China Read online

  JOHN KEAY’S books include India Discovered, The Honourable Company, Last Post: The End of the Empire in Far East, the two-volume Explorers of the Western Himalayas, India: A History, The Great Arc, Sowing the Wind: The Seeds of Conflict in the Middle East and Mad about the Mekong: Exploration and Empire in South East Asia. He is married with four children, lives in Scotland, and is co-author with Julia Keay of the Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland.

  From the reviews of China: A History:

  ‘Much of [China’s] past, by any standard, is awe-inspiring. Not just for the temples, palaces and terracotta armies that remain, but for the earliest books and scripts – and poems – that underpin the beginnings of true civilisation . . . Anybody fascinated by the puzzle of what comes next for our frail, perplexed planet will find unexpected answers in this crisp, often witty chronicle of amazements: for what comes next, as the Chinese know, is also what came up in the dynasty before last’

  Observer

  ‘Ambitious . . . [this] book has many virtues, not least its refusal to adopt a Eurocentric perspective. It also reminds us that to talk of one China, or one Chinese history, is absurd . . . China’s past was contested and fragmented. Intoxicatingly interesting’

  Independent on Sunday

  ‘An epic history of China . . . As China begins to dominate the contemporary world order a comprehensive record of this vast nation, its extended ancestry and distinctive culture is particularly timely. There’s no way of understanding China’s stirring future without a sense of its awe-inspiring past’

  Traveller magazine

  By the same author

  Into India

  When Men and Mountains Meet

  The Gilgit Game

  Eccentric Travellers

  Explorers Extraordinary

  Highland Drove

  The Royal Geographical Society’s History of World Exploration

  India Discovered

  The Honourable Company

  The Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland (with Julia Keay)

  Indonesia: From Sabang to Merauke

  Last Post: The End of Empire in the Far East

  The Great Arc

  India: A History

  Sowing the Wind: The Seeds of Conflict in the Middle East

  Mad about the Mekong: Exploration and

  Empire in South East Asia

  The Spice Route: A History

  The London Encyclopaedia (3rd Edn) (with Julia Keay)

  CHINA

  A HISTORY

  JOHN KEAY

  A MEMBER OF THE PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP

  NEW YORK

  Copyright © 2009 by John Keay

  Maps and diagrams © HarperCollins

  First published in the United States in 2009 by Basic Books,

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  Originally published in Britain in 2008 by HarperPress,

  an imprint of HarperCollins

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8810.

  Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].

  A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  LCCN: 2009930982

  ISBN: 978-0-465-01580-1

  British ISBN: 978-0-00-722177-6

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Julia

  The Master said, ‘Is it not a pleasure, having learned something, to try it out at due intervals? Is it not a joy to have like-minded friends come from afar? Is it not gentlemanly not to take offence when others fail to appreciate your abilities?’

  Confucius, The Analects, Book I, i1

  He who does not forget the past is master of the present.

  Sima Qian, Shiji2

  CONTENTS

  List of Illustrations

  List of Maps and Diagrams

  Acknowledgements

  INTRODUCTION

  Rewriting the past

  Spadework

  Cradle, core and beyond

  The dynastic dynamic

  The triumph of Pinyin

  A matter of scale

  1 RITES TO WRITING, PRE C. 1050 BC

  The Great Beginning

  Glint of bronze

  Finding family

  In the oracular

  2 SAGES AND HEROES, C. 1050– C. 250 BC

  Footprints of Zhou

  Less spring than autumn

  The Confucian conveyance

  Warring states and statist wars

  3 THE FIRST EMPIRE, C. 250–210 BC

  Stone Cattle Road

  Qin’s cultural revolution

  Crumbling wall, hidden tomb

  4 HAN ASCENDANT, 210–141 BC

  Qin implodes

  Pawn to king

  Jaded monarchs

  5 WITHIN AND BEYOND, 141 BC–AD 1

  Han and Hun

  Explorer Zhang and the Western Regions

  Administering an empire

  Confucian fundamentalism

  6 WANG MANG AND THE HAN REPRISE, AD 1–189

  A one-man dynasty

  Across the watershed

  Decline and fall

  7 FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OF VICISSITUDE, 189–550

  Three Kingdoms and the Red Cliffs

  Dao and the Celestial Masters

  Enter the Enlightened One

  Into the abyss

  Luoyang again

  8 SUI, TANG AND THE SECOND EMPIRE, 550–650

  Intercalary conjunction

  Sui-cide

  Sons of the sunset and the sunrise

  Beyond the Jade Gate

  9 HIGH TANG, 650–755

  Wanton, not wayward

  The greatest power in Asia

  Like a breath of spring

  A turning point

  10 RECONFIGURING THE EMPIRE, 755–1005

  Low Tang

  Five Dynasties or Ten Kingdoms

  Song and Liao

  11 CAVING IN, 1005–1235

  The Great State of White and High

  Reform and reappraisal

  In Singing-girl Towers

  Jin and Song

  12 BY LAND AND SEA, 1235–1405

  Sunset of the Song

  Mongol reunification

  Mongol misadventures

  Triumph of the Ming

  13 THE RITES OF MING, 1405–1620

  From the edge of the sky to the ends of the earth

  Misadventures and misfortunes

  The Great Rites Controversy

  Landmarks and inroads

  14 THE MANCHU CONQUEST, 1620–1760

  Overwhelming Ming

  From Jurchen to Manchu

  Much in demand

  Zungharia, Xinjiang and Tibet

  15 DEATH THROES OF EMPIRE, 1760–1880

  Self-evident truths

  Insults and opium

  Taiping and Tianjin

  16 REPUBLICANS AND NATIONALISTS, 1880–1950

  Brush to pen

  From empire to republic

  War and more war

  Long March, long war

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Mawangdui silk banner (Hunan Provincial Museum)

  Shang turtle plastron (China Images/Alamy)

&
nbsp; Sanxingdui bronze figure (Uniphoto/AAA Collection)

  Zeng Hou Yi bronze zun (Uniphoto/AAA Collection)

  First Emperor’s terracotta army (China Photos/Getty Images)

  Chariot from the First Emperor’s burial site (Viktor Korotayev/Reuters/Corbis)

  Tou Wan’s jade suit (Asian Art & Archaeology, Inc/Corbis)

  The Tarim Mummy ‘Charchan Man’ (© Jeffrey Newbury)

  Han Granary at Dunhuang (© Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. Photographer: Jean-François Lanzarone)

  Scene from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (The Avery Brundage Collection, B60M427. © Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Used by permission)

  ‘Nomads with a tribute horse’ (detail), traditionally attributed to Li Zanhua, Chinese, 899–936. Ink, colour, and gold on silk. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Keith McLeod Fund 52.1380. (Photograph © 2008 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

  Tang figurine of horsewoman (Uniphoto/AAA Collection)

  Tang figurine of camel and rider (Werner Forman Archive/Christian Deydier)

  The Buddha’s First Sermon, seventeenth-century fresco, Tibet (Art Archive/Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale, Rome/Gianni Dagli Orti)

  The Lungmen Buddha caves (Wolfgang Kaehler/Corbis)

  Travelling Tang monk, ninth-century Chinese painting, Tunhuang/Musée Guimet (akg-images/Erich Lessing)

  The Grand Canal at Yangzhou (Claro Cortes IV/Reuters/Corbis)

  Song paddle boat (from Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol 4, Physics and Physical Technology Part 2, Mechanical Engineering, 1965, Cambridge University Press. Originally from Yü Chhang-Hui’s Fang Hai Chi Yao, 1842)

  The Qingming scroll: ‘Going on the River at the Qingming Festival’ by Zhang Zeduan (The Palace Museum, Beijing)

  The walls and gateway, Nanjing (AFP/Getty Images)

  Jizhou plan of the Great Wall (Collection of the National Museum of China – C14.2142)

  The Great Wall today (Adam Tall/Robert Hardin)

  Qingbai porcelain bowl (Kimbell Art Museum/Corbis)

  Ming blue-and-white vase (© RMN/Richard Lambert)

  Xu Yang’s ‘Bird’s-Eye View of the Capital’ hanging scroll, colour on silk, 1767 (Palace Museum, Beijing. Ref. X146672)

  The Mongol leader Dawaci (bpk/Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin/Photo: Waltraudt Schneider-Schütz)

  Engraving of cannons on camel-back (Library of Congress)

  Scroll painting of the Kangxi emperor’s tour of the south by Yang Jin, c. 1644– c. 1726. (© RMN/© Thierry Ollivier)

  The Qing Qianlong emperor preparing to receive Macartney, engraving 1793 after original by William Alexander (Getty Images)

  Court portrait of the Qianlong emperor (The Palace Museum, Beijing. Ref: G6465)

  Packing porcelain for export (Private collection. Photo © Bonhams/Bridgeman Art Library)

  The hongs of Canton (Private collection/Roy Miles Fine Painting/Bridgeman Art Library)

  Taiping encampment at Tianjin (Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University)

  The execution of Boxer insurgents (Getty Images)

  The empress dowager Cixi (portrait, 1905–6, by Hubert Vos) (akg-images)

  Pu-yi, ‘the Last Emperor’ (The Art Archive/Culver Pictures)

  Chiang Kai-shek and Zhang Xueling (Getty Images)

  The Shanghai bund in 1930 (Getty Images)

  The Nanjing Massacre, December 1937 (Getty Images)

  Chongqing under Japanese bombing (Getty Images)

  Mao Zedong at Yan’an (Getty Images)

  ‘Rivers and Mountains are Charming’ poster (Swim Ink/Corbis)

  ‘Survey the Enemy’ poster (Swim Ink/Corbis)

  One-child-per-family policy poster (Owen Franken/Corbis)

  The Three Gorges Dam (Reuters/Corbis)

  Labrang Tashikyil monastery, Amdo (Ian Cumming/Axiom)

  LIST OF MAPS AND DIAGRAMS

  China: cradle, core and current provinces

  Rivers and mountains

  The big five dynasties

  Timeline: the five emperors and the three (pre-imperial) dynasties

  Archaeological type sites for the three (pre-imperial) dynasties

  Timeline: Former/Western Zhou kings, c. 1045–770BC

  Realm of the Former/Western Zhou, c. 1045–770BC

  Classic texts and their provenance

  The Warring States, c. 350BC

  The expansion of Qin, c. 350–210BC

  Timeline: the ruling house of Qin

  Civil war, 209–202BC

  Timeline: from Qin to Han, 220–87BC

  Han empire in the first century BC

  Timeline: Former/Western Han succession, 87BC–AD9

  Timeline: Later/Eastern Han succession, AD25–220

  The Three Kingdoms, AD220– c. 270

  Dynasties of ‘the Period of Disunion’, AD220–590

  Timeline: ‘Period of Disunion’ succession, AD220–600

  Buddhism in ‘the Period of Disunion’

  The Grand Canal, c. AD611

  The Sui-Tang reunification, 580–650

  Timeline: the Sui/Tang succession, 580–650

  The Tang empire, c. 650

  The Tang empire, c. 750 (1)

  The Tang empire, c. 750 (2)

  Timeline: the Tang succession, 650–750

  Timeline: Later Tang succession, 750–907

  Huang Chao’s long march, 878–80

  Timeline: the Five (Northern) Dynasties, 907–59

  The Five (Northern) Dynasties and the Ten Kingdoms, 907–60

  The Ten Kingdoms of the Five Dynasties period

  China, c. 1100

  Timeline: the succession of regional dynasties, 1000–1300

  China, c. 1200

  Timeline: the Song and Jin successions

  The Mongol advance, 1209–1300

  The Mongol succession

  Timeline: the Southern Song succession, 1127–1279

  The Mongol Yuan succession, 1279–1368

  The Mongol Yuan provinces

  Timeline: the Ming reign periods, 1368–1644

  Profile of an emperor

  Zheng He’s voyages, 1405–31

  Northern frontier and the Great Wall, 1550–1650

  Manchu conquests, 1616–1755

  Timeline: Manchu Qing succession, 1620–1820

  China in the nineteenth century

  Timeline: Later Qing succession, 1795–1911

  The Northern Expedition and the Long March

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book is heavily indebted to a legion of China specialists, some of whom are mentioned in the text and others in the source notes and bibliography. I know few of them personally but I hope their views have not been misrepresented. It also owes much to Ian Paten for his painstaking editing, to Caroline Hotblack who brought a rare understanding to the picture research, and to Louise McLeman for the design and HL Studios for labouring over the maps and tables. I am most grateful to all of them. A word of thanks, too, to the inventor of wheeled luggage, without which the squirreling home of trunkloads of books would have crippled me, and to the makers of that China-traveller’s essential, the plastic cafetière.

  Richard Johnson of HarperCollins suggested the book. He also championed it, commissioned it, and oversaw every stage of its production. This is the fifth book on which we have worked together. His support and friendship have been so invaluable that mere acknowledgment seems insulting. The same goes for Julia, to whom I am married. For three years she has lived this book as much as I have. It was she who fathomed the working of China Railways, hauled me from the path of oncoming traffic, and almost never complained. She has read every word of the text and drew the roughs for the maps and tables, often at the expense of her own work. No one could have been readier with encouragement and support. Ideally her name should be beside mine on the title page. Instead it is as near as possible, on the dedicatory page.

  John Keay

  May 2008

  INTRODUCTION />
  REWRITING THE PAST

  CHINA’S ECONOMIC RESURGENCE IN THE POST-MAO era has not been without its casualties. Gone are the Chairman’s portraits, the mass parades of flag-waving workers and the hoe-toting brigades on their collectivised farms. Apartment blocks, tightly mustered and regimentally aligned, perform the new choreography; flyovers vault the rice paddies, cable cars abseil the most sacred of mountains, hydrofoils ruffle the lakes beloved of poets. Familiar features in the historical landscape have either disappeared or been reconfigured as visitor attractions. Iconised for a market as much domestic as foreign, they make inviting targets for another demolitionist fraternity, that of international academe. When history itself is being so spectacularly rewritten, nothing is sacred. The Great Wall, the Grand Canal, the Long March, even the Giant Panda? Myths, declare the revisionist scholars, facile conflations, figments of foreign ignorance now appropriated to gratify Chinese chauvinism.

  Contrary to the tourist brochures, the Great Wall has been shown to be not ‘over 2,000 years old’, not ‘6,000 miles [9,700 kilometres] long’, not ‘visible from outer space’ – not visible on the ground in many places – and never to have been a single continuous structure.1 It did not keep out marauding nomads nor was that its original purpose; instead of defending and defining Chinese territory, it was probably designed to augment and project it.2 Those sections near Beijing that may conveniently be inspected today have been substantially reconstructed for just such inspection; and the rubble and footings from which they rise are those of Ming fortifications no older than the palaces in the Forbidden City or London’s Hampton Court.

  Likewise the Grand Canal. Reaching from the Yangzi delta to the Yellow River (Huang He), a distance of about 1,100 kilometres (700 miles), the canal is supposed to have served as a main artery between China’s productive heartland and its brain of government. Laid out in the seventh century AD, it did indeed connect the rice-surplus south to the often cereal-deficient north, so fusing the two main geographical components of China’s political economy and supplying a much-needed highway for bulk transport and imperial progresses. Yet it, too, was never a single continuous construction, more a series of well-engineered waterways interconnecting the various deltaic arms of the Yangzi, and elsewhere linking that river’s tributaries to those of the Huai River, whose tributaries were in turn linked to the wayward Yellow River. The system was rarely operational throughout its entirety because of variable water flow, the rainy season in the north not coinciding with that in the south; colossal manpower was needed to haul the heavily laden transports and work the locks; dredging and maintenance proved prohibitively expensive; and so frequent were the necessary realignments of the system that there are now almost as many abandoned sections of Grand Canal as there are of Great Wall.3