The Poetics of Sovereignty
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down to the common folk—it is thus that one may investigate the success or fail-
ure of government and punishments. Because of this, We have known the gray
predawn and pondered rulership, desiring to bring hidden injustices to light and
to make human relations beautiful. However, as for governors and officials who
fulfill the court’s charge, if they set off on tours and progresses in order to seek ve-rification [of conditions], and emptily establish standards of merit, or do not pre-
serve the truth of governorship, then the laws will not accord with principle, and
injustices will not be examined. As for passes, rivers, and strategic junctures, there is no way We can reach them on our own. We therefore have founded the Eastern Capital [Luoyang], so that I can inquire after [conditions] in person. Today,
We are about to undertake a tour of inspection to the Huai River delta. We will
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On “The Imperial Capital Poems”
observe the people’s customs, assiduously seek counsel, and proliferate literary
words and brushes so that within even a rural school, deficiencies will be unheard
of. Full of fear, We guard Our conduct even at night, and because of [those
things] We have neglected, We wake from sleep. If We have subjects who know
of officials in the provinces and prefectures who are bullying, or abuse and harass
commoners, turning their backs on the public good to seek private gain and not
benefiting the people, then [the subjects] ought to visit the court and memorial-
ize the throne. This will be almost like hearing from the ears of all four quarters; thus the world will have no grievances.
聽採輿頌，謀及庶民，故能審政刑之得失。是知昧旦思治，欲使幽枉
必達，彝倫有章。而牧宰任稱朝委，苟為徼幸以求考課，虛立殿最，
不存治實，綱紀於是弗理，冤屈所以莫申。關河重阻，無由自達。朕
故建立東京，躬親存問。今將巡歷淮海，觀省風俗，眷求讜言，徒繁
詞翰，而鄉校之內，闕爾無聞。恇然夕惕，用忘興寢。其民下有知州
縣官人政治苛刻，侵害百姓背公徇私，不便於民者，宜聽詣朝堂封
奏，庶乎四聰以達，天下無冤。27
The emphasis in the second decree is on the emperor’s personal appeal to
his people. Yangdi now proposes that he will tour the empire to visit his
subjects, and he commands that his subjects visit the capital to bring mat-
ters of injustice directly to his attention. The officials who had previously
been considered an adequate means of imperial intelligence now are by-
passed for a political fantasy of a direct and personal relationship between
the sovereign and his subjects.
The rhetoric of personal access serves to frame the construction of
Luoyang, the “Eastern Capital,” in a manner consonant with the image of
the sage-kings of antiquity. In 605, the same year as his decrees, Yangdi
had ordered the rebuilding of Luoyang, whose location served two pri-
mary purposes. First, Luoyang shared the name and site of the Eastern
Zhou capital Luoyang (beginning in 770 bc), and the site of the city was
the place where the Duke of Zhou had earlier erected a city on behalf of
Zhou King Cheng.28 Second, Luoyang lay in the Eastern Plain, and was
therefore a more central location than Daxingcheng to the west, since the
Tongji Canal, constructed in the same year, ran from Luoyang down to
Yangdi’s beloved Jiangdu.
—————
27. Sui shu, 3.63.
28. See Steinhardt, Chinese Imperial City Planning, pp. 43–45. Also see Li Xueqin, Eastern Zhou and Qin Civilizations, pp. 16–18.
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325
His second decree suggests that the act of touring would be necessary
to verify official reports, but it does not name the obvious paradigm of ri-
tual tours as attributed to the ancient sage-kings. In the decrees quoted in
the Sui shu, Yangdi notably does not use the set phrase xunshou, which literally describes the sovereign’s duty to travel ( xun) and observe ( shou) the conditions of his people. Instead we find the related term xunsheng
巡省 (also “to travel and inspect”) and the vaguer term xunli 巡歷 (sim-
ply “to travel”). Yet Wei Zheng and the Tang compilers of the dynastic
history recognize that Yangdi is indeed performing acts of xunshou, and
they describe his various trips as such. The Song dynasty historical work,
the Zizhi tongjian, contains a record of a conversation in which Yangdi
explicitly remarks upon the ancient xunshou ritual. Sima Guang reports
the following conversation, which took place in 609:
The emperor said to an attendant official Cai Zheng, “Since antiquity, the Son of
Heaven has performed rituals of tour and inspection. However the various em-
perors of the Southland slathered on rouge and sat deep in their palaces, never go-
ing to meet the commoners. What do you make of this?” The official replied, “It
is for this reason that their reigns did not last long.”
帝謂給事郎蔡徵曰：自古天子有巡狩之禮，而江東諸帝多傅脂粉，坐
深宮，不與百姓相見，此何理也。對曰：此其所以不能長世。29
This interchange manages to neatly rebuke both the model of delegated
or bureaucratic sovereignty, and the moral apathy of the Southern Dynas-
ties. In place of a model of imperial withdrawal, Yangdi wants to stress the
ritual necessity of the imperial tour. This is not mere extravagance since
expensive spectacle has its place in ritual theory, just as ascetic practices do.
For state ritual, some sense of pomp and ceremony must undergird the le-
gitimacy of the act, or else ritual cannot take place as ritual.
Unfortunately, Yangdi’s implementation of the ritual was complicated
by the pleasure that he clearly took in traveling. The sagely ruler must sub-
late the private for the sake of the public, and the feeling of pleasure is a sign
that the private cannot be excised from the sovereign’s body. For Yangdi,
the problem of pleasure is coupled with, and reinforced by, the lavishness of
the ritual tours that he undertook. Yangdi may have thought that
—————
29. Zizhi tongjian, 181.5644.
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On “The Imperial Capital Poems”
any imperial progress should be a spectacle of the sovereign’s power,
though in doing so, he overlooked the strong tradition of asceticism in vir-
tuous sovereigns.
A third matter makes Yangdi’s tours seem doomed to criticism from
the start: the fact that one of his first tours brought him to Jiangdu, a ma-
jor city of the decadent Southern Dynasties, and a place already identified
with Yangdi in the days before he became emperor. The “Treatise on
Economics” describes the dragon-boat fleet that, following the comple-
tion of the Tongji Can
al, set out for Jiangdu in the eighth month of 605:
Moreover, the emperor had dragon boats and phoenix vessels, “Yellow Dragons”
and red warships, tall ships and bamboo skiffs built. He enlisted all the waterway
laborers and called them his “imperial feet.” They wore fine garments with cord-
bindings on their legs; grasping ropes of green silk, they pulled the boats on the
imperial progress to Jiangdu. The emperor rode in the dragon boat; civil and
military officials of the fifth grade and above were granted the use of the tall ships; those of the ninth grade and above were granted the yellow bamboo skiffs. The
boats lined up bow to stern for over 200 li. Those provinces and prefectures through which they passed were ordered to prepare and offer supplies and resting
places. Those who made bountiful contributions of provisions were promoted in
offices and ranks; those who fell short were punished even to the point of the
death. Also, the emperor lavishly adorned the various chariots and carriages of
court and state with ornaments such as banners and plumes. He levied taxes on
all the provinces and prefectures, so that each bone, horn, or tooth that could be
used as an ornament, and each hide, fur, or feather that could be used as a coat
trimming, were all collected. The levying was fast and furious: the morning’s or-
ders had to be handled by evening. The common folk searched and hunted, lay-
ing snares and nets all over the wilds. In water and on earth the birds and beasts
were perilously close to extinction. Still, they could not provide enough, and had
to buy from the houses of the rich and powerful who had great storehouses. Pric-
es soared. In this year, the tail feathers of a pheasant cost ten rolls of fine silk, and a freshly killed egret cost half that amount.
又造龍舟鳳鰨，黃龍赤艦，樓船蔑舫。募諸水工，謂之殿腳，衣錦行
縢，執青絲纜挽船，以幸江都。帝御龍舟，文武官五品已上給樓船，
九品已上給黃蔑舫，舳艫相接，二百餘里。所經州縣，並令供頓，獻
食豐辦者，加官爵，闕乏者，譴至死。又盛修車輿輦輅，旌旗羽儀之
飾。課天下州縣，凡骨角齒牙，皮革毛羽，可飾器用，堪為氅毦者，
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327
皆責焉。徵發倉卒，朝命夕辦，百姓求捕，網罟遍野，水陸禽獸殆
盡，猶不能給，而買於豪富蓄積之家，其價騰踊。是歲，翟雉尾一，
直十縑，白鷺鮮半之。30
Here is an image of ritual choreography as parade. The ceremony of the
imperial tour consists in the linear spectacle of these impressive ships
along the canals and rivers. The authors of the Sui shu do not hesitate to
connect the extravagant fleet with the economic and social consequences
among the commoners. Of course, there is almost certainly an element of
hyperbole in the criticism, since the Sui historiographic narrative had to
conform to the description of economic failure and political decline
sketched in the opening passages of the treatise. Still, the symbolism of
Yangdi’s spectacular tour from the northern capitals to Jiangdu needed
little help from the Tang historians to make Yangdi appear as if he was es-
caping the public duties of his official life in the northern cities of Da-
xingcheng and Luoyang for the leisure and private pleasures of southern
Jiangdu. The act would appear less a xunshou than a xunyou 巡遊, a trip to the emperor’s favorite vacation spot.
We find a kind of palimpsest of motives in Yangdi’s conception of the
canal system. The economic reasons for the canals, as well as the state’s
need for an efficient, controlled transport system, are the ostensible fac-
tors behind Wendi’s revival of the old Han canals between Daxingcheng
and the Luoyang site. However, Yangdi also saw the canal infrastructure
as a superstructure, an ideological translation of the material uses. By con-
tinually traveling through the canals that joined the three capitals of Da-
xingcheng, Luoyang, and Jiangdu, Yangdi would attempt to revive the
sovereignty of Shun. The final layer of the palimpsest would then be the
private use of the canal system as a means for escaping the official space of
the northern capitals to the leisure space of the “Southern Capital” of
Jiangdu. All of the layers remain operative simultaneously, a suturing to-
gether of different teleologies within the same space. Yet Yangdi is not the
one who has the power to determine the ultimate interpretation of his
political, economic, and ritual complex—that role is only given to the his-
torians who would pass judgment on Yangdi’s life.
—————
30. Sui shu, 24.686–7. There is a partial translation in Wright, Sui Dynasty, p. 180.
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On “The Imperial Capital Poems”
The Tang historians treated the ritual implications of Yangdi’s xun-
shou as so much ideological camouflage for purely selfish ends. They are
undoubtedly correct to an extent, though Yangdi did also conceive of the
tours as a means by which the newly won unity of the empire could be
preserved. His political and ritual reasons were not negated by his selfish-
ness, and it is this point that makes Yangdi a difficult and complex figure
in the history of sovereignty. From the perspective of the Tang, however,
it is only his love for tours to the Southland that is remembered. When
Yangdi set sail to Jiangdu for the last time in 616, he left behind a north
that was falling into rebellion and turmoil.31 Hidden away in his southern
capital and politically irrelevant, he became the very double of the South-
ern Dynasties emperor he had earlier criticized.
The Feng and Shan Sacrifices during Taizong’s Reign
In the process of imagining and consolidating the new empire, Taizong
seems to have been conscious of how previous emperors had failed to real-
ize their imperial mandates. Specifically, the figure of Sui Yangdi loomed
large for the Tang co-founder, to the extent that Taizong’s rhetorical
strategies and modes of representation can be seen as repudiations of
those of Yangdi. If Yangdi roamed throughout his empire, seeking enjoy-
ment and pleasure in the name of a ritualized sovereignty, Taizong would
attempt to evoke a model of sovereignty that explicitly rejected unneces-
sary travel and expenditure, and instead would argue for the satisfactions
of remaining within the capital.
Of course, this argument was perhaps easier made in word than in deed,
and the historical record of Taizong’s last decade shows the emperor trag-
ically revisiting Yangdi’s folly on the Korean peninsula. Similarly, Taizong
keenly felt the temptation of matching, or even surpassing, the great em-
perors of the Qin and Han, who had performed the sacred rites at Mount
Tai. Both Wendi and Yangdi performed tours of inspection followed by
mountain sacrifices, though both had stopped short of the fu
ll Feng and
Shan ritual performance. Tang Gaozu refused to carry out the perform-
ance, even after one Xue Zhou 薛冑, the governor of Yanzhou 兗州,
went to view the traces of prior sacrifices at Mount Tai, compiling the
—————
31. Sui shu, 4.90–91.
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On “The Imperial Capital Poems”
329
Feng Shan tu ji yi 封禪圖及儀 ( Charts and Ceremonial Procedures for the
Feng and Shan Rites) and presenting the work to Gaozu.32 As ambitious as
Taizong was, it is not surprising that he would be quite taken with the
idea of being the first emperor since Han Guangwudi to perform the sa-
cred rites at Mount Tai.33
On three occasions, Taizong and his court seriously considered per-
formances of the Feng and Shan sacrifices: first in 632, then again in 641,
and finally in 647. Each time, Taizong would conclude by refusing the
honor of the sacrifices, a trio of refusals that, intentionally or not, could
not but recall the tropological three refusals performed by the sovereign-
to-be before accepting the offer of the imperial throne. In Offerings of Jade
and Silk, Howard J. Wechsler has provided a general overview of Tai-
zong’s endeavors, including translations of the debates between Taizong
and Wei Zheng, who opposed the Feng and Shan performances on
grounds of its meaningless extravagance and hubris.34 However, what I
want to examine here is not so much the record of deliberations within
the court over the performances, but the reasons Taizong gave for halting
the ritual preparations. For this, we have the texts of several edicts con-
cerning the Feng and Shan sacrifices, as well as various other recorded
speeches from the dynastic histories.
At this point, it is worth considering a point made by the eminent his-
torian Qian Mu 錢穆, who noted that Tang emperors did not themselves
write the edicts promulgated in their names. Instead, emperors generally
entrusted the actual composition to the Drafting Officials 中書舍人,
who then would forward different versions of a document to the Secre-
tariat Directors or Assistant Secretariat Directors 中書侍郎 for selection