Early China: A Social and Cultural History

by Li Feng

  The unitary administrative order was also achieved through a series of policies that mandated standardization. This included first of all the issuing of standard units of length, weight, and volume necessary for the calculation of taxes throughout the empire and rations for its frontier armies as well as payment for officials. Such standardization had already been carried out in the time of Shang Yang’s reform, but it was significant to expand the system over the whole empire. Old currencies used in the six eastern states before the Qin conquest were all destroyed, and the Qin currency was adopted for use in the whole empire. Most importantly, the unification of the writing system was attempted. Over the centuries after the fall of the Western Zhou state, the Zhou scripts had been variously modified, giving rise to the unique writing systems in the six states. The Qin Empire did not immediately implement their pre-conquest Small Seal scripts to the whole empire, but had its high official Li Si supervise the modification of them into a new system of writing, the Clerical Script, which featured more straight lines and allowed sharp turns, which made them much easier to write. While the pre-conquest Qin scripts continued to be used on monuments such as the stele inscriptions on the various famous mountains in the east whose creation were commissioned by the First Emperor, the new scripts were adopted as standards for government paperwork as well as registrations of the population. We do not know how fast or how thoroughly the Qin writing system had replaced the traditional regional writings in every corner of the empire, but the adherence to a single system of writing must have significantly improved the administrative efficiency of the empire. In fact, the new materials from Liye in Hunan show that even the transition from Small Seal to Cleric Scripts was probably a very mixed process.16

  As pointed out by Robin Yates, the Qin Empire, or the Chinese empires in general, claimed to rule not on the basis of the concept of sovereignty, but on the personal dignity of the emperor and legitimacy of his patrilineal ancestral line.17 The concept of “citizenship” had never been developed in Chinese civilization until modern times, and the pre-modern empire was essentially identified with dynasty, in sharp contrast to the Roman Empire which continued to flourish for centuries as the imperial throne traveled from one family to another. Therefore, the institution of emperor had a special meaning in China as the repository of imperial legitimacy. As soon as the unification was achieved, Ying Zheng adopted the deifying title Huangdi which combines the terms huang, “Mythical Ruler,” and di, “God,” although we conventionally translate it as “Emperor,” which stressed instead his secular rule. Thus, certain words such as the first personal zhen (I) was strictly reserved for use by the emperor; zhi (edict) referred to orders originated from the emperor, and xi (stamp) referred to the seal the emperor used to sanction orders. On the other hand, the emperor’s personal name was to be avoided by everyone in any public or private documents. The emperor dressed differently from all other people, and must also have eaten differently from all others. Furthermore, advised by a magician named Lu Sheng, the emperor adopted a strategy of deliberate secrecy. He traveled in tunnels and lived in hidden places, a condition said to be necessary for his intercourse with the immortals, and would execute anyone who exposed his location. By living as a ghost or shadow, the First Emperor purposely distanced himself from all humans who were basically his slaves.

  The First Emperor ruled for eleven years during which he had six major tours through the many distant parts of his empire. He climbed most of the famous mountains in eastern China, offered sacrifices to Heaven, and erected inscriptions to commemorate the accomplishment of the empire and his own virtue. Six of these inscriptions were copied by Sima Qian into his The Grand Scribe’s Records.18 The imperial armies continued to win victories on the borders. In the north, General Meng Tian was sent with a force of 300,000 soldiers to attack the Xiongnu and drove the nomads out of this vast grassland at the north bend of the Yellow River. The Qin troops subsequently constructed a new section of the Great Wall to protect the conquered land which was made a new commandery with more than thirty counties under its control. In 211 BC, the Qin court transferred 30,000 households from central China to fill these northern counties. Even the crown prince Fu Su was sent north to assist Meng Tian to manage frontier affairs after a quarrel he had with his father. In the south, as soon as the conquest of central China was completed in 221 BC, the Qin Empire massed a huge invasion force of 500,000 soldiers, striking over the Nanling Mountains in five roads on a front stretching from Fujian all the way west to Guangxi. In order to support the two western divisions which aimed to conquer the present-day Guangxi region, the Qin Empire moved workers and engineers to open a canal to link the Yangzi River system with the Li River which flows south. By 214 BC, the Qin armies captured most areas in Fujian, Guangdong, and Guangxi Provinces, lands previously inhabited by the hundred Yue people, thus expanding the empire to the shore of the South China Sea.

  Bringing the Empire to Afterlife

  The First Emperor thus gained control over almost everything that he could possibly reach, except for his own destiny as a human being, a fact that he tried very hard to deny. Facing the coming of old age, his strategy was twofold: on the one hand, he tried every means to stay in this world; on the other, he prepared to bring the empire to the afterworld which he could continue to rule. For years, the emperor entertained the dream of longevity by repeatedly sending magicians or occult specialists onto the high sea to seek herbs for immortality from such mythical islands as Penglai, and by holding personal sacrifices to the eight spirits worshipped previously in the state of Qi on the mountains in eastern Shangdong. He had also personally sailed on the high sea along the coast of the Shandong Peninsula in the hope of a spiritual encounter with the immortals. Failing to deliver herbs for immortality, some of the occult specialists such as Xu Fu simply fled overseas with rich provisions given by the emperor including reportedly hundreds of young boys and girls in his company.

  However, when the emperor adopted the title “First Emperor,” he must have envisioned a day when he could no longer rule and when the imperial throne would be passed on to the second emperor. With his time limited in this world, the emperor carefully planned to rule in the underworld. As soon as the unification was achieved, he commissioned 700,000 workers including many convicts to construct his eternal world at the foot of Lishan Mountain, some 40 km east of Xianyang, and the resulting underground complex, continuously excavated by archaeologists since the discovery of the terracotta army in the 1970s, is now counted among the seven wonders of the world (Fig. 11.7). Behind this huge project was of course the idea that the emperor’s rule cannot simply end; it must continue into the afterlife and this can be facilitated through replicating as many features as possible from the life he used to live. In the past ten years, archaeologists in Shaanxi have made important progress in understanding the organization of this immense underground complex.19

  Fig. 11.7 The Lishan complex.

  At the center of the Lishan complex are two concentric walled enclosures. In the southern part of the inner precinct is the huge mound of 500 m on each side, sitting above the emperor’s burial chamber which was intended as his living quarters, but the internal condition of the pit is still unknown. Located immediately at the north edge of the burial mound is what the archaeologists call the “Retiring Hall” which is a platform of approximately 60 m surrounded by corridors, a place where the emperor was supposed to retire to from his public life which should take place probably in the main chamber (Fig 11.8). In the back (west) of the mound, a number of structures have been found including a pit containing the well-known bronze chariot drawn by four horses, which the emperor would use on trips away from his underground palace. In the northwest part of the inner precinct, four building foundations were found arranged in a line covering an area measuring 600 m N–S and 200 m on W–E. These were the temples where sacrifice was to be offered to nourish the underground emperor. To the east of this area which actually forms a smaller enclosure i
tself some thirty-four middle- or small-size tombs were excavated, representing the minor officers and servants who once had probably worked in the palace.

  Fig. 11.8 The underground city of the First Emperor.

  The outer precinct, which measures 971 m on W–E and 2188 m N–S, is the site for a number of interesting features. Along the west wall from north to south are located the site of an administrative building, and a site that the archaeologists identified as the Yigong, grand inventory of food supplies, based on inscriptions on the pottery jars excavated. Further south across the west gateway of the city, two facilities were found: an imperial stable where horses were buried together with miniature kneeling human figurines of caretakers supplied with large plates, and a structure filled with small pottery coffins that contain various birds and animals carefully selected from the imperial hunting park. Along the east wall, a large underground structure of 100 × 130 m is found, replicating the imperial armory, from which hundreds of sets of stone-made armor were excavated, representing different ranks in the Qin military. To the south of the armory is located the burial of an acrobat with a large number of terracotta figurines imitating the gestures of their performance for the amusement of the emperor. In addition, in 2001 a unique structure was found about 900 m from the northeast corner of the outer wall. The structure was actually an underground river system in F-shape, continuing for about 60 m N–S, and was located close to a fish pond that the archaeologists believe to have been in use as early as the First Emperor’s time. On the underground banks of the river, as many as twenty swans, six cranes, and twenty wild geese, all in bronze, were found in the company of a few human figurines (Fig. 11.9).

  Fig. 11.9 Bronze crane from the underground river constructed for the First Emperor, to the north of his main burial mound.

  The various sites and objects from the complex suggest that the officials who designed the Lishan project were careful to take into consideration every need of the emperor and every public and private function he might take charge of in his afterlife. They replicated not only his living quarters and his servants, but also the natural features such as a river for him to bring to the other world. One thing that was not included in the design of the underground city was his army – these are found about 1 km to the east of the city. To the south of the modern village called Xiyang, an estimated total of 7,000 life-size terracotta warriors along with 600 terracotta horses were found in four pits, covering a total area of more than 21,700 m2. Pit no. 1, from which as many as 6,000 individual warriors and horses were excavated, is the main formation of the army and it combines infantry and chariotry in eleven rows (Fig. 11.10). Pit no. 2 contains 2,000 warriors and horses in L-shape and their position in the formation is still debated. Pit no. 3, in U-shape, judged from the weapons and styles of the chariots, is apparently the commander headquarters of the whole formation.

  Fig. 11.10 The terracotta army of the First Emperor, pit no. 1.

  Scholars have long debated the meaning of the terracotta army buried outside of the east gate of the First Emperor’s underground city. But whether they represented the army the king of Qin sent to conquer the six eastern states, or the army the First Emperor brought with him on his tours to the east, or they replicated a selection of soldiers from all over China, as variously suggested by scholars, they were a source powerful enough to terrify enemies who would dare to stand in the way of the First Emperor, whether he was alive, or beyond life.

  Regarding the First Emperor himself, much of what later generations know came through the lens of the historiography of the Han Empire which perceived itself as the enemy of the Qin Empire. There is the possibility that the First Emperor might not have been as vicious and ruthless as the Han sources have us believe. He was a great inventor of institutions and one who had the courage to test the power of the empire to its extreme. The empire he left behind provided the model for all later Chinese dynasties. But much of what the Han historians said about the First Emperor was underscored by the fact that no matter how great the empire was it lasted only fifteen years. Thus, one wonders whether, had the First Emperor not brought the state of Qin to its conquest of all others, it might have lasted much longer indeed, as probably would all other states which Qin victimized.

  Selected Reading

  Twitchett, Denis, and Michael Loewe (eds.), Cambridge History of China, vol. 1 The Chi’in and Han Empires, 221 BC–AD 220 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), Introduction and Chapter 1, pp. 1–102.

  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 5, pp. 233–78.

  Portal, Jane (ed.), The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).

  Lewis, Mark, The Early Chinese Empire: Qin and Han (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007).

  Kern, Martin, The Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang: Text and Ritual in Early Chinese Imperial Representation (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 2000).

  Loewe, Michael, The Government of the Qin and Han Empires, 221 BCE–220 CE (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006).

  1 Sima Qian, The Grand Scribe’s Records, vol. 1, The Basic Annals of Pre-Han China, edited by William H. Nienhauser Jr. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 89.

  2 It should be noted that the recently published manuscripts from Qinghua University, dating to the Warring States period, include a document that traces the origin of the Qin people to Shang. This has encouraged some scholars to reactivate an old hypothesis that the ruling house of Qin was ethnically related to groups in eastern China. But it seems that this point will remain hypothetical indefinitely.

  3 See Li Feng, Landscape and Power in Early China: The Crisis and Fall of the Western Zhou, 1045–771 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 262–273.

  4 She is the second voice speaking with authority in the inscription on a set of bronze bells cast by Duke Wu of Qin (697–678 BC), possibly her son. See Gilbert Mattos, “Eastern Zhou Bronze Inscriptions,” in Edward L. Shaughnessy (ed.), New Sources of Early Chinese History: An Introduction to the Reading of Inscriptions and Manuscripts (Berkeley: Society for Study of Early China, 1997), pp. 111–114.

  5 Mattos, “Eastern Zhou Bronze Inscriptions,” pp. 114–117.

  6 See Robin D. S. Yates, “Social Status in the Ch’in: Evidence from the Yün-meng Legal Documents. Part One: Commoners,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47.1 (1987), 219–220; idem, “Cosmos, Central Authority, and Communities in the Early Chinese Empire,” in Susan E. Alcock, Terence N. D’Altroy, Kathlean D. Morrison, and Carla M. Sinopoli (eds.), Empire: Perspectives from Archaeology and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 636–637.

  7 See Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe (eds.), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1, The Ch’in and Han Empires, 221 BC – AD 220 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 35 and n. 23.

  8 Yates, “Cosmos, Central Authority,” p. 634.

  9 A recent study suggests that the reform of Shang Yang was responsible for the rise of a unique Qin “cultural identity,” viewed both by others or the Qin elites themselves, as the single state beyond “All under Heaven.” See Gideo Shelach and Yuri Pines, “Secondary State Formation and the Development of Local Identity: Change and Continuity in the State of Qin (770–221 B.C.),” in Miriam T. Stark (ed.), Archaeology of Asia (Malden: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 217–220.

  10 Culturally Yiqu might have been closely related to the pre-existing Siwa culture in the upper Jing River region predating the Warring States; see Li, Landscape and Power in Early China, pp. 175–179.

  11 Sima Qian, The Grand Scribe’s Records, vol. 1, p. 131.

  12 See Alcock et al. (eds.), Empire: Perspectives from Archaeology and History, pp. 1–3.

  13 Twitchett and Loewe (eds.), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1, pp. 64–67.

  14 Ibid., pp. 61–62; for a map of t
he Qin road system, see Mark Lewis, The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 56.

  15 See Robin D. S. Yates, “State Control of Bureaucrats under the Qin: Techniques and Procedures,” Early China 20 (1995), 342–346.

  16 In 2002, some 36,000 wooden strips were found in a well filled as deep as 15 m in Liye in western Hunan. The documents were part of the official archive of Qianling Country of Dongting Commandery of Qin, dating between 222 BC and 208 BC. They are the most important contemporaneous records of local administration of the Qin Empire.

  17 Yates, “Cosmos, Central Authority,” p. 627.

  18 See Martin Kern, The Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang: Text and Ritual in Early Chinese Imperial Representation (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 2000), pp. 1–2.

  19 See Jane Portal (ed.), The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006) pp. 117–145.

  12 Expansion and political transition of the Han Empire

  If one is puzzled by the fact that the once great Qin Empire collapsed only fifteen years after it unified China, he is then bound to wonder why the once seemingly weak Han Empire lasted so long. The 411 years of the Han Dynasty, divided nearly equally into two halves by the reign (dynasty) of the usurper Wang Mang from AD 9 to 23, constituted a period of paramount importance in Chinese history and in the process of China’s formation as a nation. This pattern of historical development that a short-lived dynasty was taken over by a long-lasting dynasty in which many of the former’s inventions went through significant modifications is itself very interesting – it was repeated by the transition from Sui to the Tang Empire (AD 618–907). The Han Dynasty was both militant and culturally inspired, and its remarkable success instilled in China a deep sense of legitimacy granted to the imperial bureaucratic state backed by Confucian ideology. Particularly what happened between Han and the Xiongnu Empire in the second to first century BC was the struggle between two great empires using their full strength that occupied an important position in the world’s military history. The victory the Han Empire was able to consolidate through a series of difficult engagements led it to pursue expansionist goals in regions far from the Han borders. Consequently the Han Dynasty was also a time of great geographical discovery as Han envoys reached nations and tribes in central and western Asia, where the West and the East first truly entered each other’s sight. The discussion below of the Han Dynasty is divided into three parts: Chapter 12 reviews the political and military development under the Han Empire; Chapter 13 will discuss the internal organization and social orders of the Han Empire; the final chapter will analyze Han intellectual trends and highlight the splendors of Han material culture.