by Ling Zhang
Historians have written extensively on Wang Anshi's reforms, and I shall not repeat the details of this extraordinary episode in the Song's political history.14 What is significant here, and often neglected by previous scholarship, is the relationship between the changing political tide and the hydraulic policies and practices with regard to the Yellow River and Hebei. The state activism that Wang Anshi's reforms precipitated was not limited to politics, institutions, the military, and the economy – various human realms that have been the foci of the previous scholarship. The state activism extended to the control and regulation of the physical environment. The reformists were determined to move the entire Yellow River out of central Hebei and bring it back to its old eastern course. This aggressive hydraulic approach manifested the reformists’ political philosophy. To Emperor Shenzong, this fight against the river provided an opportunity to make his rule as powerful and prosperous as the great dynasties through history, and to add his own name to the list of the most successful and wise monarchs China had seen.
Due to the political polarization in this period, the Yellow River hydraulics became highly political. It shaped the politics and contributed to the widening gap between reformists and conservatives. Those who were involved in politics could not avoid participating in the debate about the river hydraulics. Not only did politicians elaborate their political philosophies to rationalize their hydraulic ideas, they used their hydraulic ideas to demonstrate and substantiate their lofty political beliefs, values, and agendas. They used hydraulic ideas as parameters to judge each other's political stance, so as to categorize allies and opponents. Actively engaging in the hydraulic debates also provided budding politicians with an expedited path into the central government. Hence, the Yellow River and the disastrous landscape of Hebei became both a pawn and an actor in the Song's political games.
Yet, the river itself remained unpredictable. It refused to conform to politicians’ wishes. As soon as the hydraulic project had managed to block the northern course in late 1069, the river overflowed and surged toward eastern Hebei, “inundating prefectures such as Daming, Enzhou, Dezhou 德州, Cangzhou, and Yongjing 永靜 Commandery.”15 After years of plaguing eastern Hebei, in 1072, the river broke through its banks in multiple places in southern Hebei. Its torrents once again converged with the Yuhe Canal, ran through central Hebei, and surged toward the northern frontier. So the northern course created in 1048 simply refused to be rerouted by human forces. Years of hydraulic efforts by the reformist government only made the river's water “overflow violently and wander extensively, and cause constant worries about its jamming and blockage.”
The activist approach failed to bring about environmental stability. Gradually, the emperor's confidence began to waver. In 1072, he asked Wang Anshi: “Regardless of how the river overflows, it occupies the same size of area that the river requires. Whether the river moves anti-clockwise toward the west or clockwise toward the east, it incurs a similar amount of benefit and harm. Why don't we just leave the river alone?”16 The emperor had also become aware that the ongoing hydraulic works in Hebei had inflicted tremendous damage, and that the hydrocrats had covered up the situation. In 1074, due both to the exacerbating situation in Hebei and to the emperor's accusation, Cheng Fang 程昉, a leading hydrocrat whom Wang Anshi patronized, was said to die from anxiety. Later that year, under severe attack from the conservatives and having lost the confidence of the emperor, even Wang Anshi himself resigned from the position of Grand Councilor.
The river continued to rage. In the summer of 1077, it overflowed in six different places in southern Hebei. In the seventh month, it suddenly crushed the southern banks at a fascine site called Caocun 曹村 and poured southward into Henan. Its torrents ran over the Liangshan 梁山 and Zhangze 張澤 lakes, overtook the Nanqing 南清 and Beiqing 北清 rivers, and surged into the course of the Huai River. Over the next few days, floods swept through forty-five prefectures and ravaged arable fields over three hundred thousand qing 頃 (approximately 18,400 square kilometers).17 All of Henan to the east of the capital Kaifeng was deluged, resembling the situation in 989, 1015, and 1019. The river attacked the state's core political area, with the imperial court barely a hundred kilometers away.
Emperor Shenzong was horrified. He immediately ordered a project to block up the bank rupture and push the flooding waters back to the north. After a year's hard work at enormous costs, in the early summer of 1078, “the river once again returned to the north,” namely back to central Hebei.18 All this negated the previous hydraulic works that the emperor and Wang Anshi supported – to shift the river to an eastern course. The conservatives found this a perfect occasion to unleash their criticism, demanding that the court punish the reform-inclining hydrocrats. As Wen Yanbo 文彥博 (1006–1097) cried, “This is not a natural disaster! It is the inadequacy of human forces!”19
By now, the river's 1048 northern course and 1060 eastern course had become dysfunctional. Its older, abandoned riverbeds between Hebei and Henan had disappeared. The river refused to be stabilized into a single flow, but surged toward various directions across central Hebei. In this situation, Yu the Great and the legendary “Nine Rivers” he had created re-emerged in the hydraulic debate at the Song court. Even Li Chui's hydraulic proposals from back in 1015 and 1019, which advocated for the restoration of Yu's courses and the channeling of the Yellow River farther into Hebei's interior, were brought back for discussion. In 1080, the emperor sent several officials to western Hebei to investigate the geography in order to evaluate if Yu's courses or Li Chui's hydraulic proposals were applicable.20
All of a sudden, the hydraulic inclination of the court flipped. The idea of “let the river be” – namely, inside Hebei – prevailed. Between 1080 and 1084, several names were brought to the fore of the hydraulic debate: deceased Li Chui, Sun Minxian 孫民先 (prefect of Shenzhou 深州 in central Hebei), and Li Lizhi 李立之 (the chief director of the Water Conservancy). These people advocated allowing the river to flow through Hebei, as Yu the Great did in antiquity. Following this idea, the court instructed to evacuate cities, towns, and villages from central Hebei, leaving to the river whatever land it demanded.
In this battle of will, the activist state lost against the river, and even Emperor Shenzong accepted his failure. In 1081, in front of his Grand Councilors and ministers, he lamented:
The Yellow River has been causing harm for long. People of recent generations have tried to manage it by treating it like an object. This is why their efforts were constantly frustrated. Flowing downward is water's nature. Managing water should accord with the Way, which means not to violate water's nature. As long as we follow the river's natural tendency, why should we be concerned about relocating some cities and towns? Even if the divine Yu the Great came back to life, this is the only thing he could do.21
And his ministers responded, “Indeed according to your sagely instruction.”
Out of frustration, Emperor Shenzong called off the project of returning the river to an eastern course. An activist approach toward the Yellow River, however, revived after he died. In 1085, his son, Emperor Zhezong 哲宗 (1077–1100), stepped onto the throne at age nine. He was welcomed by excessive rain in north China, which drove the river to inundate southern and central Hebei. Districts in those areas protested, urging the state to rescue Hebei. The prefect of Daming warned the court, “The river water has arrived with ferocity. Hundreds of thousands of people are crying for rescue.” The prefect of Jizhou, which was located in the center of Hebei, pleaded to the court to do something to remove the river from his district. And the prefect of Chanzhou, where most bank ruptures took place, brought up the old idea of returning the river to its pre-1048, old eastern course.22 The pressing environmental problems suggested that the hydraulic solution in the early 1080s, which let the river occupy Hebei without putting many constraints on it, caused tremendous damage to Hebei.
The late 1080s was the era known as the restoration of conservatis
m. Conservative officials came back to power and abolished Wang Anshi's reforms nearly wholesale. Yet, within the conservative faction, officials disagreed with each other on many things. A faction of them, in fact, sided one of Wang Anshi's policies. They wanted, as Wang Anshi did, to move the river out of central Hebei.23 There emerged a group of self-important hydrocrats in the Water Conservancy like Wang Xiaoxian 王孝先, Li Wei 李偉, and also Wu Anchi 吳安持 who was Wang Anshi's son-in-law and was not persecuted by the new conservative government thanks to his hydraulic talents. They proposed resuming Wang Anshi's hydraulic policy and returning the river to its pre-1048 eastward course. Supporting them were not only some senior, powerful statesmen at the court, such as Left Grand Councilor Lü Dafang 呂大防 (1027–1097), Wen Yanbo, Wang Di 王覿 (1036–1103), Wang Yansou 王嚴叟 (1043–1093), and An Tao 安燾, head of the Bureau of Military Affairs, but also the emperor's grandmother, Empress Dowager Gao, who possessed tremendous political capital and acted as regent in making all final decisions.
Opposite to them was another group of conservative statesmen, including Right Grand Councilor Fan Chunren 范純仁 (1027–1101) and financial ministers Su Zhe 蘇轍 (1039–1112) and Wang Cun 王存 (1023–1101). Endorsing Sima Guang's idea in 1069, these men were both humanitarian oriented and concerned with the state's financial situation. They warned the court that a large hydraulic project would inevitably “burden the people and exhaust [the state's] wealth.”24 Su Zhe, for instance, criticized his opponents for having not learnt their lesson from the failure of Emperor Shenzong: “The late Emperor (Shenzong) could not return the river [to the east], and you gentlemen want to do it. Do you consider your wisdom, courage, and strength superior to that of the late Emperor?”25 Fan Chunren elevated the Yellow River hydraulics to the level of political and moral philosophy. He reminded the court that “Sages possess three virtues: benevolence, modesty, and restrained from acting before All-Under-Heaven (i.e., the society, the people) maneuvers first.”26 Meaning, the government should be reactive, not proactive. To Fan and his fellows, the activist approach toward the river hydraulics, regardless being sponsored by Wang Anshi's government in the 1070s or by the anti-reform conservative government in the late 1080s, would lead to the state's encroachment of the society, which would eventually hurt the state in return.
From 1086 to 1094, the imperial court was torn by these two groups of hydraulic ideas and political factions. One day it would decide to support the activist group and hasten to conscript laborers and collect construction materials. Then a few days later it would be persuaded by the conservative group, and call off the previous decision. Such oscillation in hydraulic policies caused officials to complain that the court confused and disgruntled the subjects of the empire. In the midst of such confusion, however, hydraulic works did carry out in Hebei to various degrees.
In 1094, when the Empress Dowager passed away and Emperor Zhezong took control of his court, the hydraulic projects were given new life. At age seventeen, the emperor resented that he had been patronized and repressed by the royal family and senior politicians and that his father, who had supported Wang Anshi's reforms, had been continually denigrated. He lost no time in avenging these transgressions by quickly ousting conservative politicians such as Su Zhe and restoring Wang Anshi's fellow reformists to important government positions. The new government deified both the late Emperor Shenzong and Wang Anshi. The political atmosphere had turned full circle. One of a few people that remained untouched was the hydrocrat Wu Anshi. Wu survived two rounds of political purges, as the emperor could use both his personal connections with the reformists and his hydraulic talents.
Emperor Zhezong revived many of his father's old policies, including the return of the Yellow River to its eastern course. If he succeeded, not only could the young emperor “follow the Sage (Shenzong)” as the name of his new reign era “shaosheng 紹聖” indicated, but he would also deserve sagehood himself. With this mission in mind, the emperor pushed the hydraulic works to advance at full speed. In a mere few months, felicitous news came from Hebei. The river's northern course had been blocked, and its flow had been completely turned eastward onto an “old course,” although exactly which one, we do not know. Congratulations and adulation flew in from the hydrocrats who supervised the works in Hebei: “This was achieved because of your sagely, wise, and independent determination from the beginning of the ‘Following the Sage’ era. Please have this historic event recorded by historians.”27
All seemed to happen just as Emperor Zhezong desired. Yet the reality was that the northern course had not completely vanished, and there was no well-established eastern course to accommodate the water. As a result, the water surged wherever it liked, breaching banks and submerging large areas of land. Southern Hebei was inundated. For years the hydrocrats and their teams were busy rushing among different locations, trying to stop the bank ruptures and prevent a total collapse of the river system.28 People in Hebei were uprooted, fleeing southward into the capital and other regions. In the meantime, nature did not smile upon the ambitious emperor and his hydrocrats. The turn of the century was very cold and wet, and heavy snow descended in the winters of 1091, 1093, and 1101, killing many, including refugees from Hebei who lacked food, clothes, and firewood. After the snow melted into the rivers, the following springs and summers in those years (also in 1094 and 1099) saw excessive rainfall. All the waters caused the Yellow River and other local rivers in Hebei to swell. Constraining them proved impossible.29 Meanwhile, the whole of north China underwent strong earthquakes in 1099 and 1100, exacerbating the catastrophic situation.30
In the midst of the tremendous hydraulic efforts, human costs, and continuous natural disasters, in the summer of 1099, the river burst into a giant flood along its lower reaches. At the site of Three-Gates, southwest of Hebei, the torrents rose tens of meters to destroy a shrine of Yu the Great that was located on the top of a mountain.31 In southern Hebei, the so-called eastern course was completely overrun: “One hundred percent of the river's torrents are now surging northward.”32 After five years of following his father's footsteps, Emperor Zhezong had come to the same failure and sense of despair. Human forces, even with the strongest support and leadership from an activist state, could not compete with the mighty river. Defeated, the emperor died half a year later, shortly after his twenty-fourth birthday.
In the context of this catastrophic hydraulic failure, we stand at the turn of the new century, watching how history continued to unfold during the last quarter of a century of Song rule. We might anticipate a new emperor who had learnt the lessons of the previous two emperors, and a government that discarded state activism and embraced conservatism. Indeed, at least in regard to the Yellow River, the new emperor, Huizong 徽宗 (1082–1135), and his court remained quite passive for a decade. In 1108, for instance, the river drowned the entire city of Julu 巨鹿 County and carved out a new course deeper into western Hebei.33 Even at this critical moment, the court refused to be agonized or react aggressively; instead, it simply ordered the relocation of the city and refugees away from the disaster area. The reports of floods and bank ruptures never stopped coming in those years, but the court remained calm, passive, and reactive, and no one mentioned the idea of returning the river to an eastern course.
None of this suggests that Emperor Huizong was subdued by the hydraulic legacy he inherited, nor does it mean that state activism as a political philosophy guiding the state's hydraulic practices for three decades had completely faded away. As other historians have shown us, Huizong gradually demonstrated a much bigger ego than that of his elder brother Zhezong, or probably even bigger than that of any of his forefathers.34 Soon after he stepped onto the throne, he restored many of his father's and brother's reformist policies. He patronized a new generation of reformists who quickly occupied every important official position and seized full political power.
State activism as a political philosophy and means of governance prevailed again, but this t
ime it was for a different purpose – to empower and enrich the monarch and individuals in the bureaucracy. Although calling themselves reformists, Huizong's officials cared very little about Wang Anshi's dream of “enriching the state and strengthening the military.” As professional politicians, their overriding goal was power itself. They employed two main methods to achieve that goal. One was to win over and control the emperor by indulging him with flattery and drowning him in extravagant presents that they misappropriated from every corner of the empire. The flattery and presents gave the emperor a false impression that he was an excellent monarch and his empire was thriving. The other method these politicians used came in the form of factional struggles and persecution. Skilled propagandists, they deployed a successful ideological campaign to demonize conservatives, including those who had long passed away, like Sima Guang. They intensified the factional division between reformists and conservatives, and blacklisted all the names associated with the latter. By purging officials of different opinions and bringing together similar power-hungry men, they established a quite homogenous government, in which any dissenting voice was silenced. As James T. C. Liu observed, such increased conformity “far exceeded normal limits.”35
It is no wonder Huizong's court appeared more and more harmonious. As the emperor was increasingly shielded from reality, he took pride in this false sense of unity, using it to name his later reign eras: “Harmony of Governance (zhenghe 政和),” “Double Harmony (chonghe 重和),” and “Advocating Harmony (xuanhe 宣和).” Since his loyal and capable ministers were able to deal with the mundane business of the state, as the supreme leader of the state, Huizong could retreat to his artistic and spiritual world, which was full of the glory of worldly successes and fantasies of otherworldly immorality – something his late father and brother dared not dream of.
