetime, Li Qingzhao pub- Directions. lished seven volumes of shıˉ 䆫 poetry and Ting, Ch’uan-ching, & Chu Djang. (Trans.). (1989). six volumes of cì 䆡 poetry. Time has thor- A compilation of anecdotes of sung personalities. New oughly winnowed this output, however, York: St. John’s University Press. so that we only have about eighteen of her Wang Jiaosheng. (Trans.). (1989). The complete ci- shi verses and about seventy-eight of her ci poems of Li Qingzhao: A new English translation. poems (most scholars suggest that of these, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. only fi fty are truly from her pen). She also Wei Djao. (2010). A blossom like no other: Li wrote many works of prose, but only three Qingzhao. Toronto: Ginger Post.

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1893–1976—Leader of the Chinese Communist revolution, Chairman of the CCP (1943–1976), and founder of the PRC (1949)

Summary the world over and to enter Western One of the most powerful and original popular consciousness. He was a leader leaders of the twentieth century, Mao whose name will be forever stamped on Zedong was a farmer’s son who went on Chinese history, a major force in the his- • Máo Zédoˉng • to head the Chinese Communist Party tory of Communist ideas and rule, and and found the People’s Republic of a considerable infl uence on twentieth- China. “Mao Zedong Thought” became century global history. He ranks high as the offi cial ideology of the Chinese par- a Chinese unifi er, along with emperors 催⼪ ty-state, and until his death “Chairman” *Gaˉozuˇ (256–195 bce), founder of ∝ Mao determined China’s political and the Hàn dynasty; *Emperor Tàizoˉng ໾ᅫ ૤ economic course, achieving unity and (c. 599–649 ce) of the Táng ᴅܗ⩟ pride for the nation, but later spurring dynasty; and Zhuˉ Yuánzhaˉng ᯢ the fl awed mass movements known as (1328–1398), the founder of the Míng Sampleknown as *Emperor Hóngwuˇ ⋾℺. As a the Great Leap Forward and the Cul- tural Revolution. Mao was a political man of supreme power also possessing a strongman of unusual complexity who political philosophy (lacked by his con- left an explosive legacy. His failures temporary military rival *Chiang Kai- 㩟ҟ⷇ served as a springboard for his eventual shek , discussed later), he is, successor, Deng Xiaoping, to bury key arguably, unmatched in Chinese history. Maoist ideas and turn China in a new After successfully uniting China direction, but his legacy lives on. under his Chinese Communist Party

ao Zedong was the fi rst Chinese *People marked with an asterisk have entries in this M political fi gure to become known dictionary.

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(CCP) in 1949, Mao followed the Soviet Early Life Union model, but later pushed utopian policies that culminated in the cata- Mao Zedong was born in 1893 in a village strophic Cultural Revolution ᭛࣪໻䴽ੑ of around two thousand farming fami- (1966–1976), a complex social-political lies, most of them with the family name mass movement that urged people Mao, in Xiang Tan County of Hunan (especially young people) to rebel in Province. Life in Shaoshan was distant class struggle against traditional and from the dramatic last years of the capitalist elements in Chinese society. Manchu-ruled Qı¯ng ⏙ dynasty (1644– The Cultural Revolution caused mas- 1911/1912) based in Beijing, which was sive social, political, and cultural dis- doomed by incompetence, Western intru- ruption, and led to the killing and sion, and soaring population. The village injuring of many Chinese people. In his was tranquil and beautiful and Mao never fi nal years Mao surprised the world by left it until he was sixteen years old. His welcoming United States President father, Mao Yichang, after discharge from Richard Nixon to Beijing in 1972, trans- the army, prospered in farming and trade forming the bipolar world of the Cold in grain and pigs, dominating Shaoshan; War into a triangle, greatly to the disad- his four children led a comfortable, if iso-

• vantage of Moscow. lated, life. The father was a worrier, tough, Mao observed of himself that he was industrious, and mean-spirited. His wife, part tiger and part monkey, two Chinese Wen Qiwei, was a gentle Buddhist to

• ↯⋑ϰ zodiac animals known for power and whom Zedong, the eldest of three sons, playfulness respectively. The ruthless was especially close. side knew how to crash through from At age eight Mao Zedong began point A to point B; the quixotic side had classes at Shaoshan’s private school, doubts that point B was so great after all. where the Confucian classics ruled. His sense of history as cyclical, a depar- Showing a contrarian streak, Mao and ture from Marxism-Leninism, Sample made him other boys furtively read historical dissatisfi ed with any plateau of success novels such as Romance of the Three following the establishment of the Peo- Kingdoms by *Luó Guànzhoˉng 㔫䌃Ё ple’s Republic in 1949, puzzling his col- (c. 1330–c. 1400) and Journey to the West, leagues. Like Charles de Gaulle, Napoleon thought to have been written by *Wú Bonaparte, and Winston Churchill, Mao Chéng’eˉn ਈᡓᘽ (c. 1505–1580). Declin- was a “semi-intellectual.” A man of both ing to stand to recite from the ancient ideas and action, he disliked professional Four Books, which contained the works intellectuals. “In some respects intellectu- of *Mencius ᄳᄤ (c. 372–c. 289 bce) and als are wholly illiterate,” he once said *Confucius ᄨᄤ (551–479 bce), as was (Pantsov 2012, 457). required, Mao was once pulled to his

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feet by an enraged teacher but fl ed the dynastic rule detailed in Journal of the school and, like the rebels in the four- New People, edited by the infl uential teenth-century novel Story of the essayist *Liáng Qı˘qiaˉo ṕਃ䍙 (1873–1929). Marshes (also known as Water Margin), Japan’s surprising defeat of Russia in the took refuge in the hills. (He came back Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 gave three days later.) Mao an enthusiasm for international At age thirteen, Mao left school to affairs: “I knew and felt the beauty of work full time for his father, weeding, Japan, and felt something of her pride gathering wood, watering buffalo, and and might” (cited in Terrill 1999a, 47). picking beans. Not liking either his Another book he devoured was Great father or his teacher, Mao was a boy of Heroes of the World, soon declaring George passion before he became a man of revo- Washington to be his fi rst great hero: lution. He seemingly sought to do the “We need great people like these” opposite of anything his father had done (cited in Terrill 1999a, 48), he said to a or wished for his son. Whereas the father classmate. He also highlighted the had little schooling, the son wanted an pages on Napoleon, Peter the Great, education. Mao was constrained at age Gladstone, Rousseau, Catherine the Great, fourteen to an arranged marriage with and Montesquieu. • Máo Zédoˉng • an eighteen-year-old girl unappealing to Beginning a chain of shifts in place him. He again ran away from home, for and institution, Mao left Dongshan, months this time; the devastated girl where his grades were good but he died two years later of dysentery. Leav- gained a reputation for being quarrel- ing for his fi rst school outside the village some, and won admission to a middle (named Dongshan, in the town of Xiang school in Changsha meant for Xiang Xiang), Mao left a poem behind for his Xiang natives. Dusty and fl at, Hunan father to see: “Wherever one goes in the Province’s capital of 800,000 on the Xiang valley / The mountains are equally tall” River had been opened to foreign trade (cited in Pansov 2012, 28).Sample The Shaoshan as a “Treaty Port” in 1904. years turned Mao into an extremely res- In 1911, as revolutionaries moved olute teenager. against the Manchus in Wuhan, a city to the north, and the Qing dynasty was tot- tering, Mao abandoned middle school Years of Ardor and Turmoil and joined the Hunan revolutionary Mao Zedong gained his fi rst political army. After six months, he tired of army ideas from “Reform Movement of 1898,” life and sought further study, answering a manifesto by leading philosopher advertisements for schools and spend- *Kaˉng Yoˇ uwéi ᒋ᳝Ў (1858–1927), and ing his days at the Hunan Province from last-ditch ideas to save Chinese Library, gorging himself on the history

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and geography of the modern West. He After visiting Shanghai to meet loved newspapers and subscribed to *Chén Dúxiù 䰜⣀⾔ (1879–1942), a left- one, which his father called “wasted wing professor of political economy, and money on wasted paper.” to bid farewell to work-study students A pamphlet he read began, “Alas, from Hunan who were sailing for France, China will be subjugated,” and Mao Mao returned to Changsha. He did not began to make a connection between for- join his close friends on the ship bound eign bullying of China and the oppres- for France, as he fared poorly in attempt- sion he had felt in his family and at ing to learn French and he felt an urgency school. An “individual character” of about tackling China’s problems at rebelliousness made a connection with home. Despite busy political organizing, the “social character” of rebellion that Mao remained a pedagogue fi rst and an marked the dynasty’s last years. ideologue second. He taught in a pri- Mao’s skill at writing, along with mary school run by the teachers training money from his father, led to a place at a college, in a makeup class in arithmetic teachers training college in Changsha and Chinese for farmers lacking formal with the motto, “Seek the Truth from schooling, and at Hunan Self-Cultivation Facts” (shíshì qiúshì ᅲџ∖ᰃ), later a University in 1921, with his wife and

• famous slogan in the post-Mao era, brother Zetan among the helpers. They inscribed at its entrance. Here over fi ve all believed knowledge could make years he obtained a serious education, China strong.

• ↯⋑ϰ spearheaded by ethics teacher Yáng Chaˉngjì ᴼᯠ⌢ (1871–1920), who pos- sessed a doctorate from the University of Becoming a Communist Edinburgh and a daughter, Kaˉihuì ᓔ᜻, The infl uence of Li Dazhao and Chen whom Mao married. From Yang he Duxiu—the two intellectual sponsors of learned liberal idealism and ardent indi- the Chinese proto-Communists—pulled vidualism, writing a Sampleprize-winning Mao from anarchist and liberal ideas essay titled “The Energy of the Mind.” toward a socialism embracing violence to Mao published a string of six newspa- gain power. Through the Cultural Book- per articles deploring the fate of a girl store and the Renovation of the People married off against her will who com- Study Society, Mao worked to radicalize mitted suicide just before the wedding. young Hunan idealists, setting up work- In 1918 he followed Yang to Beijing and ers’ trade unions as Karl Marx (1818–1883) gained through that connection a minor had advocated. By 1923, Mao and his library job at Peking University under circle had triggered twenty-two such Marxist intellectual *Lıˇ Dàzhaˉo ᴢ໻䩞 “workers’ clubs,” though they were (1889–1927). small since the industrial proletariat (i.e.,

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A young Mao Zedong, leader of China’s Communists, addresses some of his followers on 6 December 1944. Source: Franklin d. Roosevelt Library. the class of urban workers) in Hunan Guangdong Province government) nor was minuscule. Li (on campus in Beijing) attended the Such activity led to SampleMao being one of founding congress. two Hunan delegates to the founding Mao’s fi rst child was born in October congress of the Chinese Communist 1922; he and Kaihui named their son Party in Shanghai in 1921. Communist Anying (“Hero reaches the Shore”). International (Comintern) representa- Their comfortable house at Clear Water tive Hendricus Sneevliet (1883–1942), a Pond in Changsha served as headquar- Dutch Jew who went by the pseudonym ters of the Hunan CCP and a clubhouse “Maring,” attended the furtive gather- for young leftists; Mao’s mother-in-law ing of fi fteen persons. Neither Chen also lived with them. (busy in Guangzhou—then known as In a despondent mood that was often Canton—working on education for the to recur, Mao wrote to friend Peng

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Huang in 1921 listing his own defects, Party against a common foe (imperialists among them being too prone to subjec- and warlords) was Mao’s second experi- tive judgments, being arrogant and vain, ence of a “United Front,” the fi rst being being good at big talk but not at systemic the united front he and his mother steps, and being quick to blame others formed against his father in Shaoshan, for his own errors. He told Peng these trying to convert him to Buddhism. defects would hold him back from lead- Moscow’s policy was controversial, how- ership and distinction. They did not; but ever, as many Communists, including they did fl avor his exercise of power Mao, saw a danger of the voices of CCP over China and its people. members being lost in the far larger GMD. A long period began wherein Mao That Mao missed the second CCP was constrained by Comintern instruc- congress in the summer of 1922 because tions, only occasionally defying them he “forgot the name of the place where it and always accepting that, in the end, was to be held” (Snow 1961, 159) sug- the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics gests the fragmentary nature of the (USSR) was the overall decision-maker infant CCP. Under the strains of juggling for the revolution in China. Moscow CCP and GMD loyalties in the early demanded a stress on class struggle and 1920s, Mao suffered a severe bout of

• anti-imperialism. The latter was to be neurasthenia (a condition marked by awkwardly implemented hand in hand fatigue and lack of motivation, similar in with the non-socialist (but still “revolu- some respects to chronic fatigue syn-

• ↯⋑ϰ tionary”) Nationalist Party (Guomindang, drome) and in July 1924 retreated in or GMD). During the early 1920s the depression for seven months to his home Comintern instructed CCP members to village on “medical leave” from the CCP enter the GMD when possible, and *Sun Central Executive Committee; he missed Yat-sen ᄭЁቅ (1866–1925) from the the fourth CCP congress in January 1925. Nationalist side grudgingly accepted Mao’s father had died of typhoid in this plan. Sample1920, a few months after he lost his The Comintern was banking on the mother at age 53, from persistent illness GMD to be the main force pushing the with diphtheria, lymphoma, and other “national revolution” it sought in China. ailments. In later life he expressed guilt The senior Comintern representative, at not doing more during his mother’s Mikhail Borodin (1884–1951), arriving in illness, but none for being absent from 1923, told the CCP “the creation of GMD his father’s funeral. By now Mao was organizations, the larger the better, is the shepherding his two brothers, Zemin chief task of Communists” (cited in and Zetan, and his sister, Zejian into Pantsov 2012, 135). This allying of the schooling, and organizing left-wing Communist Party and the Nationalist unions and farmers’ evening classes. His

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second son, Anqing, arrived in 1923 as would stand or fall with farmers (Mao, his marriage was losing some of its 1967, vol. 1 for both essays). intensity; a third son, Anlong, was to In Shaoshan that summer Mao and arrive in 1927. other young patriots organized an Without Comintern money—funneled, “Avenge the Shame Society” (referring at fi rst, through the Soviet Embassy in to the shame of China before foreign China or carried in envelopes by Chinese incursions into its territory). Targeted by or Russian individuals shuttling back Hunan governor Zhao Hengti, Mao was and forth to Moscow, later through Sun lucky not to be captured. He retreated to Yat-sen’s widow, Soong Ching-ling—the Guangzhou and, despite another attack CCP would not have followed the road of neurasthenia, he worked effectively of compromise with the GMD year after at the Nationalist-founded Whampoa year. During 1921 the CCP received six- Military Academy and in the newly teen times as much money from Moscow formed “GMD Committee” of the CCP. as it raised within China, and the ratio In the autumn of 1925 he summed up kept escalating. The historian Alexander his political position: “I believe in com- Pantsov writes that from its founding munism and advocate the social revolu- “until the mid-1930s, the CCP was able tion of the proletariat. The present • Máo Zédoˉng • to function only by relying on the domestic and foreign repression cannot, Kremlin’s help to the tune of 30,000 however, be overthrown by the forces of United States dollars a month” (2012, one class alone” (cited in Schram 1992– 136, 116). Mao’s entire revolutionary 2005, 2:237). career through the 1940s was paid for by Sun Yat-sen, fl awed symbol of the the Russians. Guomindang’s Republic of China (ROC), which sought to succeed the Qing dynasty (and which would eventually Countryside the Key be pushed out to Taiwan by the rival SampleCCP under Mao), died of liver cancer in Experiences in Hunan in 1925 inclined Mao to think farmers would be the key Beijing in 1925; without him the GMD to the Chinese revolution, but his essay sank into factionalism, with the left “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese wing, open to the CCP, under *Waˉng Society” of February 1926, written in Jıˉngwèi ∾㊒ि (1883–1944) initially Guangzhou, still called the industrial gaining the most ground. An incident in proletariat the “leading force in our rev- 1925 known as the May Thirtieth Inci- olution.” By the end of that year, however, dent, in which British police fi red on a in “The National Revolution and the Peas- crowd in Shanghai—under control of the ant Movement,” he downgraded urban British at the time—protesting the kill- workers and declared that the revolution ing of a Communist worker by a

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Japanese man, led to a national surge of Training Institute in Canton. He, along strikes, boycotts of foreign goods, and with Guangdong rural organizer Péng demonstrations in the port city of Pài ᕁ␗ (1896–1929), was a “Mister Qingdao (formerly known as Tsingtao) Peasantry” of the revolutionary move- and other cities under the banner “Down ment, seeing landlords and foreign with imperialism.” intruders as equal opportunity foes to In March 1926 Chiang Kai-shek, the be slain. leader of the Nationalists, began to Mao ultimately gained a crucial wreck the United Front with the Com- breakthrough to rural militancy through munists by anti-CCP maneuvering and the collapse of the United Front, but fi rst force. Though he visited the Soviet he faced danger and uncertainty. In early Union in 1923—and was even invited to 1927 he produced his “Report on an become a Communist—Chiang came to Investigation of the Peasant Movement believe that Moscow’s “brand of inter- in Hunan,” an emotional document of nationalism and World Revolution are rhetorical skill. Stalin suddenly lurched but Czarism by other names, the better left and Mao’s “Report” happened to to confuse and confound the outside fi nd favor in Moscow. At the fi fth CCP world” (Chiang 1957, 24). The Commu- congress in Wuhan contradictions

• nist-Nationalist alliance was dead by swirled among Mao, Wang Jingwei of June 1927, and violence henceforth the left GMD, and a new Comintern dominated Mao’s struggle to achieve arrival, Indian Communist M. N. Roy.

• ↯⋑ϰ a true replacement for China’s last The two senior intellectuals of the party dynasty. Moscow looked foolish for could lead no more: Li Dazhao was Chiang had let it down. But both the seized and hanged in Beijing in 1927, CCP and Moscow had their ongoing and Chen Duxiu now favored an accom- interests: the CCP still needed Russian modationist line toward the GMD that money, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ill-fi tted Mao’s and Roy’s militancy. (1878–1953) did not desireSample to give up on In September 1927 fl ailing “Autumn Chiang, as he needed him as an ally Harvest Uprisings,” led by the CCP against Japan. During 1927 Chiang’s under the slogan “not a single grain of Northern Expedition moved through the new harvest for landowners,” Changsha, Wuhan, and other bastions attempted to take Changsha and other of warlord- and leftist- power to bring, cities but failed dismally; Mao lost all his under the Nationalist Party label, the party positions. CCP members, falling in most unity China had experienced since number from fi fty thousand to seven the outbreak of revolutionary activity in thousand, became hunted criminals. Mao 1911. Mao, known as a teacher at this headed for Jiangxi Province and the time, became director of the Peasant mountains of Jinggangshan to “be with

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the forest brothers” and to form an armed Eventually a “Soviet government” peasant movement. This was the fi rst was formed in 1930 in Jiangxi Province; major change of direction in CCP strat- Mao, now thirty-seven, had successfully egy since the party’s founding. Mean- begun his strategy of mobilizing the while Chiang solidifi ed control over countryside and leaving cities to the most of China, with Nanjing as his capi- future. He wrote a notable essay on left- tal of the Republic of China; the Comin- wing organizing, “A Single Spark Can tern, with little warning, abandoned Start a Prairie” in 1930, just as the New militant instructions for China at the York Times made its fi rst mention of the CCP’s sixth congress, held in Moscow. name Mao Zedong (essay in Mao 1967, vol. 1). Mao’s fl exibility in tactics served him Rise Toward the Top well; he knew how variously to wield Mao broke rules in the mountains by ally- the soft (yıˉn 䰈) and the hard (yáng 䰇). In ing with bandits, and in his personal life an era of violence he stated, “Now we by taking a new lover, the teenaged Hè must know that political power comes Zıˇzheˉn 䌎ᄤ⦡ (1909–1984); Kaihui was from the barrel of a gun” (cited in far off in threatened Changsha. His Schram, 1992, vol. 3, 30, translation • Máo Zédoˉng • younger brother Zetan had been rejected adjusted by Terrill). On Jinggangshan he by He Zizhen, and after she chose Mao was joined by *Zhuˉ Dé ᴅᖋ (1886–1976), Zedong instead, Zetan married her a handsome man from a farm family in younger sister. Mao and He Zizhen had a Sichuan Province, seven years Mao’s daughter in May 1929. Kaihui, who knew senior, who was to become Mao’s closest of Mao’s betrayal, was executed by the comrade in arms—after initial quarrels— GMD commander in Hunan in 1930 with for decades to come, and the military her crying son Anying nearby. Mao read leader of the CCP. In the mountains, of her death in a newspaper and sent his “Zhu-Mao” jointly led the Fourth Route SampleArmy in struggles against both land- mother-in-law thirty silver dollars to make a gravestone. The three sons by lords and the leftist instructions of the Kaihui had terrifying experiences in the CCP center in Shanghai, led for the care of others in Shanghai, selling news- moment by *Lıˇ Lìsaˉn ᴢゟϝ (1899–1967), papers and scavenging for cigarette who sought to rein Mao in. In 1932 Mao butts, and the youngest, Anlong, died of and Zhu made the very theoretical ges- dysentery in 1931 at age four. Mao’s sister ture of declaring war against Japan. Zejian, a left activist like her brothers, Stalin had more faith in Mao than shuttled between Jinggangshan and the some of Mao’s colleagues did, and with- plains, but in 1929 was captured by the out it Mao would not have surged to the GMD and executed. top of the CCP leadership starting in the

• 1491 •

1930s; the “question of Mao Zedong” only twenty thousand remained; death, remained a hot potato for some years in capture, and desertion had taken the rest. the CCP. Confl icts, bringing a return of Mao’s new wife, He Zizhen, was one of Mao’s neurasthenia, were endemic: with thirty-fi ve women to start and fi nish the *Zhoˉu Eˉ nlái ਼ᘽᴹ (1898–1976), who march. Saying later, “On horseback, one would go on to become the fi rst premier has the time” to compose poetry, Mao of the People’s Republic of China; with addressed the vast Kunlun Mountains the CCP center in Shanghai; and espe- that form the northern edge of the Tibetan cially with the “returned students,” a Plateau, in verses that envisaged world doctrinaire group that had studied in peace: “Could I but draw my sword Moscow under the wing of the austere o’ertopping heaven / I’d cleave you in Pavel Mif (1901–1938). three / One piece for Europe, One for On the eve of the Long March in America / One to keep in the East / 1935—a series of military retreats under- Peace would then reign over the world / taken by the CCP’s Red Army—the posi- The same warmth and cold throughout tion both of Mao and the CCP was the globe” (cited in Terrill 1999a, 157). precarious, but after the march’s conclu- sion a year later, having passed 9,656

• kilometers through eleven provinces and Foundations for a Regime fi ve mountain ranges, the tide had turned In the small northwestern town of Yan’an for both. (The map on page 1397 of this from 1936 to 1945 Mao wrote his seminal

• ↯⋑ϰ volume shows the approximate route of works on Marxism, purged key enemies, the Long March.) The CCP, after Chiang battled Chiang and (at times) the Kai-shek’s fi ve nearly-successful “Encir- Japanese invasion, used anti-Japan clement Campaigns to Annihilate Com- nationalism for political purposes more munists,” was driven to leave southeast effectively than did Chiang, and made China. Still, during the trek Mao won out his position at the top of the CCP secure over the doctrinaire Luo SampleFu and Bo Gu; for the rest of his life. His essay “On neutralized the wavering Zhou Enlai; Practice” implicitly made a Chinese and won a climactic fi ght with Zhaˉng epistemological challenge to Moscow’s Guótaˉo ᓴ೑⛬, a senior Communist rival dialectical materialism, which posits also from Hunan, whose fi ne army met “matter” as the base of history’s move- up with Mao’s long marchers in Sichuan. ment, and culture and will only as the Mao’s guerrilla tactics had prevailed superstructure. “If you want to know the over the positional battle tactics of the taste of a pear, you must change the pear rule-by-the-book formalists who opposed by eating it yourself,” he wrote. “If you him. Eighty-six thousand people began want to know the theory and methods of the Long March; upon reaching Sichuan, revolution, you must take part in

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www.berkshirepublishing.com © 2014 Berkshire Publishing Group, all rights reserved. • People’s Republic of China (Part I) • 1949–1979 • revolution. All genuine knowledge Communist-Nationalist fi ghting went originates in direct experience” (Mao on before and after both the Xi’an Inci- 1967, 2:300). dent and the Chongqing summit. During what came to be known as In Yan’an, Mao and his wife quar- the Xi’an Incident of 1936, two of Chiang reled and although their fi fth child, Li Kai-shek’s own generals nabbed him Min (Mao’s eighth), was born in 1937, He near the city of Xi’an and delivered him Zizhen soon found herself in Moscow, into Mao’s hands. Mao set Chiang free to where the two surviving sons of Mao’s satisfy Stalin, who was worried about fi rst marriage with Yang Kaihui were danger to the USSR from Japan, and a also sent. “We tried to distract [He fresh “United Front” began between the Zizhen] in whatever ways we could,” the Communists and the Nationalists, this boys recalled of meetings between the time to fi ght the common enemy of three. “We told her all kinds of stories. . . Japan. Mao renamed the Red Army the one name we never mentioned was Mao National Revolutionary Army and Zedong” (cited in Pantsov 2012, 330). placed it under Nanjing’s authority. Although colleagues disapproved, Mao “Had the Xi’an Incident not occurred,” fell for an actress from Shanghai, *Jiaˉng writes the British author Jonathan Fenby, Qıˉng ∳䴦 (1914–1991), saying: “Without • Máo Zédoˉng • “Mao might well not have survived to [Jiang Qing’s] love, I can’t go on with the become Chiang’s successor as ruler of revolution” (cited in Terrill 1999b, 186). China” (2003, 189). (The “Xi’an Incident” The marriage endured through ups and is discussed in more detail in the article downs for thirty-eight years and pro- in this volume on Chiang Kai-shek.) duced a daughter, Li Na. Jiang Qing This step—along with Mao’s trip to would one day be famous in the West as the Sichuan city of Chongqing for a sum- “Madame Mao.” mit in 1945 under United States sponsor- By the time of the seventh CCP ship and Stalin’s pressure to negotiate congress in 1945 the party was ruling with Chiang—was partSample of a single strug- 90 million people in northern and cen- gle within the tent of the “United Front.” tral China, and CCP membership stood Upon leaving for Chongqing, Mao told at 1.2 million, plus 900,000 more in the party colleagues: “Go back to the front military. The new party constitution and fi ght, and don’t worry about my named “Mao Zedong Thought”—the safety in Chongqing. Actually the better leader’s thoughts and sayings—as the you fi ght on the battlefi eld, the more lodestar for China’s future. Another secure I’ll be” (Pang 2003, vol. 3, 13). The poem Mao wrote, “Snow,” ended with lack of success at the summit proved lines suggesting his swelling ambition: the obvious, that Mao and Chiang were “For truly great men / Look to this age “two suns” that could not share a sky. alone.”

• 1493 •

Following the end of World War II, 1949, soon matched the size of the Qing although Chiang’s armies were far empire—thanks to the return of Xinji- superior to Mao’s, thanks to GMD ang in the west and Port Arthur in the errors, the fl exible tactics of Mao, and northeast from Soviet control—which the help of military wizard *Lín Biaˉo ᵫᔾ was itself double the size of the Ming (1907–1971) and others, Mao-Chiang dynasty’s territory. Mao in the winter of power hung in the balance when the 1949–1950 spent more than two months US president Harry Truman unwisely in Moscow—his fi rst trip outside of tasked the Marshall Mission, led by China—fi nding Stalin cool at times. General George C. Marshall, with “We probably went too far,” Stalin mediation between the GMD and the observed after realizing his condescen- CCP. As the Cold War took hold in sion had put Mao in a poor mood (cited Europe, the Soviets increased their aid in Pantsov 2012, 371). Nonetheless, the to Mao and facilitated the arrival of two Communist nations signed a strong CCP armies into Manchurian cities. “Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and That did not mean Stalin trusted Mao Mutual Aid,” and Mao won US$300 million as a Communist. Sending the politician in aid at one percent interest over fi ve and diplomat Vyacheslav Molotov to years from Stalin. Mao, out of gratitude

• look him over in 1948, Stalin received but also conviction, set China on a road the report that Mao “was far from a of Soviet-style industrial planning and Marxist” (Chuev 1993, 81). Mao, how- cultural control.

• ↯⋑ϰ ever, proved himself a true pupil of A liberalized marriage law gave Stalin by writing to him late in 1947, “In women some rights, while a Land the period of the decisive victory of the Reform Law devastated China’s land- Chinese revolution, following the owning class and offered farmers an example of the USSR . . . all political apparent freedom. Soon Mao pushed parties except for the CCP must leave for the initial moderate New Democ- the political stage” (citedSample in Westad racy to be replaced by steps to red- 1998, 298). blooded socialism; farmers virtually became tenants of the state, contrary to the inclination of *Liú Shàoqí ߬ᇥ༛ PRC Years: A Soviet Path (1898–1969, chairman of the PRC from Coming to power in Beijing at age fi fty- 1959–1968), Zhou Enlai, and others. fi ve, after two decades in the country- Mao said: “The peasants want ‘free- side, Mao said, “To win nationwide dom.’ But we want socialism” (Pang victory is only the fi rst step in a long march and Jin 2003, 1:375). of 10,000 li”. The People’s Republic of When the Korean War broke out in China (PRC), proclaimed on 1 October June 1950, Mao threw Chinese forces

• 1494 •

Sample

Chairman Mao’s huge portrait in Tiananmen Square looms over the crowds with an imposing presence. Photo by Joan Lebold Cohen.

into battle as had been planned in now- down in 1954 (he chose suicide) in the available communications of 1949 and fi rst high-level purge of the PRC. Mao 1950 among Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il-sung privately declared in 1956: “Throughout (1912–1994; Kim was the leader of North my life I three times wrote in praise of Korea from its founding in 1948 until his Stalin. None of this was done willingly— death). “We’d feel bad if we stood idly I had to do it” (Wu 1995, 20). Russia’s by,” Mao argued to doubting colleagues. new leader Nikita Khrushchev (1894– General *Péng Déhuái ᕁᖋᗔ (1898–1974), 1971) and Mao never took to each other. later to be purged by Mao, urged inter- Divergent views of how to deal with the vention with the assertion that otherwise United States, plus Mao’s madcap Great the United States would go after China Leap Forward—a drive to advance Chi- from “the two bases of Taiwan and na’s agricultural and industrial devel- Korea” (Peng 1984, 473). opment to the level of the West by Mao’s oldest son, Anying, whom requiring the rural workforce to smelt his father considered “a dogmatist” iron in backyard furnaces and other after his studies in Moscow, was sent to dubious schemes, which collectively led the Chinese countryside to “learn about to a devastating famine killing mil- life” in China. In 1950 he was dis- lions—carried them further apart.

• patched to the Korean War, possibly at Khrushchev said after taking over from Anying’s own request, where a United Stalin, “We will live like brothers with States bombing raid killed him at age the Chinese” (cited in Pantsov 2012,

• ↯⋑ϰ twenty-eight. Mao’s two brothers were 409), but this was not to be. “When I say dead in the revolutionary struggle, ‘Learn from the Soviet Union,’” Mao Zetan in Fujian in 1935, Zemin in Xinji- rasped (Li 1994, 136), “we don’t have to ang in 1943. “Shall I be deprived of learn how to shit and piss from the descendants,” Mao lamented after Soviet Union too, do we?” learning his one surviving son, Anqing, During the second of Mao’s only two had been diagnosed as a Sampleschizophrenic; trips outside of China (both to the Soviet “one son killed, one gone mad” (Sch- Union), he went to Moscow for the Com- ram 1974, 143). munist summit celebrating the fortieth In 1953, the end of the Korean fi ght- anniversary of the USSR, scandalizing ing and the death of Stalin led Mao to many Communist leaders with his insou- fresh vistas that included an easing of ciant remarks on nuclear weapons. crusading leftism and a sense of his high Palmiro Togliatti (1893–1964; leader of the place in world Communism. The party Italian Communist Party from 1927 until leader in northeast China, Gaˉo Gaˇng 催 his death) challenged him: “Comrade ቫ (1905–1954), who had a pipeline to Mao Zedong, how many Italians will sur- Stalin, fell afoul of Mao and was brought vive an atomic war?” The reply: “None at

• 1496 •

www.berkshirepublishing.com © 2014 Berkshire Publishing Group, all rights reserved. • People’s Republic of China (Part I) • 1949–1979 • all. But why do you think that Italians are PRC Years: Maoism so important to humanity?” (cited in Pantsov 2012, 446). Mao’s increasing Unleashing youth on an impossible mis- departure from Soviet ways ultimately sion in launching the Cultural Revolu- led him into the mistakes of the Great tion, Mao decided the young were the Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolu- great creators in the world and closed tion, killing millions and intimidating tens the schools to allow focus on “class of millions more. As he prepared the Great struggle.” With utopian lunges he pur- Leap Forward he chillingly declared: “We sued two phantoms: the failure of social- will organize a world-wide committee ism to bring the fruits he expected, and and institute unifi ed planning for the the unwillingness of the Communist entire earth” (cited in Pantsov 2012, 455). Party to be a Mao Party. “It is right to As “Mao Zedong Thought” became rebel” was his bizarre cry in the midst of the ideology of the Chinese party-state, Liu’s and *Dèng Xiaˇopíng’s 䙧ᇣᑇ Khrushchev felt Mao had resolved to make (1904–1997) painstaking efforts to lift a the CCP “predominant in the world backward economy. (Deng would later Communist movement” (Khrushchev serve as “paramount leader” of the PRC 2007–2008, 3:399). Yet Soviet aid contin- from 1978–1992.) The result was a mil- • Máo Zédoˉng • ued until the end of the 1950s, with lion people tortured, shot, or driven to twelve thousand experts sent to China suicide and scores of millions made to from the Soviet Union and bloc allies, suffer badly (MacFarquhar and Schoe- despite Khrushchev’s uncomfortable nals 2006, 124, 126, passim). Parallel to experiences with Mao (“We lovingly this, a coarsening in Mao’s personal rela- hugged and kissed with Mao, swam in a tionships occurred as Zhou Enlai, Chén pool with him . . . and spent the whole Yì 䰜↙ (1901–1972; mayor of Shanghai time like soul mates. But it was all so and foreign minister), and other col- sickly sweet it turned your stomach” leagues were slighted, and Jiang Qing [Khrushchev 2007–2008,Sample 3:400].) When had to witness Mao’s attachment to the Khrushchev delivered his “Secret younger Zhang Yufeng, whom Mao Speech” attacking Stalin in 1956 he did plucked from her job as a railway atten- not provide a copy to Mao, who instead dant to take on more personal duties in read a Chinese translation by Xinhua Zhongnanhai, the leaders’ compound News agency from the text published in near Tiananmen. the New York Times. The dismantling of Leaving behind the tactical prudence Stalin’s reputation both freed and scared of his pre-1949 years, Mao practiced Mao. He muttered that Khrushchev was enmity against the United States and the “not mature enough to lead such a big USSR simultaneously during the most country” (Taubman 2003, 339). intense years of the Cultural Revolution

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www.berkshirepublishing.com © 2014 Berkshire Publishing Group, all rights reserved. • Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography • Volume 3 • • Henry Kissinger with Mao Zedong (with hand raised) and Zhou Enlai. Although the document that set diplomatic relations into motion was issued in 1972, normalization between the United States and China would not occur for seven more years. Source: National Archives. • ↯⋑ϰ

(the period from 1966–1969). At home he and a half of his career, when he battled had not lost his skill in political maneu- congestive heart failure, failing eyesight, vering and he successfully purged senior and other ailments, as well as political “class enemies” with minimal resistance. enemies, dismal for China and a night- Still, Mao knew failure whenSample he saw it— mare for staff, doctors, and colleagues. though unable to admit it—and in 1968 Socialism went on failing to produce the he dismissed the Red Guards (groups of expected results (“We start socialism, high school and college students mar- and everything disappears,” observed shaled as Mao Zedong’s loyal followers) Liu Shaoqi [cited in Chang and Halliday as faction mongers, summoned the mili- 2005, 395]). It was unthinkable that he tary to end the chaos of “class struggle,” would retire, but old Mao inconsistently and in 1972 reached out to Nixon for a invented fresh “bourgeois elements,” new phase in China’s foreign policy. wavered in policy, and mauled the Com- The fl aws of Marxism-Leninism had munist Party he had led for three trapped Mao; this made the last decade decades. The judgment of an early

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www.berkshirepublishing.com © 2014 Berkshire Publishing Group, all rights reserved. • People’s Republic of China (Part I) • 1949–1979 • biographer (Pye 1976) that Mao was a documents. Within a month Jiang Qing— “borderline personality” seemed justi- together with the other three members of fi ed by statements such as that the Soviet the so-called Gang of Four, Zhang Chun- Union was governed by a “German- qiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen— fascist dictatorship of the Hitler type . . . was arrested and enjoyed no more a gang of bandits worse than de Gaulle” freedom until her suicide fi fteen years (cited in Pantsov 2012, 536). later. Some Chinese quipped that it In a fi nal phase of declining health, should be the Gang of Five, since Mao political isolation, and whimsy, Mao had often encouraged the leftists. As of removed two chosen successors and 2013, Mao’s body remains displayed in a chose two more, only to hesitate backing Mausoleum (latterly shared with other them. A climactic struggle in 1971 with top leaders) at Tiananmen Square in the “successor” Lin Biao, the military wiz- heart of Beijing. ard whom he had known since 1928, A strong Communist movement probably hastened his death. Lin died would have existed in China without under suspicious circumstances in a Mao, but the CCP would not have won plane crash over Inner Mongolia, sup- power by 1949 without him. In a fl uid posedly fl eeing after a failed coup to epoch his remarkable will and passion • Máo Zédoˉng • oust Mao. In the mid-1970s old Mao were offered wide scope. The revolution could not decide whether to encourage a he led restored the unity and indepen- succession by his wife Jiang Qing, or by dence of the world’s largest still-existing those who opposed the leftists; each side ancient polity. Mao lived long enough to nervously followed the fl uctuating sig- be the Chinese Revolution’s Marx-Lenin- nals. “You have been wronged,” he Stalin all rolled into one. Peasant rabble- wrote to his wife in the summer of 1976. rouser, poet, military commander, Gloomy about his own prospects, he philosopher, tyrant, he was a political added “You, however, could reach the strongman of unusual complexity and top” (cited in Terrill 1999b,Sample 320). he left an explosive legacy. Unexpect- Mao Zedong, to use his own expres- edly to some people, his failures served sion, “went to see Marx” at age eighty- as a springboard for Deng Xiaoping to two in September 1976, after the loss of bury key Maoist ideas and turn China in both Zhou Enlai and Zhu De only months a new direction. before, and after he told colleagues at his bedside that his greatest achievements were the defeats of Chiang Kai-shek and Posthumous Reputation Japan, and the pursuit of the Cultural Deng, a few years after Mao’s death, Revolution. Jiang Qing and Zhang Yufeng declaring Mao 70 percent correct and squabbled over immediate access to his 30 percent mistaken, and hoping to

• 1499 •

formerly “banned” aspects of Mao were investigated. If the CCP’s 1981 “Resolu- tion on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party” stopped public comment on Mao, it led to important research on Mao’s life. Chinese readers fi nally learned of the mistakes and human side of Mao: his farmer’s taste in food, his insomnia, his tears at the failure of his Great Leap Forward, his habit of falling asleep with books across the bed, his desire for the company of young women in later years. From the late 1980s there arose nos- talgia for Mao among a fresh generation that refl ected disappointment with Deng. Grassroots “Mao fever” in the early 1990s saw photos of Mao carried or

• hung on the walls of shops or homes as a good luck symbol. In 1989, 370,000 copies of the offi cial portrait of Mao were

• ↯⋑ϰ Mao’s Little Red Book (offi cially translated as Quota- printed for public sale, but within two tions of Mao Zedong), with a color portrait of Mao on the cover. Photograph by Paul and Bernice Noll. years the number of copies rose to 23 million and soon to 50 million. Even Mao temples appeared in Fujian Province forestall perilous further debate on Mao, in the southeast, and in karaoke clubs subtly dismantled Mao’s leftism in order young people enjoyed songs in praise of to focus on economic development.Sample The Mao. For many the music suited a mood fl inty Sichuanese summed up his task- of detachment from public life; youth let orientation: “I don’t care whether the cat Maoist lyrics fl ow over them undigested is black or white, as long as it catches the while enjoying the beat of the music. mouse.” Mao had said when he departed As Deng grew physically feeble and from the Soviet line, “We must use our died in 1997, Jiaˉng Zémín ∳⋑⇥ own wits” (Pang and Jin 2003, 1:606) and (b. 1926) as the new leader sought to Deng followed suit in departing from place himself alongside Mao and Deng the Maoist line. as a third milestone on China’s march to A loosening of the ideological strait- twentieth-century greatness. At the time jacket on historical studies meant of the centennial of Mao’s birth, Jiang

• 1500 •

www.berkshirepublishing.com © 2014 Berkshire Publishing Group, all rights reserved. • People’s Republic of China (Part I) • 1949–1979 • associated himself with Mao’s grandson, despite collateral damage to the eggs. Mao Xinyu (b. 1970) and visited Shaoshan Common in recent years is the concept to unveil a ten-meter-tall bronze statue of a “good Mao up to the later 1950s,” of the chairman. The twenty-three-year- but a “bad Mao thereafter.” The Cultural old grandson said: “I will continue to Revolution, however, was not a lapse grow under the leadership of the Gen- from Mao’s otherwise workable social eral Secretary [Jiang Zemin]” (Li 1993). engineering, but its culmination. Phillip But progressively under Hú Jıˇntaˉo 㚵䫺 Short’s Mao: A Life (1999) marked a step ⍯ (b. 1942) and Xí Jìnpíng д䖥ᑇ (b. 1953) ahead in Mao biography for its compre- in the twenty-fi rst century, the CCP hensiveness and balance. mentioned Mao less, and the giant of Following the substantially enlarged twentieth-century China wafted into edition of Ross Terrill’s biography unoffi cial folklore to join the Yellow (1999a), the next notable biography was Emperor, the Goddess of Mercy, and Alexander Panstov’s and Steven Levine’s others. 2012 work, now the non-Chinese authority on Mao’s Moscow connections and to a degree on his family. The popularity Foreign Treatment of Mao within the PRC of Chinese translations • Máo Zédoˉng • All biographies are written within their of Mao biographies suggests both an time, and in the spirit of the 1930s, Edgar openness in Beijing to foreign work on Snow’s pioneering Red Star over China Mao and an ongoing fascination with saw Mao through a Popular Front lens. him on the part of the Chinese youth. The challenge of the age was fascism in With Jung Chang (author of the pop- Germany, Italy, and Japan; to oppose its ular Wild Swans) and Jon Halliday’s Mao: encroachment was to be a democrat and The Unknown Story (2005) the wheel that included Mao. With this political came full circle from Edgar Snow, whom agenda, Snow was nonchalant at being the couple dismissed as “Mao’s American Samplespokesman.” The one-sidedness of the duped by staged interviews in the CCP areas. “I never met a Chinese Red,” he Chang and Halliday book is straightfor- wrote, “who did not like ‘the Chairman’— ward: “Absolute selfi shness and irre- as everyone called him—and admire sponsibility lay at the heart of Mao’s him” (Snow 1961, 75). Snow came to outlook,” they declared. Unknown Story call Mao a friend and the PRC returned cannot be dismissed, however, as Beijing the favor by styling Snow a friend of has done, as an attack from the West on China. Mao and Communist China in general, “Great aims but terrible costs” was a as in large part PRC and Soviet bloc popular sinological approach to Mao by voices inform Chang and Halliday’s the 1950s; the omelet was worthwhile fi ndings. Few serious China scholars

• 1501 •

liked Mao: The Unknown Story, however, order, heroic leadership, and national and it has not been published in the PRC. pride. If the global twenty-fi rst century is China’s, Mao may be seen as the founder Mao’s Future of a Golden Age. If China meets major The 1950s sinological debate about how trouble in trying to reconcile a new econ- much “Mao Zedong Thought” was from omy with a little-changed political sys- Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, and how much tem, he might be blamed for the entire from Chinese traditions, took on new Communist experiment. The parameters form as some of Mao’s “achievements” of Mao’s revolution will certainly blur. turned out temporary and reversible. The Future Chinese political leaders will longtime framework for viewing Mao redraw them to suit their own need for was that he created Communist China; legitimacy, just as Mao interpreted China’s hence he was seen foremost as a Marxist nineteenth- and twentieth-century expe- and debate proceeded on how different riences to suit his reign. Mao’s own great he was from Soviet and other Marxists. date of 1949 will recede as China’s future Yet on neither of the basic tenets of unfolds. Historians in China and the Marxism—a theory of class and a the- West have already ceased to view the

• ory of history’s movement—was Mao Republican era as merely a prelude to thoroughly Marxist. In time he may be Mao and CCP rule. viewed as a populist dictator with vari- Mao reached back to the “great unity”

• ↯⋑ϰ ous strands to his thought, including set forth by reformer Kang Youwei as an anarchism, Confucianism, Marxism, Dao- unfulfi lled seed of his own “great unity” ism, and fascism. socialism. It is possible to imagine a Some say leftism could one day make future Chinese leader rejecting Marx and a resurgence in China under a Mao ban- Lenin as un-Chinese, and cobbling social- ner in the name of national unity, Chinese ist components together with ideas of Samplesocial justice from China’s past. Mao’s cultural pride, and egalitarian values. The utopian strands in Mao—“It is right ideas may fare no better at the hands of to rebel,” his youthful call for indepen- such a future Chinese leader, bent on dence for his home province, his equa- delineating a dream of Harmonious tion of youth’s purity with truth—cannot Chinese Civilization, than Kang’s politi- be assumed to have died with Mao. cal prescriptions fared with Mao. Others foresee a post-Communist A “good Mao–bad Marxism” dichot- China falling into disorder and anguish, omy could appear. It will be said that as happened in parts of the former Soviet Mao’s contributions to China were made Union, and the fi gure of Mao pressed against the tide of Marxism and its chief into the service of fascism in the name of bastion of the time, the Soviet Union: a

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www.berkshirepublishing.com © 2014 Berkshire Publishing Group, all rights reserved. • People’s Republic of China (Part I) • 1949–1979 • focus on peasants, an anti-imperialist Fenby, Jonathan. (2003). Generalissimo: Chiang Kai- frame of reference for the revolution, the Shek and the China he lost. London: Free Press. attack on Soviet socialism, the turn to the Khrushchev, Nikita. (2007–2008). Memoirs of Nikita West in the 1970s. Mao’s reputation as a Khrushchev. University Park: Pennsylvania State unifi er would be separated from his role University Press. as a Marxist. Li Yanchun ᴢᔺ᯹. (1993, December 26). Yeye Of course it would be a distortion, as bainian danchen sunzi zhuangzhong xuanshi: historical rewrites often are. Mao himself Mao Xinyu guangrong rudang. Beijing foresaw the process: “Certainly my Qingnianbao. words can be given different interpreta- Li Zhisui. (1994). The private life of Chairman Mao: tions. It’s inevitable. Look at Confucian- The memoirs of Mao’s personal physician. New York: ism, Buddhism, Christianity—all these Random House. great schools of thought have broken down into factions, each one with a dif- MacFarquhar, Roderick, & Schoenals, Michael. ferent interpretation of the original truth. (2006). Mao’s last revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Without different interpretations, there can be no growth or change. Stagnation Mao Tse-tung. (1967). Selected works of Mao Tse- will set in, and the original doctrine will tung. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. • Máo Zédoˉng • die” (Li 1994, 502). So a future leader in Pang Xianzhi. (Ed.). (2003). Mao Zedong nianpu, Beijing may claim that the twentieth cen- 1893-1949 ↯⋑ϰᑈ䈅 [Chronological biography tury brought a restoration of China’s of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949.] (3 vols.). Beijing: wealth and power that would have been Renmin daxue chubanshe. faster but for the diversion under Pang Xianzhi, & Jin Congji (Eds.). (2003). Mao Marxism-Leninism. Zedong zhuan ↯⋑ϰӴ (1949–1976) [Biography of Mao Zedong, 1949–1976.] (2 vols.). Beijing: Ross TERRILL Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe. Harvard University, Fairbank Center SamplePantsov, Alexander, with Levine, Steven I. (2012). Mao: The real story. London: Simon & Schuster. Further Reading Peng Dehuai. (1984). Memoirs of a Chinese marshal. The autobiographical notes of Peng Dehuai (1898– Chang, Jung, & Halliday, Jon. (2005). Mao: The 1974) (Zheng Longpu, Trans.). Beijing: Foreign unknown story. London: Jonathan Cape. Languages Press.

Chiang Kai-shek. (1957). Soviet Russia in China: A Pye, Lucian. (1976). Mao Tse-tung: The man in the summing-up at seventy. New York: Farrar, Straus, leader. New York: Basic Books. and Cudahy. Schram, Stuart R. (Ed.). (1974). Chairman Mao talks Chuev, Felix. (1993). Molotov remembers. Chicago: to the people: Talks and letters: 1956–1971. New York: Ivan Dee. Pantheon.

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Schram, Stuart R. (Ed.). (1992–2005). Mao’s road to Terrill, Ross. (2006). Mao Zedong zhuan [Biography power: Revolutionary writings 1912–1949 (7 vols.). of Mao Zedong]. Beijing: Renmin daxue Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. chubanshe.

Short, Philip. (1999). Mao: A life. New York: Henry Westad, Odd Arne. (1998). Brothers in arms: The Holt. rise and fall of the Sino-Soviet alliance, 1945–1963. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Snow, Edgar. (1961). Red star over China. New York: Grove Press. Wu Lengxi ਈދ㽓. (1995). Yi Mao zhuxi: Wo qinsheng jingli de ruogan zhongda lishi shijian Taubman, William. (2003). Khrushchev: The man pianduan ᖚ↯Џᐁ ៥҆䑿㒣ग़ⱘ㢹ᑆ䞡໻ग़৆џ and his era. New York: Norton. ӊ⠛ᮁ [Memoir of Chairman Mao: Some signifi - Terrill, Ross. (1999a). Mao. Stanford, CA: Stanford cant episodes I experienced]. Beijing: Xinhua University Press. chubanshe.

Terrill, Ross. (1999b). Madame Mao: The White-Boned Demon. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. • • ↯⋑ϰ Sample

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