Early China: A Social and Cultural History

by Li Feng

  Despite the possible differences in their origins and the ambiguity sometimes associated with their status, the Shi as a social group with a strong self-awareness did exist and played an increasing social role in the late Spring and Autumn period. It is generally agreed that this group placed themselves at the lowest level of the social elites, but their social standing was definitely higher than that of the commoners. However, as time went on many Shi actually succeeded in making their way to the higher levels of state power, and therefore, the concept of Shi had come gradually to designate people who shared with each other a common commitment to higher moral principles and a somewhat “inflated self-esteem” as intellectual and political leaders of the society.19 As Mencius says, only the Shi can keep his good heart constant despite changing economic circumstances; the commoners will definitely lose it. By Mencius’ time, the Shi were widely present and were active elements of the society. Most powerful political figures hosted a large number of Shi in their entourage if they were not themselves originally Shi, and the newly rising bureaucratic states offered ever increasing opportunities for the Shi to serve and demonstrate their talent.

  Transition in Legal Thought: The Emergence of Political Contract

  Another major change took place in legal practice and the legal system, leading to the emergence of codified law. However, this transition in the legal system must be understood in the broad historical context of the Spring and Autumn period. The bronze inscriptions show that the royal court of the Western Zhou took an active role in legal matters that were brought to its attention, and the high royal officials frequently gave verdicts in disputes that occurred between the aristocratic lineages. Disputes between members within the lineage fell completely to the autonomous judgment of the lineage head. But when disputes occurred between his lineage members or those of his sub-lineages and members of another lineage, the lineage head would have to stand in the court on behalf of his men. According to a previous assessment of the legal tradition of the Western Zhou period, law operated only in a legal system that was largely based on shared cultural tradition, value, and experience, and could always be validated by existing social–cultural norms and political legitimacy.20

  However, the decline of the lineage system and the weakening of the power of the lineage head gradually served to eliminate the focal point of the traditional lineage-based legal system. In a general sense, the gradual disappearance of the lineages in many areas brought the state into direct contact with its new citizens. This is most significant in the county units, but even in the more centrally located settlements such as the state capitals, the recent urban and commercial expansion had created a new free citizen body – the so-called “townspeople” (guoren) – that needed the protection and control by a new legal system. The idea of having prohibitions written out and posted directly to the citizens, without mediation by the lineage heads according to their political needs, had gradually become accepted in many states. Although legal historians are justified to argue that through most of Chinese history statutes were written to protect the interests of the state by imposing rules on its citizens rather than defending the rights of the citizens, the codification of law was undeniably a significant milestone in the legal thought of Early China. It had the effect of recognizing the personal “autonomy” of the individual citizens who were now regarded by the state as being able to organize their own lives and be responsible for their own conduct without being a member of a lineage; certainly talented citizens could learn the tricks of the system and use them to protect their own interests.

  Thus, we learn from the received textual sources that in 536 BC the famous minister Zi Chan ordered the casting of “Legal Statutes” on a huge bronze cauldron to regulate the conduct of the people in the state of Zheng; some twenty years later a certain individual named Deng Xi was punished for producing a new set of legal statutes on bamboo strips in the same state. In the hegemonic state Jin, between 577 and 531 BC, legal statutes were composed by the minister from the Fan family, and were cast on a cauldron by Zhao Yang in 514 BC. Even in the conservative state Chu in the south, the kings were said to have promulgated a number of statutes to prevent people from hiding from the government and soldiers from fleeing from battles. These were not isolated incidences, but show a general trend among the states that took on an active role to interfere directly in the lives of their citizens. However, in matters that concerned members of the extant lineages, particularly ones founded recently by powerful ministers, this also led to a number of recorded debates as to whether such matters belonged to the legal jurisdiction of the lineage or that of the state.

  Within the lineage, the weakening of the traditional social norms that used to bound members to the lineage head who hosted the worship of their common lineage ancestors led to the introduction of a new type of political relationship ensured by contract – the “Oath of Alliance” (Meng). During the Spring and Autumn period, such an “Oath of Alliance” was frequently taken at inter-state conferences by the state rulers as equals who swore their allegiance to the hegemon. Gradually, this practice of contractual political relationship was adopted into intra-lineage politics as a strategy to counter the increasing vulnerability of the lineages in the late Spring and Autumn period. In 1965, a large number of covenant inscriptions written in red color on jade or stone tablets were discovered outside the city of Houma in Shanxi, the Jin capital, and in 1976 an even larger number of such written tablets were found in Wenxian in northern Henan (Box 8.2). In the former, members of various minor lineages in the state of Jin swore allegiance to Zhao Jia, head of the powerful Zhao lineage prior to 424 BC.21 It is above all interesting that the covenant enemy, against whom most of the oaths were sworn, was identified in the inscriptions as a person with the surname “Zhao,” almost certainly the head of a minor branch of the same Zhao lineage. The social–cultural meaning behind these political contracts was profound and complex: on the one hand, the inscriptions undoubtedly speak about the lineage’s attempt to preserve its status quo, or its traditional solidarity in competition with other lineages; on the other hand, this happened simply because the traditional bond could no longer guarantee the willing and unconditional support of the lineage members to their common head. Therefore, the head of the lineage needed to construct a much wider sociopolitical web including both the Zhao and non-Zhao members based on written contracts and to invite surveillance by the supernatural spirits as the only way to maintain the solidarity of the lineage. Ironically, the alliance so formed was aimed to bringing down certain rebellious elements of the lineage itself.

  Ethnic Relations and the Rise of the Huaxia Concept

  The Spring and Autumn period was also a time during which the way the people in North China viewed themselves had been dramatically transformed by ongoing social and political changes. And this transformation is not unrelated to what was going on beyond the Zhou world. In fact, the Zhou dynasty down to the beginning of the fifth century BC paralleled in time the transition to pastoral nomadism that was taking place first in Central Asia and gradually spreading to Eastern Europe and East Asia. The collapse of the Western Zhou and the subsequent relocation of the Zhou royal court from the Wei River plain to Luoyang in the east had triggered waves of migration of the Rong (meaning warlike) peoples from the northwestern highlands into the central areas of the former Western Zhou. A number of such Rong groups were recorded to have occupied locations close to the confluence of the Yellow River and Wei River in eastern Shaanxi; some of these groups might have moved as far as western Henan near the royal capital in Luoyang (Map 8.1 above). In the north and northeast, groups identified as the Di people had moved down along the Taihang Mountain ranges and founded many small polities such as Wuzhong and Xianyu in Hebei and northern Henan after wiping the Zhou states Xing and Wey off the map. Some of the tribesmen, for instance, the Long Di people, who were probably very tall, might have occupied places in eastern Henan and western Shandong in the late seventh century BC.22 Towa
rds the end of the seventh century BC, even those states in the core area of the Zhou realm had come to find Rong and Di communities in their neighborhood; states on the periphery such as Qin and Jin were traditionally known to have been always surrounded by the various Rong people.

  The relationship between these Rong or Di polities and the indigenous Zhou states was complicated to say the least. War was not the unvarying form of relationship between them – occasionally we find that certain Rong or Di groups were on campaigns along with their Zhou partners against other Zhou states. During the turmoil in the royal court caused by Prince Chao, the Rong people were among the troops from Jin that restored the Zhou king to the throne in 520 BC. A century earlier, another pretender to the royal throne, Prince Dai, employed the troops of Di to attack the Zhou capital and drove King Xiang out of the royal capital. There were also Rong or Di polities that carried out successful diplomacy, mediating between the Zhou states. Despite the regular contact between the Rong or Di polities and the indigenous Zhou states, the ethnic and cultural distinction remained clear to both sides, and this is illustrated by the experience of a group of the Rong people identified as “Jiangshi.” In the words of their chief transmitted in the Zuo Commentary, this Rong group was originally located in the far west. Driven out of their lands by the ambition of the state of Qin, they had migrated east to the Jin region and had lived there as clients of Jin, possibly in southern Shanxi. The Rong had different clothes and ate different food, making no use of money and speaking a different language. In 627 BC, the Rong supplied auxiliary troops to Jin and together they vanquished the Qin army in the famous battle at Xiao (Chapter 11). Despite their long-time association with Jin, in 559 BC, their right to take the “Oath of Alliance” along with Jin in the inter-state conference was boldly denied by Jin ministers, about which the Rong chief issued a serious protest.

  It would be very interesting if such a condition of ethnic and cultural symbiosis could be found in the archaeological record. However, archaeology proves to be inadequate to demonstrate the scale and intensity of this cultural mixing in North China. The evidence that speaks about this historical process is mainly of two kinds. First, a tomb was discovered in Yimencun in Baoji at the western end of the Wei River valley, yielding a numbers of gold objects usually seen in nomadic cultures on the northern steppe, together with a number of iron tools and weapons, and horse gears. There is good reason to consider it as a burial of a horse-riding elite who had migrated into the Qin region. Second, a number of bronze objects, such as round-based cauldrons, ornate swords, and belt plaques of northern steppe styles were found in tombs from Qin and Jin territories. These are considered imported objects once appropriated or perhaps appreciated by Qin and Jin elites.23 Although archaeology has yet to offer a large picture of the cultural and ethnic mixing up suggested by the historical records, it does offer us a rudimentary idea of the movement of populations during the Spring and Autumn period.

  Whether “alien” cultural elements were appreciated or not by the population of the “Huaxia” stock, a term that referred to the indigenous people of the states of common Zhou heritage, there seems no doubt that the received textual sources document a widespread cultural prejudice against the Rong and Di people. The Rong were rudely regarded as birds and beasts who had no feelings for humanity, and who were born greedy. Even their blood and breath (qi) were configured differently from the regular human beings living in the Zhou world. However, underlying this explicitly expressed ethnic and cultural prejudice against the Rong and Di – two terms which by the late Spring and Autumn period had come quite close to the meaning of “barbarians” in English – was a process of profound self-redefinition by the people who lived in North China. As the word “Xia” in the compound “Huaxia” represents the origin of the Chinese state, Hua refers to the Hua Mountain, located at the central point between the Zhou capitals in Shaanxi and the eastern capital in Luoyang in Henan. It was their common origin in the Western Zhou state that gave them a shared identity in a time when they had become geographically intermingled with the “barbarians” due to waves of migration. Viewed in this way, the Spring and Autumn period might have been a critical time in which the concept of a Chinese (Huaxia) nation was formed and articulated, though at the expense of a total conceptual exclusion of the “barbarians.”24

  Selected Reading

  Hsu, Cho-yun, Ancient China in Transition: An Analysis of Social Mobility, 722–222 BC (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965).

  Hsu, Cho-yun, “The Spring and Autumn Period,” in Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (eds.), The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 570–576.

  Creel, Herrlee, “The Beginning of Bureaucracy in China: The Origins of the Hsien,” Journal of Asian Studies 22 (1964), 155–183.

  Blakeley, Barry B., “Regional Aspects of Chinese Socio-Political Development in the Spring and Autumn Period (722–464 B.C.): Clan Power in a Segmentary State” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1970).

  Weld, Susan Roosevelt, “Covenant in Jin’s Walled Cities: The Discoveries at Houma and Wenxian” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1990).

  McNeal, Robin, “Acquiring People: Social Organization, Mobilization, and Discourse on the Civil and the Martial in Ancient China” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 2000).

  Li, Feng, Landscape and Power in Early China: The Crisis and Fall of the Western Zhou, 1045–771 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), Chapter 6.

  Falkenhausen, Lothar von, Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1000–250 BC): The Archaeological Evidence (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, 2006).

  1 The Spring and Autumn Annals offers year-by-year brief accounts of historical events that happened in China between 722 BC and 481 BC, centering in the state of Lu, whose ducal reigns were used as the divisions of the records. There seems little doubt that the records were copied from the official chronicle of the state of Lu. The current Spring and Autumn Annals are sliced and attached to the beginning of the corresponding years in the Zuo Commentary (which actually runs down to 468 BC), composed one hundred years or more later in the Warring States period (480–221 BC), which gives detailed narratives to the events recorded in the annals. See Michael Loewe, Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1993), pp. 67–76.

  2 In the periodization scheme proposed by the Warring States philosopher Han Fei (380–233 BC), the Shang–Western Zhou period falls under his term “Recent Antiquity” which comes after the “High Antiquity” (the age of legendary emperors) and “Middle Antiquity” (the Xia Dynasty and the centuries before it). For Han Fei, see Chapter 10.

  3 This includes large areas of salt production sites dating back as early as the Shang Dynasty and as late as the Han Dynasty, under intensive archaeological research in the recent years.

  4 See Victoria Hui’s discussion in War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 55–64.

  5 See Cho-yun Hsu, “The Spring and Autumn Period,” in Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy, (eds.), The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 556–557.

  6 Cho-yun Hsu, “The Spring and Autumn Period,” pp. 556–557.

  7 Although all five titles (gong, hou, bo, zi, and nan, often translated as duke, marquis, earl, viscount, and baron) had already appeared in the Western Zhou period, they did not form a system of ranking. During the Spring and Autumn period the five titles were combined to form the so-called “Five Ranks.” See Li Feng, “Transmitting Antiquity: The Origin and Paradigmization of the ‘Five Ranks’,” in D. Kuhn et al. (eds.) Perceptions of Antiquity in Chinese Civilization (Heidelberg: Edition Forum, 2008) pp. 103–134.

  8 In the West, Herrlee Creel’s article
on the county as the origin of bureaucratic administration in China is well known. See Herrlee Creel, “The Beginning of Bureaucracy in China: The Origins of the Hsien,” Journal of Asian Studies 22 (1964), 155–183.

  9 This was the polity called Quan, located in present-day Yicheng in northern Hubei, in the Han River valley.

  10 These were the states of Southern Shen, Xi, and Lü.

  11 These were the counties of Shanggui in eastern Gansu, and Du and Zheng in eastern Shaanxi.

  12 The Figure for Qin is not known for the fifth century, but it was forty-one after the reform of Shang Yang in the mid fourth century BC.

  13 See Cho-yun Hsu, Ancient China in Transition: An Analysis of Social Mobility, 722–222 BC (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), pp. 25–39.

  14 Barry B. Blakeley, Functional Disparities in the Socio-Political Traditions of Spring and Autumn China (Leiden: Brill, 1980), pp. 107–113.

  15 See Robin McNeal “Acquiring People: Social Organization, Mobilization, and Discourse on the Civil and Martial in Ancient China” (Ph.D. dissertation: University of Washington, 2000), pp. 78–107.