Chapter Five

e Maturing of Convention: e Poetry of the Northern and Southern Dynasties

Although the Jin emperors had reunited the old Han domain by AD 280, they could not maintain control as internecine strife eroded the dynasty. e generals who founded the Jin had given their kin large domains to provide both tax revenue and soldiers. However, the successors to the throne could not prevent their kinsmen from drawing on their great resources and regional powerbases and rebelling to seize power. After a short period of constant warfare, one of the rebellious princes invited a local Xiongnu chieftain to join his side, but instead Xiongnu troops under a succession of generals captured and sacked the two capitals of Chang’an and Luoyang and drove the Jin court south in 316. us began the two hundred years of division between non-Chinese rule in the North and successive military regimes in the South known as the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

North and South

roughout the late Eastern Han, Wei, and Jin dynasties, as imperial authority weakened in the countryside, the great landholding clans had established their own armies and forts. Many farmers displaced by warfare voluntarily or involuntarily became part of these large estates as slaves or bondsmen. In order to rein in the power of these families at the imperial court and recruit officials as impartially as possible from these clan-controlled localities, Cao Cao had set up a process of recommendation and evaluation known as the Nine-Rank system. However, during the Jin, this system of evaluation designed to break the pattern of inherited rank began to evolve into yet another form of hereditary entitlement to office, since those who held the higher ranks controlled both the processes of recommendation and subsequent assessment. When the Jin court fled south in 316, it was joined by at least a million refugees who resettled in the still sparsely settled lands of the middle and lower Yangzi basin. e elite families among the refugees brought with them a political, social, and economic order that shaped the aristocratic culture that emerged in the South. ese aristocratic émigrés reestablished a Jin court and recreated great estates from lands either newly opened or seized and worked by slaves or bondsmen drawn from the large pool of landless farmers who joined the exodus south. Although the reconstituted Eastern Jin dynasty (317–420) continued for another hundred years, the court was in constant competition with its generals and with the aristocratic clans who had claims on bureaucratic office and exemption from taxation on the vast estates. In the end, Huan Wen 桓溫 (312–73), the greatest of the Eastern Jin generals, extended the dynasty’s control into Sichuan but later came to dominate the court. His son usurped the throne in 403. Although the Jin was restored, Liu Yu 劉裕 (363–422), one of the generals responsible for the restoration, seized the throne in 420 to found the Song dynasty. Liu Yu was of humble background 146 Northern and Southern Dynasties Poetry

outside of the great clans, and he drew his major officials from outside the aristocracy as well, leaving the great lineages to hold hereditary offices that increasingly were becoming mere sinecures. Liu Yu died soon after founding the dynasty, but his trusted chief ministers decided that the heir whom Liu Yu had chosen was incompetent, and he deposed him for a younger brother, Liu Yilong 劉義隆 (407–53). Liu Yilong proved an exceptionally talented, hard-working administrator whose long rule brought peace and growing prosperity to the South as Emperor Wen of the Song. Still, Emperor Wen had to rely on regional commanders—rather than a strong palace army—to support his rule, and this inevitably led to palace intrigues in which his sons formed alliances to plot their ways into succession. In the end, the crown prince assassinated Emperor Wen, claimed the crown, and was then deposed by another brother who ruled with a firm grip at court but still was unable to control the provinces. e Liu Song dynasty continued to spiral downward in palace intrigue, and the last emperor was deposed in 479 by Xiao Daocheng 蕭道成 (427–82), the general in command of the palace guard, who founded the Qi dynasty (479–502). Repeating the pattern seen in the Liu Song, the founding emperor died soon after taking the throne but was fortunate in having an effective successor, Emperor Wu 齊武帝 (440–93), whose Yongming reign period (483–93) defined a distinctive moment in the development of court poetry. Because Emperor Wu’s successors were in continual fear of palace coups, however, they took violent measures to eliminate their rivals and reigned only briefly. Eventually a regional commander who was a distant member of the Xiao clan, Xiao Yan 蕭衍 (464–549), deposed the Qi ruler during a period of internecine turmoil and proclaimed the Liang dynasty in 502. Xiao Yan, unlike earlier rulers, reigned for forty-seven years as Emperor Wu of Liang. Although his rule brought relative stability, warfare with the northern states and rebellions by provincial generals resisting Xiao Yan’s efforts to assert greater authority continued to plague the state. His rule took a fateful turn in the spring of 548 when he accepted the surrender of Hou Jing 侯景 (d. 552), a northern commander who had controlled provinces on the border with the Liang but was forced to flee south with only a few troops. Xiao Yan then allowed Hou Jing to retain control of a province he had captured. However, in the summer of 548, fearing he was being outmaneuvered by Xiao Yan’s negotiations with his former nominal rulers in the North, Hou Jing attacked the capital, Jiankang 建康. Although he had an army of only several thousand soldiers, the imperial clansmen who held positions as regional governors decided not to send aid in hopes of exploiting Hou Jing’s rebellion to ascend to the throne. us Hou Jing was able to capture the capital, the emperor Xiao Yan, and the crown prince Xiao Gang 蕭綱 (503– 51). When Xiao Yan died shortly after his capture, Hou Jing placed Emperor Wu’s nephew (Xiao Zhengde 蕭正德) on the throne but quickly deposed and executed him, and in 549 replaced him with Xiao Gang. e provinces surrounding the capital were devastated in the ensuing warfare between Hou Jing, the provincial governors, and a succession of increasingly aggressive northern dynasties, and many peasants fled yet further south to the areas of Fujian and Guangdong. Hou Jing was killed by a subordinate in 552, and Chen Baxian 陳霸先 (503–59), who had gained a reputation fighting in Vietnam and had created a powerbase in Guangdong, eventually came to control the capital region. In 557 he deposed the last nominal Liang emperor and founded the Chen dynasty. He died two years later. e odds against Chen Baxian’s successor, his nephew Chen Qian 陳蒨 (522–66), were wretched: the heartland of the Liang dynasty had been devastated, the provincial governors had become independent warlords, and the Northern Zhou and Northern Qi pressed him on the border. Still, in the seven years of his rule, Chen Qian managed to suppress the regional warlords within his empire, and after his death, his oldest son was deposed by an energetic and competent younger son, Chen Xu 陳頊 (530–