DALY LIE I

TRITION
CHI
Te Tang Dyast
|HLbDL^
The Greenwood Press "Daily Life Through History" Series

GREENWOOD PRESS
Westort, Connecticut London
Preface
This text is the product of a college course titled "Daily Life in Tradi
tional China" that I have taught half a dozen times. The objective of the
course was to introduce students of history, philosophy, religion, liter
ature, art, and other disciplines to the "nitty-gritty" of ancient China. Its
content covered the physical and material aspects (from toilets to tombs),
as well as the customs, of premoder times (from festivals to funerals),
features that are sometimes overlooked in courses that concentrate on
theoretical issues. The scope of the course, however, is far too large for
a modest survey such as this since it covers 3,000 years. Consequently
this work will cover the Tang dynasty (618-907) only, an epoch of some
300 years that is the period of my scholarly endeavors.
The Tang dynasty is worthy of special treatment because it was the
golden age of Chinese culture, at least in the opinion of many later Chi
nese. Tey have esteemed two of its poets as the greatest in their history.
An anthology of three hundred Tang poems compiled in the eighteenth
century is still te primer for children when they begin their study of
verse. It was a text treasured by intellectuals sent to prison camps during
the Cultural Revolution. Tang writers devised a simplified and terse
form of prose that subsequently became the dominant style until the
twentieth century. One of its painters was regarded as the greatest of all
time for centuries after his death, even though few of his works survived
the fall of the dynasty. The Tang was also one of the greatest, if not the
greatest, periods in the development of music, song, and dance during
Chinese history. Its law code, promulgated in 637, remained in force until
Preface
the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) revised it in 1397. Forty percent of it sur
vived until the fall of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). It also served as the
basis for the law codes of premoder Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Two
new forms of historical compilations emerged during the Tang and be
cae standard genres in later dynasties. The dynasty was the first to
compile a national materia medica (compendium of medicinal sub
stances), a text that was also the first to have illustrations. Both printing,
as well as the first printed illustrations, and gunpowder-developments
that profoundly affected the emergence of the modern world-were in
vented during the period. Te Tang was the golden age of Buddhism.
The religion attracted large numbers of adherents, amassed immense
wealth, and exerted great influence at court. It also produced the only
uniquely Chinese sect of the religion, Chan (Zen). Fially, tea became
the national drink during the dynasty.
The history of the Tang dynasty is largely the story of its patricians
(nobles and mandarins), intellectuals, and clergy (Taoist priests and Bud
dhist monks). Annals, biographies, documents, fiction, and other sources
furnish a wealth of information about the daily lives of those elites. His
torians and other writers, members of the upper classes themselves, paid
little attention to merchants, artisans, peasants, and slaves. Those lower
classes left no writings of their own. They appear occasionally in poetry,
fiction, prose sketches, accounts of legal proceedings, and so forth. Most
of what is known about them derives from laws, edicts, and official re
ports, where they are treated collectively. With some exceptions the na
ture of their daily existence is obscure. Women-mainly the mothers,
wives, or daughters of the elite-fared somewhat better. At least imperial
recorders and other authors compiled biographies and composed obit
uaries for them. However, they were in a distinct minority. Tang history
is largely the story of men.
The Wester reader will find much in ths text that is unfamiliar, per
haps bizarre. Some of the shangeness derives from cultural differences.
For much of history, Europe and China developed in relative isolation
from one another. The ideas and customs of the two were, and are, dis
tinct and unique. Some of it is due to time. Eleven centuries have passed
since the demise of the Tang, and great changes have taken place since
then. Moder Chinese will also find many aspects of the dynasty un
usual.
To a large extent the contents of this text are my own translations or
paraphrases done for this book or other works tat I am writing. Since
the original sources are in classical Chinese accessible only to sinologists
trained in that language, I have omitted notes. I have, however, ap
pended a list of suggested readings in Western languages that can be
consulted for further information on the topics covered here.
Most of the materials in Daily Life in Traditional China: The Tang Dynasty
Preface xi
derive from original Tang sources or secondary studies. The most notable
exception to this rule is a work on agriculture written about ninety years
before the founding of the dynasty. That book contains recipes for the
preparation of food, rare formulas that can be found nowhere else for
several centuries after the fall of the Tang. The fact that it survived when
most other texts on farming and culinary arts did not, attests to its pop
ularity and utility long after te time of its publication. For that reason
I have translated some of its recipes for the chapter on food and feasts.
All of the illustrations in this book are my own. There are two cate
gories. The first consists of those that I composed myself, some of which
appear in other works I am writing. Except for the maps and certain
illustrations of clothing, they are based on woodblock illustrations from
books printed during the golden age of Chinese woodcuts (1600-1650).
The second consists of illustrations based on fgures in Chinese texts
dating from 961 to 1905. Although they are faithful to the originals in
general, I have redrawn most and altered the rest-pictures fom ancient
Chinese works are invariably in poor shape due to age. Ink faults and
irrelevant background have been excised. Broken lines have been re
paired. The objective was to enhance the clarity of the illustrations (Un
fortunately, during the production of this text the illustrations were
reduced and have lost their ori ginal definition and clarity). I one in
stance I made an addition to the original. "Carving Flesh to Feed an
Ailing Elder" (actually a picture of bloodletting in the Ming dynasty)
does not show the wound inficted or the blood dripping from it.
Two previous works on daily life in ancient China are well worth
reading: Michael Loewe's Everyday Life in Early Imperial China (New York,
1970), which covers the Han period (206 B.C.E.-C.E. 220), ad Jacques
Gemet's Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-1276
(trans. by H. M. Wright; Stanford, 1962).
I am deeply grateful to Emily Birch, David Palmer and the rest of the
staff at Greenwood Press for editing te manuscript of this text and over
seeing its production. Any errors that remain in this book are my re
sponsibility, not theirs.
1
Histor1
REBELLION (617-618)
The Tang was the successor to the Sui (581-618), the dynasty that unified
China after nearly four centuries of division. Despite that monumental
achievement, the second ruler of the Sui squandered the state's resources,
human and material, on three disastrous campaigns of conquest against
norther Korea in 612, 613, and 614. Those debacles caused widespread
disaffection and rebellions throughout norther China. In the face of
mounting insurrections, the Sui court fed south to Yangzhou. After the
emperor abandoned his capital Luoyang in the north, one of his com
manders, Li Yuan-the Duke of Tang, known posthumously as Gaozu
rose in revolt. Li led his armies out of his base at Taiyuan and marched
southwest to seize the western capital, a feat that he accomplished in
late 617.
RECONSTRUCTION (618-683)
O June 18, 618, Gaozu assumed the throne, adopted the name of his
fief Tang as the title of his new dynasty, and changed the name of the
wester capital to Changan. His declaration of sovereignty was auda
cious and premature because he had not yet subjugated other anti-Sui
contenders for power or conquered all of China. It was not until 624 that
Tang forces defeated his last major rivals. However, Gaozu's troubles
were not over. As soon as he established his dominion over China
2 Daily Life in Traditional China
proper, the Eastern Turks north of his borders began making trouble by
launching numerous incursions into Cha. Their depredations contin
ued for six years before te armies of the second Tang emperor, Taizong,
finally vanquished them. Thereafter te empire enjoyed more than half
a century of peace and stability.
The rebellions against the Su exacted a heavy toll on China's popu
lation. During the last years of te Sui, rebels impressed large numbers
of able-bodied men to serve in their armies, and consequently the people
were unable to sustain themselves through farmig or other occupations.
Military service at the time was so onerous that men took to breaking
their limbs to escape forced conscription. They called their arms and legs
"propitious paws" and "fortunate feet." The custom persisted well into
the Tang dynasty. In 642 the emperor issued a decree increasing the
punishment for deliberately inficting wounds on oneself in an efort to
eradicate the practice.
The Turkish invasions were equally devastating. According to a report
written in 629, more than 1 million Chinese had surrendered to, fed to,
or been abducted by the Eastern Turks in the last years of the Sui and
the early years of the Tang. In 631, after the defeat of the Eastern Turks,
the throne sent an envoy bearing gold and silk to redeem Chinese whom
the Turks had enslaved. The emissary managed to save 80,000 men and
women.
Soon after assuming the throne, Gaozu set to work restoring the im
perial government that he had iherited from the Sui. At the apex of it
were the chief ministers, the most powerful bureaucrats in the country.1
They served on a council responsible for making policy decisions. The
oretically, tey met with the emperor daily, but that was often not the
case. Te most powerful agencies in the goverment were three secre
tariats charged with composing and transmitting edicts as well as sup
plying advice. One of them also controlled the six departments
personnel, rites, war, households (revenue), justice, and public works
that implemented the decisions made by the throne. I addition there
was an independent censorial agency that was responsible for maintain
ing surveillance over the conduct of officials to prevent corruption and
misconduct. Another class of censors was in charge specifically of mon
itoring the behavior of the emperor and admonishing him for his faults
and shortcomings. In fact, it was the custom that any official could re
prove him for his mistakes and wrongdoings. Such censure might, how
ever, cost him his head. Gaozu also reconstituted local government-te
prefectures and beneath them the counties-as his armies conquered
new territories. Furthermore, he reestablished the civil service exam
inations, reopened colleges in the capital, and established schools in all
prefectures and counties to provide the government with qualified can
didates for appointment to offices.
History 3
To provide security, the Tang established frontier garrisons containing
large numbers of Easter Turkish cavalry that had surrendered to the
Tang in 630, instituted a number of regional commands that controlled
military affairs in large areas, and restored the old militia system. As
rationalized in 636, the militia, known as the Intrepid Militia, had 633
units. More than one-third of the troops were stationed in the immediate
vicinity of Changan, and the rest around Luoyang and in the northeast.
The soldiers, preferably from large and well-to-do families, served fom
the ages of twenty-one to sixty. They trained i the slack farming seasons
(fall and winter), participated in formal battle exercises as well as a great
hunt at te end of the winter, and enjoyed exemption from taxes and
compulsory labor. The toops rotated into positions as members of the
twelve guards of the emperor or the six guards of the heir apparent for
short terms. As such they functioned as defenders of the capital. The
government supplied them with pack mules or horses, provisions, ar
mor, weapons, and tents.
Te most pressing problem for the Tang in the early seventh century
was the restoration of fiscal solvency. The government's granaries and
treasuries were virtually empty at the dynasty's founding. The state
therefore reinstituted the "equal felds" system because it ensured a
steady fow of tax revenues. The state parceled out lad, all of which the
emperor theoretically owned, in equal shares to the peasants. It allocated
approximately thirteen and a third acres to all adult males between the
ages of seventeen and fifty-nine, their working years. In retur the farm
ers had to pay two kinds of taxes annually: an amount of grain equiv
alent to 2 or 3 percent of the anual harvest for each male adult in the
family (women were tax-exempt), and twenty feet of silk or twenty-five
feet of linen that their women wove. Males also owed the central gov
ernment twenty days of compulsory labor (corvee) and the local
government two months of special duty (corvee). Local officials took a
census every three years and redistributed the land. They reclaimed 80
percent of it from men sixty years of age and, on the basis of it, redis
tributed it to men who had reached the age of seventeen.
The trone also took measures to establish a viable currency in the
wake of large-scale counterfeiting that had broken out at the end of the
Sui dynasty. In 621 the emperor ordered the minting of new coppers that
had uniform shapes, weights, and metal content. He also imposed the
death penalty on anyone caught privately casting coins. By 755 the gov
ernment had eleven mints with ninety-nine furaces producing coins in
various places in China. Those coppers, also called cash, were small,
round coins with a square hole in the center. The hole permitted the
threading of coins on cords. A string of 1,000 coppers constituted the
next higher unit of currency. Needless to say, large quantities of cash
were very bulky and difficult to transport. Consequently, it was the prac-
4 Daily Life in Traditional China
A Tang Copper
tice in Tang China to make payments for large transactions in gold, sil
ver, and silk.
In the seventh century Tang forces extended Chinese dominion over
a territory greater in extent than previously known. By 661 the armies
had established the dynasty's sway over Central Asia as far as a point
north of Kashmir, on the border with Persia. In 668 a combined force of
Chinese and souther Koreans (Silla) conquered norther Korea (Ko
guryo), a feat that had eluded both the last emperor of the Sui and Em
peror Taizong. However, te Tang was not able to subjugate the country
completely. Furthermore, a new and very powerful kingdom in Tibet
began to encroach on China's wester territories.
The era ended on a sad note. Due to floods, droughts, locust plagues,
and epidemics, famine broke out in the two capitals in 682. The corpses
of the dead lined the streets, and citizens resorted to cannibalism in order
to survive. The scarcity of food drove the price of grain to unprecedented
heights.
USURPATION, OVERTHROW, AND CORRUPTION
(684-712)
The period following te death of the third Tang emperor on Decem
ber 27, 683, was unique in the annals of Chinese history. It was singular
because a remarkable woman, Empress Wu, ruled the empire in her own
right. Gaozong, her husband, suffered from a chronic illness, perhaps a
stroke, that left him subject to dizziness, paralysis, and impaired vision.
He was also weak-willed. Taking advantage of the situation, the empress
assumed the power behind the throne by 660 and became monarch in
reality if not in name. After Gaozong's death she deposed her eldest son,
Zhongzong, and sent him into exile. Then she installed her second son,
Ruizong, on the throne and governed for te next six years as a regent,
the manner by which women in traditional China took control of the
goverment. In 690 she deposed Ruizong, overthrew the Tang, assumed
the throne, and established her own dynasty, the Zhou (690- 705). She
was the only woman in Chinese history to accomplish such a feat.
The daughter of a lumber merchant, Empress Wu was extremely gifted
History 5
and intelligent and had a natural gift for politics, a superb ability to judge
men, and an exceptional talent for manipulating them. However, she also
was singularly ruthless and cruel. After a rebellion against her regime
broke out in Yangzhou during 684, she initiated a reign of terror that
grew in intensity over the next decade. She established a secret service
to ferret out her enemies, or those supposed to be her foes, and in 690
established a special investigative office at a gate in Luoyang where her
agents subjected suspected traitors to unspeakable tortures. The perse
cution culminated in the exile and executions of thousands. At first di
rected at members of the Tang clan (the Lis), it eventually came to
encompass anyone she thought to be a threat to her power, from chief
ministers to palace servants. Many, if not most, of the prosecutions dur
ing that period were unjust. Numerous innocent men and woman died
as result of false accusations or the caprice of her agents. Others suffered
from physical disabilities for the rest of their lives as a result of injuries
inficted by the empress's lackeys. A prince who spent ten years impris
oned in the palace received a beating several times a year. Afterward he
could predict the weather. When it was about to rain, his welts would
feel heavy and depressed. When it was about to clear, they felt light and
vigorous.
The reign of terror ground to a halt in 693, and the empress enjoyed
two years of relative calm. In 696, however, trouble erupted on China's
borders. First, in te spring the Tibetans invaded from the west and
inficted a great defeat on a Chinese army less than 200 miles from
Changan. Then in the summer the Khitan, a pastoral people living in the
northeast, rebelled against their cruel and arrogant Chinese goveror,
and annihilated a Chinese force. The bodies of the slain soldiers filled a
mountain valley near what is now Beijing. Then the rebels drove deep
into Tang territory. The loss of Chinese troops in those battles was so
heavy that the empress freed prisoners ad emancipated private slaves
who were willing to fight. She promised the new recruits rewards if they
enlisted in her armies. To make matters worse, the Turkish khan seized
several prefectures in the northwest during the fall. While holding off
the Turks and Tibetans with skillful diplomacy and bribery, the empress
sent a force of 200,000 troops to attack the Khitan in the summer of 697.
The Khitan folded ad fed to join the Turks. In the autumn of 698 the
Turks invaded along a route similar to that taken by the Khitan. Empress
Wu dispatched 450,000 soldiers to thwart tem, but the huge force failed
to expel the enemy. When she called for new recruits, less than 1,000
men responded. In desperation she recalled her eldest son from exile,
installed him as heir apparent, and appointed him generalissimo of an
other army. Almost immediately 50,000 men volunteered to serve.
Thereafter the empress was able to assemble a substantial force that com
pelled the kha to withdraw into te steppes.
6 Daily Life in Traditional China
After assuming te throne, Empress Wu instituted many changes that
were intended to establish the uniqueness of her dynasty. Most of her
innovations were superficial and short-lived. By and large there was no
great break in the continuity of the goverment, society, or economy
between the Tang and the Zhou dynasties. Life went on much as it had
before her usurpation. Perhaps her greatest legacy was her elevation to
office of men known for their intelligence and talent. A number of those
men provided the government with able leadership for years after her
death.
In 705 Tang loyalists deposed Empress Wu and restored Zhongzong
to the throne. For the next eight years women enjoyed unprecedented
power in court politics, and a dramatic upsurge in corruption occurred.
Empress Wei, the wife of Zhongzong, who assumed the throne in that
year, enjoyed his favor because she had given him steadfast support and
talked him out of committing suicide while he was in exile between 684
and 698. Taking advantage of his goodwill and weak disposition, she
promoted the rights of her daughters and sought to acquire for them the
same privileges that royal princes enjoyed. At her insistence her husband
established offices with staffs of officials-previously granted only to
sons of the emperor-for his sister and his daughters in 706. In 709 Wei
requested that Zhongzong grant women the right to bequeath hereditary
privileges to their sons, previously a male prerogative only.
The princesses also pressed their causes. In 706 Princess Anle, the em
peror's favorite daughter, asked him to name her heir apparent in place
of his son, a request that he ignored despite his weak will. She, her
sisters, and other women in the empress's clique arrogated to themselves
the right to make appointments to their staffs without going through
bureaucratic channels. Those commissions came at a price: the ladies
charged 300,000 coppers per title. They made a prn<cely sum from the
enterprise, selling more than 1,400 appointments. They also peddled of
ficial ordination certificates to the Buddhist and Taoist clergy for 30,000
coppers apiece.2 In 714 the authorities discovered that the women had
fraudulently ordained 12,000 monks and priests. As time went on, their
behavior became even more outrageous. They stole gold, jade, and price
less pieces of calligraphy from the palace treasury. The princesses also
sent their servants out to abduct the children of commoners in order to
enslave them for service in their households.
Empress Wei had pretensions of emulating Empress Wu, and planned
to assume the throne in her own right. I 710 she had poison inserted
into one of her husband's pastries. After he died, she placed a boy on
the throne. Tang loyalists, however, were not about to endure another
usurpation of the throne. Eighteen days after the enthronement, they
stormed the palace and slew the empress and Princess Anle. For three
more years another woman, Princess Taiping, the daughter of Empress
History 7
Wu, wielded great power at the imperial court. She, too, was brought
down by Tang loyalists in the summer of 713, and forced to commit
suicide.
THE GOLDEN AGE (712-755)
The reign of Illustrious August (Xuanzong), as he was known popu
larly, was the longest (forty-four years) and most glorious epoch of the
Tang. He had led the coups d'etat that overthrew Empress Wei and
Princess Taiping. When he came to power, he found the state's resources
wanting due in part to the corruption in the preceding decades. In 714
the emperor established a policy of austerity with regard to palace ex
penditures, forbidding his empress, consorts, and the women of his
harem to wear brocades, embroideries, pearls, and jade. He ordered his
gold and silver vessels melted down to provide funds for his armies. To
impress the people with his earnestess, he had the pearls, jade, and
precious cloth in his treasury bured in front of a palace hall. Illustrious
August also took measures against the Buddhist church. He forbade
wealthy and powerful families to establish Buddhist monasteries, a
means of evading taxation, and defrocked more tan 30,000 spurious
monks, returing them to lay life and the tax rolls.
To increase revenues, the emperor sent agents out to reregister run
away households, families who had fled the Khitan and Turkish inva
sions in Empress Wu's reign, military service, famines, and other
hardships in the north. Most of the peasants fed south to occupy pre
viously uncultivated lands. Being unregistered there, they evaded taxa
tion. For those who voluntarily surrendered, the goverent offered six
years of exemption from taxation and compulsory labor in return for a
payment of 1,500 coppers. As a result the government reregistered more
than 800,000 families and took in more than 1 billion cash by 724.
Thereafter the goverment never suffered from a lack of revenue.
Illustrious August's reign was probably the most prosperous age in
the Tang for the vast majority of the people. It was a period of low
inflation that was in part due to the expansion of a system of granaries.
Local officials bought grain when prices were low, stored it in their gran
aries, and sold it below market value when prices were high. That action
stabilized the prices of food and prevented famines. Originally the gran
aries existed only in the capitals, but in 719 the emperor established tem
in other districts of the empire's northern, souther and western regions.
Land reclamation during the period increased agricultural productivity,
and a rationalization of te canal system reduced the cost of transporting
grain and other commodities. Furthermore, the emperor's goverent
efficiently maitained law and order so that there was little banditry.
Travel was safe and trade fourished.
8 Daily Life in Traditional China
His reign was one of great humaneness and benevolence. The number
of executions-the emperor had to approve all of them-carried out in
the empire was only twenty-four in 730 and ffty-eight in 736. In 747
Illustrious August also abolished the death penalty. In 716, when he
leared that venomous snakes were killig people in the southeast, he
ordered local offcials to cut down the vegetation for ten paces along
both sides of public roads to ensure that serpents would not attack trav
elers. In 722 Illustrious August distributed lands attached to government
offices to the poor, and in 744 he raised the age of liability for taxation
and corvee from nieteen to twenty-two. Two years later the emperor
granted tax exemptions to ten of the poorest families in every village
throughout the empire. Later he raised the fgure to thirty, about 5 per
cent of the population. During his reign he also expanded the school
system and improved health care in the provinces.
A skilled musician, poet, and calligrapher, Illustrious August fostered
the arts. He and his brothers patronized the most famous artists of their
day, and his reign was the most glorious period of achevements i those
fields. Illustrious August was especially fond of musicians, singers, and
dancers. An accomplished performer on a Central Asian drum, he often
personally instructed his entertainers, correcting errors that they made.
The emperor was also responsible for integrating foreign and Chinese
music. He was probably most renowned for establishing the Pear Garden
Troupe that trained musicians and singers. Illustrious August personally
selected 300 performers from a larger institution, the Entertainment
Ward, and taught members of the troupe the proper way to execute
choral and instrumetal music. Te emperor used the troupe to try out
and create new music. It was his own personal company, and probably
performed only at the palace in the emperor's presence.
Relative peace between China and its neighbors prevailed while Illus
trious August was on the throne. The nomadic peoples of the north, as
always, periodically conducted raids along the frontier to plunder. They
stole grain, abducted people to serve as their slaves, and chased off live
stock. Though vexing, the incursions did not endanger the security of
the empire. Only the Tibetans posed a real threat, because they were
intent on seizing Tang territory. The objective of their invasions at the
time was not the land of China proper, but that of Tang's dependencies
to the northwest. Chinese forces were usually victorious over the Tibet
ans during the epoch.
Peace on te frontiers was partially due to disarray among the steppe
peoples, the Tang's pursuit of diplomacy rather than war, and China's
lack of an expansionist policy. However, the peace was mainly the result
of a defense policy that originated in te middle of the seventh century
and was most vigorously pursued during the reign of Illustrious August.
That policy established large, permanent armies manned by militia units
History 9
and non-Chinese cavalry along the Chiese frontier. I the early eighth
century the government began to appoint permanent military command
ers to lead those forces so that they could mobilize quickly in the event
of an attack. The commanders were given considerable discretion in gov
ernig their troops and the use of official funds to procure provisions
and arms. In 737 the throne abandoned te policy of conscripting men
into service. Conscripts served for only tree years, during which they
trained i warfare and fought battles. Once their terms expired, raw
recruits replaced them and tl1e process of training had to begin anew.
The cost of moving men to the outlands was large, and the continuous
instruction of green troops inefficient, so the state replaced the conscripts
with long-service soldiers who were battled-hardened and had lived in
the frontier garrisons for years. The defense forces became professional
armies. By 742 the total number of troops in those armies had risen to
nearly half a million.
While the throne was taking aggressive steps to bolster border de
fenses, it was ignoring the guards and armies in the capitals. By the
middle of the eighth century they were ill-trained, undermanned, and
led by inexperienced officers. In some instances wealthy merchant and
townsmen enlisted in them to acquire tax exemptions, then hired sub
stitutes to take their places.
Although he was a vigorous and conscientious ruler during his frst
decades on the throne, Emperor Illustrious August grew lax in his later
years. After 736 he delegated great powers to two of his chief ministers,
who assumed nearly dictatorial control over important state affairs. Fur
thermore, the emperor became obsessed with one of his son's wives. In
7 40 he ordered a eunuch to seize the woman from the prince's mansion.
Then he ordained her as a Taoist priestess-no doubt as a subterfuge to
forestall the scandal that the abduction would inevitably engender-and
had her ensconced in one of his palaces. Five years later he defrocked
her and raised her to the highest rank among his consorts. Yang Guifei,
as she is known to history, was a distant descendant of the Sui's ruling
house. A plump beauty, she was accomplished in music and dance, Il
lustrious August's passions. She and the emperor apparently spent most
of their time idulging in pleasure. Yang Guifei used her immense infu
ence over him to have her relatives appointed to some of te most im
portant offices in the empire. Her life and its tragic end became perhaps
the most famous love story in Chinese history. It was later recounted in
poetry, drama, and fiction.
TIME OF TROUBLES (756804)
The halcyon age of Illustrious August came to an end with te rebel
lion of An Lushan. An's father was a Sogdian, an Indo-European people
10 Daily Life in Traditional China
who lived in a kingdom far to the northwest of China, and his mother
was a Turk. He was governor of three defense forces in the northeast
with headquarters near what is now Beijing. As such, he was responsible
for controlling the Khitan and other nomadic tribes in present-day Man
churia. He also enjoyed unprecedented favor from the emperor, who
appointed him to high-ranking ofices, dubbed him prince (a privilege
usually reserved for members of te imperial clan), had a mansion built
for him in Changan, and granted him the right to mint coins. By 755 An
became aware that Chief Minister Yang, a cousin of Yang Guifei, in
Changan was plotting to remove him from power and began to fear that
he was losing the emperor's favor. Consequently, on December 16, 755,
he rose in revolt with the expressed intention of destroying his enemy,
the chief minister in the capital. With some 150,000 troops, A Lushan
marched south, encountering very little resistance. There were no
trained, battle-hardened forces to impede his way. The best of the im
perial armies were stationed on distant frontiers, and recalling them
would take a long time. Twenty-four days later An crossed the Yellow
River, where he seized control of the Grand Canal and cut off funds and
supplies to the imperial court from the south. Ten days after that, Luo
yang, defended by hastily conscripted recruits, fell to his forces. Having
captured a capital, the rebel was able to proclaim himself emperor and
establish a new dynasty.
In the summer of 756 Illushious August made a disastrous decision.
He ordered the imperial forces tat occupied a formidable defensive po
sition at a pass on the Yellow River to advance and confront A Lushan's
armies. The frontal assault tured into a debacle when the rebel troops
ambushed the national armies on July 9. The way to Changan was open,
and there was nothing left to defend the city. Consequently, Illustrious
August with his heir apparent, Yang Guifei, Chief Minister Yang, and a
small escort of troops skulked out of the capital in the predawn hours
of July 14. When they reached a rapid relay station west of Changan,
the troops rebelled, slew the chief minister, and demanded the life of
Yang Guifei. The emperor had no choice but to order his most trusted
eunuch to strangle the love of his life with a horse whip. His highness
then proceeded over an arduous route to exile in Chengdu in the south
west, where he abdicated. The heir apparent made his way to a city in
the northwest. Meanwhile, An Lushan had fallen ill. He suffered from
deep-rooted boils on his face that caused acute pain, and he gradually
lost his sight. As a result he became cruel and irascible, moods that dis
affected his subordinates. In early 757 a eunuch entered his tent during
the night and plunged a sword into his belly. An Lushan died from loss
of blood. The rebellion, however, continued, first under the command of
An's son and then of his former generals.
Although the Tang recovered its capitals in 757 and finally suppressed
History 11
An Lushan's successors in early 763, the effects of the rebellions were
devastating. The first of them was the collapse of border defenses. In 756
the goverment withdrew troops from the south to fight An. The abo
rigines there took advantage of the opportunity. Their army of 200,000
men ivaded the area east of Canton, bured Chiese settlements, and
maintained control over the area for five years. Two years later a force
of Arab and Persian pirates surrounded Canton, forcing the Chinese gov
ernor to fee. The brigands looted the government granaries and store
houses, burned dwellings, and sailed away. I 763 the Tibetans also took
advantage of the Tang's military weaknesses, invaded from the west,
and seized Changan, where they installed their own candidate, a Tang
prince, on the throne. The occupaton lasted less than a month, but it
forced the court to flee again. The Tibetans continued to menace the
capital, forcing the government to declare martial law in the city on four
occasions between 764 and 768. They established a border between them
selves and the Chinese tat was only seventy-eight miles west of Chang
an, and repeatedly sent forces across it to raid and plunder for more
than two decades. Furthermore, te Tibetans seized the northwest ter
ritories of China proper as well as Chinese settlements along the Silk
Route in Central Asia. The loss of the northwest prefectures was a ter
rible blow to the Tang because they contained the best pastures for
horses. Consequently the dynasty was short of mounts for its cavalry. It
had to buy steeds fom the Uighurs, who took advantage of the situation
to sell the Chinese broken-down horses for outrageous prices. The Tang
did not recover the northwest territories until the 840s, and warfare with
the Tibetans continued sporadically until 851.
To recapture its capitals, the throne called upon the pastoral peoples
of the northwest and west regions to render assistance. Of those peoples
the Uighur Turks were the most able of the mounted warriors and the
most important factor in the Tang's victories. In 757, as a reward for
their aid in capturing Luoyang, the commander of the imperial expedi
tion allowed them to loot the imperial treasuries and storehouses, pillage
the markets, and slay defenseless citizens in the city for three days. El
ements of the imperial army that thought of the city as rebel territory
also participated in the plundering and carage. The violence continued
for three months. Luoyang fell to rebels once again in 759, and te em
peror asked the Uighurs for further assistance. In 762 the Turks and
imperial forces retook and plundered the city. The citizens of Luoyang,
who were terrified of the Uighur, took refuge in pavilions at two Bud
dhist monasteries. The Turks set the structures ablaze, killing tens of
thousands of people. The fires did not die out for many weeks. By virtue
of their contribution to the restoration of te Tang, the Uighurs enjoyed
something of a favored position i Changan for decades thereafter. That
led to some outrageous and arrogant behavior on their part. I early 772
12 Daily Life i n Traditional China
their legation, 300 horsemen, left the hostel for foreign emissaries with
out authorization and abducted boys and girls in the wards and markets
of Changan. When officials tried to prevent the kidnappings, the Uighurs
assaulted them. Te throne sent a eunuch to mollify them, and they
stopped their depredations. Seven months later the Uighurs agai left
the hostel without permission, chased a county commandant, and seized
his horse. He dared not struggle with them, and departed on another
mount. The throne tolerated their barbarous behavior because the Ui
ghurs were essential to the success of the Tang's defense. I maintained
friendly relations through marriage alliances of royal princesses to their
khans.
War with the Tibetans and the vexatious relations with the Uighurs
were not the most pressing problems that faced the dyrtasty i the late
eighth century. Foremost of its predicaments was a policy of establishig
military governorships in the interior of China precisely comparable to
the frontier defense garrisons that Emperor Illustrious August created in
the first half of the century. In order to bring a quick end to the rebellion
of A Lushan, the throne appointed army commanders to raise troops
in large areas of China proper. That entailed the creation of new admin
istrative regions, called provinces, that encompassed from two to a dozen
or more prefectures. By 763 there were thirty-four of them, and as many
as fifty later in the century. That policy also caused the militarization of
large areas of te empire. In 763 there were more than 750,000 men under
arms in the new professional, standing armies. Their commanders could
also call up local militia units under their control. The latter were low
cost because they served on a temporary basis only and would tena
ciously defend their homes. However, they were ill-trained for combat
outside their native districts.
In 763, 75 percent of the governors in the provinces were military men,
and 50 percent as late as 804. There were two types of commanders, the
loyal and the disloyal (who were mostly former officers of An Lushan's
armies). In order to avoid prolonging the campaign against the remnants
of An's forces, the trone pardoned those of their leaders willing to cease
hostilities and confirmed them as military goverors of the territories
under their control. Since the dynasty had no reliable armies of its own,
except for te frontier garrisons in the northwest that could not be with
drawn in the face of Tibetan aggression until 780, it depended on the
loyal governors for interal defense. Those forces, however, were not
under the direct control of te court, and many of their governors sub
mited taxes irregularly because they needed funds to maintain their
armies. As for the former rebel officers-occupying the northeast and
portions of a region south of the Yellow River-they became semi
autonomous or autonomous. From 763 to 819 over thirty prefectures in
the east and northeast appointed officials on their own authority and
History 13
submitted no tribute or taxes. The government lost control of 25 to 30
percent of the population, as well as of the revenues that it would oth
erwise have received from those subjects. The court had effective control
over four regions: the nortwest frontier; the region around Changan;
the south, including the Huai River and the Yangtze Rver basin; and
a corridor along the Grand Canal. Except for two rebellions in 762 and
763, the south remained loyal to the dynasty and was its principal source
of revenue during that period. For that reason the government made
every effort to keep the Grand Canal open.
All goverors acquired political control over the territories they oc
cupied by virtue of their military power. In autonomous provinces, the
military goverors in many cases insisted on hereditary succession and
passed their offices on to their sons. In other cases former subordinate
officers fought it out to determine who would assume the goverorship.
The court was powerless to intervene in either event, and usually ac
corded de facto recognition of the new leadership. The governors of
those regions openly defied orders from the central government, ap
pointed their own followers to political offices in their spheres of infu
ence, and levied illegal taxes. As a result, the quality of the local
bureaucracy declined. Authority became decentralized, and te court in
Changan was unable to prevent it because it lacked the military forces
to impose its will on the governors. The throne adopted a laissez-faire
attitude toward te provinces.
The next most pressing problem for the Tang was fnancial. When A
Lushan seized the Grand Canal, he cut off the flow of grain, cloth, and
money from the south to Changan. After his seizure of the capitals, the
imperial government lost all of the cereals stored in its granaries and the
wealth in its treasuries. As a result the court was in dire need of funds,
especially to support its war effort. The throne resorted to the temporary
expedient of selling ordination certificates for the Buddhist and Taoist
priesthoods. In late 755 and early 756 one official collected 1 billion cop
pers from that activity in one northern city alone. After the recapture of
the capitals the throne extended the practice to all areas of the empire
and authorized the sale of titles for goverment posts, honorary bureau
cratic titles, and noble titles as well. It also approved the sale of exami
nation degrees that went for 100,000 cash each. Most of the purchasers
of those instruments were merchants, the only group that could afford
the large sums of money required to pay for them. The traders were
eager to obtain them because the certificates exempted them from taxa
tion. Te court also appealed to merchants for a conhibution of one-fifth
of their wealth to support the war effort.
The old taxation and land systems completely collapsed after the re
bellion of An Lushan. In the course of the wars many census records
and tax rolls were destroyed or became obsolete because the peasants
14 Daily Life in Traditional China
had become casualties or had migrated out of te battle zone. The gov
erment made little effort to revive the old systems after 766 and abol
ished them in 780. In the meantime it resorted to levying miscellaneous
taxes to provide revenues for the public coffers. Those were so inade
quate that the state had to reduce the salaries and other emoluments of
officials as well as te incomes of the nobility. In 780 the throne abolished
all of the taxes and instituted a simplified, rationalized biennial levy.
Local governments collected it in the summer and autumn, when the
peasants harvested their crops and were in the best position to fulfill the
impositions. The law imposed the exactions on all productive classes,
not just farmers. There were two categories to the biennial levy. The first
was a household tax based on the size and property of the family. It was
assessed on the basis of money, but often collected in kind-grai and
cloth-because there was an acute shortage of coppers. The second was
a land tax collected in kind that applied only to felds under cultivation.
In 780 the central goverment sent commissioners out to establish quotas
for provinces and prefectures, quotas that remained in force thereafter.
Those fixed amounts applied even to regions not under direct control of
Changan. The state took no interest in how local authorities collected the
taxes or in how much they collected (it varied from place to place) as
long as they forwarded its share to the capital. The law allocated the
revenues from te biennial tax to the central government, the provinces,
and the prefectures. In the first years (781-783) the funds from the new
levies exceeded the total proceeds from all other sources. Although the
amounts declined thereafter, the system was so successful that it sur
vived for seven centuries.
By far the most lucrative source of funds for the central government
in te late eighth century was the salt monopoly. By 780 it produced
half the state's income. Commissioners ran the system. They controlled
production at salt wells in the southwest, evaporation pans along the
coast that processed seawater, and a small number of salt pools scattered
throughout the empire. The officials recruited workers who had tradi
tionally engaged in the occupation or chose migrants willing to take it
up. In either case the salt workers were exempt from compulsory labor.
The producers had to sell all of their salt to the goverent, which in
turn sold it to merchants, adding a tax that was ten times the market
value of the commodity. In addition, local officials charged the traders
transit taxes as they conveyed their goods to market. Since salt was an
essential item in the preservation of food, everyone needed it even if its
price was exorbitant, and therefore te goverment profted enormously,
at least when the monopoly was well run.
The half-century following the outbreak of An Lushan's rebellion was
a dismal time of great suffering for the dynasty and its subjects. The
rebellion wrought great destruction throughout northern China. Rebel
History 15
armies destroyed libraries, stole art treasures, and abducted enterta
ers-singers, dancers, musicians, and acrobats. Changan and Luoyang
suffered repeated lootings and became dangerous places to live fom
756 to 786. Mutinies and assassinations occurred frequently in both
loyal and separatist armies during those thrty years, and warfare laid
waste to many areas of northern China. The latter caused many people,
especially peasants, to migrate south, where peace and prosperity pre
vailed.
The efforts by te throne to suppress defiant, autonomous military
governors, especially those of the northeast provinces, between 781 and
786 ended in disaster. At first the court was fairly successful on the bat
tlefield, but it suffered a major defeat in 782. The followig year border
troops from the northwest, who were making their way to the front on
orders from the emperor, rebelled when they reached Changan because
the government had not issued tem adequate provisions. They seized
the capital, forcing the emperor to fee westward with a few of his coun
selors. Then their commander assumed the throne and established a new
dynasty. In 784 a provincial goveror seized control of the Grand Canal,
completely cutting Changan off from its source of revenues and supplies
in the south. The goverent resorted to imposing new property and
sales taxes on the citizens of Changan, as well as forcing loans from
merchants in the capital. Warfare came to an end the next year when the
tluone returned to the status quo ante by confirming the independence
of the autonomous goverors. That defeat humbled the emperor, and he
did nothing to reassert central authority for his remaining twenty years
on te throne.
RECOVERY (805860)
In 805 an aggressive and vigorous emperor, Xianzong, ascended the
throne. He was bent on reestablishing central control over the recalcitrant
autonomous provinces. In the pursuit of his ambition he had two ad
vantages that his predecessors did not. First, the fiscal reforms of the
early 780s had filled his coffers, at least during his first years on the
throne, so he could afford to engage in military operations. Second, the
emperor had an effective and well-trained army, the Army of Divine
Strategy, under his direct control. Originally the Army of Divine Strat
egy, founded in 753, was a northwest border garrison. Between 760 and
761 te imperial court moved it to a base west of Luoyang, where it
could defend the approaches to Changan. In 765 the throne had it trans
ferred to the imperial park in the capital. The trone placed eunuchs in
charge of it in 783, and they remained in control until the end of the
dynasty. By 798 it had grown to 240,000 troops and officers. During
Emperor Xianzong's reign the army participated in several expeditions
16 Daily Lie in Traditioual China
sent out to quell autonomous provinces. It also defended the capital,
preventing rebel forces from besieging the city.
Xianzong conducted seven major military campaigns against the au
tonomous, recalcitrant provinces between 806 and 819, and managed to
reassert imperial authority over all but two of them. That meant the
throne recovered its powers to appoint military governors (that is,
hereditary succession came to an end) as well as local officials in those
areas. The more tan thirty prefectures in the east and northeast that the
central government lost in 763 returned to the fold. Xianzong's achieve
ments endured. After his death the empire enjoyed four decades of peace
and stability during which only one revolt of any significance occurred.
Xianzong's successors proved less capable than he. The first to spent
much of their time indulging in hunting, polo, and other forms of di
version. The third was frugal and more serious. He enjoyed reading and
studying. However, neither he nor his predecessors were able to control
the eunuchs nor instill awe in the most powerful mandarins at the cap
ital. The eunuchs held enormous sway over the emperor in the palace
while the mandarins led factions that caused strife in the bureaucracy.
Wuzong, who assumed the throne in 840, was more forceful than his
predecessors, though he did not solve the problems of the eunuchs and
bureaucratic factionalism. He was an ardent devotee of Taoism and in
tent on destroying nonidigenous religions. In 842 he launched a per
secution of Buddhism as well as other foreign faiths such as
Manichaeanism, Zoroastrianism, and Nestorian Christianity. His repres
sion reached its height in 845 when the goverment closed 4,600 mon
asteries and 40,000 smaller chapels and shrines. It also defrocked all
monks under the age of fifty and those over fifty who did not possess
proper ordination certificates, laicizing over 250,000 clerics in all. Hys
teria reigned, and rumor had it that the emperor had ordered the de
capitation of all monks and nuns in the capital so that he could use their
heads to fill a large pit from which earth had been excavated to build a
terrace in his palace. The throne allowed only forty-nine monasteries
with some 800 monks throughout the empire to remain open. During
the proscription, when monasteries were destroyed, dismantled, or con
verted to other uses, the church lost its greatest murals, paintings, and
statuary. Many of them were the works of the most renowned artists of
the Tang.
The real motive for the proscription was economic, not ideological.
The state was short of revenues, and the defenseless Buddhist church
provided easy pickings. The goverment seized its slaves, cash, silk, and
grain to pay the salaries of its officials. It expropriated all metal statues
and bells, converting those of bronze into coins, those of gold and silver
into ingots that found their way into the public purse, and those of iron
into farming tools. The throne also demanded that lay owners of metal
History 17
statues turn their images over to the government for destruction. The
stat defocked monks and nuns in order to retur them to the tax rolls,
but te effect of the policy was not always what the emperor intended.
Bereft of food and clothing, some of the laicized clergy formed gangs of
bandits that plundered villages to steal food and clothing.
In the two decades after Emperor Wuzong's demise in early 846, his
successors did much to reverse his suppression of Buddhism and restore
the religion to vigor. Besides bestowing imperial patronage on the
church, the throne permitted virtually everyone from the nabobs of the
capi
t
al to the peasantry in the villages to restore old and establish new
monasteries if they had the wherewithal to do so. Nevertheless, it is
highly unlikely that Buddhism ever fully recovered from the proscrip
tion. In a scant twenty years the number of monasteries, the size of the
clergy, and the extent of its landholdings and wealh could scarcely have
reached the magnitudes that were the product of more than two centu
ries of development. The civil disorders that plagued the empire in its
last forty years dealt further blows to te church, its property and its
scriptures.
THE DECLINE (860-884)
The first sign of serious problems for the dynasty appeared when a
large-scale rebellion broke out in a region southeast of te Yangtze River
between 859 and 860. The goverment quickly suppressed it, but the
revolt was the outcome of disaffections that had been growing for years
in the south. Half of the rebels, who numbered more than 30,000 at one
time, were peasants who had abandoned their lands because of oppres
sive taxation and had tured to banditry for their survival. The dynasty
was losing the support of the region that had been staunchly loyal since
the An Lushan rebellion and had been the major source of its revenue.
At the same time the Kingdom of Nanzhao, southwest of the Tang, in
vaded Annam (norther Vietnam, then part of China proper) after the
military governor there forced them to sell their livestock at below mar
ket value and killed one of their leaders. Chinese forces finally secured
the area in 866, but the Nanhao continued to attack Tang borders farther
north until 875. One of the side effects of the war in Annam was a dis
astrous mutiny. In 868 norther troops, whom the governent had sent
south to fight, revolted when the court reneged on a promise to let them
return home at the end of teir tours of duty. They marched into the
northeast where they attracted large numbers of peasants, bandits, and
alienated soldiers in the area. The rebels seized control of a large region
on the east coast between the Yellow and Yangtze rivers, then took to
liberating landowners and merchants of their wealth. With the help of
the Turks and other steppes tribes, imperial forces quickly put down the
18 Daily Life in Traditional China
insurrection in 869, but again a once loyal and revenue-rich area was
devastated and disaffected.
It was precisely in the region between the Yellow and Yangtze rivers
that the rebellion which broke the back of the Tang originated. In 878
Huang Chao, who excelled in swordsmanship and mounted archery,
took command of an army of insurgents and, in the face of stronger
imperial forces, decided to head south-pillaging, burning, and slaugh
tering as he went. In 879 he took Canton, the great entrepot of overseas
trade, and slaughtered most of its 200,000 inhabitants. Huang, who lost
40 percent of his forces to malaria in Canton, then marched north, gath
ering new recruits for his army from mutinous imperial troops and ban
dits. He devastated the critical lower Yangtze region again. In late 880
Luoyang fell to him without a fight. Changan succumbed on January 5,
881. Emperor Xizong and his court fed to Chengdu in moder Sichuan
province. Huang declared the establishment of a new dynasty.
NOTES
1. The word "minister" always refers to a high-ranking official, never to a
clergyman.
2. Taoism and Taoist always refer to the Taoist religion, not Taoist philosophy,
unless othenvise specified.
2
Societ1
ARISTOCRACY
Although Tang China cannot be called feudal, at least in the sense that
Europe of the same time was, it was a highly stratified, hierarchical so
ciety. The state regulated everythig-the allocation of resources; access
to education and political ofice; tax obligations and exemptions; legal
accountability and punishment; and more-on the basis of an individ
ual's status. Sumptuary laws dictated the quantity, quality, size, and
adornment of clothes, transportation, homes, and other facets of life. The
notion of equality, so cherished in modern times, did not exist in the
Tang.
At the apex of society were, of course, the emperor and his family.
The latter included both his nuclear and his extended families: grand
fathers, gradmothers, mother, wives, sons, daughters, grandsons,
granddaughters, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, and
cousins. The throne bestowed nine ranks of noble titles, from prince to
baron, on male relatives. It also conferred the title princess on aunts,
sisters, daughters, the consort of the heir apparent, and the wives of
princes. The court allocated portions of the annual tax revenues to them.
Fiefs, estates that nobles controlled at the acquiescence of a king, had
vanished long before the Tang. Grants of tax receipts replaced them.
Those allowances were the grain and clotl< levies that local officials col
lected from a given number of households in a given district. In the first
half of the Tang, the government established offices with staffs of officials
20 Daily Life in Traditional China
and clerks for princes. Those agencies coped with the grants and other
matters. Before 682 the allowances, as a rule, were modest. Revenues
ranged from 800 to 1,000 households for princes and 300 to 600 for prin
cesses. During the reigns of Empress Wu and Emperor Zhongzong the
amounts rose steeply. In 705 the emperor bestowed the taxes from 5,000
households on his brother and Princess Taiping, and the following year,
generous grants of 4,000 and 3,500 households on his two favorite
daughters. In 709 one of his ministers calculated that taxes from 600,000
households, about 8 percent of the taxpaying population, were going to
pay for te incomes of the nobility. He reckoned that aristocrats received
more silk from levies than the imperial treasury did. In the same year a
report to the throne concluded tat there were 140 nobles receiving in
comes from fifty-four prefectures, roughly 15 percent of the empire. After
Illustrious August ascended the trone and launched his program of
austerities, he cut the incomes of the nobility. Another period of inflation
occurred tereafter as the fiscal health of the goverent improved. Ac
cording to statutes enacted before 739, the range of revenues granted the
nobility ranged from 10,000 households for a prince to 300 for a baron.
After the rebellion of An Lushan, the court could no longer afford such
excessive expenditures, and the allowances dropped drastically.
The aristocracy also included extremely powerful clans who had mo
nopolized high goverment positions in the dynasties before the Tang.
Some of them, four from te northeast in particular, professed to have
the finest Chinese pedigrees, married only among themselves, and con
sidered the Lis (the royal house of the Tang) to be parvenus. As late as
the early ninth century an emperor complained that a marriage to two
of those families was considered superior to one with the imperial fam
ily. The members of those clans who held noble titles did not acquire
them by virtue of their birth. The throne bestowed them for meritorious
service or as expressions of favor. The power of the clans rested solely
on social prestige and tradition. That strength was sufficient to secure
them high-ranking positions in te bureaucracy until the end of the dy
nasty.
Except in the worst of times, the aristocracy lived comfortably. I the
best of times they lived lavishly and exhavagantly. Some princes were
dissolute, indulging in hunting, drinking, and entertainment. I the early
eighth century the son of one prince died suddenly because of over
indulgence in wine and women. It was Zhongzong's daughters, how
ever, who outdid all others in the prodigal expenditure of te enormous
wealth that they had acquired by selling ordination certificates and offce
titles. Princess Anle expropriated te estates of commoners west of
Chagan to build a pleasure park. She spent enormous sums on adorn
ing the grounds. Workers excavated a lake sixteen miles in circumfer
ence. Laborers piled stones to create a mountain resembling Mount
Society 21
Hua-a sacred peak and scenic wonder east of the capital-dug a river
channel in the form of te Milky Way, installed bridges, and paved roads
with stone. Carpenters erected pavilions and covered walkways. Artisans
decorated the structures with gold and silver, and inlaid them with
pearls and jade. After the execution of the princess i 710, the govem
ment seized the property and tumed it into a public park. Citizens of
the capital visited it daily. Some princes were avaricious and accumu
lated large amounts of gold and oter valuables in their treasuries. Oc
casionally, the throne punished a nobleman for violating sumptuary
regulations. One emperor removed a prince from office because his
clothes and ornaments were too extravagant. There were rare cases of
frugality among the aristocrats. One preferred cheap hemp garments to
the normal expensive silk robes worn by nobles, and ate nothing for
three days on the anniversaries of his ancestors' deaths.
In the early years of the Tang, aristocrats were prominent officers in
imperial armies. Three of Gaozu's sons played active and decisive roles
in the military campaigns that founded the dynasty. One of his daugh
ters also took part in the early stages of the Tang rebellion. She fled to
her estate west of Changan on learning that her father was about to
revolt. After arriving there, she distributed her property to recruit several
hundred men hiding in the nearby mountains, so that they could assist
Gaozu as he approached the capital. She sent a servant to a bandit,
camped in a bamboo grove, who was killing travelers. The young boy
conviced the highwayman to join forces with the princess. Te servant
also taled three more brigands, who controlled several thousand men,
into placing their bands at her disposal. Her motley crew, known as the
Lady's Army, managed to capture three prefectures. A number of princes
and sons of princes served as military officers later in the seventh cen
tury. Tere was a warrior tradition in the imperial family at least in the
early years of the dynasty.
Some later imperial appointments of aristocrats to military posts were
disastrous. In 756 Illustrious August appointed one of his sons as mili
tary govemor of the empire's southem regions. When the prince arrived
at a city on the Yangtze River, he recruited an army of more tan 200,000
men. Then he rebelled against the tluone. Raised in the palace, he had
no knowledge of or feeling for leading men. Govemment armies put
down his insurrection and killed him.
It was the custom of the Tang court, especially in the first half of the
dynasty, to appoint princes and other nobles to govemment posts. In
many cases the offices were sinecures. The aristocrats held them in ab
sentia and never performed the duties assigned to teir ofices or even
left their mansions in the capital. I some cases, however, nobles actually
went to the provinces and administered their districts as true officials.
A few of them acquitted themselves admirably. One acquired a reputa-
22 Daily Life in Traditional China
tion for his fairness in adjudicating important legal cases. Another was
so uncorrupt and severe i administering justice that criminals fled his
jurisdiction. Yet another distinguished himself by quelling a rebellion of
aborigines in souteast China without resorting to force. Others, how
ever, were cruel goverors. One prince who was serving as the governor
of a prefecture assaulted a county commandant under his authority for
no just cause. When one of his subordinates dared to reprove him for
trampling the crops of peasants while hunting, he beat him.
Some aristocrats took to learing and the arts. Others fostered schol
arship. A emperor appointed one of his sons to the post of director of
the imperial library because he was so fond of learning. A prince in the
early seventh century used his wealth to collect a large library that con
tained very fine editions as well as rare calligraphy and copies of stone
inscriptions. In 641, another prince published a large historical geogra
phy of the empire compiled by a literary academy of scholars tat he
had established with imperial consent. I 677, a third prince submitted
to the throne an annotation to an early dynastic history that his circle of
leared men had compiled. Subsequently, one of Empress Wu's hench
men subjected him to severe duress, and he committed suicide. There
were princes who excelled in music, painting, and calligraphy. Even dis
tant members of the imperial clan were artists of some note. The most
infamous chief minister of the early eighth century was a fine painter,
as were his father and uncle.
Sometimes the character of aristocrats left something to be desired.
Some were arrogant, overbearing, or self-indulgent. Others were ignoble;
their behavior unseemly, criminal, indecent, or depraved. In 643 the heir
to the throne created a scandal at court when he became infatuated with
a boy dancer of an imperial troupe that performed at his mansion. The
boy, who was about thirteen years old, was exceedingly good-looking
and an outstanding singer. The heir made no effort to hide the love affair,
and his father soon learned of it. The emperor had the boy put to death.
The loss of his paramour devastated the heir, who took ill. He installed
a statue of the dancer in one of his halls and made libations to it as acts
of mouming. In the same year another prince had two officials on his
staff assassinated when one was about to reveal his transgressions, and
the other refused to have any part i the murder of the first. In 672 a
son of an ailing prince took advantage of his father's weakened state to
molest one of his concubines. Afterward the prince leamed about the
harassment and rebuked his son. Unrepentant, the son deprived his fa
ther of food and medicine so that he died of starvation. I 682 or 683
the throne ordered another son of a prince to commit suicide for best
ality, specifically for committing the crime of incest. One of Illustrious
August's nephews and three of his friends murdered a man in the cap
ital, partly to obtain his riches ad partly to settle a grudge. In broad
Society 23
daylight they bludgeoned the man to death, boiled his flesh, and ate it.
When the crime came to light in the summer of 739, the throne banished
the nephew. It then ordered him to commit suicide when he reached a
rapid relay station east of Changan.
The in-laws of an emperor could be as wicked as his clansmen. One
of Empress Wu's nephews, a handsome fellow, had a abominable char
acter and believed he could do as he pleased because he was a close
relative of the empress. When the empress's daughter, then seven or
eight years old, came to pay a call on her grandmother-who doted on
the nephew and in whose mansion he lived-he seduced all of the young
palace ladies in her retinue. That was outrageous enough and entirely
illegal, but his transgression went unpunished because he enjoyed the
protection of his grandmother. Unchastened, he committed an even
greater offense. He broke into the home of a beautiful young girl whom
the court had selected to be the heir apparent's concubine, and raped
her. By that time his protectress had died. During the mouring period
for her he brazenly cast aside his sackcloth and indulged in entertain
ment, seriously violating Tang law. Empress Wu had had enough of his
deplorable and illicit behavior. She arranged to have him banished on
the grounds that he had violated mourning regulations. She did not want
her family's reputation besmirched by a conviction on the charge of rape.
Her nephew committed suicide on the road to exile.
There were also some hard times for aristocrats. After the deposition
of an empress in 655, her adopted son and former heir apparent was so
afraid that Empress Wu or one of her cohorts would send a assassin to
slay him that he took to wearing women's clothes as a disguise. It was
not uncommon for a aristocrat to commit suicide when he believed that
the throne would have him executed for being implicated in some plot.
From 688 to 693 Empress Wu had hundreds, if not thousands, of the
Tang's nobles put to death, frequently on baseless charges. I 752 the
throne demoted the son of a prince merely because he sold a house to
an official whom the throne had found guilty of plotting rebellion.
BUREAUCRACY
In the Tang there were two types of officials: functionaries and man
darins. Functionaries, known as those "outside te current," were
scribes, clerks, warehouse keepers, and other subalters of the manda
rins, those "witin the current." They performed te routine tasks of
administration-drafting correspondence and reports, compiling records
and registers, maintaining inventories, and the like-that were beneat
the dignity of the mandarins from whom they received their salaries.
The highest goal for an ambitious man of social standing and/ or ed
ucation was to acquire a position "within the current," to become a man-
24 Daily Life in Traditional China
darin. There were basically three ways to acquire such an office. First, a
man could assert hereditary privilege. Te sons of officials were eligible
for appointment to a post one grade lower than the highest office that
their fathers held (or had held, if they were deceased). That form of
advancement probably accounts for the fact that some high-ranking man
darins in the Tag were illiterate. In the early eighth century a minister
of the Department of Households in Changan could neither recognize
written words nor understand documents. He apparently had a low re
gard for those who could do so, for he called his subordinates "dogs"
and "jackasses." Officials of that sort relied heavily on their subordinates
to read and draft documents. It would be a mistake, however, to assume
that all men who acquired posts by hereditary privilege were illiterate
or incompetent. Second, he could receive a special appointment from the
throne. In those cases, the emperor acted on the recommendation of an
official or on information, oral or written, that he had received. In most
instances he made his decisions on the grounds that the candidates had
superior reputations, special skills, or exceptional qualifications. Last, an
aspirant for a bureaucratic position could sit for civil service examina
tions and receive a post if he passed them.
One authority has called the Chinese bureaucracy a meritocracy be
cause in principle it recruited and promoted officeholders on the basis
of learning, skills, and other abilities-not on the basis of social status.
That is certainly true for the Tang with some exceptions, notably man
darins who received appointments on the basis of hereditary privilege.
After a man acquired a post, his superior annually rated his character
according to four categories of attributes: his virtue and righteousness,
integrity and prudence, impartiality, and diligence. He then assessed the
subordinate's actual performance of his duties according to tenty-seven
criteria, such as the selection of talented subordiates with good char
acter for his staff, proper training and equipping of troops, just
sentencing of convicted criminals, meticulous maintenance of records,
prevention of faud in the market, and rearing te animals under his
charge so that they were fat and strong. An official's career depended
on favorable evaluations, so he had to conduct himself prudently if he
wished to advance.
There was a hierarchy of nine grades for offices and the mandarins
holding them. The ladder of success for mandarins-who received ele
gant titles such as Grandee of Radiant Emolument and Bearer of the Gold
Seal with Purple Ribbon on attaining new grades-conferred greater and
greater prestige and privileges as they received promotions to offices
with higher and higher rankings. The system was also the instrument
by which the government fixed salaries, all of them tax-exempt, and
allocated resources. In addition, the court ennobled high-ranking or mer
itorious bureaucrats, civil and military. It conferred titles-duke, mar-
Society 25
quis, cout, viscount, and baron-on them and provided them with
grants similar to those accorded the aristocracy but smaller i size (the
revenues from 50 to 2,000 households).
Many of the Tang's officials were upright, diligent, and competent. A
legal officer in one prefecture never imposed beating with the thick rod
as punishment for cries. When he rose to a post in the Department of
Punition at the capital during the reign of Empress Wu, he was respon
sible for saving the lives of several thousand men whom the empress's
cruel clerks had falsely accused. In the same period an oficial in the
Service of the Supreme Justice-immortalized as Judge Dee in novels by
a moder Western author-adjudicated 17,000 legal cases in one year,
cases that had remained unresolved for years. Through his intervention
he also saved the lives of 600 to 700 men sentenced to death for being
implicated in the rebellion of a prince. A general of the Gold Bird Guard
that patrolled the streets of the capital night and day personally passed
judgment daily on more than 100 men caught violating the law. He was
not lenient in applying punishments, so citizens, both nobles and com
moners, feared him. Nevertheless, he was responsible for establishing
order in the city. Exemplary local offcials took a keen interest in the
welfare of the people they govered. When one county commandant
arrived in his district, he discovered that it had suffered from floods year
after year, and that the river damaged a wooden bridge that had to be
repaired annually. He had the dike along the river raised, and built a
foating bridge to replace its wooden counterpart. Those actions pre
vented further calamities in the county. When an epidemic struck and
killed livestock in his province, a governor-general devised a machine
that peasants could push to plow their fields instead of using their cows.
Other local officials made efforts to repair schools and encourage stu
dents to pursue learning. When powerful and wealthy families in a pre
fecture illegally occupied land, depriving peasants of their fields, the
governor gathered up a large tract of land and gave it to the poor and
needy. One county commandant was extremely frugal, permitting his
slaves only one meal a day. Whatever surplus his parsimony produced,
he gave to the poor. A goveror of a prefecture had a flour mill built at
his own expense and donated te profits to the starving. I addition he
had more than ten huts built along the sides of his dwelling for them to
live in. It was common practice among people living in districts gov
erned by worthy, exemplary, and humane officials to raise stone tablets
in their markets or streets bearing inscriptions commemorating te good
government of their mandarins.
Tang China also had its share of bad oficials. The most common form
of malfeasance during the dynasty was corruption. When the chief of
some aborigines in what is now North Vietnam wanted to take a wife,
the Chinese governor of the prefecture demanded 1,000 lengths of fine
26 Daily Lie in Traditional China
silk fabric before he would grant his permission. The chief was able to
supply only 800 lengths, so the governor seized the bride-to-be and had
his way with the maid for three days before returning her. Since he had
defowered te woman, the chief would not marry her. An imperial cen
sor had a passion for eating beef. Consequently, while he was conducting
an inspection tour in the region south of the Yangtze River, the number
of cattle slaughtered in the area to feed his appetite was enormous. He
was corrupt and would not conclude an investigation, whether it con
cerned a trivial or a grave matter, until he received gold for doing so.
Consequently, the price of gold and silver rose sharly in the region.
The people there called him the Gold Cow Governor. The throne took a
particularly dim view of such offenses, and often had mandarins found
guilty of the crime beaten to death before officials standing in the court
yard of the audience hall, to serve as a waring.
The Tang dynasty was a period of brutality and violence, but no more
so than the twentieth century. A goveror-general of the region north
west of Changan composed a declaration of war against a Turkish khan
in which he rebuked the khan in very rude terms. Then he wrote the
text on the stomach and back of a Turk, cut the words into the man's
fesh, blackened the characters with ink, and cauterized the wounds with
fire. The pain was ubearable, and tl"te Turk screamed all day and night.
Afterward the goveror-general sent the man back to the khan. When
the emissary retured with the khan's reply, the governor-general sliced
off the man's flesh, piece by piece, until he died. When the same man
was serving as a senior official for Luoyang between 705 and 707, the
price of grain rose and thieves proliferated. He apprehended all of the
robbers and had them beaten to death. Then he left the criminals' rotting
corpses piled up before the gate of his office as a waring to the citizens
of the capital. No one dared steal thereafter.
The army had the usual hierarchy of leaders, including generalissimos,
grand generals, generals, and lower-ranking officers. During the Tang,
military officers could earn honorary titles for meritorious service on the
battlefield. The distinctions ranged from Marshal of War Cavalry, the
lowest, to Superior Pillar of State, the highest. To qualify for the titles,
the commander had to accumulate a certain number of commendations:
the highest, Superior Pillar of State, required twelve. The Provost of Hon
ors awarded commendations on the basis of a formula that combined
the number of men killed or captured with the size of the enemy's army
defeated in battle. There were three grades of merit for the former: 10,
20, and 40 percent of the adversary's troops slain or taken prisoner. There
were also three degrees for the latter: victories won against superior,
equal, and inferior forces. The highest number of commendations that
an officer could ear in a single engagement was fve, for a victory
against a larger army in which his troops killed or captured 40 percent
Society 27
of the enemy. He could also ear three for stubborly defending a
stronghold or for surviving a partcularly fierce battle. The Provost of
Honors often relied on reports sent to him by the commanders who
fought the wars. Some unscrupulous officers padded the figures for the
numbers of enemy troops killed and the size of their adversary's forces
when tey forwarded their battle accounts to the capital. I the early
seventh century one enterprising warrior chopped the noses off the men
he slew and carried them back to his superior to avoid suspicion that he
was exaggerating in his combat report. In some cases commanders
claimed victories when they had actually sufered defeats. The court
could grant the same honorary titles to civil officials for meritorious
achievements that did not involve military action.
EUNUCHS
Imperial eunuchs constituted another, small class of the privileged.
They probably numbered no more than 5,000 at any given time during
the dynasty, but had tremendous power and infuence. Although by the
mid-ninth century the throne required all regions to submit castrated
boys, most came from regions along the southeast coast. The majority of
them were sold by their parents and emasculated in their youth, before
they were sent to the capital. After the boys arrived in Changan, a senior
eunuch of the Service for Palace Attendants adopted them and gave
them his surame. He also taught them whatever duties the throne as
signed tem. By and large eunuchs were illiterate, and most performed
menial duties in the innermost, private quarters of the emperor. Some,
however, had enough education to teach palace ladies the Confucian
classics, Taoist philosophy, history, mathematics, law, poetry, calligra
phy, and board games.
In the early years of the dynasty the throne restricted the number,
power and privileges of the eunuchs. In te late seventh century Empress
Wu eased the restraints. Eunuchs began to acquire mansions in the cap
itals as well as estates in the nearby countryside, take "wives," and adopt
uncastrated children of both sexes so that they could bequeath their titles
and property to their heirs.
Eunuchs were the guardians of the imperial harem, so employed be
cause tey could not spread their seed and spawn offspring that were
not the emperor's. By the middle of the eighth century te number of
women in the seraglio of Emperor Illustrious August soared to 40,000,
with about one eunuch for every ten ladies. Because they governed the
emperor's household, eunuchs had unique and frequent access to him.
Illustrious August's most trusted eunuch slept in a curtained area along
the side of the emperor's bedchamber. Eunuchs were solely responsible
28 Daily Lie in Traditional China
to ad dependent on the emperor, but acquired enormous power over
officials because of their unique access to h.
By the early eighth century the throne was employing eunuchs as gen
erals. It sent one to northern Vietam with orders to suppress revolts by
aborigines. Between 722 and 728 he quelled three rebellions with te help
of an army that he recruited from the natives. He took more than 80,000
heads and had the bodies of the slain stacked in pyramids, presumably
to serve as a waring to men contemplating insurrection. He was a brutal
ma who terrifed the aborigines because he took scalps and cut the skin
from the faces of prisoners he had captured. He was not the only eunuch
known for his cruelty. The citizens of Changan so despised one who had
been a thief catcher in the capital tat they stood by te road with bricks
and stones to hurl at hi when he departed for an assignment in the
south. A chief minister at the time had to order market officials to dis
perse te crowd so the man could leave the city.
It was not until the rebellion of An Lushan that eunuchs began to exert
great power over te court and the goverment. After 800 they came to
control the flow of documents to and from the throne. Addresses to the
emperor and decrees from him passed through their hands, and required
their approval before implementation. They became involved in appoint
ments of provincial governors and the operations of capital schools. By
the ninth century the throne had placed eunuchs in charge of the palaces,
the postal system, guest houses, the imperial treasury, and churches in
the capitals. It also established a council of eunuchs responsible for con
ducting deliberations on public policy. As a result the power of eunuchs
became so great that they engineered the enthronements of over half of
the emperors in tat century. Some of the hapless rulers in that epoch
became puppets of the eunuchs.
CLERGY
One of the largest privileged groups in Tang society was the clergy.
In 845 there were 360,000 monks and nuns throughout the empire. The
church attracted novices, not only because of their devotion to the faith
but also because, once ordained, they were exempt from taxes and com
pulsory labor. It also attracted many landlords who wished to evade
those obligations. Those "bogus monks" remained laymen, acquired or
dination certifcates, but did not practice celibacy, lived with their fam
ilies, and reaped the profits from their fields or other enterprises.
The power of Buddhism rested on its control of land, industrial works,
and money that were often tax-exempt. Its doctrines of compassion and
salvation were the forces tat led to the acquisition of wealth and prop
erty. Compassion required the clergy and laity to assist those less for
tunate than themselves: the indigent, the frail, and others. That tenet of
Society 29
faith compelled the laity to donate portions of their wealth to the church
as a kind of sectarian welfare. Salvation was individual and particular,
in contrast to compassion, which was universal and altruistic (i.e., cor
passion applied to all people, regardless of their status or relationships).
The motive of donors was to improve their lot and that of their ancestors
in purgatory, and to elevate themselves or their ancestors to a superior
station during their rebirth in the next state of existence. The notion was
that a gift could redeem sins committed in this life, and thereby reduce
or eliminate punishment in the afterlife. The size of such gifts was some
times astronomical. In 767 a eunuch not only granted the church his
estate, a prime piece of real estate east of Changan, but also contributed
a billion coppers for te construction of a monastery on the manor.
The donors belonged to all classes of society fom the emperor to the
peasant, and gave all manner of property-land, mills, coppers, silk,
slaves, and more. In addition, monasteries increased their holdings by
purchasing fields and confiscating lands when debtors defaulted on
loans. Except for Chan (Zen) Buddhists, the ordained clergy did not
work the land. According to the Indian notion of nonviolence, the mo
nastic rules of discipline forbade them from digging, irrigating, and har
vesting because such actions might result in the killing of living things,
in particular insects and microorganisms. Consequently, monasteries en
trusted the working of the land to novices, tenant farmers who paid rent
that was ten to twenty times tl1e tax obligation that they would otherwise
have paid to the goverment, bondservants who indentured themselves
to pay off debts, and slaves. In 845, at the height of the persecution of
Buddhism, the goverment confiscated 150,000 slaves from Buddhist es
tablishments. The slaves did not fare well. The army took possession of
those who had martial skills, civil offices took the old and enfeebled, and
the government sold the young who had no skills. Officials divided their
families, sending fathers in one direction and sons in another. In the
provinces of central China slaves had no food or shelter. Corrupt officials
or wealthy merchants often illegally seized them.
Monasteries augmented the revenue they received from their land
with income from industrial enterprises. The most important were mills
for hulling grains or grinding them into four. These installations, oper
ated on water power, were built along irrigation canals in uplands and
were far too expensive for peasants to construct. Trip-hammer mecha
nisms, pestles attached to wooden arms and affixed to an axle, rose and
fell as a waterwheel at the end of the axle rotated. When the pestles
descended and struck the cereals, they pounded off the husks. Grist mills
operated in a similar manner. A waterwheel attached to an axle turned
an upper stone that revolved over a lower, stationary stone. That action
pulverized grains placed between the stones into flour. Though monas
teries owned the mills, they did not operate them. The clergy entrusted
30 Daily Life in Traditio1al China
their construction and maintenance to millwrights and the production to
millers. The millers, who may have been serfs, had to pay rent for the
use of the mills. The revenues collected went into the coffers of the mon
astery.
Monasteries operated oil presses that extracted oil from sesame (hemp)
seeds. As with the mills, they owned the equipment and were respon-
Society 31
sible for its maintenance, but entrusted the operation of the presses to
laymen. They charged the operators rent for use of them. Contracts en
titled them to seize the property of the lessees should they fail to pay
the prescribed fees. Like millers, the oil producers were free to sell to
the public any surplus in excess of the rents they owed, but the mon
astery imposed a tax on such sales. They were probably the greatest
consumers of oil because they kept lamps perpetually burning in their
Buddha halls.
Te wealth accumulated by the church through donations, rents, and
industries went frst to the maintenance of monasteries and the support
of the clergy. However, the normal expenditures of monasteries appar
ently required only one-fourt to one-third of their income. Some of the
surplus went to the construction of new facilities and to the commis
sioning or purchase of paintings, murals, statues, and bells, as well as to
furnish supplies for festivals. However, the monks employed a large por
tion of it to increase their revenues trough commercial transactions. The
frst of them was pawnbroking, which appeared in Buddhist monasteries
in the sixth century. A peasant in need of seed at the beginning of spring
would deposit a valuable object, such as an iron cauldron, with the mon
astery as security for a loan of grain. I he failed to redeem the property
by returning the seed after the autumn harvest, he agreed to forfeit all
of his movable property. The monks charged him no interest for the
transaction. If, however, the person was of a higher station and te trans
action involved money, such as a woman who pawned her comb for 500
coppers, he or she had to retur the pricipal with interest to redeem
the pledge. Buddhist pawnshops did a thriving business. One monk in
the early ninth century set up establishments that lent out more than 1
billion coppers a year against security. This astonished the emperor, who
issued a decree in 817 that prohibited the nobility, officials, Taoist priests,
and Buddhist monks from holding more than 5 million cash at a given
time.
The second commercial activity was lending. There were basically two
types of loans. The first type was short-term loans, usually for seven
months, extended to peasants and consisting mostly of seed grain. Some
farmers, either because they exhausted teir stores during the winter or
they had used their surplus to celebrate the New Year, did not have
enough to begin sowing in the spring. If the borrower was a monastery's
tenant, it advanced the grain to him without interest. He agreed, how
ever, to forfeit his movable property if he failed to repay the loan after
the autumn harvest. If the borrower was a free farmer, the monastery
charged him interest, generally 50 percent, when he retured the prin
cipal. The second type consisted of loans extended to individuals of some
station, officials or aristocrats. They were advances of silk, money, or
processed commodities, such as oil and four. The interest rates were
32 Daily Lie in Traditional China
substantially higher than those charged peasants. One contract estab
lished the rate for a loan of 1,000 coppers at 200 cash per month, for a
total of 1,200 coppers interest when the loan fell due in six months. In
other words, the borrower paid a rate of 120 percent when he returned
the principal. The reason for such exorbitant rates of interest may be that
the risk was higher, both because the value of the loans was greater and
because there was a greater chance of default. Some officials failed to
pay their debts, and monasteries were relatively powerless to compel
them to make good. To reduce the risk, the monks usually drew up
contracts with borrowers, including peasants, that were signed by guar
antors who promised to make restitution should the borrowers default.
The income from commercial transactions must have been substantial.
The ledgers of two monasteries in Central Asia record that 33 and 55
percent of their income came from interest. The returns to some promi
nent churcl1es in te capitals and other large, prosperous cities in China
proper were even greater. By and large Buddhists lived off the labor and
product of the peasantry and other lower classes. However, they re
tured much of their income to the community as charity.
PEASANTS
All Chinese dynasties regarded farming as the fundamental occupa
tion, and rightly so since the economy was overwhelmingly agrarian.
Farmers and their families constituted 80 to 90 percent of the population.
The goverment relied on them to produce the revenues that enriched
the royal treasury, supported the nobility, supplied salaries for officials,
maintained armies, and funded public works, among other things. Con
sequently, during the early Tang te state took steps to ensure a mini
mum standard of living for the peasants and to bind them to their land.
The latter required registration of the entire rural population. Local of
ficials revised the registers every tird year, taking a sort of census, to
make sure tat farmers still occupied their assigned plots. From the reg
isters they then compiled tax rolls.
Adult males of rural households grew grain in their fields: wheat,
barley, and millet in the relatively dry north and rice in the wet south.
They also raised vegetables as well as domestic animals, especially pigs,
cattle, and chckens. In addition the men hunted and fished to augment
their diets. The Tang law code permitted private citizens to possess bows,
arrows, swords, shields, and short spears. If the peasant had enough
money to buy or the skill to manufacture them, he could supply himself
with the tools for bagging game. There was a division of labor in farming
families. The wives and daughters were responsible for weaving textiles.
That task required them to process plant fibers and draw out silk from
the cocoons of silkworms.
Society 33
Te peasant suffered from a large number of afflictions, both natural
and man-made. Natural disasters were the worst. Floods as deep as forty
feet inundated as many as sixty prefectures, or one-sixth of the empire.
Some destroyed as many as 10,000 homes, forcing people to live on boats
or nest in trees. They drowned thousands and laid waste to crops and
farmland. Droughts struck as often as four years in a row. One devas
tated 14 percent of the empire, not only killing plants but also drying
up wells, so that people died of thirst and disease. Hail, sometimes the
size of a fist, flattened crops and killed men, horses, cows, and birds.
Pests, too, were a threat to the livelihood of the peasant. Rats in packs
of as many as 10,000 attacked the fields and burrowed into houses, where
they ate clothing. Rabbits in similar numbers devoured the crops. The
worst of the pests were probably the locusts that descended in enormous
swarms and devoured all of the soft tissues of trees and plants. With
nothing else to eat, the peasants sometimes resorted to stripping off the
grasshoppers' legs and wings, in order to steam them for food.
According to traditional ideology, the emperor assumed personal re
sponsibility for such disasters. He blamed himself for governing poorly
and offending Heaven (nature). When a plague of locusts struck Chang
an in 628, the emperor seized a grasshopper in te Forbidden Park and,
as he was about to eat it, declared, "Mankind depends on grains for life.
If the people have committed sins, I am solely accountable for them. You
should devour me only, and not harm the people. " During a drought in
724 the emperor stood naked, exposing himself to the sun for three days,
to elicit the sympathy of the gods while praying for rain at an altar in
the palace. Some local officials also performed that rite. Those unusual
acts were probably rare, but it was quite normal for the throne to dis
patch officials to conduct religious rituals at temples in the capital and
at holy sites, such as sacred mountains, throughout the empire.
The goverment undertook more pragmatic measures to relieve the
distress of the peasants. It had a system of granaries situated at strategic
sites throughout the empire. The granaries collected around three and a
half bushels of grain from each landholder anually. When a natural
disaster struck, causing famine, officials distributed the stored cereals to
the starving population in the affected region. Furthermore, one of the
Tang's statutes provided a graduated system of tax remissions to farmers
who sustained losses. If 40 percent of a peasant's crops was destroyed,
he did not have to pay the grain tax; if 60 percent, he did not need to
render the grain or cloth levy to the state; and if more than 70 percent,
he did not have to pay any taxes or perform compulsory labor.
Peasants also suffered greatly at the hands of their fellow men. There
were large displacements of population in the north because the wars
with the Khitan and Turks during Empress Wu's reign and the rebellion
of A Lushan had devastated farmlands. Peasants also deserted their
34 Daily Lie in Traditional China
felds and fed to evade compulsory labor and conscription. Even when
it involved public works, such as constructing dikes or repairing roads,
that the farmer might benefit from, forced labor took him away from his
land and family for extended periods. Far worse, except for rations that
the government provided while he was traveling to and from the place
where he performed the service, he had to bring his own provisions with
him for the time, usually twenty days, that he spent working on the
project. If he had the money-and most did not-he could hire a sub
stitute. Peasants might protest when the undertaking did not involve
their personal interests, the taskmasters were harsh, or the conditions of
service were unbearable. During the construction of a prince's tomb, the
peasants so hated the forced labor that they filled the road, raised a
clamor, and trew bricks and tiles at the funeral cortege. Conscription
was even more terrible because the term of service was three years, it
might mean serving far from home on the frontiers, and it involved the
risk of injury or death. The north suffered the most from absconding
peasants in the first half of the Tang. According to one estimate, the north
lost 28 percent of its population, and the south nearly tripled its popu
lation, between 609 and 742.
War and compulsory labor were not the only banes of the peasant's
existence. Aristocrats, mandarins (both those in the capital and in the
provinces), and eunuchs, as well as military goverors, army oficers,
and merchants, were major sources of misery for free farmers. Beginning
in the second half of the seventh century, powerful families, especially
those in the region around Changan, built landed estates at the expense
of independent peasants. Through the abuse of their authority as offi
cials, falsification of land registers, sheer coercion, illegal purchases, and
confiscation for nonpayment of debt, the upper classes and the wealthy
seized peasants' plots. In the early ninth century a military governor in
the southwest illegally confiscated 122 estates and 88 households. The
government made efforts to halt estate-building and provide land for
dispossessed farmers in the first half of the Tang with some success, but
after 756 t
h
at sort of legislation proved futile. Furthermore, the state
contributed to the problem. It owned estates that it rented to tenant farm
ers. By the late eighth century two reports from officials to the throne
estimated tat independent farmers constituted no more than 4 or 5 per
cent of the empire's population. This may have been an exaggeration,
but the loss of fee farmers was staggering nonetheless.
In the late eighth and early ninth centuries the biennial tax became a
source of great distress for farmers. When the court instituted the tax in
780, it fixed tax rates according to the value of coppers in that year. At
the time the economy was in the last throes of an inflationary cycle that
had begun in 763. In 785, however, a long period of defation began that
lasted until 820. As a result the price of the peasants' grain and cloth
Society 35
dropped steadily as the value of money rose. Farmers therefore had to
set aside increasingly larger amounts of their commodities to pay the
levies imposed by te govemment. According to one estimate, their tax
burden increased 500 percent in forty years. That, of course, caused more
peasants to abandon their land. During that period a mandarin met a
snake catcher in south China who submitted his vipers, which had black
skins with white stripes, to the imperial physician in Changan twice a
year in lieu of paying the biennial tax. When dried and preserved, the
fesh of the serpents could cure leprosy, boils, and other maladies. Both
the grandfather and father of the peasant had died while catching snakes.
He himself had almost died a number of times during the twelve years
that he had been gathering vipers. Out of sympathy for the man's plight,
the oficial offered to intervene with the authorities and restore him to
the tax rolls. The snake catcher pleaded with him not to do so. He pre
ferred risking his life, because 50 to 60 percent of his neighbors who
were liable for the biennial ta had abandoned their land and migrated.
Under such difficult circumstances the peasant had two options. First,
he could stay where he was and become a tenant farmer or agricultural
laborer. Tat was not an appealing altemative. Tenant farmers, as many
as 200 families on a single estate, constituted the bulk of the landowner's
labor force. Te tenant paid half of the crops that he harvested as rent
to the landowner, a sum much larger than the taxes he would have paid
to the govemment had he been free. In addition, when the estate sup
plied him seed and food, it expected repayment and charged him a high
rate of interest. It also imposed levies on other commodities, such as
textiles, that he produced. Finally, the landowner required him to per
form labor services, such as constructing or repairing walls, bridges, and
buildings.
His second option was fight. Although that choice involved a certain
amount of hardship initially-leaving one's ancestral home was excru
ciating and haveling was hazardous-the peasant was better off in the
end. The south was the preferred destination because there were still
extensive regions of rich land that had not been occupied. The problem
of estate-building was also less severe in that part of the country. Finally,
during the Tang the far south (present-day North Vietam and the prov
inces of Guangsi and Guangdong) was rich in minerals, especially gold.
Around 700 a peasant who had a fock of more than 100 ducks was
cleaning their pen one day and saw the glint of something shining in
their droppings. He sifted the dung in a basin of water and recovered
fourteen ounces of gold. Afterward he followed the fowl to their feeding
area at the foot of a mountain. He drilled into the spot and dug up more
than 12,800 ounces of the precious metal. As a result he became a very
wealthy man. Peasants were still extracting gold from the droppings of
geese and ducks as late as the ninth century. Oters used felt to sift gold
36 Daily Life in Traditional China
from river water. Peasants ceased tilling their fields and ran away to the
goldfields. Mining offered farmers their only hope of striking it rich and
escaping from the miseries inflicted by estate owners and tax collectors.
ARTISANS AND MERCHANTS
Aside from slaves and vagrants, the classes most subject to discrimi
nation in the Tang were artisans and merchants, especially the latter. The
basis for the prejudice against merchants on the part of the state, officials,
and intellectuals was that traders were "leeches" who produced nothing.
They lived off the surplus that the peasantry generated by dint of its
hard labor. Furthermore, their pursuit of wealth was contrary to con
ventional ethics that fowned on materialism. Finally, their wandering
lifestyle made it difficult for te govemment to control them. For those
reasons merchants and artisans-te latter grouped with merchants be
cause, although they were producers, they sold teir wares for profit
occupied te lowest rung in the traditional hierarchy of classes. The gov
emment and the upper classes accepted them only because they were
necessary for the operation of the economy.
Because of that bias the government enacted statutes that discrimi
nated against merchants and artisans. The law prohibited them from
having intercourse with officials and banned the upper echelons of the
bureaucracy from entering urban markets. It forbade merchants and ar
tisans to sit for civil service examinations, and therefore to hold public
office. They had no access to political power. The state did not allocate
land to them except in regions where there were vacant tracts, and even
then it allowed them to occupy only half of the amount that it normally
granted to peasants. It also forbade them to ride horses.
Landless merchants and artisans living in cities did enjoy some priv
ileges when it came to taxation. There they had to pay only levies on
their households and properties. However, after the rebellion of An Lu
shan the govemment occasionally subjected them to other exactions.
During a crisis in 783-784, when the state was strapped for revenue, it
compelled merchants in Changan to loan it money. Officials estimated
that they could exact 250 million coppers from ten to twenty of the
wealthiest traders without forcing them out of business. They also im
posed a 20 percent excise tax on all goods sold in the markets. There
were two further instances in the ninth century when the government
resorted to exacting forced loans from merchants. Meanwhile, some pro
vincial officials were also collecting excise taxes on goods sold by mer
chants.
Despite the discrimination and exploitation, some merchants made im
mense fortunes. In 734, when the state confiscated the property of a mer
chant living in Changan, his fortune amounted to 600 million coppers.
Society 37
The government took a similar action against another merchant residing
in a city on te Grand Canal in the early ninth century and seized 10
billion coppers from him. Those men were among the tycoons, a very
small number of traders. There was a host of small vendors and peddlers
who eked out a hard living with little retur and never struck it rich.
Te upper class's prejudice against merchants is difficult to under
stand, given the fact that aristocrats and mandarins were also parasites
who, with some exceptions, sucked the blood from the peasants through
rents and taxes. Like the traders they produced no concrete goods
grain, salt, cloth, metals, bricks, tiles, furiture, and so forth. Although
the law barred mandarins from making a profit from their inferiors (i.e.,
commoners), they engaged in commerce anyway. Even the government
of te early Tang relied on capitalism to pay te salaries of officials be
cause the granaries and treasuries were empty. It allocated funds to all
local goverments. They then turned the money over to wealthy families,
no doubt mostly merchants, who had experience in loaning money.
Those families were responsible for making a profit on the capital at a
rate of interest fixed by the government. The local goveror then appor
tioned the revenues that he received to supply salaries for his staff. This
form of bureaucratic capitalism continued into the ninth century.
At least one local official manifested some entrepreneurial talent. A
county commandant met the elder of a hamlet and asked, "How many
eggs can 1 buy for a copper?" The man replied, "Three. " So the cor
mandant purchased 30,000 for 10,000 coppers, but he did not take them
with him. Instead he instructed the elder to have hens hatch them. After
they hatched, the commandant had one of his underlings sell the chick
ens for him, and made 300,000 cash. He also asked the elder, "How many
bamboo shoots can I buy for a copper?" The man replied, "Five." So the
commandant purchased 50,000 of them. Then he told the elder to raise
the shoots in the woods. When they grew into bamboo stalks in the fall,
the commandant sold them for ten coppers apiece and made 500,000
cash.
Some officials of the court engaged in commerce. A director of palace
workshops was an expert at making a profit. In 681 he reported to the
throne that he had made 20 million coppers fom selling horse manure.
When te emperor asked for his opinion on the matter, a mandarin re
plied, "Even though the profit is great, I fear that later ages will call the
house of Tang 'sellers of horse manure.' " So, despite the fact that profits
went to his coffers, the emperor put a halt to the practice. In 687, when
the superintendent of the Forbidden Park north of Changan was about
to sell fruits and vegetables to make money for the throne, the goveror
of Changan protested that it was undignified for the emperor to sell such
lowly goods. Consequently, Empress Wu forbade it. By the early eighth
38 Daily Life in Traditional China
century the aristocracy was making money from flour mils that they
had erected on their country estates outside of Changan.
In the late eighth century aristocrats and offcials who had previously
been reluctant to sully themselves with mercantile activities openly en
gaged in commerce. By 780 they had set up shops to trade commodities
in Yangzhou, the great center of commerce and industry. At the time
military goverors and inspector generals in the south also got involved
in establishing businesses. Under the guise of making money for their
armies, they actually made a profit for themselves. By 831 even soldiers
had established shops along the avenues of Changan.
In the same period that some officials were becoming merchants, some
merchants were becoming officials. Although still despised by the upper
classes, merchants were indispensable for producing revenue at a time
when older sources, especially land taxes, were drying up. In their cease
less search for funds, local governors, warlords, and others, sought out
merchants and employed them because they had the talent to make
money. Even the central government was not above using them. Fur
thermore, although a merchant might not take civil service examinations,
it appears that by 803 large numbers of their sons were doing so, and
also occupying most of the seats in the state colleges at the capitals.
SLAVES
At the bottom of the pecking order were te slaves. There were two
types: official and private. The imperial court and the goverment ac
quired slaves from several sources. During the early years of the Tang,
large numbers of slaves were foreign soldiers and civilians captured in
victorious campaigns that Tang armies conducted in Korea, Inner Mon
golia, Central Asia, and norther India. In the first half of the sevent
century the emperor sent an envoy to India who traversed the difficult
road over the mountains in the southwest, gathered a force of Tibetans
and Nepalese, plundered Magadha (the birthplace of Buddha), seized
2,000 men and women as well as thousands of cattle and horses, and
retured to Changan with the king of India. Among his prisoners was a
physician who claimed to be 200 years old and to possess a formula for
prolonging life. When, however, he failed to produce te elixir, the em
peror dismissed him. After Tang armies conquered norther Korea in
688, they brought back 200,000 prisoners. The descendant of one of the
captives was Emperor Illustrious August's personal slave. In 713 the em
peror freed him for his meritorious contributions to the deposition of
Princess Taiping and appointed him to various posts in the imperial
guards.
The second type of slave was family members of men sentenced to
death for rebellion and sedition. The court confned the womenfolk of
Society 39
the condemned in the Flank Court, the wester section of the central
palace within the walls of Changan, and called them palace ladies. It was
the custom for an emperor to free large numbers of the women when he
ascended the throne. This no doubt accounts for the enormous size-
40,000 women-of Emperor Illustrious August's harem. He reigned for
forty-four years, so there was no occasion for releasing the ladies, and
their numbers mounted year after year. Many of the adult women were
probably literate because they came mainly from the upper class. For
those who had no education, the young perhaps, the throne provided
instruction in the classics, writing, poetry, law, mathematics, chess, and
other fields. They were also supposed to care for mulberry trees and
raise silkworms, traditionally woman's work, to supply fabrics for the
palace.
The third source of oficial slaves was foreign tribute, the obligation
that monarchs and chieftains of subject states or tribes owed the Chinese
emperor, who was their liege lord. Those gifts included skilled artists
and entertainers. The king of Tokhara, a nation north of modem-day
Afghanistan and Pakistan, sent a painter of extraordinary skill to the
Chinese court in the early seventh century. He was best known for his
Buddhist icons, but also executed works depicting fowers and birds. The
most celebrated of the slaves, however, were troupes of musicians, sing
ers, and dancers who performed at court banquets and other functions.
The kingdoms of Japan, Korea, what is now Burma, and several Central
Asian states sent them periodically to Changan, where they were inte
grated into the court's music bureaus. Other gifts, however, were curi
osities. A king of what is now Cambodia dispatched albinos to the
emperor. In 669 an embassy from Japan presented some hairy Ainu arch
ers who astonished the Chinese court.
Merchants supplied private slaves to wealthy customers for a price.
Most of their goods were foreigners or aboriginal peoples living in the
soutern districts of China. The aliens included Turks from the north
west, who were prized for teir abilities to ride horses and handle live
stock; Persians captured by Chinese pirates in the southeast; and Korean
women, whose beauty made them a hot commodity in the households
of the well-to-do. It had been taboo since ancient times to sell Chinese,
and the Tang law code imposed a stiff penalty for doing so. Kidnapping
a person to sell as a slave was a capital offense requiring execution by
strangulation. This applied, however, only to those who were enslaved
against their will. Chinese debtors and tenant farmers who could not
meet their obligations sold themselves or their sons for fixed periods,
even for life, to relieve themselves of their burdens. Furthermore, the law
did not apply to aborigines living in the soutern prefectures of the em
pire. Those regions supplied the largest number of slaves in the Tang.
Traders considered the native inhabitants of those regions to be barbar-
40 Daily Life in Traditional China
ians, beyond the pale of Chinese civilization, and therefore not subject
to the law prohibiting their abduction and sale. Neither the emperor nor
local officials could stop the trade.
Slaves in the Tang, as elsewhere, were property. The Tang law code
accorded them a status equal to that of domestic animals and inanimate
possessions. Consequently, if a man abducted another man's slave, it
prescribed a severe punishment of exile to the distant reaches of the
empire. The same rule applied to someone who caught a runaway slave
and failed to turn him in to the authorities within five days. A govem
ment slave who ran away was subject to sixty blows of the thick rod for
the first day he was missing, and more the longer he remained at large.
Male slaves could not marry the daughters of commoners (i.e., free men).
If their masters permitted them to do so, they were subject to two and
half years of penal servitude, and the marriages were annulled. On the
one hand, the penalty for murdering a master was decapitation, or stran
gulation if the death resulted from an accident. On the other hand, if the
master killed his slave for no legitimate reason, he received a sentence
of one year penal servitude. However, if he did so because the slave
committed a crime and he had not requested authorization to slay him,
he was liable for a punishment of only 100 blows with the thick rod.
FOREIGNERS
The Tang dynasty was one of the most cosmopolitan i Chinese his
tory. Influences from abroad affected nearly every aspect of life, from
music to medicine. Part of the reason for the tolerance of things foreign
was Buddhism, which reached the height of its development and pop
ularity in the Tang. The spread of te religion, which began about A. D.
65, continued into the seventh and eighth centuries. At least fifty-six
Chinese monks made their way to India between 618 and 705, learned
Sanskrit, and retured to China laden with hundreds of sutras that they
set about translating. Conversely, monks from India and Central Asia
made their way to China to spread their doctrines. During the eighth
century three great masters of Tantric (occult) Buddhism arrived in
Changan, where they received a favorable reception from the Tang court
and transmitted the tenets of teir school. Whether Chinese or foreign,
the monks imported many facets of Indian culture to the Tang besides
their scriptures and religion.
Anoter factor in the Tang's acceptance of things foreign was the na
ture of the ruling class. In the period of disunion from 316 to 581, after
the nomadic peoples conquered north China, many Chinese aristocrats
in the north and northeast, including the reigning Lis of the Tang, inter
married with the barbarians and assimilated their culture to a degree.
After the founding of the Tang, the infuence of the steppe cultures per-
Society 41
sisted. The best, or at least most infamous, case was that of Taizong's
eldest son. He was so enamored of Turkish culture that he took up the
language and dressed in Turkish clothes. He selected attendants whose
appearance resembled that of the Turks, had them braid their hair in
pigtails, don sheepski garb, and tend sheep. He installed himself in a
tent erected in his palace, outside of which he installed banners embla
zoned wit wolves' heads, the totem of the Turks, who thought of them
selves as descendants of the beast. There he had lambs roasted whole,
and carved the fesh off the sheep with his sword. He even re-created a
Turkish funeral fit for a khan in which he lay on the ground while his
attendants circled his body on horseback and shouted, in conformance
with nomadic mouring rite. Few people of the Tang were so obsessively
attached to Turkish ways a he, but the infuence of that pastoral people
was apparent in many facets of Tang culture.
During the Tang the government divided foreigners who decided to
stay in China into three classes based on their wealth. Adults of the high
est class had to pay a tax of ten silver coins; those of the second, of five;
and those of the lowest, nothing. After they lived in the empire for two
years, the law reduced the levy to two sheep for the. highest class, one
sheep for the second, and one sheep for every three households of the
lowest. The state also required the aliens to supply horses in the event of
military campaigns. Obviously the regulations applied only to the no
madic, pastoral peoples of the northern and wester steppes, as well as
to merchants from countries west of China who traveled overland. While
the Arabs and Persians who rode the waves may have brought silver
with them, it is unlikely that they brought sheep or procured them in the
south, where the animals were scarce. The government was more toler
ant of the "barbarous" indigenous peoples of the southeast, who prac
ticed slash-and-bur agriculture that yielded meager harvests. It
demanded only half the taxes it imposed on their Chinese neighbors.
The destination for the seafaring Arab and Persian merchants, as well
as Malay and other outlanders of the south and west, was the great port
of Canton. There were warehouses there for off-loading their cargoes that
were exchanged for silk and porcelain, the Chinese commodities most
desired by those aliens. The throne also set aside a special residential
quarter south of the Pearl River for foreigners who chose to stay in China
and trade or to wait for the northeastern monsoon to carry them out to
their homes. The size of that community was quite substantial by the
late ninth century. When Huang Chao sacked the city in 879, many of
his 120,000 victims were foreigners-Persians, Arabs, Indians, Southeast
Asians, and others. Like all foreign settlements in the Tang, that in Can
ton enjoyed a degree of autonomy and extraterritoriality. Designated el
ders govered tlw affairs of the community. Furthermore, under Tang
law aliens who committed crimes agaist those of their own nationality
42 Daily Life in Traditional China
were j udged according to their own customs and laws. The state required
Chinese magistrates to inquire what those mores and regulations were
before passing sentences. If, however, they committed offenses against
those of another nationality or native Chinese, the judge passed judg
ment on them according to Chinese law. Furthermore, if a foreigner mar
ried a Chinese woman while living in the empire, he could not take her
back to his native country. This put him in a predicament, because if he
died i China without a wife or an heir, the state confiscated all of his
property.
Despite that deference to their native laws and customs, foreigil mer
chants in Canton often suffered mistreatment at the hands of local offi
cials. A governor in the late seventh century could not control his staff
because he was weak and irresolute. When a foreign ship docked at the
port in 684, hs subordinates seized the cargo. The merchant lodged a
complaint with the governor, who had te trader shackled and was
about to imprison him. That enraged all of the foreigners in the city. One
of their number, a Malay, strode into the courtroom, pulled a kfe from
his sleeve, and murdered the governor along with more than ten of his
aides. He then fled, boarded a ship, and disappeared. In 761 a eunuch,
whom the throne placed in charge of foreign shipping that entered the
p01t, chased out the military govemor and permitted his subordinates
to plunder the city on a grand scale. More often, however, local officials
milked foreign merchants for all they were wort. In the late ninth cen
tury a governor imposed a kind of private tax on them which was so
lucrative that over an eight-year period his fortune grew to exceed the
value of the empire's treasury. He was especially fond of rhinoceros
homs, elephant tusks, and pearls. In 769 his graft was so great that the
number of foreign ships entering the port dropped to four or five a year.
When an honest official took charge, it increased to more than forty a
year.
Te Tang welcomed the wisdom and expertise of foreigners. Three
clans of Indian astronomers/ astrologers held posts in the imperial bu
reau of astronomy at the capitals during the late seventh and early eighth
centuries. The most renowned and productive bore the name of te Bud
dha, Gautama Siddhartha. The throne placed him in charge of compiling
a massive compendium, which survives today in 120 chapters, of as
tronomy and divination, fields in which he was a master. Although it
consists mainly of excerpts from ancient Chinese treatises, it introduced
from India a symbol for zero, primitive trigonometry, ad the division
of the circle into 360 degrees. The influx of foreign medicinal substances
from the west was so great that a Chinese pharmacologist compiled a
treatise devoted solely to them. Te goverment also prized the military
abilities of outlanders. By 751 the commands of all armies on the north,
northeast, and northwest frontiers of China proper were in the hands of
Society 43
foreign generals. Among those aliens was a Korean general who was
remarkably successful in campaigns against Central Asians in the far
northwest util te Arabs defeated him in 751.
3
Cities a1 Vrba1 life
CITIES
The word for "city" in Chinese literally means "walls and markets," an
adequate if somewhat minimal definition of a traditional urban settle
ment. All cities i Tang China theoretically had raparts and bazaars.
Officially, according to te census of 754, there were 1,859 cities-321
prefectures and 1,538 counties-throughout the empire. The actual figure
was somewhat smaller since prefectures were also the seats for some
counties. A number of the prefectures and counties were located in poor
backwaters that had neither the resources to afford nor the strategic
value to justify the construction of outer walls. They also had popula
tions too small to warrant labeling tem "cities. " Those settlements had
bamboo fences or palisades instead of walls.
All cities-capitals, prefectures, and counties-were seats of gover
ment administration. Commerce, industry, transportation, and commu
nication were important but secondary facets of their character. Cities
never enjoyed any significant autonomy from the central government.
Nor were they independent from the countryside that surounded them.
The fgures for populations of county seats included both the citizens
within their walls and the inhabitants of the villages within their juris
dictions. Unlike cities in classical and medieval Europe, they had ony a
hazy identity of their own. Most Chinese in ancient times thought of
themselves as residents of villages or urban wards where their families
originated, and where their ancestral graveyards were situated in the
46 Daily Lie in Traditional China
adjacent countryside. City walls were purely defensive; they did not
serve as rigid boundaries between the rural and the urban. Cities did,
however, drain wealth from rural sectors in the form of taxes and profits
from trade. Rural riches provided the luxurious lifestyles that the urban
upper classes enjoyed. The accumulated wealth also made cities the pri
mary targets for pillaging rebels and marauding foreign invaders.
The greatest of the cities were the capitals, Changan in the west and
Luoyang in the east. Tey housed imperial palaces as well as com
pounds-the August Enceintes-for the bureaus of the central govem
ment. Changan had been the main seat of the Tang since its founding in
618, and was probably the largest city in the world at the time, with a
population of perhaps 2 million souls. Its prestige was so great that the
Japanese adopted its layout for their imperial metropolis at Nara in the
eighth century. At the beginning of the Tang, Luoyang, which had suf
fered greatly from destruction wrought by warfare, was the seat of a
military govemor and a prefecture. In 657 the emperor raised it to the
status of capital because frequent famines in Changan, which suffered
from a supply problem, forced the imperial court to move there. Luo
yang, however, remained underpopulated until 691, when Empress Wu,
who favored it over its western counterpart, had more than 100,000 fam
ilies, half a million people, transplanted there from the region around
Changan. Thereafter, it became the second largest city in China with a
population of about 1 million souls. Luoyang sat astride the Luo River
close to the end of the Grand Canat so foodstuffs from the fertile south
easily made their way into the city. Except during her reign it was the
secondary capital of the Tang. Furthermore, the court never visited it
after 743, when Changan's supply problem was solved. The dynasty also
designated Taiyuan as its northem capitat but te city never became the
seat of goven1ment.
Some cities were more than seats of goverment. They were also
centers of economic activity. The greatest of them in the Tang was
Yangzhou, located on the Grand Canal close to te Yangtze River,
where commodities from the interior of China and overseas were trans
shipped and sent to northem metropolises. It was also the headquarters
for the national salt monopoly as well as the greatest industrial town in
the period. It produced admirable bronze mirrors; fine felt hats that cit
izens of Changan esteemed; sugar refined from cane; boats that sold for
5 million coppers; elegant, expensive furniture; and beautiful silk tex
tiles. Canton was the greatest entepot of foreign trade. There ships
from Persia, Arabia, and southeast Asia off-loaded rare perfumes,
woods, j ewels, plants, drugs, dyes, and other goods that Chinese mer
chants sent north to satisfy te tastes of the rich and powerful in the
capitals. Chegdu in the southwest was the greatest center for the pro
duction of paper and printed books, both of which were Chinese inven-
Cities and Urban Life 47
tions. It also served as a haven for emperors fleeing rebels who attacked
and seized Changan.
Most Tang cities lay on flatlands next to rivers that served as the
cheapest routes for transportation. That meant that sprig floods peri
odically devastated towns as witer snows melted in the mountains to
the west and raised the levels of rivers above the levees built to prevent
inundations. Luoyang, which sat astride a river, was particularly vul
nerable to such disasters. Floods on occasion destroyed as much as 18
percent of the city. The most readily available and cheapest building
material in the lowlands where towns were erected was dirt. Conse
quently, engineers and laborers built walls by ramming thin layers of
loose earth in wood frames to form the core of the ramparts. They then
faced them with brick or stone to prevent erosion by rain and con
structed battlements on top to provide for their defense.
The outer walls of Changan, the city about which we have the most
information, were about eighteen feet high. They encompassed an area
some five miles by six, about thirty square miles. The purpose of the
ramparts was to provide security for the residents witlun. They were
barriers for preventing intrusions by assassins and bandits, but not in
surmoutable obstacles, as Tang law recognized. Climbing over city
walls was an offense punishable by ninety blows with a thlck rod for
walls of the counties and one year of penal servitude for walls of the
prefectures and capitals. As defensive bulwarks for impeding attacks by
foreign invaders and indigenous rebels, the ramparts were less than sat
isfactory. They rarely withstood prolonged sieges, and emperors usually
abandoned their capitals at tl1e first signs of imminent military attack.
Furthermore, the efficacy of walls as impediments was somewhat dubi
ous, for wild animals sauntered into cities from time to time. In 769 a
tiger settled in the ancestral shrine of a chief minister in Changan, and
a general dispatched by the throne slew it with a crossbow. Another
tiger entered a ward of the city in 782 and wounded two men before it
was captured. In 830 a bear lumbered into a Buddhist monastery in
Changan. Deer were also frequent intruders at the capital.
Gates in the walls provided access to city interiors. Smaller metropo
lises probably had at least one gate for each direction, but in Changan
there were three each in the east, south, and west walls, as well as a
dozen or so in the north that opened onto imperial parks and palaces.
Each gate had three portals, and since traffic traveled to the right in Tang
times, men, horses, and carriages entered Changan through the right
portal (as one faced the gate from outside) and departed through the
left. The middle opening was no doubt reserved for imperial or ritual
processions. Gates were weak points in city defenses and therefore were
heavily reinforced. Their keepers shut them at dusk, when the curfew
began, and secured them with cylinder locks. No one, except for couiers
48 Daily Life in Traditional China
with imperial decrees of an urgent nature, could enter or leave the city
during the night. Failure to fasten the bolts of the locks or destruction
of them while opening the gates was an offense punishable by eighty
blows wit a thick rod. In the capitals, gates were also prominent urban
monuments and often were topped with pillared halls. Emperors made
progresses (joureys) to them to see officials off when they were trav
eling to new posts in the provinces or retiring from office, as well as to
pay their respects to deceased ministers or other eminent persons when
their funeral corteges were leaving the cities to make their way to tombs
outside the city.
Inside city walls, toroughfares divided the urban landscape into a
grid. In Changan there were eleven avenues running from north to south
and fourteen streets running from east to west. The roads were con
structed of rammed earth and, being unpaved, tured to muddy bogs
when it rained. The narrowest were 82 feet wide, those terminating in
the gates of the outer ramparts were 328 feet wide, and the imperial way
located in the exact center of te city, running from north to south, was
492 feet wide. The width of roads in the capitals, enormous even by
modem standards, no doubt created excellent firebreaks in an age when
water pumps for extinguishing confagrations were unknown. Although
terrible fires broke out in some sectors of the city-a fire consumed 4,000
homes, warehouses, and other buildings in the easter market during
843-Changan suffered none of the citywide holocausts like the one tat
destroyed 17,000 homes in a southern city during 807. Roads in that town
were unquestionably narrower.
The Tang law code established regulations for the control of traffic
along urban thoroughfares. Fifty blows of the thin rod was the penalty
for speeders, that is, riders or coachmen who raced their horses or car
riages down a street or lane of a city into a crowd of three or more
people. If they injured or killed a person, the punishments were sixty
blows with the thick rod and execution by strangulation, respectively. If
they injured or killed a domestic animat they had to pay restitution to
the owner of the animal. However, if the coachman or rider had just
cause for speeding, such as summoning a physician to treat an illness or
delivering an imperial decree, he was free from punishment unless he
maimed or killed.
Precisely who maintained law and order in the streets of most cities
during the Tang is unclear except for the capitals. There the responsi
bility fell to the Gold Bird Guards, who patrolled the thoroughfares day
and night. Every intersection had a police post with thirty guards at
major crossroads and five at minor ones. All gates had such posts with
100 men at te most important and 20 at the least important. The Gold
Bird Guards were not always effective in carrying out their duties. In
838 some highwaymen shot at Chief Minister Li as he was making his
Cities and Urban Lie 49
way to an audience with the emperor in the predawn hours. Li suffered
a slight wound, his retainers fed in all directions, and his startled horse
raced back to his mansion. The thugs intercepted Li at the gate of his
ward, assaulted him, and cut the tail off his horse. He barely escaped
with his life. The emperor commanded army troops to take over guard
ing the streets of the capital. It was several days before calm returned to
Chang an.
Drainage ditches eleven feet wide and seven feet deep fanked both
verges of the avenues and streets in Changan. The installation of the
drains naturaly entailed the construction of bridges, four at all intersec
tions. The ditches were not sewers. Human waste was a commodity
carted to the countryside and sold to farmers, who used it as fertilizer
for their crops. There was a family in Changan that for generations had
engaged i collecting night soil from dwellings in the city and had be
come wealthy fom the trade. They had a beautiful mansion replete with
fie furiture, a staff of slaves to do their bidding, elegant clothes for
their women to wear, and herds of domestic animals to supply meat for
their table.
From the founding of Changan in 582 emperors had trees planted
elms and junipers and pagodas-alongside the ditches to provide shade
and elegance for the metropolis. Citizens were probably most pleased
when the throne ordered the planting of fruit trees along the avenues in
740, an act that enriced their diets as well as their surroundings. Em
perors periodically had to order the replanting of trees. Gales occasion
ally uprooted them. In 835 a great wid blew down 10,000. Heavy snow
and rainfall in 820 toppled many. In addition, citizens chopped them
down for fuel and building materials in times of unrest when the au
thorities governing towns were unable to enforce the laws.
Canals were essential fixtures of cities, more so in the south, which
had more watercourses than te north. The great metropolis of Yang
zhou, which was crisscrossed wit canals, had more boats tan carriages.
Changan had five canals, all but one of which delivered water to parks
in the outer city, lakes in the gardens of patricians, and the grounds of
imperial palaces. The ffth, desigrted to transport lumber and completed
in 742, flowed into the western market, where the wood was stored in
a pool. In 766 the mayor of the capital extended one of the canals east
ward across the city to furish citizens with firewood and charcoal,
which were in short supply. The channel was eight feet wide and ten
feet deep. Canals were weak poits in city walls, as Tang law acknowl
edged. Entering a city through a canal was an offense punishable by
ninety blows with a thick rod and eighty blows if the trespasser was
caught in the water but had not yet entered the town.
The area around Changan was overpopulated and suffered from a lack
of grain from te early seventh century to the early eighth century. That
50 Daily Life in Traditional China
was partly due to the difficult and expensive carting of the cereals that
had to travel roads on the last leg of their journey. In 743 the Commis
sioner of Land and River Transport constructed a canal from the junction
of the Yellow and Wei rivers to the capital, and dug a lake just outside
the city to receive boats. The following year 1,750,000 bushels of grain
arrived from the east and south. Changan rarely suffered a shortage
thereafter. A canal also supplied Luoyang with its needs. It termnated
at a lake inside the city where transport boats anchored.
WARDS
Avenues and streets divided cities into square or rectangular wards
Changan had 110 of them and Luoyang 113-similar to blocks in modern
American towns. Unlike their modern counte
r
parts, however, they were
far larger and walled. I Changan te size of the smallest was 68 acres
and that of the largest, 233 acres. Te wards encompassed houses, man
sions, government offices, monasteries, temples, parks, workshops, and
inns. In Changan, newly rebuilt in the late sixth century, the souther
most wards, four to the east and west of the main north-south avenue,
had no great dwellings, at least in the early eighth century. Farmers
raised crops there. In both capitals there were also gardens for cultivating
medicinal herbs used in the palace; growing vegetables served at im
perial feasts ad sacrifices; and raising bamboo to supply te Department
of Agriculture. The southern portion of one ward in Changan had no
dwellings at all, only graves. Ironically, though the region surrounding
Changa was overpopulated, the capital itself was underpopulated.
Walls of rammed earth, nine or ten feet high in Chang an, enclosed the
wards. Sometimes the walls were inadvertently erected in perilous lo
cations. On July 30, 720, te walls of one ward in Changan collapsed
during the night and a large pool formed. The disaster, probably caused
by a sinkhole created when ground water eroded the limestone bedrock,
destroyed more than 500 homes.
Each of the wards was crisscrossed by north-south and east-west
roads that terminated in gates. Maintaining the integrity of the arteries
was a difficult task for the goverment. Citizens encroached on the roads
to plant crops, to excavate earth to build kilns for baking bricks or roof
tiles, and to build walls and dwellings. The penalty for infringing on the
streets was seventy blows of the thick rod, but only fifty blows with the
thin rod if the infraction was committed to grow food. Enforcement of
that regulation was not particularly effective in the late eighth century,
however. In 776 the throne ordered all structures built in the roads of
the wards and markets destroyed. The lanes of the wards were unpaved.
In the late ninth century rain mired a road in one of them, and a j ackass
carrying firewood got stuck in the mud, blocking the way for a ruffian.
Cities and Urban Life 51
Infuriated, he picked up the beast by all four of its legs and threw it
several paces into a drainage ditch.
Roads divided wards into quarters. The quarters had alleys that were
crooked or serpentine, so the grid pattern favored by Chinese city plan
ners since antiquity broke down at that point. A few names of the al
leys-Felt Alley and the Alley of the Jingling Haress-survive in Tang
sources.
The function of ward walls was to provide internal security by pre
venting the movement of people. The law clearly asserted the principle.
Ninety blows with a thick rod was the punishment for climbing over
ward walls. Each of a ward's roads terminated in gates that a headman,
who was in charge of affairs within the ward, barred at dusk. As the
sun went down in Changan, a tattoo of 400 beats on a drum signaled
the closig of palace gates and a second, of 600 beats, the closing of ward
and city gates. Te length of the tattoos gave people ample time to retur
to their dwellings before the ward gates closed. In the predawn hours
drummers beat another tattoo of 3,000 beats that was the signal for open
ing the gates. Each of the avenues also had drums that sounded at cur
few. The law forbade citizens to travel on te main thoroughfares of the
cities outside the wards during curfew, but it did not restrict their noc
tural movements within the wards. The statute, however, permitted
public commissioners bearing official documents, as well as marriage
processions, to use the avenues and streets after curfew. In both cases
they had to obtain a permit fom the county government first. It also
allowed private citizens who needed to fnd a doctor or procure medicine
for the treatment of the ill to travet as well as those who needed to leave
their ward to announce a death. However, they had to have a certificate
issued by the ward headman. Anyone else found wandering outside the
wards during the night by the Gold Bird Guard was subject to twenty
blows of the thin rod. In 808, however, the throne had a eunuch who
got drunk and violated the curfew beaten to death. The emperor also
demoted the officer in charge of the Gold Bird Guard and banished him
from the capital.
Woe betide the reveler or criminal who tried to ignore the hail of the
night patrol. According to the law, if a guard encountered a traveler on
the main streets outside his ward and the traveler failed to respond to
his queries, the guard was to twang his bowstring. If the wretch refused
to aswer his second calt the sentry was to loose a warning arrow to
one side of him. If the fool still did not reply, the watchman was to shoot
him down.
Aristocrats and high-ranking officials preferred living in the wards of
Changan' s easter half. One particular ward along the northeast wall of
the city attracted their attention because during the Sui dynasty a clair
voyant declared that the place had the aura of nobilty. No doubt the
52 Daily Life in Traditional China
upper classes believed that a mansion there would perpetuate their good
fortune and elite status. The wester half of the city was far more pop
ulous than the easter, and full of drifters and transients. It also appears
to have been the district where foreigners lived. A Turkish prince and
his wife had a mansion there, and most of the foreign churches were
located in the northwest.
Te lowest inhabitants of cities were the impoverished, who lived
wherever they could fnd shelter and sought sustenance by begging from
those better off than themselves. In the early eighth century a man led
a cow that had a human hand more than a foot in length hanging be
tween its forelegs through the wards of a city. He exhibited the mutant
in the expectation that passersby would give him food. An impoverished
woman and her father sang songs in the streets of wards to eke out a
living. A general was so smitten with her voice that he took her as one
of his private entertainers. Not all panhandlers were human. A clever
artisan who was in charge of the imperial factories once carved a Bud
dhist monk from wood and placed it in the market of a provincial city.
The automaton carried a bowl in its hand, was able to move on its own,
and begged for money. When its bowl was full of coppers, a mechanized
bolt abruptly shot out, locking the coins in the dish so that no one could
filch them. The wooden monk could speak on its own and say "Alms. "
The market folk flocked to see the spectacle. Because they wanted the
automaton to speak, the donations made to watch it perform filled the
bowl several thousand times each day.
Emperors were not happy to have derelicts roaming the streets of the
capitals. They considered the cities to be their own special domiciles. In
734 the throne banned beggars from the streets of the metropolises and
consigned them to the Wards for the Sick, Buddhist foundations that
cared for the ill, aged, orphaned, and poor. The government oversaw
the wards and capital officials provided the money for their maintenance
from teir own funds. In 738 the emperor also assigned revenues from
newly opened fields near Changan for te relief of the poor and of com
moners who had retured to their lands after fleeing. Those welfare mea
sures did not survive the rebellion of An Lushan in 756.
After the rebellion the structure of the wards broke down along with
the political order. Previously only nobles and high-ranking ministers
could legally construct gates for teir mansions that opened directly onto
the main avenues of Changan outside the wards. Afterward other citi
zens who had not enjoyed such privileges before followed suit. They
began knocking down ward walls and encroaching on the roads to build
their dwellings. In 831 the Commissioner for Patrolling the Streets re
ported that people having gates opening onto te avenues did not ob
serve curfew carefully, opening them before dawn and closing them after
nightfall. As a result it was easy for thieves to flee and hide on their
Cities and Urban Li 53
property. So the official proposed that all private gates, except for those
of the nobles and ministers, be barricaded.
MARKETS
In theory every city had a market, but small and impoverished coun
ties probably did not. Those that did, were official markets ruled by
Market Commandants appointed by the central government. In 707 the
throne issued a decree forbidding the establishment of markets outside
cities. There were, however, exceptions. The state operated periodic mar
kets along the norther frontier, mainly to purchase horses from no
madic, pastoral peoples. There were also unofficial rural markets, called
"markets in the grass" (norther China) or "markets in the wilds" (south
China). They arose spontaneously in the countryside to serve the needs
of peasants living more than a day's ride from a city. The farmers traded
their produce for goods-the most important of which was salt, which
was not available in many places-suppled by travelig merchants. At
first they had no stores, shops, or warehouses, but toward the end of the
dynasty some of them acquired such facilities.
The government controlled all urban markets through the agency of
Market Commandants and their small staffs. The duties of the comman
dants were to register merchants and their establishments; to inspect
weights and measures to ensure that they met goverment standards; to
weed out counterfeit coins; and to prevent the sale of inferior goods that
did not meet official requirements for size, weight, and quality of ma
terials or workmanship. The statutes required market officials to send all
weights and measures to the imperial treasuries in the capitals or the
offices of prefectures and counties in the eighth moon of every year so
they could be tested to ensure their accuracy, and stamped with a seaL
It was the responsibility of market officials to issue certificates of pur
chase for slaves, horses, cattle, camels, mules, and donkeys within three
days after the transactions. In addition it was their duty to prevent price
fixing, monopolies, and other unfair market practices by merchants. Ac
cording to regulations, they had to set the prevailing prices for all
commodities every ten days. If they fraudulently acquired goods by set
ting the prices higher or lower than their real value at the time, the
government ordered them to resign, stripped them of all their bureau
cratic and aristocratic titles for a period of six years, ad forced them to
pay double the value of the property involved.
The greatest markets in the Tang were those in Chagan. The capital
had two of them, each of which was somewhat bigger than two of the
largest wards (i. e., over 466 acres). There were two roads running east
to west and two running north to south that were 100 paces wide each.
The streets divided the markets into nine sectors. The office of the
54 Daily Life in Traditional China
Market Commandant was in the central block, as were those of two
bureaus charged with stabilizing prices. The first of them was respon
sible for disbursing cereals during famines, when grain prices soared. It
released reserves amassed from taxes and held in government granaries.
Its duty was to food the market with cereals at prices below market
value so that the price of food dropped and people who were starving
had enough to survive. Prefectures also had such ofices as well as gran
aries. The second bureau, abolished in the 730s, was responsible for sta
bilizing prices of other commodities. It dumped surplus goods that
government agencies had not used and property that the state had con
fiscated from nobles, officials, and others who had committed high
crimes. The goverment was about the business of curbing infation.
The nine sectors of Changan's markets, as well as other urban bazaars,
were subdivided into laes (hang), each of which was devoted to a single
commodity and was required by law to erect at its entrace a sign with
a title that designated its specialty. All retail shops or stalls that sold a
given product were located in the lane with the appropriate sign. Ware
houses and wholesale outlets lined the outer walls of the market. Only
a dozen or so of the names for the hang in te capitals and other cities
have survived in Tang literature: Meat (where a man once purchased
the head of white cow to concoct a nostrum for curing some ailment);
Iron (where one could find a clever fortune-teller); Apothecary (where
an emperor once ordered ingredients for a Taoist elixir that would ensure
his immortality); Ready-Made Clothes; Pongee (low-grade silk); Axes;
Steamed Buns; Bridles and Saddles (that had a tavern); Weights and
Measures; Gold- and Silversmits; Fishmongers; and Greengrocers. Since
the eastern market of Changan alone had 220 lanes, these titles represent
a minute fraction of the goods and services offered in the lanes.
There were also businesses i the markets whose hang names are un
known. Some sold horses, mules, cows, pigs, and slaves that were kept
in pens. The western market in Changan had a pig sty where a sow gave
birth to a piglet wit one head, three ears, two bodies, and eight legs in
the summer of 813. A firm in the eastern market, the Jackass Express,
rented donkeys to travelers who did not wish to walk to teir destina
tions in the city. At another firm a patron could purchase foreign musical
instruments. Brewers produced an ale called Melody of the Wester Mar
ket, no doubt because that was the location of their establishment. A
man in that bazaar sold porridge for a proft and made a fortune from
his enterprise. In contrast, the wife of a wealthy merchant, who was a
devout Buddhist and donated his mansion to the church for conversion
into a monastery, sold excellent cooked cereals at a cheap price. There
was an establishment that sold fied pastries and steamed dumplings in
the western market, and also a restaurant or delicatessen.
By the begin ng of the ninth century, a large icrease in trade led to
Cities and Urban Lie 55
new developments in urban markets. Protobanks-there was one in the
western market of Changan-emerged that offered a safe-deposit ser
vice. For a fee they took custody of gold, silver, and coins to protect
them from theft. The firms issued checks to their customers, who could
use them to draw funds from their stored valuables. The checks were
the ancestors of the world's first paper currency, which a provincial gov
ernment in China issued during 1024. Gold- and silversmiths also issued
such promissory notes.
Te hours for trading at markets throughout the empire were more
restrictive than the curfew. According to a Tang statute they opened at
noon with a tattoo of 300 beats on a drum and closed an hour and three
quarters before dusk with 300 beats on a gong. However, night markets
must have flourished in residential wards because the gates of the central
markets closed before nightfall . There is little information about them,
but no doubt they served the needs of customers who had neglected to
purchase essential items during te day at central markets. The throne
banned the night markets in Changan in 841, but, like many such edicts,
that decree was probably ineffective because the bazaars were critical to
the lives of urban dwellers.
Because the mansions of nobles, mandarins, and other eminent people
were mostly located in the eastern half of Changan, the shops of the
eastern market catered to the rich and famous by selling costly and exotic
wares. Its warehouses held rare goods imported fom all over the world.
Although commodities sold in the western market were of a more util
itarian and pragmatic sort, it was not without its own exotic wares. It
had a Persian bazaar. The Persians, whose empire fell to the Arabs in
the early seventh century, specialized in stones, precious metals, gems,
elephant tusks, sacred relics, and above all pearls. After the rebellion of
An Lushan the westem. market also had a thousand or more "Uighur"
moneylenders who adopted Chinese dress, apparently to conceal their
ethnic identities. Several Central Asian peoples assumed Uighur names
no doubt to avail themselves of the extraordinary protection that the
Turks enjoyed-to pursue the lucrative business. The moneylenders ad
vanced cash to the sons and younger brothers of nobles, military officers,
merchants, and commoners. The young men squandered the money on
amusig themselves. The usurers made enormous profits from their
transactions. In 831 a "Uighur" sued the son of a grand general who had
failed to repay a debt of nearly 11 million coppers. Upset over te scan
dal, the emperor not only banished the general but banned all commer
cial dealings between Chinese and foreigners except for trade in
livestock.
Merchants were not the only proprietors of shops in the markets. Bud
dhist monasteries also established retail outlets and businesses that made
loas against security. The income from those enterprises was sometimes
56 Daily Lie in Traditional China
substantial, and found its way into the church's treasuries. The throne
banned Buddhists from participating in such commercial activities in
845.
Te western market of Changan also had a pond for releasing the
living. A Buddhist monk had it dug and filled with water in the early
eighth century. The notion was tat by purchasing fish and freeing them
in the pool, one could accrue merit for one's ancestors that would absolve
them from sin, lead to liberation from purgatory, and assure their rebirth
in a favorable existence, such as an official, in the next life. No doubt
monks recaptured the creatures-as they have in modern times-to re
sell to the next supplicant seeking salvation. Buddhist monasteries had
identical ponds in the Tang. Ironically, the government conducted most
executions under the solitary willow tree near the pond in the wester
market.
Not all trading took place in the great urban markets. By the ninth
century some retail establishments, such as shops that sold fine silk tex
tiles, existed in residential quarters. Furthermore, throughout the Tang,
peddlers roamed the wards of Changan. A hawker who acquired the
nickname Camel because he was a hunchback, pushed a small cart from
which he sold pastries in the streets. Once he crashed into overturned
wagon of bricks and spilled his snacks on the ground. When he removed
the bricks with a mattock, he found a pot of gold. He became a very
wealthy man and purchased a mansion in the capital. A fellow trades
man who was a westerer had a small shop by the gate of a ward. He
lit his lamps and stove in the predawn hours to sell breakfast. A vendor
peddled fish on the main north-south street of Changan. Villagers out
side the capital brought firewood in from the country on the backs of
donkeys to sell in Changan. Huineng, the founder of the southern school
of Chan (Zen), sold firewood in a city near Canton because his father, a
banished official, died when he was very young. While doing so, he was
instantaneously enlightened after hearing the reading of a Buddhist su
tra. There were also vendors of oil who carried their vats on their back
and sometimes were as unwilling as the sellers of kindling to yield the
road to an official.
Nor was manufacturing concentrated in the official markets. As pre
viously noted, the makers of bricks and tiles were in the habit of digging
up dirt from roads in the wards where their works were located. In the
ninth century there was an iron forge in a ward just west of the eastern
market whose blacksmith also dabbled in selling horses in the street.
Some brewers also made fine ale at the Toad Tumulus, an ancient grave
mound in a ward beside the eastern wall of Changan. A craftsman of
fine musical instruments had a workshop in the northeaster section of
Changan. Where water was plentiful, as in Luoyang, there were grist
mils for grindig grain into four inside the city. A Buddhist monastery
in that city had one with four waterwheels.
Cities and Urban Lie 57
Various shops in the roads of wards copied Buddhist sutras and cast
statues that they sold to the faithful along with food and ale. The em
peror forbade that commerce in 714, ordering the clergy in monasteries
to transcribe scriptures for the laity who wanted them instead. Laws
proscribing activities that had become popular were generally effective
only in the short term, so the trade in such articles probably survived
into later times. The throne had banned the manufacture of statues by
craftsmen for public sale in the first half of the seventh century, without
lasting success.
There was also a variety of services offered outside the main markets.
The capitals had many inns, both private and public, to accommodate
travelers. A ward along the west wall of Changan had a funeral parlor
where one could hire square-faced (masked) exorcists who expelled de
mons at graves, as well as rent hearses and other equipment for funerals.
Such establishments would, for a fee, provide professional wailers who
keened during funeral processions. O occasion they held contests to
determine which of their mourners was te greatest singer of dirges.
According to a short story, such a match took place on a major thor
oughfare of the capital and attracted tens of thousands of spectators. Two
firms put up 50,000 coppers to pay for food and drink as a prize for the
wi1mer. The competition began at dawn with an exhibition of hearses
and other funerary parapheralia. At noon the singers entered the arena
and sang their laments. The winner reduced the crowd to sobbing and
weeping with his rendition of "Dew on the Shallots," a classic funeral
elegy. An old madam in a bordello in the Gay Quarters was very wealthy
and rented a large store of clothes and dishes to others of her profession
who wished to entertain male guests. A physiognomist, who read peo
ple's faces to foretell their futures, had a place in one of Changan's south
easter wards. He was so good at his occult art that citizens flocked there
in hordes.
Buddhist monasteries ran public bathhouses in cities. A monk erected
such an establishment in Luoyang, and the citizens of the capital, clergy
and laity, the wealthy and the destitute, tronged there. It was open only
on the frst fve days of each moon, but it attracted a steady stream of
patrons. Some 2,000 to 3,000 customers bathed in its waters yearly during
the seventy or seventy-five days when it was in operation.
The markets had their complement of taverns, but there were also
pubs scattered throughout cities. In Changa westerners operated tav
erns, favored by poets, in the wards along the southeast wall of the city.
They employed white-skinned, green-eyed, blond women from Cental
Asia to sing and dance so that patrons would spend more money on ale.
Aside from the taverns inside Changan's walls, there were pubs where
villagers living along some nineteen miles of the eastern road outside
the city sold ale to travelers. Sojourners called the drinks that those es-
58 Daily Life in Traditional China
tablshments purveyed "goblets for dismounting the horse. " Since the
Chinese rarely drank without eating, pubs were also restaurants or snack
shops.
Tavers dispensed ale on credit, and their proprietors, sometimes
women, entrusted the collection of debts to their waiters. In his youth
the most renowned painter of horses in the Tang caught the attention of
a great poet when he went to settle a bar tab at the versifier's home.
While waiting for the money, he passed the time drawing men and
horses on the ground. The poet was so impressed with his work that he
bestowed an annual stipend of 20,000 coppers on the lad for more than
ten years, to sustain him while he studied painting.
OFFICES
Every city in Tang China had a government office. All of them were
walled compounds. In the provinces they contaied the local governor's
reception halt where he conducted all of his official business, including
criminal trials. Both prefectures and counties had residences at the offices
for the governors and comandants, as well as for their families, if they
accompanied them to their posts. They might have gardens with an
abundance of white fowers. The compounds included offces for sub
ordinate officials and prisons where wardens kept close watch over wit
nesses and criminals. They also housed local schools, with shrines for
Confucius and his disciples, where teachers instructed their charges in
the classics.
I the courtyard before the prefectural governor's reception halt offi
cials, military officers, commoners, and clergy gathered and stood, in
positions fixed by their ranks, on the east side to hear the reading of
imperial amnesties. Couriers of the rapid relay system brought the de
crees, written on yellow paper, from the capital. When everyone was
settled, the governor emerged fom his hall at the north end of te square
with a military escort of twenty officers, and stood on a carpet facing
west. Army officers brought a stand covered with purple cloth and
placed it before him. A judicial official spread the imperial decrees on it.
Two legal mandarins read parts of the edicts alternately in loud voices.
The objective of tis recital was to ensure that the emperor's subjects
understood his will. When the reading concluded, the governor dis
missed all in attendance.
Te largest concentrations of public buildings were in the two capitals.
Each had compounds for its mayor and two county commandants. They
also had huge, walled compounds-the August Enceintes-that con
tained the bureaus of the central goverment. Official agencies were also
located in wards outside that compound. The Directorate of the Sons of
State, which governed the most prestigious schools in te empire, was
Cities and Urban Lie 59
just souteast of the August Enceinte in Changan. In the early eighth
century the throne converted one entire ward of the capital, formerly a
market, into a camp for training soldiers in the use of the crossbow. In
the ninth century there were also military camps in the outer city of that
capital. I the last years of the dynasty Changan's wards also contained
institutes for trainig musicians and entertainers.
By far the largest number of offices in Changan's wards were the head
quarters of prefectural officials who traveled to the capital and made
reports to the throne on affairs in their districts once a year, in the au
tumn and winter. During 643 the emperor discovered tat they had no
quarters in the capital and were renting rooms where they lived together
with merchants. He therefore ordered the agencies i charge of construc
tion to build them mansions. I 691, 2,800 of the local officials arrived
in Luoyang to attend court, so the number of their dwelligs must have
been substantial. After the rebellion of An Lushan, provincial mandarins
no longer made annual trips to Changan. Military governors took over
the mansions and tued them into transmission offices. They sent their
dispatches there for forwarding to te throne. The bureaus also became
credit institutions. Southern merchants who transported their goods
north and sold them in the capital turned the money that they made
from their transactions over to agents at the transmission offices of the
districts from which they care. Te officials then used the funds to pay
the taxes that their provinces owed the central government and issued
the merchants certificates, known a "flying money." When the traders
returned to their homes in the south, they presented the certificates to
local authorities, who paid them the amount of money specified on the
certificates. The system saved the merchants the risk and burden of
carrying their profts with tem as they traveled, and spared the gov
erment the expense of transporting taxes to Changan.
CHURCHES
All great cities in the Tang had religious establishents of one sort or
another. In the early eighth century Changan had ninety-one Buddhist
monasteries (sixty-four for monks and twenty-seven for nuns), sixteen
Taoist temples (ten for priests and six for priestesses), two Nestorian
Christian churches, and four Zoroastrian shrines. Those figures did not
include small Buddhist chapels or te ancestral shrines of powerful fam
ilies. Some of the monasteries and temples were immense, occupying
entire wards in te capital. One of the Buddhist establishments there had
more than ten courtyards with 1,897 bays (the space between pillars)
where 300 officially ordained monks resided.
The size and magnificence of the churches in Changan were the result
primarily of patronage fom the throne, nobility, and eminent political
60 Daily Life in Traditional China
figures, who usually endowed them in order to earn merit toward sal
vation for themselves and their ancestors. In 631 the emperor established
a Taoist abbey in gratitude to priests who had cured the heir apparent's
illness. The Tang dynasty had a special affinity for Taoism because the
family claimed descent from Lao Tzu. When the throne dubbed a prince
heir apparent in 656, it converted his mansion into an abbey whose ver
andas, halls, murals, statuary, and priests' quarters were beyond com
pare. In the early eighth century, when the daughter of a princess took
vows as a Taoist priestess, the court converted her mansion into an ab
bey. In 747, when the husband of a princess died, she requested permis
sion to become a Taoist priestess, and the emperor established an abbey
for her. The third emperor of the Tang established the most famous Bud
dhist monastery in the city-it occupied a whole ward-in the memory
of his mother. The mother of an emperor in the mid-ninth century en
dowed a Buddhist monastery with 200,000 cash and three carts laden
with embroidered cloth to accrue merit for her son's deceased wife. Even
enslaved palace ladies collected money among themselves to erect a pa
goda. One official donated his mansion as an act of repentance for exe
cuting a monk who had been falsely accused of having intercourse with
a maidservant. The most powerful eunuch of the early eighth century
donated his mansion in Changan for conversion into a Buddhist mon
astery. After the casting of a bell for the church, he convened a vegetarian
feast for members of the imperial court. He demanded that his guests
contribute 100,000 coppers each time they struck the bell. Someone who
wished to curry the eunuch's favor struck the bell twenty times and
forked over 2 million cash.
It was also the habit of the throne to have buildings in palaces dis
mantled and given to churches, which reassembled them to construct
religious halls. Empress Wu donated one of her dressing rooms to a
Buddhist monastery, and in 713 the emperor gave his bedchamber to a
cloister. In the early eighth century the throne presented a stage for danc
ing to a Buddhist cloister. In 730 the emperor bestowed perhaps the
largest of such gifts when he wanted a Taoist abbey erected with utmost
speed. He ordered four palace halls dismantled to construct two halls
for venerating the gods, a meditation chamber, and gates. I the early
ninth century another emperor had 300 men restore the same abbey at
a cost of 1 million coppers. At the cost of 1,000 lengths of silk and 171
pounds of tea, he also had an enclosed passageway built from the palace
to the temple. Then he paid 5 million coppers and 207 bushels of grain
to sponsor a great rite at te church.
Some emperors had halls for teir own portraits established at mon
asteries in Changan. In 713 the monarch allocated 20 million coppers
and assigned 1,000 craftsmen to the construction of such an edifice. Not
only did his likeness adorn the walls, but paintings of ghosts and gods
Cities and Urban Lie 61
that he had removed fom the palace were installed there. A princess
built a portrait hall that had landscape murals on its walls painted by a
respected artist.
The wealth of Buddhist monasteries in Changan was enormous. In the
early years of the dynasty, a monk set up an Inexhaustible Treasury
so named because its assets could earn interest indefinitely-in a mon
astery. Men and women of high standing brought cartloads of coppers
and silk as acts of repentance. They left their riches on the premises and
then departed without giving their names. By the middle of the seventh
century the wealth derived from those donations was incalculable. Un
fortunately, the prelates who govered the church placed a secular cus
todian, whom they judged to be of good character, in charge of guarding
their treasury. The temptation was too much for him, and he made off
with its gold. The monks were so trusting that they were unaware of the
theft until he absconded, and never discovered how much he had stolen.
Monks supervised the treasury thereafter. The monastery used the in
terest it earned from loanng the riches it accumulated to pay for the
restoration of other monasteries throughout the empire, to feed the starv
ing, and to sponsor religious rites. The monks did not require contracts
from debtors, fully confident tat they would repay them with interest.
ln 713 the emperor abolished the treasury on the grounds that its bank
ing practices were fraudulent, and confscated its treasury. He then dis
bursed the holdings to other Buddhist monasteries as well as Taoist
abbeys in the capital for use in repairing statues, halls, and bridges.
All monasteries had at least one hall for worshipping Buddha: offering
prayers, buring incense, and chanting scriptures. Some were enormous.
A hall dedicated to the Buddha Who Is to Come was 150 feet high. Every
hall had a statue of the Buddha, one of which was thirty feet tall. They
were usually made of bronze, but also could be of precious metals and
stones. One monastery in Changan had 600 small silver Buddhas, one
figure of pure gold that was several feet high, and another of silver over
six feet tall. A church in the capital had a statue carved from jade that
came from Central Asia. Occasionally, emperors bestowed statuary from
the palace collection on monasteries. In such cases they sent the images
forth in corteges having 1,000 painted carriages escorted by troupes of
palace musicians, singers, and dancers.
Emperors might also bestow paintings from the palace collection on
churches. Most artworks in the cloisters served ideological and educa
tional ends. Since the vast majority of Chinese were illiterate, Buddhist
monasteries and Taoist abbeys commissioned artists to paint murals de
picting aspects of their beliefs that the unlettered could grasp visually.
The frescoes of purgatory that the greatest artist of the dynasty painted
on the walls of a monastery in Changan were so horrific and monstrous
that visitors felt their hair stand on end. He executed another mural of
62 Daily Life in Traditional China
the underworld that was so terrifying, butchers and fishmongers who
saw it changed their professions. They feared that they would suffer the
hellish tortures depicted in it for the sin of slaying living things. One
artist's depictions of the underworld were particularly marvelous be
cause he had died, visited the infemal regions, and retumed to life to
paint what he had seen. Murals of paradise were no less vivid and re
alistic, though less sensational.
The most prominent structures of Buddhist monasteries were pagodas,
a unique form of architecture developed by the Chinese. Purportedly
based on Indian stupas, they more closely resembled ancient towers that
had been the vogue in architecture centuries before the Tang. Pagodas
were artificial imitations of the sacred mountain, and were the only high
rise buildings in traditional times. Two, the Large Goose and the Small
Goose, that rise to 210 feet and 149 feet, respectively, and are built of
brick, are the only structures that survive from Tang Changan. The upper
stories of pagodas provided excellent views of cities and became urban
landmarks.
They also assumed an important role in the ancient Chinese art of feng
shui, or geomancy. The basis for geomancy was the belief that invisible
forces (qi: breaths, vapors, energies) control nature and the destiny of
people. They fow above and below. Human activities, such as digging
and building, disrupt, obstruct, and injure the currents. As a result, nat
ural disasters occur and, more important, one's luck takes a tum for the
worse. In the early seventh century a Sui official observed that a large
lake southwest of Changan was exerting an adverse effect on the capital,
and suggested that the erection of a pagoda could counter its infuence.
In geomancy, water, the element of yin (the moon, dark, pliant, female)
could exert either a benevolent or a malevolent force on the site of a city,
dwelling, or grave, depending on its location and character. A river with
a slow current that fowed south and tumed to the east was a benign
influence. In this case the lake was to the west and was not fowing at
all. Therefore, it was stagnant and lifeless. To remedy such a situation,
geomancers usually proposed interposing a tall object, often a tree for
a home, that represented yang (the sun, light, rigid, fire, male) be
tween the structure and the water. A pagoda was ideal for a city, given
its height. So in 611 the emperor had a pagoda built of wood that was
330 feet tall and 120 paces in circumference at the southwest comer of
Chang an.
Monasteries had meditation halls where monks practiced their devo
tions, cells where they slept, baths where they bathed, as well as kitchens
and dining halls. They had libraries where they stored their sutras (scrip
tures). One of them had a separate building that housed a revolving
bookcase. The size of Buddhist libraries in Changan grew enormously
when pilgrims retumed from India with great loads of suuas. After they
Cities and Urban Lie 63
arrived home, they translated the scriptures at the churches in the capital.
Monastic collections often included Taoist scriptures as well as secular
works. One wise poet of the ninth century deposited editions of his col
lected works in monasteries on three different occasions, probably be
cause he believed that the cloisters provided better security and would
preserve them longer. The broad range of books in the churches may
account for the fact that candidates for civil service examinations took
lodgings in the monasteries of Changan while preparing for their tests.
Some of Changan's monasteries were repositories for Buddha's relics;
four of his teeth were preserved in four different cloisters. One of them,
which a Chinese pilgrim brought from India, was three inches in length.
Those monasteries put te purported artifacts on exhibit with offerings
of food, fowers, and incense. Citizens donated cereals, coppers, ad
other things as pledges of their reverence. The most revered of the relics
was part of Buddha's finger bone, preserved in a cloister 100 miles or so
west of the capital. On three occasions in the late eighth and the ninth
centuries the throne had it brought to Changan, escorted by a grand
cortege with monks and nuns trailing behind. Villagers from the sur
rounding countryside flocked to the city to watch the spectacle as the
parade entered through the northwest gate, where the emperor greeted
it from a pillared hall above. The leading families of the metropolis dec
orated their coaches in rich adornments to honor the relic. In 873 a zeal
ous believer, a soldier, lopped off an arm and carried it along the road,
his blood dripping on the street, as the cavalcade made its way through
the boulevards. Many citizens bit off their fngers to manifest their de
votion. A monk bured herbs on his bald pate. He shook his head and
cried out in pain, but lads from the market gripped him tightly so that
he could not budge. Finally, he fell to the ground when he could no
longer stand the agony. After the relic arrived in the palace, the emperor
ordered some 10,000 posts of incense, ten to twenty feet tall, erected
throughout the city. Gold and jade adored te first nine feet of the
posts, which were made of earth. The fragrance from the incense wafted
throughout the capital. Wealthy families built halls from silk cloth where
they installed trees of gold and jade and pools of mercury. They also
built foats of fancy textiles that carried singers and dancers. The floats
paraded through the sheets of the metropolis for the amusement of
Changan's citizens.
Self-mutilation was a facet of Buddhist asceticism. Buddhists had little
regard for the body, which they called "a bag of stinking skin." They
thought of it as the ultimate source of the temptations that prevented
the devout from attaining enlightenment and salvation. It is therefore
not surprising that monks or the laity willingly sacrificed all or part of
their bodies to express their deep devotion to their faith. They might
burn off fingers, gouge out eyes, or cut off ears to make offerings to the
64 Daily Life in Tmditional China
Buddha. Buddhist scripture promised the clergy who made such sacri
fices that they would qualify for rebirth in the paradise of Pure Land.
The most extreme form of such practices was autocremation. One Tang
monk at the age of seventy-four set out with a disciple for a peak on a
holy mountain. At his order the disciple wrapped him i waxed cloth
and hemp, and poured oil over him. Then he set fire to his master. The
fames consumed the monk's body from the top of his head to the soles
of his feet.
Convents were not always the abodes of the chaste that they were
supposed to be. I the mid-ninth century an emperor made a tour of
Changan in disguise. When he arrived at a Taoist nunnery, he discovered
that the women were attired in elegant gowns and heavily made up.
Shocked and angered, the monarch ordered one of his officials to expel
the priestesses from the place, and appointed two men to take charge of
the abbey. The ladies apparently were courtesans.
THE GAY QUARTERS
There was one special district, the North Hamlet, in Changan reserved
for high-class courtesans who mainly served nobles, officials, graduates
of the civil service examinations, and occasionally rich merchants. Prized
more, or at least as much as, for teir talents as entertainers at feasts
than for their sexual services, they resembled Japanese geishas. They
were superior to their counterparts in Luoyang and the barmaids who
served drinks in the prefectures because they had excellent table manners
and were extremely polite (or at least some were). They were official
entertainers who had to register wit the goverment and over whom
the mayor of the capital exercised control. He regulated their sedan
chairs and could stop them from leaving their quarters.
The North Hamlet was in the northeast quadrant of a ward that was
adjacent to the eastern market, across from the August Enceinte ad east
of the national colleges. It had three winding alleys. The courtesans liv
ing in the Nort Alley were inferior in skills to the those residing in the
Central and Southern alleys, who held them in contempt. The gates of
the latter byways opened onto the north-south road of the ward. Newly
appointed officials sauntered incognito tere, looking for pleasure. The
bordellos on those alleys were large and tranquil. They had three or more
salons for receiving guests as well as smaller rooms hung with several
layers of drapes. Flowers and shrubs grew in front of and behind the
dwellings, where there were ponds with strangely shaped rocks. Not all
of the courtesans there were well-to-do. The house of one who lived in
the South Alley with her madam-who happened to be her biological
mother-and two older, unskilled sisters was shabby. Since the women
Cities and Urban Lie
A candidate
lodged at an
inn in this
ward.
I
East
Magazin
Tmperial An
V cestral Shrine
46
Capital

schools
I
Fianu =
Monastery
Provincial examination
andidates preferred rent
ing quarters in this ward
since it was close to the

Wa1
County
North Hamlet, the Gay Quarters
65
40
attracted few pleasure seekers, the women sold herbs and fruit at a small
stall on their property.
The madams were, for the most part, foster mothers because the girls
and young women over whom they exercised control were usually not
their biological daughters. Some of the foster mothers were former cour
tesans who were too old to pursue their profession. They supported men
who attended to teir bedchambers, but te women did not treat them
as their husbands. Madams were popularly called "exploding charcoal,"
perhaps because they often lost their tempers at their foster daughters.
Foster mothers taught the courtesans the skills of their trade: singing and
the rules of drinking games in particular. They flogged their trainees
whenever they were negligent or lazy.
As for the courtesans, some had been raised as beggars in their youth,
and oters had been indentured to poor families in rural hamlets. Others
came from good (i. e. , wealthy or patrician) families that had betrothed
them to obtain a bride price from unscrupulous men. Those scoundrels
then sold the girls to madams in the North Hamlet, where they had no
means of extricating themselves. When the girls entered the bordellos
there, they took the surnames of their foster mothers. After training, at
the age of eleven or twelve they received splendid gowns, a gift that
signified they were fully fit to receive guests.
It was difficult for courtesans to leave their bordellos. The madams let
them out only on the eighth, eighteenth, and twenty-eighth days of the
moon to hear lectures on scriptures at a nearby Buddhist monastery, and
then only after their daughter paid 1,000 coppers. On those tree days
young men of Changan gathered at the church to look over and meet
the courtesans. If a woman went elsewhere, to attend a party at a park
66 Daily Life in Traditional China
or to have a rendezvous with a man, a maid had to accompany her. The
maid took her earnings and handed them over to her madam.
An important role for the courtesans was to supervise feasts. They
were at ease with nobles, high-ranking officials, and candidates for the
civil service examinations, but were especially punctilious in following
the rules of propriety when receiving court officials who carried gold
insignia. Whatever the case, te best of them were skilled conversation
alists, poets, and singers who knew te rules of drinking games and kept
a party convivial. They were also not above telling a guest that he talked
too much when he was bragging about his accomplishments and spoiling
the banquet for oters. Some of them, however, had bad dispositions
when offended. After a drunken guest made fun of one courtesan, she
struck his cheek and inficted a deep scratch. Some hostesses enjoyed
great repute among their patrons even though they were homely. After
hearing the fame of a courtesan, a graduate of the examinations named
Liu became infatuated with her, sight unseen. He sent her gift after gift,
but she refused to see him. Fially, he bribed an official with a gift of
three and three-quarters pounds of gold fowers and silver goblets. The
mandarin escorted the woman to the graduate's feast even though she
was sick at the time. When Liu lifted the curtain of her sedan chair, he
found an ugly woman who was disheveled, in tears, and older than he.
He sent her back
The normal fee for a feast at a bordello in North Hamlet was 1,600
coppers, and double that for a guest who was a newcomer and for a
party that went on after the first candles sputtered out. Musicians who
lived near North Hamlet were ready to perform for a feast at a moment's
notice. The musicians charged 1,200 coppers for each round of drinks,
but 2,400 if the revelry went on after the first candles died. When a guest
came up short on the required fee to a madam, she might seize his car
riage and clothes in lieu of payment.
In the early ninth century the North Hamlet could be a dangerous
place to visit. A young member of the Gold Bird Guard named Wang
encountered a drunk in one of the brothels and hid under the man's bed.
Another man suddenly burst into the room with sword drawn and be
headed the drunk, believing him to be Wang. The murderer then threw
his victim's head to the ground and lay down on te bed to sleep. Wang
escaped with his life, presumably after spending an uncomfortable night
on the floor, and never visited the quarter again. In the same period
Linghu, a candidate for the civil service examinations sent to Changan
from the provinces, spent much of his time in the Gay Quarters. One
day the madam of a brothel asked him to leave because she was having
a family gathering. Suspicious or curious, he went to the neighboring
house to sneak a peek at the festivities. From its window he saw the
Cities and Urban Li 67
madam and her courtesan slay a drunk and bury him in their backyard.
The next day, he went to spend the night at the brothet and in the
middle of the night asked the courtesan about the murder. Alarmed, she
seized his throat in an attempt to strangle him and called out to her
foster mother. When he was on the verge of dying, the madam advised
her daughter to stop. The next morning Linghu reported the matter to
the authorities, but when tey went to ivestigate, the pair had fed.
Some courtesans were not happy with their lives in North Hamlet and
yearned to leave it. If they were lucky, a rich man might marry them,
present them with gold and silk as a bride price, and take them away
from North Hamlet. Nobles might, with te approval of teir wives, take
them as concubines. In one case, while a duke was occupied with affairs
of state, his nephew had an illicit affair with his uncle's concubine and
spent a month with her, neglecting his duties. Wen the matter came to
light, the duke's wife sent her away with several hundred pieces of gold.
The woman married a minor clerk, and before a year had passed, they
had squandered the gold. Since her husband could not support her, she
returned to North Hamlet to become a courtesan again.
The local goverments of prefectures and larger administrations also
maintained courtesans, who had to register and entertain officials. Camp
courtesans provided amusement for mlitary officers at posts around the
empire. The proud father of a successful graduate of the civil service
examinations opened the gates of his home in soutwest China for a
party at which all of the camp courtesans in his district appeared to
enliven the festivities.
Not all courtesans lived in the Gay Quarters of Changan. Oe named
Night Coming lived in a ward along the southeast wall of the capital.
As a young woman her skills at amusing men, singing, and dancing
exceeded all others. The sons of the nobility squandered fortunes to pay
for a visit to her. One of the greatest poets of the Tang, a Taoist priestess
and a courtesan, entertained her gentleman clients i the abbey where
she lived. Both of those women probably were official courtesans, for
they appear to have entertained only aristocrats and mandarins.
As for commoners, when the economy boomed in the second half of
the Tang, public houses of prostitution began to appear in markets ad
other heavily trafficked places to serve the needs of merchants and others
who could afford the pleasure.
A promiscuous man could catch a venereal disease in the Gay Quarters
or in lower-class bordellos. Syphilis did not exist in China until Euro
peans introduced it in the sixteenth century. Tang physicians recognized
some form of gonorrhea, however, and they knew that it was spread by
indiscriminate intercourse with prostitutes.
68 Daily Life in Traditional China
PARKS
The largest park in Changan was the Forbidden Park north of Chang
an. Though not the largest in the empire-that distinction belonged to
its counterpart i Luoyang-it was forty miles in circumference and, as
its name implies, off-limits to anyone but the emperor, his servitors, and
his guests. Fed by rivers and canals that flowed from the mountains
south of the city, it had lakes with fish and groves of peach, pear, and
willow trees, as well as vineyards. The Department of Agriculture ran
the vast complex that produced food for the emperor, his family, and
his officials. The park was also an animal preserve where herds of ani
mals roamed, and sometimes became prey during the throne's hunts.
There were palatial halls and ball fields where the emperor amused him
self and those whom he chose to honor.
Several parks existed in the districts outside the Forbidden Park and
the palaces. The greatest of them was the Serpentine River in the south
east comer of the city. In the early eighth century the throne had the
river flowing through the area dredged to form a lake so deep that one
could not see the bottom. It was joined to a much older park called the
Lotus Garden. After 756 it became the most popular spot for feasts that
emperors bestowed on their officials. A Arab who visited the capital in
the ninth century reported that it was off-limits to commoners (i.e., cit
izens who were not aristocrats, mandarins, or examination graduates) .
The park had a two-story hall called Purple Clouds as well as a num
ber of pavilions where a successful contender for a palace examination
might convene a feast to celebrate his victory. The Serpentine River and
Lotus Garden had willows, poplars, lotus, chrysanthemums, marsh
grasses, and reeds. Wildfowl visited it in the fall when they made their
way south for the winter. Esthetes liked to visit, watch the birds fly by,
and listen to their cries. There were also a Buddhist convent and a mon
astery, as well as two ancestral shrines for high-ranking officials, within
its precincts. In 835 the throne undertook a restoration of the park, or
dering 1,500 soldiers to dredge its lake and rebuild its edifices. At that
time the emperor bestowed grants of vacant land on officials so that they
could build teir own pavilions i the park.
Patricians could visit the Serpentine River at any time of the year, but
they were particularly fond of going there during the spring. It was the
custom for citizens of Changan to climb into carriages or mount horses
and ride to parks in the city or scenic areas in the suburbs during the
second half of the first moon. There they erected oiled tents and feasted
to enjoy the arrival of spring. The waterproof tents protected revelers
and their victuals from being soaked by rain. The third day of the third
moon was an occasion that had special relevance to Serpentine River.
Since the fourth century the educated had held driking partes along
Cities and Urban Life 69
winding rivers, and those festivities survived into the Tang (though then
they took place on the banks of lakes) . Patricians went to the Serpentine
River, where they ate and drank under silk tents erected along the shores
of the lake. High-ranking ministers could take their pleasure on painted
boats that drifted on the surface of its water. The emperor, who some
times attended such fetes, might provide entertainment in the form of
music, song, dance, and acrobatics by lending his own performers to the
revelers. The ninth day of the ninth moon was an occasion for visits to
the park, where revelers spread out a picnic, roamed the banks of the
lake half-drunk, and listened to the calls of ducks and geese.
4
DWELLINGS
The word for "home" in Chinese is a pictograph of a roof with a pig
beneath. The roof was, of course, essential to any dwelling built above
ground. A pig in an abode, however, was peculiar to China. Throughout
most of China's history, even in the twentieth century, the pig has been
the most prized source of meat, butchered and eaten on ceremonial or
sacrificial occasions by even the most humble people. For that reason the
lowly peasant made every effort to protect the creature from theft and
allocated space for it within his house. Those with greater resources
rich peasants, merchants, officials, and aristocrats-had sties to house
their hogs and did not keep them in their living quarters.
There were all sorts of dwellings in the Tang dynasty. Beyond the
Great Wall pastoral tribes lived in yurts, round tents made of felt that
they stretched over wood frames. They could easily dismantle the yurts
and move them, loaded on their horses, to greener pastures for grazing
their sheep. In northwest China, where trees were scarce and the climate
was dry, people lived in artificial caves. The soil of that region was loess,
dirt that the winds had blown in from the steppes of the north for cen
turies. The deposits were 150 or more feet thick, and fairly easy to work
since they contained few rocks. The inhabitants dug chambers into the
sides of hills or excavated deep, rectangular pits at the bottom of which
they tunneled into the walls to fashion rooms. Cave dwelligs reached
a mature stage of development during the Tang. In southwest China
72 Daily Life in Traditional China
aborigines lived in homes built on pilings to protect themselves and their
property from moisture and fooding. Along the Yangtze River crews of
transport vessels spent teir entire lives on boats. Their craft even had
gardens that produced vegetables for the tables of the boat people. Some
merchants in central China had large ships on which they lived with
troupes of female entertainers and complements of maidservants. In
some souther districts nearly half of the population lived on boats.
Most of the information about houses in Tang sources concerns the
great residences of the patricians in Changan and Luoyang. At the be
ginning of the dynasty, those mansions were spare and plain. Between
690 and 710, however, members of the aristocracy, especially princesses,
began to erect lavish dwellings, striving to outdo each other in extrav
agance. That trend continued during the second half of lllustrious Au
gust's reign among iperial princes, hgh-ranking officials, and those
who enjoyed imperial favor. In some instances the behavior of well
connected families during tat period was as outrageous as that of
Zhongzong's daughters in the early eight century. One of Yang Guifei's
elder sisters, who enjoyed imperial favor by virtue of her kinship to the
emperor's beloved consort, arrived at the house of a former high-ranking
minister named Wei. Dressed in a skirt and tunic of yellow silk gauze,
she climbed out of her sedan chair and entered the mansion with more
than twenty of her maidservants. She met Wei's sons and said, "I've
heard that this dwelling is up for sale. How much do you want for it?"
They replied, "This was the residence of our ancestor, so we could not
bear to part with it." Before they finished speaking, several hundred
workmen burst into the mansion, scaled the easter and western wings,
and began dismantlig the structures from the roof tiles down to the
timbers. Helpless to stop the pillaging, the Wei sons and their servants
managed to rescue only their zithers and books. As compensation for
seizing their halls, the woman gave them some two acres of wasteland.
In contrast, when workmen finished building her main hall, using the
materials from the Wei mansion, she paid them 2 million coppers for the
job. In the end the lady met her just desert for abuse of the Weis. When
A Lushan's armies descended on Changan, she fed into a bamboo
grove, where her mother-in-law stabbed her to death before slitting her
L throat.
During the rebellion of An Lushan many of the great houses in the
capitals were razed or ruined. After 763 chief ministers, other powerful
mandarins, and meritorious generals launched another period of extrav
agant building. One of them in the second half of the eighth century had
two first-rate mansions-northern and southern-in Changan as well as
more than a score of country estates south of the city. After his disgrace
and execution the government had both of the mansions dismantled and
seized the building materials to construct office buildings. The fashion
House and Gardfn 73
of erecting grand mansions i the capitals continued during later times
when peace and prosperity prevailed. There were, however, eminent of
ficials who were frugal and lived on shabby lanes in homes that barely
sheltered them from wind and rain.
Many of the mansions in Changan and Luoyang were actually the
property of the emperor, who thought the capitals were his own personal
domains. It was the habit of the throne to bestow mansions on nobles,
mandarins, and eminent persons who enjoyed imperial favor. Some of
the dwellings were enormous. The mansion of a prince might occupy an
entire ward. When the emperor granted such gifts, he usually ordered a
chief minister and/ or general to escort the honored recipient to his new
residence with the imperial fife and drum corps. The throne might also
furnish a troupe of female entertainers, fancy fabrics, and silver vessels,
as well as bestow a feast upon the honoree. Occasionally, an emperor
would erect a dwelling for a favorite. Illustrious August had one raised
in Luoyang for a singer whose voice he greatly prized. It was more lavish
than the mansions of the aristocracy. Properties of that sort reverted to
the state on te death of the occupant and were sometimes sold by the
government. It was also the privilege of the throne to confiscate them if
the person who received them committed a high crime or suffered some
disgrace. Not all dwellings in the capitals, however, were in the hands
of the dynasts. Such private real estate could be sold. One of the man
sions i Changan was valued at 3.4 million coppers in 856, and another
sold for 5 million coppers in the same period. I one instance an emperor
of the early ninth century had to spend 2 million coppers to purchase a
mansion so that he could return it to the impoverished descendant of a
venerated chief minister who had lived in te early seventh century.
Ideally, a dwelling of the Tang dynasty faced south so that it received
the warmth of the sun and the beneficent forces of fire-the element
associated with that direction and a vitalizing force for the inhabitants
of the house. This notion, derived from ancient cosmology and geomancy
lengshui), determined te location of a dwelling's main gate or door. The
Chinese, however, also believed that malevolent forces, such as noxious
vapors (qi) or ghosts, could enter through the portals. To obstruct such
evil invasions, those who could afford to do so had a wall, called a
shadow wall, built in front of their gates to prevent calamities from be
falling their families.
Larger dwellings had outer walls to provide privacy
and security. Builders used the same rammed earth tech- Exterior Walls
no logy employed in building the outer ramparts of cities.
and Gates
They did not, however, face home walls with brick or
stone. That may explain why sixty days of continuous rai in the fall of
754 destroyed large numbers of houses in Changan. Tat type of con
struction had other defects as well. A tief needed only a pail of water
74 Daily Life in Traditional China
Rammed Earth Wall Construction for a House
for rubbing a hole in a wall to break in and make off with the owner's
valuables. Furthermore, unless carefully tended to, earth walls devel
oped cracks from settling or earthquakes. Nosy neighbors might then
peek into the house next door.
Walls had to have gates. At the mansions of the upper classes they
were tall enough to accommodate a mounted rider and wide enough to
permit the passage of a carriage with its team of horses. They had two
leaves like tl1e doors to halls, and wooden bars on te inside to bolt
them. Keepers manned them to prevent the intrusion of unwanted vis
itors. If they did not recognize the person knocking on the portal, they
would demand a calling card from the stranger. Unscrupulous gate
keepers might also demand a bribe from the visitor. They would not
inform their masters that someone had come to pay him a call otherwise.
One of the honors accorded to the highest-ranking aristocrats and man-
House and Garden 75
darins was the privilege of having lances with banners attached to them
planted outside the gates of their homes and offices. Sumptuary regu
lations specified the number of lances, which varied, according to the
rank of the man, from twenty-four for the emperor to ten for the gov
ernors of the smallest prefectures. Because the banners deteriorated over
time, the Office of Military Arms replaced them every five years. The
lances were markers of rank and made the dwellings of the elite who
lived outside te palace readily identifiable to travelers on urban roads.
Depictions of gate gods, either painted directly on the leaves or on
paper that was attached to them, were a means of defending the portals
against the intrusions of evil forces. According to folklore, the deities
were two generals who served Emperor Taizong of the Tang. One night
the emperor took ill after hearing the sound of a demon heaving bricks
and tiles at the door of his bedchamber. Two generals volunteered to
stand guard in front of the emperor's door, and did so night after night
until Taizong recovered. The emperor then had portraits of te officers
painted and glued to the leaves of hs gate, one for each panel, to prevent
the demon from entering again.
The mansions of the rich and powerful in Tang China, like
those before and after them, consisted of a series of courtyards. Halls
Unlike the great houses, chateaus, and villas of the West, they
were not single, massive buildings embracing parlors, dining rooms,
kitchens, bedrooms, and so forth. Instead, they were compounds con
taining separate structures for different purposes. In general the main
buildings, or halls, sat on a central axis that ran from north to south and
were at the rear of the large courtyards. Smaller buildings sat on the east
and west sides of the squares, and were j oined to the halls by porticos,
or covered walkways, that provided shelter from the elements for any
one moving between the structures. The courtyards were fairly self
contained, so that an owner could close one off and rent it to a lodger.
The front or outer courtyard was the man's domain. It contained the
largest and most formal hall, a parlor where the head of the household
received visitors and conducted business. The rear or inner apartments
were the woman's realm and were off-limits to men unless they were
family members. In the seventh and early eighth centuries some of the
patricians had eunuchs to guard those quarters, their harems. In 749 the
throne abolished the custom with a decree that ordered all private house
holds to send their eunuchs to the palace.
Most halls were rectangular with one longer side, the font, facing
south. Occasionally, an official might have a crescent-shaped parlor built
to receive hs associates. Halls were usually one or two stories high, so
mansions presented a horizontal aspect. Sumptuary statutes regulated
their size. The halls of aristocrats and mandarins of the third grade and
above could not exceed five bays (the space between two pillars) on the
76 Daily Life in Traditional China
Courtard Dwellings
long side and three on the short. The figures for nobles and bureaucrats
of the fourth and fifth grades were five and three bays, and those for
lower ranks and for commoners were three and one, respectively.
The halls rested on platforms of rammed earth that prevented foods
from damaging the interior and its contents. Sometimes that precaution
failed. In 817 a heavy rain in Changan collapsed a pillar in one of the
palaces, flooded the markets with three feet of water, and destroyed
House and Garden 77
more than 2,000 homes. That paled in comparison to a flood that struck
a city in the norteast during 669. The waters rose to five feet and de
stroyed more than 14,000 homes. The wealthy had the foundations of
their homes and the stairs leading up to them faced with polished stones
that had beautiful grains. The burish was so fine in some cases that
visitors wearing leather boots risked slipping and falling. Stone, how
ever, was not a preferred building material in ancient China. It was used
mostly for steps, balustrades, bridges, and tombs.
A builder had to be careful where he obtained his ma-
terials, lest he disturb te fengshui of the site. When a ge- Construction
omancer visited a chief minister in the early eight
century, he warned the mandarin not to have earth removed from the
northeast comer of the property. A month later the man paid another
call on the official, declared that the aura of the place was desolate, and
suspected that a great deal of soil had been taken from the forbidden
spot. When he and the minister went to the site, they discovered pits
more than ten feet deep. The geomancer predicted that the mandarin
would enjoy fame and fortune for twenty years, but thereafter his sons
would suffer disaster. Greatly shocked, the official asked if the misfor
tune could be averted if the holes were filled. The master replied that
soil from another place would not have the aura of the site and would
not join with the arteries of energy running beneath te ground. As he
had foretold, one of the chief minister's sons was later executed and the
other was sent into exile for collaborating with An Lushan.
Craftsmen, using bamboo scaffoldings, raised wooden pillars that
rested on stone plinths (footings) on the rammed earth platforms. Car
penters worked them into round shapes and then sanded them smooth.
There were two materials for accomplishing the latter task. One was a
plant appropriately called "wood thief," which grew in the marshes of
the northwest and contained large amounts of silica. The other was the
rough skin of sharks. The pillars, not the walls, bore all of the roof's
weight. Only in peasant dwellings were walls load-bearing. Carpenters
tied the pillars together by fastening square or rectangular beams on
their tops. In very fancy halls, imperial palaces, or Buddhist monasteries,
they might install elaborate systems of brackets on the beams to support
the rafters. The eaves of the roof extended beyond the walls to cover
porches that surrounded the building and provided shade. The entire
frame-pillars, beams, rafters, and the rest-was made of wood, the pre
ferred material for homes of patricians. Pillars, beams, and rafters were
often painted bright colors. In some cases, however, roof beams made of
cypress timbers were left untouched so that one could admire their fine
grains. Of all the elements in traditional architecture, the roof was the
crowning glory of the hall, its most expensive and striking feature.
Workmen laid semicircular glazed ceramic tiles on roof boards affixed
78 Daily Life in Traditional China
to the rafters. Though much more expensive, tiles had a great advantage
over other materials, such as thatch, commonly used in peasant dwell
ings. They were fireproof. Embers from a nearby blaze blown onto them
by the wind would not ignite them. The holocausts that destroyed huge
numbers of dwellings in some provincial cities during the Tang may
have resulted from failure to install tiles on roofs. Canton, a primitive
city by the standards of its norther counterparts, was repeatedly rav
aged by fires until 806, when a goveror ordered its citizens to use tiles.
There were some disadvantages to tiles, however. They were so heavy
that when a gale blew them off roofs, they crushed people to death. They
also attracted unwanted guests. Snakes had a nasty habit of taking up
residence under them.
Te spaces between the pillars of halls were filled with a variety of
materials, such as wood and bricks. The mansions of patricians some
times had double walls or concealed rooms in which valuables or fugi
tives were hidden. In the aftermath of a chief minister's assassination in
815, the emperor ordered authorities i Chagan to search for such secret
places in the homes of nobles and mandarins, i an attempt to find the
murderers. The probe failed to locate the culprits. Another chief minister
living in the same period was a conoisseur of fine things and paid high
prices for them. He acquired rare books and paintings that he had
mounted on gold and jade rollers. He stored them in holes gouged from
a wall hidden behind another. After his death a thief broke into his vault,
stole the treasures, removed their gold and jade rollers, and abandoned
the books and paintings, which were probably far more valuable, on a
road. Generally speaking, a hall's interior did not have walls that divided
it into smaller rooms.
Windows provided ventilation and light. Glass panes did not exist in
Tang China. For those of modest means, paper sufficed for windows,
preferably oiled paper because it was translucent and therefore admitted
more light. For the more affluent, silk-dyed scarlet, green, or some
other hue-might serve the purpose and tint the sunlight falling on the
floor inside of the room. I either case the materials could not withstand
the force of strong winds. Consequently, carpenters built wooden lattices
to which they glued the paper or cloth. They used pine, wood that was
too soft for structural members of the building, for the fames. There was
a wide variety of patterns for lattices, a feature for which Chinese ar
chitecture has been justly renowned. In exceptional cases small pieces of
glass or mica that sparkled in the sunlight might be inlaid in the frames.
It was customary to fit windows and doors with blinds that provided
privacy while allowing air to circulate when the windows or doors were
open. Made of long bamboo slats and cord, they rolled upward. Car
penters also installed latticework on the upper portions of doors. Prin
cess Tongchang had the lattices of her doors adored with jewels, and
House and Garden 79
I , -,

-
..
Window L!ttice
a powerful minister of the late eighth century had his embellished with
gold and silver.
Workers covered the masonry walls inside and out with plaster. Te
owner of a mansion might have a famous artist pait cranes, horses, a
landscape, or a rendering of a famous dance on his walls. A renowned
calligrapher might brush a le or two of poety or prose on the walls
of his host's abode during a feast. Ancient Chinese thought of graffti as
a means of beautifing, not defacing, a room-or, for that matter, nature.
Many rocks on scenic mountains have inscriptions chiseled into their
surfaces. In 681 a director of the court's workshops adomed the walls of
a hall that he had built for the emperor in a controversial manner. He
installed mirrors on all sides. After the emperor went to look at the place,
he asked one of his ministers what he thought of it. The official replied
that heaven did not have two suns, nor earth two rulers. The mandarin
thought that the multiple images he saw in the chamber were terribly
inauspicious. They were signs that new rulers would rise to challenge
the Tang and split te empire into several kingdoms. The emperor or
dered the mirrors removed immediately. In 825 another emperor had a
new hall built that required 100,000 pieces of gold and silver leaf to
decorate its walls and ceilings.
The truly extravagant had teir halls plastered with aromatics. In the
early eighth century a sybaritic minister who was a member of Empress
Wei's clique had a new mansion built, and ordered the workmen to
apply a paste of aloeswood and red powder to the walls. When one
opened the doors, a heavy fragrance burst forth from the interior. Al
oeswood was the rotten portion of trees that grew in Southeast Asia. It
was impregnated with a richly scented resin and very expensive in
northem China. Emperor Illustrious August had a pavilion of aloeswood
in front of which there were peony trees with red, pink, purple, and
80 Daily Life in Traditional China
white blossoms. One of his chief ministers outdid him. There was a pa
vilion of aloeswood at his mansion at Changan that had sandalwood
(another aromatic tree that grew in Southeast Asia) railings and walls
plastered with a paste of musk and frankincense. In the spring, when
the peonies were blooming, he assembled guests in the pavilion to ad
mire the fowers growing outside.
The private quarters of a mansion, including its bedchambers,
Rooms were usually located in courtyards behind the parlor. A high-
ranking official bought a property in Luoyang during the eighth
century and had it modified over the years. At the center stood a hall
for his first wife, who had died. It was spare and unadored. To the east
of that was one for his elder brother's wife (the brother presumably had
passed away). To the northeast was another for his elder sisters when
they came to visit. It was not ucommon in the Tang for brothers to live
together. In that case the head of the household would allocate a whole
courtyard to each so that they could live with their families yet have a
degree of privacy.
Some halls served special purposes. Aside from the parlor there were
libraries where educated men spent their leisure hours reading and writ
ing. In the early Tang the literate had to transcribe books themselves or
purchase them from a store that employed scribes. The texts were copied
by hand on sheets of paper, the text written from the top of the page to
the bottom and from right to left. Afterward the sheets were pasted to
gether to form a scroll and rollers were glued to an end of the scroll so
the book could be rolled up for storage. Longer books had many scrolls
that constituted chapters. It was the custom to measure the size of a
library not by the number of titles in it, but by the number of scrolls it
had. Some of the collections were quite large. In the late eighth century
a chief minister had 30,000 scrolls in his library and at least three other
men had 20,000. A collector in the early eighth century acquired so many
books that they overfowed his shelves. He had to pile the excess on his
widowsills. The heaps tere grew so tall that they totally blocked out
the sunlight. An aficionado of music could also have a special two-story
hall devoted solely to playing the drum.
The mansion of a wealthy patrician might have its own treasury. The
grandson of Empress Wu's uncle had one that was 500 paces long and
had more than 100 coffers where he stored the riches that he had col
lected. He used that wealth to curry favor with other courtiers and of
ficials. One night the building burned to the ground, destroying
everyting inside.
A mandarin had a shrine built in the southwest corner of his mansion
for worshiping his ancestors. The truly powerful living in Changan, how
ever, had separate ancestral shrines erected in other parts of the city.
Patricians had separate bathhouses. The washrooms had pitchers, ba-
House and Garde11 81
sins-made of metals such as bronze or gold-and towels for washing
the face ad hands. They also had tubs, the humblest made of wood and
the grandest of porcelain or metal. A bathhouse might also have a couch,
mats, and a screen to shield women from men's gazes. Peeping Toms
were not unknown. In the fifth century a Buddhist nun stayed in the
home of a powerful general. He stole a glance at her while she was
bathing and completely naked. As he watched, the woman took out a
knife, cut open her belly and removed her organs, lopped off her feet,
and beheaded herself. In a short time she restored herself to her origial
state.
The grandest of all baths during the Tang were those at hot springs
on Mount Blackhorse, a day's ride east of Changan. The second Tang
emperor favored the springs, which he visited eight times for seven to
ten days in the winter and spring. He had a palace built there so he
could avail himself of the healing powers of the waters, which contained
arsenic and sulfur. It was, however, Emperor Illustrious August who
made the place his home away from home. He sojoured there thirty
eight years out of forty-four that he was on the throne. After 740 his
visits during the cold seasons grew longer and longer. He lingered at
the hot springs for tree weeks, four weeks, five weeks, sixty days, and
finally for three months.
Since Illustrious August spent large amounts of time at the springs, he
had a city built on the site. Whenever he made an excursion to Mount
Blackhorse, his court went with him. That entourage included not only
his harem, members of his family, and guards, but also the whole bu
reaucracy of the empire that usually worked in the capital. The complex
at the springs was therefore huge, for it included mansions for nobles
and mandarins, offices for all of te central government agencies, and
quarters for underlings and servants as well as warehouses, kitchens,
and other support facilities. Construction of the complex entailed erect
ing a wall around it. In the end its cost must have been enormous.
Two springs formed the core of the palace. The Hall of Nine Dragon,
appropriately named because the dragon was traditionally the emblem
atic beast of the emperor, was for the personal use of Illustrious August.
The second, called the Lotus Blossom Spa, was Yang Guifei's bath hall.
She also had her own multistoried hall for grooming and applying cos
metics. The pools had linings of exquisite stones with elegant grains.
When he still enjoyed imperial favor, An Lushan presented the emperor
with fish, dragons, ducks, and geese carved from white stone, as well as
stone bridges and lotus flowers. When the emperor disrobed to enter the
water, the creatures that An furnished seemed about to take flight. That
frightened Illustrious August, who ordered them removed. The baths
must have been fairly large, because the emperor had boats of lacquered
wood cl1ased with silver and oars inlaid with pearls and jade made so
82 Daily Life in Traditional China
that he and Yang Guifei could cruise upon the waters. He also had an
island made of precious stones and aloeswood erected in the middle of
a pool. There were also sixteen baths for the imperial concubines, who
seem to have been careless about their baubles. Their pearled tassels and
jeweled cords floated down the "Gold Drain," out of the palace and into
the drainage ditches along the streets, where poor folks snatched them
up daily.
There were structures in mansions that did not qualify as halls. Kitch
ens were essential fixtures in homes where the lord frequently enter
tained his guests with feasts, but little information about them has
survived in Tang literature. The well-to-do traveled on horseback or in
horse-drawn carriages, so their dwellings had stables and garages. There
were also quarters for the servants that even families of modest means
required.
All great houses had privies. I most homes they were crude stuctures
that were not the objects of much embellishment. They consisted of a pit
and a wooden outhouse installed above it. The outhouse had an opening
in the floor over which the user squatted. They usually reeked until the
local collector of muck care by to empty them, and therefore probably
were installed far enough from the living quarters that their stench did
not offend anyone. There was a means of thwarting malodorous assaults
on the olfactory senses when one had to use the outhouse. It was the
custom to stuff dried jujubes (Chinese blackthorns) up te nostrils before
entering it. A thoughtful host might provide his privy with a wooden
lid to hide the filth from his guest's sight. The task of removing the waste
from a latrine was sometimes assigned to a student by his mentor, as an
act of discipline. For example, a young man, who later wrote the classic
book on tea, offended a Buddhist monk with whom he was studying, so
the monk ordered him to clean out the monastery's privy as punishment.
Assassins availed themselves of the pits to dispose of their victims' heads
because lawmen were reluctant to search through their contents. The
cousin of a poet thought so little of his verses that he tossed them into
his latrine. In the homes of the wealthy the privy might be fancier,
having an antechamber furnished with a couch. In 819, when a subor
dinate of a military goveror made up his mind to dispose of his su
perior, he sent troops to bring him in. They found te governor and his
two sons hiding beneath a couch in a latrine at their hore.
A man had to be careful about where he installed his privy. There was
a haunted house in Changan during the Sui dynasty. All of the previous
occupants had died there. A man named Wan, who did not believe in
ghosts, took over the place without a second thought. One night a spirit
dressed in very fie robes appeared to him. Wan asked the spirit why
he had come. The specter replied that he had been a general centuries
before, and that his grave lay near the hore's privy. He had always
House and Garde11 83
A Chinese Priv
suffered from the foul odor there, so he asked Wan to do him the favor
of having his remains removed to another place. The ghost promised to
reward him liberally for his efforts. Wan agreed, and asked the spirit
why it had slain the previous occupants of the dwelling. Te specter
replied that they had all died of fright; he had killed no one. Wan dug
up the coffin and interred it elsewhere. The following night te specter
appeared again, predicted that Wan would become a general, and vowed
to provide assistance on all of his campaigns. As predicted, Wan became
a commander of Sui forces, and every time he went into battle, he sensed
the presence of spirit warriors aiding him. He always won his battles.
The privy had its own deity. According to a tradition recorded in the
fifth century, she was the second wife of a provincial official. In a fit of
jealousy the man's first wife slew her by throwing her into the pit of a
latrine during the Lantern Festival, te fifteenth day of the first moon.
Later the ruler of heaven took pity on her and dubbed her the goddess
of the privy. Mortals knew her as the Purple Maiden. It became the
custom on the fifteenth day of the first moon to welcome the Purple
Maiden at one's latrine by uttering the words, "Your husband is not at
home and his first wife has gone out. So, little damsel, you may come
out [of the privy] . " It was also the custom for householders to shine
torches into wells and latrines on the last day of the first moon to expel
all ghosts.
The homes of the wealthy had to have wells to provide water.
Although there appears to be no notice of them in Tang sources, Wells
every ward in all cities must have had public wells. Digging
them was expensive-well beyond the means of the lower classes to pay
for-and carrying water long distances was extremely difficult, if not
impossible, unless one had the means to purchase a horse and cart. De
vout Buddhists established wells in the markets of the capitals and priv
ies at their four gates for the convenience of people. Use of those wells,
84 Daily Life in Traditional China
however, was beneath the dignity of the upper classes. They installed
their own wells on their property. Some patricians went to extreme
lengths to embellish them. In the ninth century Princess Tongchang had
a railing of gold and silver built around her well. Wells usually had
covers to prevent dirt, vegetation, and animals (lizards, rats, insects, and
children) from falling into them. Even so, an annual cleaning of them
had been the practice for centuries. Some wiser minds tossed sand into
their wells to flter out impurities seeping from the ground. Others
dumped cinnabar and arsenic i them, hoping to acquire immortality. A
chief minister in the ninth century had a well with a gold and j ade railing
that he kept securely locked because he threw jade and pearls into it.
After he was beheaded, it was discovered that his bones had turned a
golden yellow because he had drunk the well water for years.
Wells were not always reliable. During a great drought in 785, the
rivers flowing toward Changan from the mountains to the south of
the city dried up, and so did all of the wells in the capital. Sometimes
wells collapsed. They also served purposes other than those for which
they were intended. Women often committed suicide by leaping into
them. Sometimes they provided handy hiding places for valuables. In
613 te family of a rebel trew their gold into a well, no doubt because
they feared the government would confiscate it in reprisal for his up
rising.
FURNISHINGS
I the early Tang, couches were the primary pieces of furiture in
parlors. They were low, large, raised platforms, usually made of wood,
that had no backs or armrests. People sat on them cross-legged and used
low tables for writing and eating. The emperor's throne, called the
"dragon couch," was certainly the heaviest and no doubt the most mag
nificent. It was made of gold and bronze. The throne was "mobile" in
the sense tat imperial servitors, probably a good number of them, trans
ported it to various locations for important occasions. On the last day of
the moon and during solar eclipses, the attendants carried it to the Altar
of Soil, where the emperor attended to state rituals. They also carried it
to the examinations for mounted archery. Another fancy imperial couch
came from Persia as tribute. It was made of carelian, a stone that is
usually some shade of red.
Outside of the palace the most extravagant couch in history, or so one
observer claimed, was one that a favorite of Empress Wu had made for
his mother. Fashioned of ivory, it sat in a tent adored with gold, silver,
pearls, jade, and every sort of precious stuff. It had coverings of woven
rhinoceros hor, sable cushions, cricket-mosquito felt and dragon
whisker and phoenix pinion mats (rush or reed mats made in China).
House a1d Garde 85
Armrest
Couch Barbarian Bed
When the son was beheaded in 705, the throne enslaved the mother in
the palace.
Tents, or perhaps more appropriately curtains with canopies, sur
rounded couches of the wealthy in formal settings such as parlors. The
materials used to make them could be as humble as bamboo or as ex
travagant as pearls and jade. In 873, when the emperor had the finger
bone of Buddha brought to the palace, he had it ensconced behind drapes
of pearls and jade. A chief minister in the late eighth century settled his
favorite concubine in a tent with curtains of gold thread. He had another
tent made of shark silk. According to folklore the shark people living
beneath the Southern Sea, who wept tears of pearl, wove it. The fabric
may have been pinikon, a cinnamon-colored cloth made in South Asia
from the tough filaments that mussels use to attach themselves to un
derwater surfaces. Whatever the case, the material purportedly provided
warmth in the winter and coolness in the summer.
The Chinese had known of the chair since at least the first century. It
was a folding seat and clearly of foreign origin, for it was called the
"barbarian bed. " The fashion of sitting on chairs did not catch on for
centuries, perhaps because people preferred sitting cross-legged. What
ever the case, the first true chairs appeared in the Tang. In the middle
of the eighth century a courtier made a frame to lean his back against
out of tree limbs. When he made one that resembled a dragon, he pre
sented it to the throne, and thereafter such pieces became the rage among
patricians. It is not clear whether the man attached his invention to a
couch or not, but chairs had definitely become common pieces of fur
niture for mansions by the ninth century. Small, round stools and long
benches for sitting at dinner tables also appeared in the home about that
time.
Screens were common fixtures i the homes of patricians. They were
movable and installed behind seats to block drafts. Their surfaces pro-
86 Daily Life in Traditional China
vided convenient spaces for inscribing texts. Taizong had ten criticisms
of him submitted by a righteous minister affixed to a screen so that he
could read them in the morning and evening. He recorded the names of
all prefectural goverors on another, which he consulted on rising and
retiring-apparently so he could memorize the officials' names. During
his reign one of his ministers, who was an outstanding calligrapher, cop
ied the text of a book devoted to biographies of virtuous women on a
series of screens. Nor was that the only such work. A monastery in
Changan possessed a set of fifteen screens with the text of a Buddhist
scripture engraved on it, the characters inlaid with precious stones. Pal
ace ladies had entrusted the treasure to the cloister for safekeeping dur
ing the rebellion of An Lushan, along wit pearl-lidded jeweled caskets
for storing them.
Screens were also the objects of aesthetic adornment. A man of means
could commission an artist to paint landscapes or scenes of the four
seasons on them. Yang Guifei had one on which pictures of beautiful
House and Garden 87
women from former times had been engraved ai1d their clothes inlaid
with precious stones. A chief minister who lived just after her had a
screen with images of famous and beautiful female entertainers of the
past chased on it and decorated with tortoiseshell and crystals.
Beds were couches with poles affixed to their four corners, and cur
tais hung from te poles. Te drapes for imperial use were exquisite.
Empress Wu bestowed a set made of embroidered silk gauze on one of
her ministers after visiting his home and learng that he slept behid
curtains of inferior silk. He spent an uncomfortable night in hs new
surroundings. The next day the mandarin reported to the empress that
a face reader had told him when he was young that he ought not be
extravagat. He therefore requested her permission to return to his old,
humble drapes. The servants of a sybaritic chief minister in the eighth
century hung his ad his wife's nightclothes over twelve gold and silver
braziers during the day to infuse tem with aromatics for a pleasant
sleep at night. Taoists recommended that beds be at least tree and half
feet high, so that damp air and demons emanatig from the ground
could not attack sleeping people. They also counseled against placing a
bed against the northern wall and advocated removing the left shoe first
when retiring for the night.
Pillows were made of porcelain, wood, stone, and oter hard materi
als. A official in charge of the government's monopoly on iron and salt
had one encrusted with lapis lazuli that he placed on his gold bed. Those
made of rosewood were said to cure headaches. Pillows were rectan
gular, with a dip in the middle for resting the neck. A noble lady in the
early eighth century had a unight shining pillown that glowed in the
dark so she did not have to rely on lamps or candles. Pillows, according
to te Taoists, should not be too tall because they could diminish the
number of years allotted to one. They were also magical in Chinese folk
lore. The younger sister of Empress Wei had one in the form of a leop
ard's head that warded off evit and another in the shape of a prostrate
bear that would ensure the birth of a male child.
There were no closets in Tang homes. They had pegs on which one
could hang one's apparel temporarily. Bamboo hampers were used for
long-term storage of clothing. A auspicious omen appeared in one of
them during the spring of 708. The palace reported that a multicolored
cloud rose from one of Empress Wei's skirts that was lying in a bamboo
hamper. The emperor had his artists paint a picture of the portent to
show his bureaucratic corps. One of his ministers suggested that he have
the illustration promulgated throughout the empire. He agreed, had cop
ies made, sent them to localities, and bestowed an amnesty on his sub
jects for good measure.
The mansion of a powerful man might have a treasure chest. Acade
mician Wang, a really ugly man who enjoyed the emperor's favor,
88 Daily Life in Traditional China
Bed, Bedding, Pillow, Candle, and Ghost
sought only to enrich himself by collecting bribes from patricians seeking
his infuence at court. The gentlemen focked to his gate, and some who
could not gain admittance during the day had to sleep overnight in pas
try shops and taverns. Wang accepted nothing less than 1,000 coppers
just to let them into his dwelling. He had a large chest in his house that
had no lid, only a hole through which he passed the gold and silk that
he received. His wife sometimes slept on it.
Foreign rugs graced the floors of patrician dwellings in the Tang. At
least two ancient centers, Bukhara and Persia, that were renowned for
their ca
r
pets then as now, sent them as tribute to the court. Such goods
were also commercial wares, transported on the backs of camels across
the deserts of Central Asia to Changan. They made their way to shops
in city markets. China had its own works for weaving rugs, as the fol
lowing anecdote attests. When Chief Minister Yang installed a pavilion
made of sandalwood at his mansion in Changan during the ninth cen
tury, the son of a provincial official secretly sent a man to measure its
House and Garden 89
foor. Afterward he had a carpet woven and presented it to the chef
minister at a party the mandarin threw for relatives ad friends to mark
the completion of the pavilion. Unfortunately, when Yang fell from
power, the gift of the rug implicated the son with the chief minister, and
he, too, suffered punishment.
Chamber pots were standard fxtures in the homes of the well-to-do.
In order to curry favor with a notorious favorite of Empress Wu, a poet
of some renown carried his urine bucket for him. In 683 a govemor, who
wished to gain the empress's favor, falsely informed Prince Li Ming, who
had been banished to his district, that she had bestowed suicide on him.
Terrified, the prince hanged himself. Later, while the govemor was sleep
ing during the night, an assassin sneaked into his quarters, decapitated
him, and fled with his head. Subsequently, Empress Wu had Li Ming's
sons executed. While officials were taking inventory of their property
that the govemment had confiscated, they found te govemor's skull. It
had been lacquered to make a chamber pot and inscribed with his name.
It was only then that the authorities leamed the prince's sons had com
missioned an assassin to murder the governor in order to avenge the
injustice that he had done to their father.
Tang dwellings in nortem climates were cold. They were drafty and
had no insulation. Stoves or braziers were the only source of heat from
late autumn to early spring. Te fuel for the heaters was either firewood
or charcoal. If a man was a aristocrat, bureaucrat, or military officer,
the govemment provided a monthy supply of fuel for him. Clever mem
bers of one chief minister's household in the mid-eighth century mixed
coal dust wit honey and kneaded the dough into the shapes of paired
phoenixes. They placed sandalwood in their stoves, put the phoenixes
on top, and set them ablaze. Braziers apparently were not very effective
at warming the chill, or at least some patricians thought so. A chief
minister of the mid-eighth century had the largest and fattest of his con
cubines and maids form a line in font of him to block the wind during
winter months. He called the array a "formation of flesh. " When the
winds and snows became bitterly cold, one prince had female singers
crowd closely around the sides of his seat to protect him from frigid
drafts. He called them the "chanteuse band. " Another prince, when his
hands were cold during the height of the winter, and he was far from a
fire, would thrust his hands into the bosoms of his lovely female sigers
and caress the fesh of their breasts. He called the ladies "hand warmers."
In the Tang there were three ways of starting a fire. First, one could
strike a fint knife agaist a fint stone to produce sparks that ignited
tinder. Second, one could use a metal fire drill, twirling it rapidly to
generate fames on wood by the heat of friction. Last, one could use a
concave bronze miror to focus the rays of the sun on dry kindling.
90 Daily Life in Traditiolal China
The latter method had the disadvantage of not working on cloudy days
or at night.
The humble had to make do with fans for relief from the heat of sum
mer. There were other ways for those with means. A princess once or
dered her servants to hang silks dipped in clean water along the souther
veranda of her mansion, to cool her guests during a party at the height
of summer. On the hottest days the sons of an official in the early eighth
century had artisans carve blocks of ice into the shapes of phoenixes or
other animals, and sometimes decorated them with gold rings and col
ored ribbons. When the carvers completed the work, the sons placed the
ice sculptures on platters and sent them to princes, dukes, and great
ministers. They hoped to curry the favor of those powerful men by pro
viding them the means of coolig themselves. For the truly rich and
powerful there was a form of air conditoning built into halls. Emperor
Illustrious August had a cool hall built. When one of his mandarins
strongly denounced him for doing so, he ordered a eunuch to summon
the man. It was summer, and the heat was intense. When the minister
arrived at the cool hall, the emperor was sitting on his throne, behind
which water struck fan-wheels creating a chilly breeze that wafted
around the sovereign's clothes. Water pumped to the four comers of the
hall fell in a curtain that splashed on the foor. The emperor invited his
critic to sit on a stone couch that contained ice and supplied him with a
cold drink. Soon the official was trembling from the cold. His belly rum
bled thunderously. He had to repeatedly implore Illustrious August to
let him retire before the monarch would grant his permission. The cold
ness to which his body had been subjected so disturbed his system that
the bureaucrat wet his pants when he reached the hall's gate. As in other
matters, high-ranking ministers sometimes adopted the fashions of the
throne. After the execution of a censor in the mid-eighth century, clerks
sent to inventory his property found a "pavilion of automatic rain" from
the eaves of which water cascaded down on all four sides. During the
summer Yang Guifei's throat became parched from the heat. To remedy
the problem, she sucked on a j ade fish.
Tere were four types of implements for lighting in Tang China:
torches, oil lamps, candles, and lanters. Torches provided illumination
for courtyards and for travelers. Made of faggots and installed at the foot
of stairs leading into halls, they provided enough light to tur night into
day. Without them nocturnal feasts, polo matches, and hunting were
impossible. Lanters, made of light bamboo frames to which paper or
silk was pasted and in which lighted candles were placed, supplied light
for short trips in the dark.
Candles and lamps provided interior illumination for halls. The fuel
used in lamps-burned in flat metal or ceramic pans-was usually hemp
oil. Some exotic fats, such as whale and seal oil, also were used. A fish
House and Garde11 91
caught i the oceans off Chia's southem coast was more fat than meat.
Its fesh was rendered to provide oil for the lamps lit at banquets or that
illuminated looms. (Apparently women wove at night.) Lamps so fueled
were called gluttonous fish lamps. Medical canons discouraged the use
of pork and bear fats for lighting because smoke from their fames caused
nearsightedness. Patricians might have fancy stands made for their
lamps. A royal prince of the early eighth century had dwarf slaves
carved from wood and painted polychrome hues to set before his bed.
Each of the statues held lamps i its hands that burned from dusk to
dawn.
Unlike Europe, where animal fats were the chief constituents of can
dles, the substance for candles in medieval China was usually an oil
derived from the berry of a plant that was mixed with beeswax. Patri
cians might have aromatic candles that had various fragrances mixed
into the wax, and flled their bedrooms with marvelous scents all night.
They might also have elegant holders for them. A prince of the early
eighth century had lads carved from wood and clothed in green robes
that held candles in their hands. He placed te figures around his ban
quet mats whenever he dined with other princes and nobles. Some can
dles were graduated so that people-probably Buddhist monks
performing noctumal devotions-could determine the passing of time.
Buddhists also introduced incense clocks to Tang China. The wood or
metal devices had channels in the shapes of Sanskrit characters that were
filled with icense. Monks could tell the time because as the incense
burned, it passed marks along the channels. Each mark represented one
of the night watches: 7 to 9 P. M. , 9 to 11 P. M. , 11 P. M. to 1 A. M., 1 to 3
A. M. , and 3 to 5 A. M.
The ambience of an upper-class home was extremely important in
Tang China, especially with regard to its scent. To broadcast fragrances,
homes of the wealthy had braziers i which they bumed aromatics. A
sybaritic prince of te early eighth century had two sculpted, dwarf lads
bearing bejeweled braziers in their hands placed before his bed curtains
so that they would dispense their fragrance throughout the night as he
slept. The Tang materia medica recommended mixing dried bat dung
with frankincense and cassia, and buming the mixture to repel mosqui
toes.
GARDENS
Patricians went to extreme lengths to provide temselves with grand
gardens. Bai Juyi, one of the greatest poets of the ninth century, con
tended that gardens should occupy at least half of the land for a stately
home, and should include a lake as well as 1,000 stalks of bamboo. In
823 he purchased a mansion in the northwest comer of a southeastern
92 Daily Life in Traditional China
ward in Luoyang, a section of the city he considered to be the most
scenic. The residential quarters sat on only 18 percent of the property's
nearly two and a half acres. The remainder of the tract was a garden
with a lake (29 percent of the land) and an enormous bamboo grove (53
percent of the land).
After retiring from office i 829, Bai set about the business of reno
vating his garden. To the east of the lake he built a granary to store 1,700
bushels of cereals that he had amassed while serving in his last gover
ment post. To the north of it he erected a library to house the cartload
of books that he had collected, and to the west of it a zither pavilion,
with a large stone jug for ale, that served as a site for the many parties
that he threw. Bai had three mountains-perhaps in imitation of the
three holy mounts in the Easter Sea on which te immortals dwelt
raised in the middle of the lake. He built bridges between the islands
and the shore, and laid out a road that encircled the lake. While serving
as governor of Hangzhou and subsequently of Suzhou, districts just
south of the mouth of the Yangtze River, the poet collected item for his
northern garden. In Hangzhou he procured a strange rock from India
and a pair of cranes. In Suzhou, a district long famed for the beauty of
its scenery, he acquired white lotus and pleasure boats for sailing on his
lake. He also shipped back from there fve fantastically shaped stones
formed by erosion on Grand Lake. Bai's friends contributed to his en
deavors. One built a bridge for him. Another supplied him with a recipe
for brewing a very delectable ale. A third gave him a zither with an
extremely clear timbre. A fourth taught him a serene tune to strum on
the instrument. A last donated three square, smooth bluestones large
enough for sitting or reclining.
Bai passed the last eighteen years of his life at the mansion, frequently
entertaining his friends in its garden. Whenever he trew a party, he and
his guests went for a sail on his pleasure boats. Trailing along behind
the craft underneath the water were 110 waterproof sacks containing ale
and roasted meat. Whenever the party exhausted the contents of one
bag, the poet's attendants would retrieve another for the pleasure of his
companions. Bai also had a troupe of ten singers, dancers, and musicians.
When the strumming of the zither was over and his guest were merrily
drunk, he sent the entertainers to pavilions on the islands in the lake,
where they performed the introductory section of "Rainbow Skirt," a
famous piece of music that, according to legend, Illustrious August
leared while on a trip to the moon.
As the account of Bai Juyi's garden indicates, the cultured elite of the
Tang greatly prized bamboo and rocks. Some were not above embellish
ing the stalks of the woody grass. A sybaritic prince of the early eighth
century had pieces of jade tied to his bamboo so that he could listen to
their tinkling as the wind knocked them together duing the night. When
House and Garden 93
Peony and Garden Rock
the groves were large, they provided convenient places for assassins or
other outlaws to hide from the authorities. Patricians in the Tang had a
passion for rocks, especially those from Grand Lake near Suzhou. They
appreciated stones that gave the appearance of being miniature moun
tais with grottoes, cascades, and streams. These gentlemen did not shy
away from defacing them. One eminent official of the ninth century had
the phrase "Possessing the Way" carved on a rock in his famous garden.
Some rockeries were quite valuable. One with a grove of trees at a prin
cess's mansion in the early eighth century was worth 20 million coppers.
The crown j ewel of Tang gardens was the peony-te most esteemed
flower of the time, known as the King of Flowers-and Luoyang had
the most magnificent varieties. According to one source the reason was
that Empress Wu banished tem to the city after a visit to a rear garden
in the palaces of Changan, where she noticed that they bloomed later
than other flowers. There were two forms of peonies, a plant and a shrub
(the so-called tree peony). They had large, showy blossoms, sometimes
as much as seven or eight inches in diameter, and came i yellow, red,
white, and purple, as well as pastel versions of the same colors. A clever
Taoist in the ninth century created hues for them artificially. He applied
chemicals such as lac, a secretion of an insect that infested trees in Viet
nam and Cambodia, to the roots of the plant. Within a few weeks blue,
94 Daily Life in Traditional China
purple, yellow, or red flowers bloomed, according to various formulas
that he used. l the same period the peony had become so admired that
the price of a single graft from a magnificent shrub could fetch tens of
thousands of cash. There was a tree peony in the palace that had 1,000
petals. It attracted more than 10,000 white and yellow butterfies at night,
and the ladies of the palace tried to catch them with nets.
A gentleman's garden might have lotus growing in one of its ponds
or lakes. Te plant was a import from the west, probably India, and its
blossoms were usually pink or white. There was an unusual yellow va
riety that clever gardeners in the region south of the Yangtze delta may
have bred. Blue lotus flowers were even more rare. Apparently a family
of dyers from the same region produced the peculiar blossoms by ap
plying their stains to the plant. Other fowers that found their way ito
Tang gardens included white and purple magnolias, three varieties of
cassia (Chinese cinnamon) trees that produced white flowers with red
centers as well as pale yellow and purple blossoms, a fragrant bramble
with yellow blossoms (the color of ale, to which it was often added for
favor), azaleas, chrysanthemums (favored because tl1ey bloomed in the
autumn), redbuds (misnamed because they had small purple flowers),
and many more. Patricians also esteemed two nonfowering evergreens,
the pine and the cypress. Evergreens were symbolic of long life because
they never tum color in the fall or winter, and thus they were essential
elements of a good garden.
Many Tang gardens served bot aesthetic and practical ends. Patri
cians planted Chese apricots that bloomed in the spring with fagrant,
light pink or white sprays, peaches that had deep pink blossoms, and
crabapples with rose-red flowers. The owners of some mansions raised
geese and ducks on their ponds. One had a pool that produced fine fish.
Gardens provided fruit and meat for the table.
Architecture was an essential element of gardens, an artificial intrusion
in a natural landscape. There were thirty-six pavilions in a garden at a
mansion in Luoyang during te Tang. Such structures were often the
sites for banquets and other amusements. However, some might serve
as refuges from the maddening crowd. One mandarin built himself a
studio in a secluded area of his garden so that he could get away from
company to hum and whistle. Another fancy addition to a man's private
park might be a stone for foating ale goblets. The custom of foating
goblets originated with a party that China's most celebrated calligrapher
threw for forty-one friends and relatives on April 22 (the third day of
the third moon) in 353. The festivities took place on the banks of a wind
ing river where guests sat on mats. l the course of the feast the host
had goblets of ale set adrift on the waters. When a beaker touched the
spot on the bank where a guest sat, he had to retrieve it, drink its con-
House and Garde1 95
tents, and write a poem. In the Tang, patricias continued to hold such
driking parties. By that time it had become the custom of some to have
channels carved into large slabs of stone in imitation of the winding
river. Presumably, goblets floated on water fowing through the channels
to seats where guests sat ready to seize them, drink, and write poetry.
Or perhaps they were only oraments.
The grandest of all gardens during the Tang were those of the emperor
in Changan. All palaces had areas devoted to woodlands, lakes, streams,
and bridges. Some came equipped with winding rivers for celebratng
the third day of the third moon. The walls of the Forbidden Park encom
passed the ruins of the ancient capital of the Han dynasty and pavilions
where the emperor entertained his guests. It was also a reserve where
wild animals such as white deer roamed fee, so that his maj esty and his
guests, foreign envoys in particular, could enjoy themselves hunting. The
game they shot usually provided meat for sacrifices, especially those at
the imperial ancestral shrine. The park had mews for hawks, eagles, and
other raptors, as well as kennels for hounds that were employed in the
hunt to chase down or catch quarry. It also had pens for exotic crea
tures-lions, leopards, elephants, and rhinoceroses-sent as tribute by
foreign nations. A Tang manual on government states tat there was not
a bird, animal, vegetable, or fruit that was not raised there.
Many of the fora and fauna in the Forbidden Park and oter imperial
gardens were native to China. Sometimes the method by which the
throne acquired plants and animals did not endear the emperor to his
subjects. Eunuchs were sent to the provinces, especially those in the
south, to procure rare and beautiful things. In 682 a party of the gelded
servitors went to fnd extraordinary specimens of bamboo. As they sailed
up and down the Yangtze River in a boat that carried the grasses for
transplantation in the Forbidden Park, they treated the locals cruelly.
When they arrived at one prefecture, a senior administrator would have
none of their tyrannous behavior and imprisoned them. He then sent an
address to the throne severely criticizing the dispatching of such expe
ditions. After receiving the remonstrance, the emperor put an end to the
expedition. In 716 Emperor Illustrious August sent a company of eun
uchs to collect exotic birds, pond herons and tufted ducks, in the south.
The agents caused great annoyance among the inhabitants of the region.
When his servitors reached the norther end of the Grand Canal, a gov
ernor of a prefecture sent an address to the court, reproaching the em
peror for his wish to fll the Forbidden Park with rare fowl Illustrious
August acknowledged the fairness of his remaks, set the birds free, and
bestowed forty lengths of silk on the man.
In the mid-eighth century some hedonistic scions of the upper class
devised a sort of mobile garden. The sons of a chief minister hunted
96 Daily Life in Tmditio11al China
down celebrated fowers and extraordinary trees during the spring and
planted them on the foor of a wooden cart. Beneath the carriage was a
set of gears attached to the axle. As the vehicle moved forward, pulled
by slaves or servants, the base on which the foliage rested rotated so
everyone could see all of its wonders without changing their positions.
;
FABRICS
In 815 an assassin waylaid Pei Du, a chief minister, near his home and
struck him on the head. Pei fell off his horse and landed in a drainage
ditch. A member of his entourage grabbed the kiler from behind and
raised the alarm with a loud bellow. The desperado cut off the man's
arm and fled before the authorities could apprehend him. Although the
blow to his head inflicted a wound, Pei survived the assault because the
felt of his hat was so thick.
Felt, made from wool, was a tough material, as this anecdote dem
onstrates. It was used for tents, saddle covers, and boots. In the Tang it
seems to have been particularly suited for making hats. Early in the
seventh century a high-ranking minister who was the brother-in-law of
the emperor devised a new kind of felt hat made from the wool of black
sheep. It became the rage among patricians in the capital. The original
homeland of the fabric was Persia, and it was sent to China from Central
Asia during the Tang. By that time some northwest prefectures of the
empire also produced it.
There was a host of fabrics available for making clothes in the Tang.
Prefectures in the northwest sent camel hair, a very soft cloth, to the
Tang court. The Tibetans presented the throne with a woolen fabric made
from otter fur as tribute during the ninth century. Southeast Asia, Tibet,
japan, and Korea sent bombycine, a textile woven from the remnants of
the cocoon that the wild htssah moth cut its way out of, to the Tang
98 Daily Life in Traditional China
court. I the southeast, people made fabrics from banana fibers by treat
ing them with lime. They were soft and yellowish-white, inferior to bast
fabrics (such as those made from hemp) produced in the rest of China.
The Chinese of the Tang knew of cotton, but only as an article of com
merce. It was indigenous to Pakistan and India, but made its way grad
ually along the Silk Route into Central Asia. Cotton was expensive to
produce and inferior to silk so it was not until the thirteenth century,
when technology improved its manufacture and lowered its price, that
it became an important fabric for clothing. Under extreme circumstances
the people sometimes wore garb made of materials not normally used
for garments. When a military goveror was on his way to Changan to
attend an imperial audience in 767, he allowed his troops to plunder a
district just east of the capital. They laid waste to an area of thirty-three
miles, stripping it of all its wealth, even clothes. As a result mandarins
and functionaries had to wear apparel made of paper.
Princess Anle had the imperial workshops make two skirts from the
featers of 100 birds. When one looked at them from the front, they had
one color; from the side, another; in the sun, yet another; and in the
shade, a fourth. The dressmakers wove the images of a hundred birds
into the "fabric. " Afterward the fashion caught on with officials and com
moners. As as result, hunters went into mountain valleys to capture ex
traordinary birds for sale in the market. The numbers killed in their nets
were countless. Nearly all of the extraordinary fowl of the Yangtze River
valley and the southeast were exterminated. In 713 Emperor Illustrious
August had the princess's skirt burned in font of a palace hall .
All of these fabrics were exotics, and some of them made it no farther
than palace warehouses. Except for felt, few played a major role in Chi
nese clothing of the Tang. In that period there were really only three
types of cloth: wool made from animal fur, linen made from woody
(bast) fibers, and silk made from insect filaments. Woolens were probably
the easiest to manufacture because there were few steps between shear
ing te sheep and spinning the thread. Commoners wore clothing made
from the fabric during the Tang.
The making of bast fabrics from the fibers of hemp, ramie (a plant of
the nettle family) and kudzu (a creeping vine) was more complicated.
For example, preparing hemp required soaking the plant in water, peel
ing the skin off, scraping it, soaking again, washing, drying, beating,
combing, splitting, beating again, spinning, steaming, and drying again.
Hemp was a northern plant that grew in colder climates and produced
seeds that, when pressed, yielded the most prevalent oil for cooking and
lighting in the Tang. Hemp cloth was a coarse fabric favored for mour
ing clothes (sackcloth), bandages, sheets, and shrouds. It was also the
cloth for the garments of the lowest classes and recluses. Both ramie and
kudzu were southern plants. Ramie was superior to hemp because a
Clothes and Hygic11e 99
farmer could get two to three times the yield fom it on the same amount
of land. Cloth made from it had a brilliant luster like silk and dried easily
in climates of high humidity. Southemers wore it in the summer because
it was light and cool, and absorbed sweat.
The most difficult and expensive fabric to manufacture was silk. It
required, first of all, a grove of mulberry trees. Pickers stood on ladders
or platforms to pluck the leaves from the trees. They collected the leaves
in baskets and carried them to sheds for feeding the insects. Women took
charge of raising the silkworms. When the eggs hatched in the spring,
they spread the worms on hemp mats in trays or on shelves so the grubs
could feed on the mulberry leaves. The heat from a fire buming in a pit
dug in the floor of the shed could reduce the time of the worms' mat
uration by as much as five days. The preferred fuel was dried cow ma
nure because it did not smoke while burng. The ladies frequently fed
the grubs large amounts of leaves and constantly moved them from one
container to another, to clean out their droppings. After thirty-three days
or so, the caterpillars begin to weave cocoons with filaments excreted
from the glands located along their sides. They completed their task in
about four days. To obtain the best quality of silk thread, reeling began
immediately while the moths were alive. The women had to unravel the
filaments from the cocoon before the moths started chewing their way
out. If there were not enough hands to accomplish the work task quickly,
they killed the moths. There were three methods for doing that: drying
the cocoons in sunlight, drawing out their moisture by salting them, and
steaming them. The latter was superior to the others. The ladies allowed
only a select few of the moths to gnaw their way out of the cocoons.
They bred and laid the eggs for the next generation of silkworms.
The Bureau of Weaving and Dyeing in Changan recognized ten types
of textiles. Two of tl1em were linens and woolens. The remainder were
various types of silk-chiffons, damasks, satins, and the like-differen
tiated by the character of teir weaving. Gauze was one of the finer
varieties. It was an open weave in which spaces were left between the
warp and woof threads. Gauze was probably the fabric preferred for
summer apparel because it was light and permitted air to circulate
around the body. In the simplest weaves the warp tleads passed over
and under the woof threads. By varying the interlace-for example, pass
ing the warp threads under two woof threads, over tmee, under two
weavers could create different pattems. Known as figured silks, the de
signs might include fowers, birds, talons, clouds, or tortoise shells. Bro
cade was produced when the weaver used threads of different colors to
produce the design. Embroidery was yet another method of adoming
cloth with images created by threads of various hues.
Color was a very important factor in Tang clothing because it was a
mark of status and distinction. The Buxeau of Weaving and Dyeing rec-
100 Daily Life in Traditional China
ognized six hues: purple, blue, red, yellow, black, and white. Dyers usu
ally tinted fabrics with vegetable dyes to create the first five colors, and
used bleaches to produce white. The secretions of the lac insect were
used to dye deer skins red. I 630 the emperor issued a decree that fixed
the order of hues: the robes of mandarins third grade above were purple;
fourth and ffth grades, red; sixth and seventh, green; and eighth and
ninth, blue. Wives wore frocks of the same color as their husband's robes.
The throne conferred purple robes on men of exceptional distinction,
including Taoist priests, Buddhist monks, recluses, and others. White
was the prescribed color of garments for commoners. That class included
scholars who were candidates for civil service examinations. It was also
the color of mouring garments. Commoners in the seventh century ap
parently were not happy with the color imposed on them by the statute.
They took to wearing short, inner tunics of purple, red, green, and blue
under their outer garb. Some went so far as to remove their white robes
and parade around in their colored underwear when they were in their
villages. When the emperor learned this in 674, it upset him because the
proper distinctions between the noble (patricians) and the base (com
moners) were not being maintained. He ordered everyone to wear inner
garments of the same color as their outer garments. During the Sui dy
nasty the law required butchers and merchants to wear black, but it is
not clear if the rule still applied in the Tang.
Dyers could apply their tints to threads or to whole cloth. They could
also stamp it onto the fabric. The process involved carving the desired
design on a block of wood. The dyers strung two cords horizontally
between two poles and hung the fabric on the lower one. Tey swabbed
their tints on two blocks, suspended them from the upper cord and
pressed them on the stationary cloth. Then they moved the block farther
along the upper string and repeated the process. Stamping reached its
maturity in the Tang, when dyers began imprinting cloth with multicol
ored designs. The innovation required multiple stampings, one for each
tint applied. The process was an important precursor to the invention of
printing in the Tang, an operation that involved inking engraved
wooden blocks and pressing paper on them.
FASHIONS
Commoners-farmers, artisans, merchants, and scholars not in gov
erment service-wore loose, baggy trousers (similar to modern pajama
pants), tunics that opened in the front, and sashes tied at the waist. By
law the hems of their tunics, which often had round collars, could not
fall below the thigh, and the fabrics used for all of their apparel had to
be white hemp cloth. Slippers made of rushes, straw, or hemp thread,
and sandals secured to their feet by straps, served as shoes. Some shoes
Clothes and Hygme 101
were made of wood. Medical authorities recomended using camphor
because it dispelled foul foot odor. In the fields peasants wore large
brimmed, bamboo hats that protected them from the sun and rain.
How seriously the state prosecuted violations of sumptuary regula
tions is open to question. Enforcement was probably more rigorous be
fore the rebellion of An Lushan than after. In 693 a chief minister had
an official beaten to death in the imperial audience hall for amassing
brocades that the throne had forbidden private persons to own. After
756 the goverent probably overlooked infractions, especially with re
gard to the merchant class. By the ninth century there were complaints
that the wives of traders had ample supplies of silk and wore gold brace
lets. Their daughters sported pearl necklaces.
Most of the information about clothing that has survived in Tang
sources concerns the attire of aristocrats and mandarins, and their
women. Ceremonial vestments were numerous and elaborate. There
were fourteen diferent regalia for the emperor alone: raiments for wor
shiping Heaven, enthronements, sacrifices to former rulers, offerings to
the gods of the seas and mountains, worshiping the deities of soil and
grain, audiences on the first day of the moon (new moon), feasting of
ficials, hunting, audiences on the fifteenth day of the moon (full moon),
memorial services at tombs, passing legal judgments, horse riding, and
funerals. Nobles and officials also had formal dress for religious rituals,
audiences with the emperor, and banquets. Ceremonial attire for emper
ors included mortarboards with chin straps and strings of pearls dan
gling from the front and rear; robes with embroidered badges depicting
dragons, holy mountains, and other symbols; leather belts fastened with
jade hooks; ceremonial swords, some of which were embellished with
gold and jade; silk pouches for carrying seals; jade girdle pendants; and
silk slippers with upturned toes. The stitching of imperial robes was so
fine that one could not see the seams. The size, number, color, quality,
and decoration of tose articles differed according to the rank of the
wearer. A renowned court painter provided the designs for the formal
attire of the emperor and officials as well as those for palanquins, par
asols and fans.
Formal dress, whether wor at court or otherwise, resembled moder
bathrobes. Gentlemen wore a set of two made of silk. They folded the
right lapel of both over the left. The outer was the smaller, so it exposed
the lapels and sleeves of tl1e inner. Men wore unlined robes in the sum
mer and lined robes in the winter. A sash or belt secured them at the
waist. The sleeves of the clothing were quite voluminous, and sometimes
hung down from the wrists and forearms to well below the knee. When
meeting people, men and women covered their hands with their sleeves.
If they needed to use their hands, they folded the sleeves back across
their forearms. Those sleeves were ideal places to hide daggers if one
.
Robe
Ritual Regalia
Tunic, Seal Pouch, Jade Belt
Tang Patterns for Men's Clothing
Clothes and Hygme 103
Turbans
Late Tang Court Headdress Early Tan
g
Mens' Hats
had a murderous intent. Men's skirts were tied at teir waists. Te hems
brushed te foor and covered the feet, exposing only the toes of shoes.
The everyday apparel for patricians was much plainer. In fact, it was
very similar to that for commoners: baggy trousers and tunics with
round collars. However, there were no restrictions on the lengths of the
tunics nor on the kind of fabric for them. Silk was, of course, the pre
ferred cloth. The standard headgear for men was a cloth cap or turban
that wrapped around the forehead and rose up at the back to form pro
jections in various shapes above the head. It was tied in a knot at the
back, and the ends of the excess material hung down like tails. Some
times the ends were starched or lacquered so tat they jutted out verti-
104 Daily Life in Traditional China
cally like wings. Boots were common footwear because horseback riding
was an essential mode of tranportation for the upper classes. The skin
of a deer that roamed the forests of the south supplied the best leather
for them. The hides were dyed red before the bootmakers set to work.
Peasants wore raincoats made out of reeds or staw that hung down
from their necks and covered their bodies. The well-to-do used oiled
cloth to protect temselves against downpours. A collection of medical
prescriptions had a bizarre formula for waterproofing cloth: Place spi
ders i a pot and feed them pork lard for 100 days. Then kill the arach
nids and rub the grease exuded from their remains on a towel.
Presumably, the towel was placed on te head during storms. Physicians
warned that wearing clothes drenched with water or sweat caused sores,
rashes, and itchiness. They recommended changing garments immedi
ately and powdering the body.
Women's clothing was similar to the formal wear of men. I resembled
the kimono that is still worn in Japan today. In some fashions te outer
skirt was tied across or above te breasts and fared out from the sides
of the body. Tis fashion survives in traditional ceremonial wear for
Korean women. At certain times it was fashionable to bare the shoulders
and don a shawl of sheer fabric that fell to foor. Some styles revealed
cleavage, an immodesty uncharacteristic for Chinese women. Perhaps
they were outfits wor by courtesans or entertainers. Judging from mor
tuary fgures, some female dancers performed topless. When they did
not, fluttering the long sleeves of their gowns was an important feature
of their choreography.
Women wore types of jewelry common to most cultures: earrings, fin
ger rings, necklaces, and bracelets. It was their preference for baubles
that set them apart. One finds virtually no references to the gems-di
amonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires-as precious stones for j ewelry.
Diamonds were known to te Tang, but only as an industrial material
for grinding stones and perforating pearls. The three most popular ob
jects for personal adornment were jade, pearls and kingfisher feathers.
Some types of jewelry were peculiar to China, notably the hairpin. It was
a long piece of gold, silver, or ivory that resembled a dagger or letter
opener. The shaft was for iserting into the hair. The hilt was the object
of adorment, often flaring out in floral designs. Pearls or pieces of jade
on string sometimes dangled from their ends. Bright blue kingfisher
featers were used to create gorgeous hair pieces. Some women believed
that the wings of an emerald-green beetle were love charms, and pinned
them to their frocks to attract men.
Taoist alchemists had two methods for making artificial pearls. One of
them called for boiling the nacre (mother-of-pearl) removed from oyster
shells in vinegar and pulling it into threads after the liquid had cooled.
Roll the nacre into spheres the desired size and perforate with a pig's
Clothes and Hygene 105
Big Sleeves Low-Cut
Dancer's Costume Wester
Tang Patterns for Women's Gowns
bristle for stringing. Insert the spheres into the belly of a ca
r
p and steam
the fish until overdone. Bring the milk of a white goat containing mica
to a boil several times. Then remove te mica, bring the milk to a boil
again, and place the pearls in it. Leave tem in the milk overnight. Rinse
them the next moring.
For men, jewelry was an element of formal court wear. Aside from the
girdle pendants and jade belt hooks that had a long history in China,
they also wore leather belts studded with jade plaques. According to
sumptuary regulations the emperor's belt had twenty-four plaques of
white "mutton-fat" jade; those of nobles and mandarins, fifteen of pale
green jade.
The infuence of foreign cultures had a profound effect on fashions
throughout the Tang. At the beginning of the dynasty the riding habits
106 Daily Life in Tmditional China
for palace ladies was a sort of burnoose that the Chinese had adopted
from the Tu-yii-hun, a pastoral people who lived on the northwest fron
tier of China proper. It was a large sheet of cloth that the women draped
over their heads. The mantle fell across the shoulders to the feet, covering
most of the body and leaving only a small break between the edges for
the women to see through. The purpose of the apparel was to prevent
men on the streets from leering at the women. It had one drawback from
the government's point of view. It provided a convenient disguise that
rebels donned when they wanted to escape from the authorities who
were hunting them down.
Women began to abandon the buroose in the middle of the seventh
century. Emperor Gaozong took a dim view of the trend, believing it to
be a serious decline in public decency. I 663 and 671 he issued decrees
that attempted to revive it, but to little avail. The mantle continued to
lose favor with palace ladies and disappeared completely by 705.
When Gaozong issued his edicts, women had taken up a new fashion
as a substitute for te buroose. It was the curtain bonnet, a broad
rimmed hat with a veil that ran around the sides and back and fell to
the shoulders. The fabric of the veil was a gauzelike material, and the
fancier veils were adorned with jade and kingfisher feathers. Alternately,
women might wear a hood that exposed only the face. I eiter case the
headwear did not cover the face, a fact that disturbed the emperor. The
curtain bonnet was another foreign import, an article of clothing native
to Tokara, a nation in the far northwest, outside the empire's borders.
After 705 the hat became extremely popular not only among palace
women, but also among the wives and daughters of commoners who
followed their lead. However, it lost favor, and by 742 women were
wearing hats that concealed nothing of their face or lower hair. Some
did not even bother to don headgear when riding horseback in public.
Wester dress became fashionable in the 740s and 750s. It is not clear
from which westerners the Chinese adopted the style. They were prob
ably Central Asians, but they may also have been Persians. Men sported
leopard skin hats, and the women wore hairpins with trinkets tat jin
gled when they walked. Te apparel for women had tight sleeves and
collars. After 705 women had adopted masculine attire, boots in partic
ular, according to the customs of the pastoral peoples living northeast of
China. After the rebellion of An Lushan the infuence of Uighur culture
grew along with Uighur military power. Women began to fix their hair
in the Uighur style, to wear Uighur dress, and to ride Uighur horses.
For the most part it was the high society of Changan that succumbed to
foreign fads. It is impossible to determine how much effect they had in
the provinces.
Clothes and Hygiene 107
APPEARANCE
A pleasing appearance was extremely important to the women of the
Tang. It could be obtained naturally or artificially. The natural method
involved applying or ingesting animal or vegetable matter that improved
the look of the skin. According to a pharmacologist, bat brains applied
to a woman's face removed blackheads. A Sui dynasty manual on aro
matics for women in the imperial harem gave the following formula for
attaining a fair skin tone: Pulverize dried tangerine peel, white melon
seeds, and peach blossoms, strain the powder through a sieve, and ingest
a spoonful thrice daily for thirty days. Another, fom a collection of
prescriptions to relieve discomfort, supplied directions for a mixture that
would improve the complexion and slim the waistline: Dry blossoms
from three peach trees, crush them, and sift the powder. Mix the powder
with ale and take a spoonful before eating thrice daily. The collection
also recommended a face cream that would make the face glow and
protect it against harsh cold in winter: Boil apricot pits and pulverize
them with skinless sesame seeds that have been fried in their own oil.
Blend those ingredients with Chinese powdered hemp seeds until the
mixture turns creamy white. Another facial cream called for steeping
three chicken eggs in fn"le ale, sealing the mixture in a pot, covering the
jar tightly, and letting it stand unopened for twenty-eight days. There
was an even simpler potion: Smear the face and body with the blood of
a black-boned, silky bird on the seventh day of the seventh moon. Apply
the gore three times.
Cosmetics were, of course, the artificial means of beautifying the coun
tenance. There were several powders that Tang women applied to their
faces to give tem color. One of the oldest was ceruse, made of a lead
oxide, which tinted the skin white. Women also applied it to their
breasts. Poets called such makeup "lead face" and "lead fower." Women
may also have applied minium, another lead oxide, as a rouge to redden
their cheeks. It is more likely, however, that they used vermilion (mer
curic sulfide), a bright red pigment, or saffower which has large orange
or red blossoms. Rice flour served as the base into which the minerals
or flowers were mixed. The lac insect from soutern Vietam and Cam
bodia yielded a dye for rouges as well. Since the sixth century Chinese
women dabbed their foreheads with a powder containing massicot, a
third lead oxide, that imparted a yellow color to te brows. They may
have used golden arsenic for the same purpose. A yellow forehead was
extremely popular in the Tang, perhaps because face readers asserted
that a yellow aura around the forehead was extremely auspicious. Con
versely, sometimes the character of makeup could be a portent of a ca
lamity. In the early eighth century, Illustrious August's concubines ap-
108 Daily Life in Traditional China
plied ceruse to their cheeks in a pattern suggesting tears. Those in the
know considered that to be a bad omen. The rebellion of An Lushan
broke out thereafter. There was a simple and quick method of perfuming
face powders: placing whole cloves in their containers. In the early ninth
century, when Tibetan fashions became popular, patrician ladies aban
doned face powders and rouges entirely, a change not welcomed by
some men.
There were also lotions for making the skin glossy. A formula from
the sixth century calls for wrapping four aromatics, including cloves and
nutmeg, i a piece of silk and immersing the packet in fine ale. Let the
liquid rest for one night in the summer, two in the spring or autumn
and three in the winter. Pour the ale into a copper pot and add sesame
oil and lard. Bring the liquid to boil for a few minutes and then reduce
to a simmer. Add the scent packet and continue simmering until the fuid
is completely evaporated. The salve is done when you stick a piece of
buring wood in the mixture, and it does not sizzle when the potion
extinguishes the fames.
In the Tang women applied beauty marks to their chins, cheeks, and
foreheads. Painted on with red, yellow, black, and other pigments, they
took the form of crescent moons, coins, birds, insects, fowers, leaves,
and the like. The fashion was an old custom that dated back to the sec
ond century, but it did not come into vogue during the Tang until
around 700. A woman who had been enslaved in the palace, and by
virtue of her extraordinary literary talents rose to become a secretary to
Empress Wu, reintroduced it to high society. It was a means of covering
facial blemishes and scars. Beauty marks did not always mask natural
flaws or accidental wounds. Before 766 the wives of patricians were ex
tremely jealous. Whenever female slaves or concubines committed the
slightest offenses, they branded their faces.
It was the habit of women in medieval China to pluck all their eye
brows and paint in new ones with tinctures. The best-known style, called
moth eyebrows because their shape resembled the wings of the insect,
apparently originated in the Sui dynasty. It became so fashionable at the
court in the early seventh century that officials had to supply a daily
ration of twenty-seven quarts of a pigment to the ladies of the emperor's
harem. The pigment was derived from conch shells. In the Tang, women
seem to have preferred a greenish blue. In the late eighth century, palace
women were using indigo, a blue dye of Persian origin. In the early ninth
century, under the influence of Tibetan culture, they began to paint thin
eyebrows in the form of inverted Vs that gave their faces a sad expres
sion. The style was called "convict/' "tear/' or "mourning makeup. " A
decade later they were drawing three or four red or purple lines above
and below teir eyes. They called the fashion "blood halos. "
One jealous wife i n the Tang devised her own style of eyebrows.
Clothes and Hygime 109
Beaut Marks and Eyebrows
Madam Fang would not permit her husband's slave girls to wear thick
makeup or do their hair up in tall chignons. A recently purchased maid
servant did not yet know the rules or her mistress's temper. She made
herself up a bit too attractively for the wife's taste. The mistress said to
her, "So you like makeup? I will make you up! " At which point the
woman had someone slice open the slave's eyebrows and fill the inci
sions with blue pigment. Afterward she heated a metal door bolt util
it was red hot and burned the corners of the servant's eyes. The scorching
caused the skin to roll up. The wife then applied red powder to tem.
When the scabs fell away, the scars looked just like made-up eyebrows.
Red was an important color for facial cosmetics. Women brushed
rouge on their cheeks directly under their eyes. Cinabar (mercuric sul
fide) imparted the red color to ladies' lip glosses. A powder ground from
the horny plate that closes the shells of mollusks lent an agreeable scent
to lip glosses in the Tang. The infuence of Tibetan culture briefly led to
the abandonment of red glosses. I the early ninth century black lip
glosses became fashionable in high society. Pigment from impatiens, a
fowering plant, blended with aluminum sulfate and garlic supplied a
dye for women's fingerails. Both men and women wore their nails long.
Some medical authorities warned tat cutting fingernails and toenails
too frequently weakened muscles.
Six gods govemed women's cosmetics, ornaments, and attire: the first,
ointments and pomades; the second, eyebrow tinctures; the third, face
powders; the fourth, glosses; the fifth, jewelry; and the last, gowns.
Whenever Yang Guifei did her face and hair, she would call out to each
one of them by name while she was engaged in the procedure appro
priate to tat particular god. It would seem that she was appealing for
divine assistance to beautify herself so that she would not lose the em
peror's favor. His favor extended not only to her, but to her older sisters
as well. He provided the women with an annual stipend of 1 million
coppers to be used solely for purchasing powders and glosses.
There were a substantial number of hair styles for women in te Tang.
Some were enduig. Others were passing fancies that surfaced for a
1 10 Daily Life in Traditional China
Tall Bindings Te Conch Deserting the Family
Tang Hairstles for Women
short time and developed fom specific historical or sociological causes.
One recent authority has uncovered twenty-four of the most popular
fashions from his study of poems, histories, and other sources.
Tall bindings consisted of hair drawn to the top of the head and formed
into "piles" in a large variety of shapes. The height of the hairdo was as
much as a foot. The style was the most common in the Tang. Some
women, notably Yang Guifei, achieved the effect without going to the
trouble of doing her hair. She had wigs.
In the conch, the hair was drawn up to the top of the head, bound at
the base with a ribbon, and the ends curled backward into a spiral re
sembling the shells of certain mollusks. Sometimes women combed their
hair into double spirals.
In jeweled bindings, women wove gold, silver, and jade ornaments, of
ten in the shapes of fowers, into their hairdos.
In fower bindings, women inserted or wove fowers into their tall bind
ings. The blossoms in question were probably peonies because they were
the favorite fowers of the Tang period.
In the convict cinch, the hair was tightly pulled to the top of the head,
bound at te base, and the ends done up in a bun. Although the style
had been around for some time, it became fashionable among palace
women in the reign of Xizong (873-888), especially during his exile in
Chengdu. The name apparently derived from the fact that the ladies felt
like prisoners in that city.
In deserting the family, the hair at the temples was pulled down along
both sides to embrace the face. The fashion came into vogue at the very
end of the Tang, when everyone clearly recognized that the dynasty was
about to collapse and widespread dislocations of the population would
occur in its wake. At the time it became chic to wear hairpins made of
Clothes and Hygene 111
Tang Mirror
lapis lazuli. That, too, was an ill omen, for the pronunciation of the word
was the same as that of the phrase "wandering away," another expres
sion connoting one's loss of home.
Uprooting the grove was a style similar to the preceding, except tat the
hair forming the fame for the face was disordered, and that from the
top of the head was allowed to fall and cover the eyes. It emerged from
the same sense that the Tang was doomed.
Girls did not do their hair in tall bindings, perhaps because their elders
would not allow it. They did their hair up in a style called "anticipating
immortals," which required them to draw two braids up from the back
of the neck, pull them over the head and tie their ends above the hairline
to form loops. Girls also wore bangs.
Combs were essential for keeping the hair in place when tall bindings
were worn. The style required as many as ten of them. Made of gold,
silver, jade, rhioceros horn, and ivory, combs were small and had
curved backs. A woman might also insert as many as twelve hairpins to
fx her hairdo.
Every woman needed a mirror to apply her cosmetics and do her hair.
In ancient and medieval China, mirrors, usually round, were made of
bronze, not glass. The front was a smooth, fat surface that reflected
images because it was highly polished. With time the surface dimmed
and it had to be refurbished. There were craftsmen who did the job by
burnishing it on a grindstone. The backs of mirrors were almost always
ornamented. The designs could be purely decorative or they might be
occult. Mirrors were magical. In the Tang the citizens of Changan would
point them at the moon during lunar eclipses, hoping to save the orb
from being eaten up. To enhance mirrors' mysterious, reflective powers,
artisans often cast symbols, such as constellations and mythical beasts
1 12 Daily Life in Traditional China
that had supernatural powers, on their reverse sides. Mirrors required
stands. They were fairly tall when people sat on mats or couches, but
later they were affixed to cosmetic chests that were fairly short.
Emperor Zhongzong had the grandest mirror of all. He commissioned
the ateliers in Yangzhou to make a ten-foot-square mirror and cast a
bronze cassia tree for its frame. The tree was adorned with gold blossoms
and silver leaves. Each time the emperor mounted a horse, he looked at
his refection in it. The mirror was large enough to encompass both horse
and rider.
Women stored their cosmetics, combs, hairpins, and all the rest i
partitioned chests usually made of wood. In the early eighth century a
skilled craftsman built an automated cosmetic case for the empress. It
had a stand for a mirror and two compartments beneath. When she
raised the lid to make herself up, a door to one of the compartments
opened, and a wooden lady with a towel and a comb came out. After
she finished, the empress replaced the items, the statuette retured to
her niche, and its door closed. Then the other door opened, and a
wooden woman emerged bearing rouge, eyebrow tincture, and hairpins.
It, too, returned to its compartent, and the door closed, when the em
press completed her makeup. Gold and silver decorated the painted box,
and the wooden automatons wore robes of exquisite fabrics.
In the Tang some men also adorned their bodies. Their embellishments
were skin deep. In general te Chinese did not approve of tattooing
because it was a mutilation of the body, which ought to be returned to
the grave in pristine condition, and because it was a custom practiced
by the barbarians. There were, however, some men who defied social
conventions. They were mainy the residents of markets, strongmen, and
thugs. One of the ruffians in Changan spent 5,000 cash to have an artist
prick his chest and stomach so that he could sport a landscape replete
with gazebos nestled in the mountains, pavilions soaring over rivers,
trees, birds, and animals. In the ninth century a band of j uvenile bullies,
more than thirty in number, terrorized and robbed people by force in
the streets of a market at Changan. They entered a tavern carrying snakes
and assaulted patrons with te shoulder blades of sheep. All of the hoo
ligans had teir heads shaved and tattooed with all sorts of images. The
mayor of the capital ordered some ward headmen and their lackeys to
apprehend the culprits. After their arrest, he had all of them beaten to
death in the market. Thereafter market people with tattoos had them
effaced by burning. At the time there was a strongman in one of the
city's wards who had tattoos on his shoulders. That on the left read, "In
life I do not fear the mayor," and that on the right, "In death I will not
fear the king of hell. " He paid for his insolence. The mayor had him
beaten to death as well.
Some men paid to have their entire bodies tattooed. Others, despite
Clothes and Hygiene 113
their violent character, had a literary bent. A tough guy in the market
of Jingzhou, a man who never finched from a blow, had some verses
by Bai Juyi tattooed on his torso from the neck downward. Others pre
ferred religious motifs. The goveror of a prefecture in southwest China
imprisoned a troublemaker from the market who was prone to fighting.
His underlings went to beat the man in his cell, but they could not bring
themselves to do so because he had the image of te Buddhist god of
wealth tattooed on his back When he learned this, the governor was
furious and had the thug brought to the courtyard in front of his office.
Then he ordered his bailiff to thrash the man with a new bamboo rod
that had a head three inches in circumference. Ten days later the ruffian
was wandering the streets with his upper torso bared and begging for
money. A soldier and strongman also had an image of a Buddhist deity
tattooed on his back. On the first and fifteenth days of every moon he
took his shirt off, sat with his back to his family, and had his wife and
children worship the icon on his skin as they would have venerated a
statue in a monastery.
A provincial inspector, who had excelled at playing polo on j ackasses
in his younger days, had a snake tattooed all over his body in his youth.
The image of the serpent began in his right hand, where the jaws of the
beast drawn on his thumb and index finger gaped. The body of the snake
wound around his wrist, arm and neck Then it slithered down his chest,
stomach, thigh, and shin, where it terminated wit a taiL Later in life
the mandarin kept his hand hidden until he was merrily drunk Then
he would expose it and grab entertainers between his thumb and index
finger, saying, "The serpent is biting you! " The performers would howl
and pretended to suffer painfully. The inspector thought it was amusing.
HYGIENE
There was not much tolerance for body odor in the Tang. In that pe
riod the word for the stench was "barbarian B.O." The barbarians in
question were westerners, mainly Persians, but also Indians and other
peoples living outside the empire, to the west. Those peoples earned such
a notorious reputation for their offensive smell that their foulness became
synonymous with body odor. One of Illustrious August's female acro
bats, a westerer, suffered from the ignominy of it. It was perhaps not
so much that the outlanders were naturally malodorous, as that they did
not take measures to remedy the problem. The Chinese, at least the up
per classes, were more sensitive to the problem. Women and men per
fumed themselves. Palace ladies applied scents so lavishly that when
they went out on an excursion, the redolence of their cortege permeated
the air for miles. During the eighth century a courtesan in Changan was
so skilled in applying scents to her body tat her fragrance lured bees
114 Daily Lie in Traditional China
and butterfies, which followed her wherever she went. Yang Guifei wore
cicadas and silkworms molded from camphor in her robes. It was also
the custom for people of high station to attach small cloth bags filled
with aromatics to their waist sashes. They favored slipping sweet basil
into the pouches. They might also attach storax to their girdles. There
was a rare, but more lasting way of perfuming the body. A madam, who
raised a young girl to become a courtesan, fed her aromatics when she
was a child. After she grew into adulthood, her body naturally exuded
a delightful odor all of the tie.
Medical authorities had their own solutions to the problem of body
order. One of them was a deodorant made of lime, frankincense, cloves,
sweet gu (the fragrant resin of a tree that grew in south China), and
birthwort (an aromatic root). The compound was packed into small bags
that were slung under the armpits. The authorities also recommended
washing the armpits with urine on New Year's Day. One might also
concoct a deodorant for interal consumption: Pound together cloves,
patchouli (a Malayan mint), sweet basil, costus root (an import from
Kashmir or Sri Lanka), Chinese spikenard (an aromatic from a Southeast
Asian plant of the valerian family), two kinds of Chinese angelica (a
fragrant member of the carrot family), the inner bark of the cassia tree,
seeds from the areca (betel) palm, and musk from te glands of the male
musk deer. Sift the fine powder, add honey, pound again with a pestle
1,000 times, and shape into pills. Take twelve pills during the day, dis
solving one pill at a time in the mouth and three during the night. The
body will exude the perfume of the mixture in five days, and it will scent
clothes and bed linens.
Bad breath was also a social taboo among the upper classes. Cloves
were an ancient remedy. In the Han dynasty the throne required its
ministers to suck on a few cloves when they appeared at audiences to
make their reports, so they did not offend tl1e emperor. The clove was
also a soothing balm for toothaches. Its active igredient, eugenol, was
a painkiller. In pre-Tang and Tang times southerners preferred chewing
Chinese olives because they considered them superior to cloves as a
breath freshener. The fruit was sour, but people steeped them in honey
to make them more palatable. If one had the wherewithal, he might avail
himself of more exotic scents. A sybaritic prince of the early eighth cen
tury chewed on a mixture of aloeswood and musk whenever he spoke
with his guests. After he opened his mouth and began conversing with
them, a lovely fragrance wafted over the mats on which they sat. As for
dental care, a medical treatise of the early eighth century recommended
rubbing teeth after getting out of bed in the moring, fushing the mouth
with water several times after eating, and rubbing the teeth again before
retiring. Failure to follow those directions would lead to rot. The intro-
Cloths and Hygem 11S
duction of Buddhism brought the Indian custom of using a stick to clean
teeth.
The Chinese of the period 206 B. C.-A.D. 1000, especially those who
lived in the north, the drainage basin of the Yellow River, had an am
bivalent attitude toward bathing. In the sixth century a fastidious man
at the very least washed his hands and face when he got out of bed in
the moring, and his body every fifth day. Bathing every fifth day had
been the custom since the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), when the
government provided a day off for officials to wash their hair. Chinese
wore their hair long, so it was the focus of attention because it was prone
to collect dirt and oils from the scalp. The Tang, following the precedent
of a southern kingdom in the sixth century, was less generous than the
Han, providing its officials with one day off out of every ten (on the
tenth, twentieth, and last day of every moon) . The casual term for a
bureaucrat's salary at the time was "subsidy for clothing and hair wash
ing." After the rebellion of An Lushan the government abandoned that
liberal policy because of the frequent emergencies that required the serv
ices of its offcials for long periods of time. Taoists did not believe in
frequent bathing because they thought of it as a source of illness.
There were, on the one hand, fanatics about bathig. A scholar of the
sixth century washed ten or more times a day and thought even that
was insufficient. On the other there were men notorious for their un
cleanness, An author who lived at the beginning of the Tang and enjoyed
the favor of the emperor immersed himself in meditation and did not
use a wash basin for ten days at a time. Bai Juyi, the renowned poet of
the early ninth century, wrote that he did not wash or bathe for an entire
year. When he finally did, he discovered how wasted his body had be
come.
The prevalence of body lice is perhaps the best evidence for the lack
of cleanliness among many Chinese during the Tang. They were so com
mon that one author of te period declared that you could predict the
fate of an ailig man by the movements of the pests. If the vermin
crawled toward their host, he would live. If tey scrambled away from
him, he would die (rats deserting a sinking ship, as it were). A authority
on medicine recommended that the hair of children be regularly combed
and washed, lest lice multiply on their scalps. Some adults infested with
large numbers of the vermin were in the habit of disposing of them by
biting and eating them. The lice then formed a mass in the stomach that
only the ingestion of the ashes and boiled water from old combs could
expel.
Te bathing customs of foreigners were the object of some disdain on
the part of Chinese. They found the habits of Cambodians strange be
cause they bathed twice a day and applied musk to their bodies. The
Koreans, too, washed themselves twice a day, and considered Chiese
116 Daily Life in Traditional China
filthy because they were so remiss i their attention to personal cleanli
ness. Worse still, from the Chiese point of view, were the outlanders'
customs of communal bathing. Men and women bathed together in the
nude in both Korea and Cambodia. The authors of those opinions were
mostly northerners (from the drainage basin of the Yellow River). A cold
climate and fewer water resources were probably importat factors in
shaping their bathing habits and prejudices. An ancient philosopher from
that region declared that people did not wash in the winter because
doing so was unsuitable for the body. In other words, it was dangerous
to the health. Taoists in the Tang opposed frequent bathing as well as
bathing in rooms with drafts, too much heat or too much cold, because
such conditions gave rise to disease.
It was the practice among some people in the Tang to scent their bath
water. There were officials in the emperor's household responsible for
his tub. They inspected the water to determine if it was clean and prop
erly perfumed. They also tested its temperature to ensure that it had the
proper warmth for their lord. A Taoist scripture on liturgy instructed
priests to bathe in the Waters of the Black Clouds before performing their
rituals. Mix four ounces of green wood, seven ounces of sandalwood
and two ounces of ginseng with three pecks of water and boil it until
the liquid clears. The water was suitable for bathing in the summer, but
had to be heated during the winter. Other Taoist scriptures called for
bathing in waters scented with a compound of aloeswood, frankincense,
sandalwood, birthwort, cloves, and Borneo camphor. Besides perfuming
the body the scents had the power to bring down the spirits from the
five directions (east, south, west, north, and center) . Taoists also added
boiled orchid and chrysanthemum fowers to tubs of hot water in which
they bathed. They believed tat the aromatics would prolong their lives.
The Chinese did not have true soaps (that is, soaps made from animal
fats) until modern times. Instead, they relied on detergents made from
the beans of the soapbean tree. Detergents act by forming films between
cloth or the body and the dirt or oil on it. The films lift the filth off.
Pharmacists mixed the pulverized beans with flour, powdered minerals,
and perfumes. Then they rolled the compound into balls for use in wash
ing and bathing. At the beginning of the Tang, apothecaries kept their
formulas secret. They forbade their children to reveal them or, in some
cases, would not pass tem down to their offspring at all. In the early
eighth century an author compiled a collection of prescriptions in which
he supplied recipes for making some 200 products of various kinds for
cleaning. Among them are two for washing the face, five for the hair,
and eight for the body. The upper classes washed their hands in water
containing bath beans after using the privy. The unsophisticated were
ignorant of the custom and sometimes disgraced themselves. After one
man's marriage, his wife's slave girls brought a basi of water with a
Clothes and Hygiene 117
Bath Beans
silver casket full of the beans to him every morning. He poured the
contents of the casket into the water and ate it for breakfast.
A Zen koan (paradox) from the Tang period irreverently declared,
"The Buddha is nothing more than a dung-wiping stick. " As the paradox
indicates, the Chinese of the time were still using sticks to clean them
selves after using the privy. However, at the time there was a superior
material for accomplishing that: toilet paper. Te Chinese invented paper
in the first century or ealier, and soon put it to good use i the latine.
The oldest reference to toilet paper appears in a ghost story recorded i
the fifth century. When a Mr. Yu was using the privy, someone extended
his or her arm into the outhouse with a handful of "grass paper" so he
could wipe himself. He never saw the body of the person who rendered
the service. Later, when he was in the outhouse and waited in vain for
someone to send in the toilet paper, he heard a struggle outside. He
peeked out and saw the ghosts of a male slave and a female slave ar
guing over who would be the first to offer the paper. When the male
inched ahead, a fight broke out between the two. When Yu was ready
to leave, they were still at it. So he shouted at them in a harsh voice, and
they vanished, never to return. An Arab merchant in the late Tang did
not think much of Chinese cleanliness, observing that they did not wash
their hands after using the privy, but merely wiped themselves with
paper. Clearly, the people that he encountered were not among the most
sophisticated.
6
FOODSTUFFS
In te late eighth century a general declared, "There is nothing that can
not be eaten. Making tings edible is only a question of skillfully blend
ing sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and peppery flavors while cooking." Once
he cooked the worn-out mudguard of his saddle, and declared that his
dish was very tasty.
In short, an adept chef could tur even tough, old leather (the mud
guard) into delectable fare. More to the point is te general's coment
that everything is edible. It is probably fair to say that the Chinese have
been the most omnivorous people in the history of the world. There were
several reasons for that, the most important of which was geographical.
The Tang empire stretched from the arid grasslands of Inner Mongolia
to the lush, humid tropics of norther Vietnam; from the fish-rich sea
coasts on the Pacific Ocean to the fertile plains on the border with Tibet
as well as the deserts and steppes of Central Asia. The range of animals,
plants, and minerals was greater than that of Japan, Korea, India, Persia,
Arabia, Byzantium, and Europe in medieval times. Consequently, the
number of edible things was larger than elsewhere.
Differences in climate, soil, availability of water, and other factors led
to the development of regional variations in food and cuisine. The major
geographic division in the Tang was that between the north and the
south. The relatively arid north, essentially the drainage basin of the
Yellow River and the steppes beyond, favored the cultivation of millet,
120 Daily Life in Tmditional China
which had been the major cereal in the Chinese diet from ancient times;
barley, which was a preferred ingredient for soups; and increasingly
wheat, which supplied flour for pastas and pastries. Turnips, a norther
root vegetable, were delectable when cooked wit mutton. Gourmets of
the capital prized a summer garlic that flourished in the vicinity of
Changan. The best pears, called Phoenix Roost, grew north of Luoyang.
Grapes, apricots, peaches, Chinese pears, Chinese apples, persimmons,
pomegranates (an import fom the west), and jujubes (Chinese black
thorns) were also native to the region. Rhubarb grew in the nortwest.
The finest hazelnuts came from the region west of Changan; pine nuts,
from the east of the capital; and chestnuts (dried, roasted, or ground into
a flour) from the northeast. Walnuts, an import from te west, had taken
root in northern orchards. Aside from pork, the most ubiquitous and
most often eaten meat throughout the whole of the empire, the meat of
choice in te north was lamb. Northerners also enjoyed the fesh of the
Bactrian camel, especially the hump which was broiled or boiled. Bears
inhabited the mountain valleys in the region south of Changan but were
difficult to catch. A recipe for steamed bear called for boiling the meat
and head of the creature until rare, and then marinating it in fermented
soybean paste overnight; steaming sticky grains that had soaked in fer
mented soybean paste until they tured a reddish yellow; mixing the
meat and cereal with scallions, ginger, dried tangerine peel, and salt; and
steaming the mixture. Northeaster prefectures sent bamboo rats, so
named because they fed on bamboo roots and were the size of rabbits,
for the emperor's table. The peoples of the northwest captured marmots,
whose flesh was fat and savory, to eat. The natives of the northeast ate
sea otters, the size of dogs, which had waterproof skins. Eating roasted
snow pheasant from an area northeast of Luoyang was said to make one
courageous and robust. The natives of Shu (modern Sichuan) in the west
ate fying cockroaches.
The south, stretching from the drainage basin of the Yangtze River to
the souther border of what is now northern Vietnam, had the greatest
variety of fauna and flora because it was warm and moist. Animals and
plants also suffered less from human depredations because the region
was still underpopulated. The major staple there was rice, most varieties
of which grew in flooded paddies that required the great water re
sources. Te construction of the Grand Canal in the early seventh century
facilitated the transportation of rice north and made it readily available,
at least to patricians and the rich, in the capitals. A palm tree produced
another starch, sago four, that southerers prized for making cakes,
though they used rice more often. Bamboo shoots grew everywhere in
Tang China, but those of the souther spotted bamboo were the tastiest
of all. Yams and taro were soutern root vegetables. A recipe for taro
soup of the early sixth century recommends boiling lamb and pork with
Food and Feasts 121
the root; favoring it with scallions, salt, ginger, vinegar, and fermented
soy paste; and thickenig it with glutinous rice. Several varieties of sea
weed were a foodstuff along the seacoast. Overindulgence in eating the
purple leaf variety caused stomachaches and gas, but a blue-green va
riety facilitated uriation. Islanders off te east coast of China from Korea
to the southeast ate a purple-reddish kelp because they did not have
other vegetables. Norther Chinese who consumed it, however, took ill.
The south was the great homeland of fruits, a paradise of sweets. Ba
nanas grew there, but the crown jewel of the region was the litchi. It had
a coarse, reddish skin and a dark pit. Its fesh was sweet and aromatic.
Southerners prized it so much that they established a festival to celebrate
the ripening of the fruit. Occasionally a northerer developed a passion
for it. Because Yang Guifei loved them, she had the goverment's rapid
relay system transport them to the imperial palace thousands of miles
from their native district. Court musicians composed a song in honor of
the fruit. Less favorful, but closely related to the litchi, were dragon eyes,
which were smaller, had a smoother skin, were greenish-yellow, and
were less sweet. Although litchi enjoyed the greatest esteem, it was not
the most common fruit. That honor belonged to citrus fruit. Oranges,
mandarin oranges, tangerines, kumquats, and loquats all graced the ta
bles of southern diners. As early as the fourth century, markets in the
southeast sold rush bags, as thin as silk, filled with reddish-yellow ants
that attacked insect pests when hung from mandarin orange trees and
saved the fruit from destruction. This is probably the first instance of
usig insects to control insects in human history. I pre-Tang times
southern Chinese women carved the citron, imported from southwest
Asia, into the shapes of fowers and birds, then stewed them in honey
for edible table decorations. That practice probably continued into the
Tang. A variety of oak yielded a sweet acorn that slaked thirst and ar
rested diarrhea. A climbing woody plant bore a nut three to four inches
in length, with white pulp and a black kerel, that was sweet and edible.
If the south was the richest region for fruit, it was also the most boun
tiful area for seafood. Southerners enjoyed jellyfish cooked with cinna
mon, Sichuan pepper, cardamom, and ginger; oysters boiled and eaten
with ale; fried squid favored with ginger and vinegar; horseshoe crabs
prepared as a sauce or pickle; red crab seasoned with the five favors
(sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and peppery); live shrimp served with vege
tables and heavy sauces; and soup prepared from a gelatinous substance
obtained from the shells of the green turtle. Te natives also ate puffers,
fsh that Tang men called "river piglet" (though some species also lived
in the sea). When frightened, the fish inflate a bladder and foat to the
surface of the water, where they are easily gathered. The puffer is ex
tremely poisonous, having a sac of toxin near its spine. Te Japanese
today eat it raw, sometimes with disastrous results; a small number of
122 Daily Lie in Traditional China
people die every year when chefs improperly prepare it. However, Tang
cooks cleaned, then boiled it in a pot of hot water that presumably
leached out whatever poison remained in the flesh.
Mammals, reptiles, and insects also made their way to souther tables.
Some, such as the sambar deer, were common and fairly recognizable to
northerers. Oters were bizarre. The elephant, slain with poison arrows,
produced twelve cuts of meat, the best of which was the trunk, whose
crispness after cooking made it a favorite for barbecuing. Southerers in
pre-Tang times made a broth from the head of the macaque monkey and
probably continued to do so in the Tang. In the Tang they also boiled
the fesh of the proboscis monkey with the five flavors to make a soup
that they claimed cured malaria. According to a northern exile, the meat
of the white-throated partridge was sweet and plump, superior in favor
to that of chickens and pheasants. Easter barbarians, the aborigines of
China's southeast coast who lived in mountain valleys, ate the native
green peacock-it tasted just like duck-not to be confused with the
flamboyant Indian peacock. They also made jerky of its flesh. Nor did
the southerner exclude reptiles from his diet. The locals of many areas
relished frogs. They also considered python hash favored with vinegar
a delicacy. Snakes were such common fare in some districts that a north
etner who lived there for ten years had never encountered a single ser
pent because the locals had eaten them all. The natives of certain areas
were fond of eating horet larvae roasted with salt, cooled, and dried.
Wearing protective overcoats made of grass, they smoked out the insects,
climbed the trees, and brought down the nests, which had several hun
dred tiers of combs. That delicacy was sent to Changan as tribute for the
emperor. Chieftains of southern tribes were in the habit of presenting a
sauce of ant eggs and salt to honored guests as a treat.
By far the greatest factor in the diversity of the Chinese diet, then as
now, was the search for substances that could cure illnesses, prolong life,
and confer immortality. The search for things to promote health and
longevity led medicine men to investigate and classify the benefits of all
sorts of animals (dogs, asses, tigers, porcupines, badgers, wolves, hedge
hogs, bats, whales, humans), birds (storks, goatsuckers, cuckoos, crested
mynahs, goshawks, owls), fish (carp, eels, sharks, cuttlefsh, stingrays,
sea horses), reptiles (alligators, geckos, pit vipers, sea snakes), amphibi
ans (toads), insects (praying mantises, bombardier beetles, spiders, dung
beetles, firefies, mosquitoes, centipedes, lice), plants (chrysanthemums,
camphor, eggplant, hemp, ferns, j asmine), and minerals (gold, silver,
mercury, arsenic, mica, copper, iron, lead, jade, coral, pearls). No doubt
those who searched for these products were also largely responsible for
introducing all sorts of parts from animals and plants into the cuisine of
China. For example, the ubiquitous pig yielded its head, lard, brain,
heart, liver, spleen, kidneys, pancreas, stomach, bladder, intestines, tes-
Food and Feasts 123
tides, feet, snout, lips, tongue, teeth, tai, and nails, as well as various
fluids ad excreta, such as blood, milk, sweat, bile, and feces, for healig
prescriptions. Not all of the substances or parts listed ended up on the
table, but many did. A clear distinction between drugs and food did not,
and does not, exist in Chinese fare.
Another factor in the omnivorous appetite of Tang Chinese was a pas
sion for exotics. Some of the foodstuffs, such as bear's paw, reached the
table because they were hard to obtain and venerated since antiquity.
Others were foreign imports and sometimes difficult to acquire. Golden
peaches that came from far off Samarkand took root in the imperial gar
dens north of Changa, and probably graced the tables only of the em
peror and his favorites. Pistachios arrived from as far away as Persia.
Tang dietitians contended that eating them made a person fat and robust.
By the ninth century farmers in southeast China were growing them, so
they had become a native nut. Korea contributed the best pine seeds and
ginseng roots. Dates from palm trees-sweeter tan jujubes-and figs
made their way from Persia. Both trees took root in the southeast by the
ninth century. Mangoes were exotic because they were imported from
Southeast Asia and probably were enjoyed only at te tables of exiles
banished to the prefectures of the south. Finally, there were dishes tat
were noted for their bizarre preparation. Southerers, always k1own for
their odd customs, stuffed infant mice with honey and let them loose on
the table, where they scurried about, peeping. Guests invited to such
banquets snatched the "honeyed peepers" with their chopsticks and ate
them alive. Southerers also boiled taro and, when the water bubbled,
dropped live frogs into the pot. The frogs, attempting to escape the scald
ing heat, embraced the taro and were eaten when fully cooked. Some
times bamboo shoots replaced the taro, and the dish became something
like an amphibian Popsicle.
Authorities on Chinese history and culture have probably overrated
famines-at least forty-two of which (approximately one every seven
years) occurred during the Tang-as a source of diversity in Chinese
cuisine, but famines did compel people to eat things that they would
normally scor. In 621 Tang forces besieged Luoyang and erected eart
works around the city to prevent ayone from leaving or foodstuffs from
entering the metropolis. After consuming all of the grass roots and tree
leaves in the city, the citizens tured to making cakes of mud and the
powdered residue of grains, with unfortunate results. Everyone who ate
the pastries took ill. Their bodies swelled, their legs weakened, and they
died.
Cannibalism was another last resort for surviving famines. In the win
ter of 618-619 the army of a warlord, some 200,000 troops in all, sur
rounded a district south of Luoyang ad exhausted all the stores of millet
there. The price of grain rose to 10,000 coppers per peck, and one could
124 Daily Life in Traditional China
not find any to buy even at that price. Famine broke out, so the natives
began to devour each other. The rebel soldiers were also starving, so
they took to abducting children, whom they steamed and ate. That led
the warlord to conclude, "Of all the delicious things to eat, none sur
passes human flesh. As long as there are people in neighboring districts
we have nothing to fear from famine. " He had a large bronze bell with
a capacity of 200 bushels inverted, stewed the fesh of children and
women in it, divided the meat, and gave it to his officers. The worst
famines occurred in cities under long sieges. In 757, when An Lushan's
forces surrounded a town and its provisions ran out, the inhabitants ate
all of the horses, birds, and rats they could fnd. Then they turned to
paper, tree bark, and tea leaves. Afterward they ate their children, break
ing and roasting their bones to get at the marrow. The general in com
mand of te armies in the city slew his concubines in front of his troops,
in order to feed his men. He forced them to eat the flesh of his women.
When that food ran out, he rounded up all the women, and finally the
young and old men in the city, to supply his soldiers. In all, 20,000 to
30,000 people died to feed the troops.
Sometimes cannibalism was not an act of survival but a form of pun
ishment. That was especially true in cases of disloyalty to the trone. In
643 a general had a goveror chopped in two at the waist for treachery.
Then he ripped out his heart and liver, and ate them. The emperor was
upset because the general had not asked his permission in advance, but
he did not punish the officer. Devouring the flesh of rebels, traitors, and
barbarians was quite acceptable. Chastisement need not involve hgh
crimes. A chieftain in southeaster China during the late seventh or early
eighth century threw a feast to entertain some guests, and ordered a
dandy to serve the ale. The fop committed some offense that enraged
his master, who ordered him dragged out ad murdered. Then the chief
tain had the poor fellow's remains boiled until they were tender, and
served the soup to his guests. Some time later, as the level of the broth
dropped, the dandy's hands appeared in the bowl. The sight shocked
the guests, who clutched their throats and vomited.
Vengeance was also a motive for canibalism. Sometimes a son felt
compelled not only to assassinate his father's murderer, but to devour
his heart and liver.
And some men just developed a taste for human fesh. In the late
seventh or early eighth century, a marshal got a moneylender and his
slave, who had arrived at a hostel in his city, drunk; murdered them;
and carved up their fesh. He mixed the meat with mercury and fried it
in oil together with their bones, which he had pulverized. Afterward he
wanted to eat the moneylender's wife as well, but, aware of his inten
tions, she fled. The county commandant investigated the matter thor
oughly and uncovered the facts of the case. In due course the supreme
Food and Feasts 125
court in the capital handed down a verdict ordering local officials to beat
the marshal to death.
Despite the general's assertion that all things were edible, there were
bans on certain foodstuffs. Several principles underlay those proscrip
tions. Some were political and religious in nature. Generally speaking,
the throne encouraged the avoidance of eating beef and butchering of
cows, on the grounds that the bull was the principal draft animal that
farmers employed to plow their fields. In one extreme case the emperor,
who favored Buddhism, banned the slaughter of cattle from 831 to 833.
Despite those occasional decrees, people ate beef during the Tang. In the
south women slaughtered water buffalo. They tied the beasts to trees,
scolded them for refusing to plow, and then beheaded them. Perhaps
the cattle were aged and no longer able to perform the task assigned
them. Cattle were not the ony creatures subject to the humane regard
of the throne. At various times emperors ba1med the butchering of chick
ens, dogs, asses, birds, and insects. They also prohibited fishing. The
underlying justification for such edicts was usually secular, but no doubt
the Indian notion of nonviolence and reincarnation that Buddhism
brought to China had some effect as well. Whatever the case, te throne
banned the slaughter of animals on various Buddhist fast days and Tao
ist holy days as well as during certain months.
Other bans on eating foods derived from medical canons and dietary
manuals. Some that called for abstaining from meat that was contami
nated or diseased-meats thought to be poisonous-were related to san
itation: do not eat horses or cows with boils, any animal slain with a
poison arrow, the flesh of domestic animals that dogs refuse to eat, any
meat allowed to sit overight without being boiled, underdone boiled
meat, meat that floats in water, perforated hearts or livers of pigs ad
sheep, domestic animals suffering from diseases or scabies, sacrificial
meat that moves on its own accord, the flesh of a rabid dog, moist jerky
under a leaky roof, and jerky that fails to dry when set out in the sun.
Another set of prohibitions concered toxic combinations of foodstuffs,
at least in the opinion of the dietitians: do not eat plums with the meat
of small songbirds or honey; pheasants with walnuts; the eastern speck
led quail with pork; turtle with pork, rabbit, duck, or mustard; leeks with
beef or honey; and mussels with melons or radishes. A third class was
religious, and included strong-smelling vegetables. Both Buddhists and
Taoists eschewed consuming onions, garlic, scallions, leeks, coriander,
and the like. I principle their monastic rules also forbade them from
eating meat and drinking alcohol. In reality some of the clergy indulged
anyway.
A fifth class was cosmological in character: never eat heart in the sum
mer, liver in te spring, lungs in the fall, kidneys in the winter, or spleen
in any season. Apparently the notion was that one ought not to consume
126 Daily Life in Tmditio1al China
organs in season: the heart was the govering organ of summer, the liver
of spring, the kidney of winter, the lungs of fall, and the spleen of the
entire year. One also should not devour the fesh of the animal that was
one's astrological sign (ram, bull, rabbit, rat, etc. ). Finally, there was a
large number of taboos that defy logical explanation. They were probably
superstitions based on ancient folklore: do not eat black cows or sheep
with white heads, white sheep with black heads, white horses with black
heads or hooves, deer with white armpits, any animal with red feet,
black fesh taken from beneath the saddle of a horse, horse liver, sheep
with a single hom, horses that grow hors, domestic animals that died
of natural causes with their heads facing north (presumably it was per
missible to eat the meat of those whose heads faced south), domestic
animals that died of natural causes with their mouths open, and animals
with forked tails.
As with many oter aspects of life in Tang tmes, the imperial court
bestowed foodstufs on nobles and oficials according to rank For the
purpose of distribution the goverment grouped the nine grades of that
elite into four categories. As might be expected, the highest class
mainly royal princes-enjoyed the richest, most varied, and largest
quantities of such gifts. Te number and types of food diminished with
each downward step of the pecking order. The princes received a
monthly ration of twenty head of sheep, thirty-seven pounds of pork,
and thirty fish (each of which was one foot in length). The lowest order
got no meat at all, and those in between, very meager daily portions of
mutton ony. The princes were also the only recipients of honey, pears,
chestnuts, and rice four. The throne also provided varying amounts of
charcoal and firewood for cooking food as well as for heating the home.
PRESERVATION
In ancient times there were basically two means of transforming raw
food into edible fare, preserving and cooking. The preservation of foods
was important in all parts of Tang China, but especially in the temperate
zones of the north, which were subject to harsh winters. In those climes
refrigeration was available. The best of the coolers, of course, were those
of te emperor, ice pits located in the massive parks of the capitals. Each
year his minions carved 1,000 blocks three feet by three feet and a foot
and a half thick from the frozen creeks of mountain valleys, and had
them transported to the imperial "iceboxes" where they kept perishable
delicacies fresh and succulent-chilled melons were particularly popular
during the summer-throughout the year. No doubt nobles and high
ranking officials also had pits for storing ice since they were wont to
follow the ways of the court. According to an agricultural manual, even
a peasant could avail himself of a simple method of cooling his produce.
Food and Feasts 127
Dig a ditch four or fve feet deep next to the south side of a wall between
late October and early December. Pack vegetables into the trench, one
variety to a layer, and intersperse with layers of soil. When the pit is
three-fourths or four-fifths full, press earth and straw on top of it. The
vegetables so stored would survive the winter in the cool, insulated
depths and, when retrieved, were as crisp and fresh as they had been in
the summer. Similarly, a farmer could dig a pit in the ground under the
roof of a shed and carve holes in its side for depositing dusters of grapes
that would last through the winter when covered with earth.
The latter metod was effective only during cold seasons and useless
for preserving meats, but there were many processes for preventing
spoilage of fesh, fruits, and vegetables by rot, bacteria, and maggots. In
some cases, apparently, simply drying was sufficient to accomplish the
task. The fesh of the river deer, cut into slices the size of a person's
palm, or boiled fish could be laid out to dry in the shade. Raisins were
made by mixing grapes with honey and oil, boiling four or five times,
straining, and spreading out to dry in the shade. Honey enhanced the
flavor. The raisins would last throughout the summer without spoiling.
Usually, however, preservation required heat, salt and ferments.
Salting fish required removal of gills and guts: Fillet, wash, and rub
the fish with salt (more salt during the summer than other seasons). Press
two fish together, skin sides out, and cover with a mat (or seal in a jar
if preparing in the summer) . The fish are ready to eat when the meat
turns pink. To eat, wash the salt off and boil, steam or bake the fish.
Brining was another means of preserving: Shove sticks into the mouth
of unsealed and undressed snakehead fish, and push them down to the
tail to prevent the fsh from curling. Pour an extremely salty brine with
a powder of ginger and Sichuan pepper into the body cavities, thrust a
rod through the eye sockets of ten fish, and hang the rod under the
norter eaves of the house for two or three months during the winter
and spring. Remove the viscera and steep the fish in vinegar to eat.
Salted apricots, called white apricots, were a snack eaten while drinking
ale: Pick the fruit in te summer, after it has changed to a yellow color,
and rub them with salt. After te salt has extracted the juice, salt the
fruit again and dry them in the sun. When ready to use them, rinse the
salt off and soak them in honey.
Jerky had a long history in China, and during the medieval period the
process was applied to beef, mutton, venison, and wild and domestic
pigs. The procedure was as follows: Slice the meat into strips. Prepare a
clear stock by boiling cracked lamb or beef bones, and skim the scum
off the top. Cook fermented soybeans in the broth and add finely minced
shallots with a powder of Sichuan pepper, ginger, and tangerine peel.
After the meat sits in that marinade for three nights, string the slices on
a cord and hang them under te eaves on te north side of the house to
128 Daily Lie in Tmditional China
dry. Afterward, wrap the jerky in paper bags to prevent fies and dirt
from spoiling it, and suspend it in an empty storeroom. Various species
of fowl-chicken, duck, geese, pigeon, and more-were preserved in the
same manner.
Pickling with vinegar was a common method of preserving vegetables
in medieval times. The liquid for it was usually made from spoiled ale,
moldy cooking grains, salt, and honey; rotten Chinese peaches also
served the purpose: Seal the fruit tightly in a j ar; they will decompose
in seven days. Strain out the skins and pits, and seal the jug tightly again.
Twenty-one days later the peaches become a delicious vinegar. Vegeta
bles preserved in vinegar included leafy greens (mallow and mustard),
tubers (rape turnip, garlic, and ginger), melons, mushrooms, and even
fers. Ale was also used as a preservative: Fill a jar with jujubes (Chinese
blackthors) and pour ale over them. Seal the jug tightly with mud. The
fruit will last for several years without spoiling.
There was an unusual method for preserving duck eggs that entailed
the use of a plant peel also employed as a poison that was thown into
ponds or streams to kill and harvest fsh effortlessly: Boil the skin to
extract its sap, and mix the liquid with salt. Let it cool, then pour it into
a pot holding the duck eggs. The eggs are edible after they have been
steeped for one month. Boil until well done and serve with ale or food.
The sap dyed the eggs a reddish-brown.
COOKING
The most prevalent form of cooking was boiling because it was the
means of making plain cereals, gruels, stews, soups, vegetables, and bev
erages. Turtle soup had a long history as a gourmet dish in China: Boil
a softshell turtle whole, take it out of the pot, and remove its shell and
innards. Return the meat to the water, and add mutton, ale, spring on
ions, the bark of the lily magnolia tree, and ginger. Boil the mixture until
done, and adjust the seasoning with salt and vinegar. A recipe for rabbit
stew called for boiling it in ale and lily magnolia bark. Sheep's lungs
required a double boiling. After the first remove the lungs, finely mince
them and finish cooking in a thick mutton soup with a little sticky rice
and fresh ginger. Pig's feet required boiling the meat to a pulp, removing
the bones, and flavoring wit vinegar, spring onions and fermented soy
beans. The ingredients for "sour stew" included pig's intestine and malt
sugar. Another for pig's intestines called for clotted sheep's blood as an
ingredient. Vegetable soups included taro with pork and mutton, the
leaves from a gourd vine with chicken, and pickled bamboo shoots with
fish. In areas blessed with hot springs, people cooked pork, mutton, and
eggs in their boiling waters, thus avoiding expenses for fuel and the labor
for drawing water.
Food and Feasts 129
Steaming was another widely used method for preparing all sorts of
things, including bear: Clean a bear's head, boil it with some of its flesh
until half done, and steep overght in fermented soybeans. Soak gluti
nous rice in fermented soybeans, and cook. Mix the meat with the rice,
ginger, salt, and dried tangerine peel. Steam until done. The head of a
fresh pig also lent itself to such treatment: Debone it, boil, and mince the
flesh. Add clear ale, salt, and fermented soybeans. After steaming, sprin
kle it with dried ginger and Sichuan pepper. A recipe for sweet lotus
root called for cutting off the top of the tuber, filling its cavities with
honey, and sealing it with flour. After steaming, the flour was removed
and the honey was poured out. Then the root was peeled and sliced.
Roasting, broiling, and barbecuing were common forms of cooking in
medieval Cha, and suckling pig was a haditional favorite: Scald the
pig, remove its bristles with a knife, cut a small hole in the belly, pull
out the viscera, and clean thoroughly inside and out. Fill the stomach
and chest cavity with grass, impale the pig on a stout wooden spit, and
roast it over a fire, turing the spit quickly and ceaselessly. While roast
ing, baste it wit clear, filtered ale, fresh rendered pork fat, or sesame
oil until golden brown. Cooked this way the pork melted in the mouth
like snow. Basting ensured that the skin of the pig was crispy, the most
prized quality. The procedure for roasting beef was different: Impale a
piece of meat fom the back of an adult cow or the thigh of a calf on a
spit and place it close to the fire, cooking one side at a time. When the
meat turs white, immediately slice it off and roast another side. This
method ensured that the beef was juicy, tender, and delicious.
Beef, lamb, or pork liver marinated in scallions, salt, and fermented
soybeans, as well as beef tripe (appreciated for its crispness when done),
lent themselves to roastig when strung on sticks and cooked over open
fires. There was a barbecued sausage made from the large intestines of
sheep and filled with minced lamb favored with finely chopped scal
lions, salt, fermented soybeans, ginger, and Sichuan pepper. A kind of
haggis found its way into medieval cookbooks from the west, no doubt
through the pastoral peoples of the steppes: Clean the stomach of a one
year-old lamb and tum it inside out. Fill it with thin slices of mutton
and mutton fat, along with ginger, black pepper, fermented soy paste,
salt, and other condiments, and sew it closed. Dig a pit and build a fire
in it. Remove te embers, place the stomach in the bottom, arrange the
coals on top, and roast until done. Meatballs also had a place among the
roasts: Slice pork and mutton into a fine julienne; mix it with fresh gin
ger, dried tangerine peel, scallions, and melons; pound to a pulp; roll
into balls; and roast. Balls of minced meat from a young goose were also
good fare: Mix goose meat with scallions, ginger, Sichuan pepper, and
other condiments; form into balls; and string on bamboo. Baste with the
whites of ten chicken eggs and then with the yolks. Roast rapidly over
130 Daily Life in Traditional China
a very hot fire. When the juice oozes out of the meat, it is done. One
could also wrap minced and stir-fried goose, duck, deer, pork, or lamb
flavored with various condiments around a bamboo tube, six inches in
circumference and three feet long, from which the green skin and nodes
had been scraped off. A chicken or duck feather was used to apply egg
whites and yolks. The cook held one end of the tube and tured it rap
idly over a fire. When the meat was done, te meat was cut into six-inch
pieces. Oysters and giant clams roasted in iron pans were served on the
half shell with a little vinegar for favor. Roasting was essential to finish
burt cakes, a pastry filled with a mixture of fried mutton and scallions.
Two brothers eared a reputation for a bizarre and cruel form of roast
ing. They were the favorites of Empress Wu in the early eighth century
and competed to see which of them could invent the most outrageous
form of cooking. The first had a giant cage made. He placed geese and
ducks, and a bronze basin containing a sauce of five condiments inside
and lit a charcoal fire at the center. As the fowl circled the fire, they got
thirsty and drank the sauce. The birds whirled and tured in pain as the
fre roasted them. When they were cooked inside and out, all their feath
ers had dropped off, and their flesh was pink and warm. Not to be
outdone, the second installed a live jackass in a small chamber furished
with the sauce of five condiments and lit a charcoal fire. In both instances
the animals presumably marinated from the inside out. The brothers
received their just deserts when, after their executions in 705, the citizens
of Luoyang happened upon their corpses, which had been thrown in the
street, and as an act of vengeance carved up their flesh. When the people
discovered that it was as white as the fat of pork belly, they roasted and
ate it. At te time people said that the terrible manner in which they met
their fate was retribution for their cruel treatment of animals.
Frying, too, had its place in the culinary arts of the medieval period.
There was, for example, a recipe for a kind of crispy, sweet-and-sour fish
that may sound familiar to those acquainted with modern Cantonese
cooking: Gut a golden carp but do not remove its scales. Marinate it in
a mixture of honey and vinegar, and add salt. Fry it in oil until the color
changes to pink, and serve it whole at the feast. Another probably has
no parallel in modem Chinese cuisine. Emperor Illustrious August or
dered an archer to slay a deer, and had the meat fried in its blood. He
bestowed the dish, called hot Luo and Yellow Rivers, on An Lushan and
other generals. Frying was a method for cooking pastry. A recipe for rich
(fat) rings called for a dough of glutinous rice flour, water, and honey
that was rolled out like a large noodle. The ends were pinched together
to form a doughnut, and it was fried in oil. Another recipe for fine ring
cakes had the same ingredients and cooking method, but required the
addition of cow and sheep milk, which made the pastry crispy.
Baking was not as prevalent in medieval China as it is in modern
Food and Feasts 131
times, perhaps because ancient Chinese stoves did not have baking
chambers. A recipe for marrow cakes, however, calls for it: Mix marrow
fat with honey and flour. Form cakes four or five inches thick, plaster
them to the sides of a wester cake oven and cook until done. Do not
tum. They are fatty and delicious. Baked fish required an even more
primitive method: Wrap a fish in grass and cover with clay. Place on hot
embers and cook. When done, remove the grass and clay, wrap in leather
or cloth, and beat to tenderize. The fesh was white as snow and tasty,
a true delicacy for a meal or as a snack while drinking ale. Sometimes
baking was done in an underground pit: Clean a sheep's stomach and
tur it inside out. Mince mutton, fill the stomach with it, and sew the
stomach closed. Heat the earth in a pit with torches. When the torches
are consumed, remove the burning charcoal. Place the sheep's stomach
in the bottom of the pit and cover it with the embers. The virtue of this
method was that the resulting sausage cooked in its own juices.
The most important skill in Chinese cooking throughout the ages has
been cutting, slicing, and chopping; and the most importat tool, the
cleaver. In an ancient classic a master chef described his art. He worked
with his mind, not his eyes. By so doing, he glided through the natural
interstices of the meat, gently applyig his blade without overworking
it. The average cook had to change his cleaver once a month and a pro
ficient chef once a year, but he had not needed a new one for nineteen
years. Cutting meats and vegetables was a critical aspect of cooking be
cause the Chinese had only two eatig utensils, chopsticks and spoons.
The cook did all of the slicing ad chopping in the kitchen, and he made
sure that the pieces were small enough for the diners to pick up with
chopsticks.
Aside from rice, which was usually served plain, a large number of
Chinese dishes were stews, mixtures of meat, vegetables, and/ or fruits.
That allowed t1e cook to develop fare that derived its savor from the
natural flavors of the foods he combined. It may also explain why there
was such a narrow range of seasonings employed in medieval Chinese
cooking: garlic, raw ginger, tangerine peel, preserved Chinese apricot,
cooked chestnut meat, salt, honey, sugar, ale, pepper, onions, fermented
soybean paste, and vinegar. There were two kinds of pepper used in the
cuisine of the Tang, the native Sichuan pepper and an import from India.
Patricians prized the latter over the indigenous variety. When a chief
miister fell from power in the eighth century, officials took an inventory
of his possessions that the government was going to confiscate and dis
covered 1,400 bushels of the Indian pepper in his mansion. The size of
the cache indicates that the foreign pepper was not just a commodity,
but a store of wealth like silk, and that it derived its value from a high
level of demand among the upper classes in the capital.
132 Daily Life in Traditional China
FEASTS
The greatest of all feasts were those that the emperor bestowed. He
had bureaus with ample personel to provide victuals and drink for such
occasions. The palace food service had a staff of seven cooks and helpers
under the direction of sixteen supervisors and eight dietitians who over
saw and prepared the food served daily to the emperor and members
of his household. The supervisors and dietitians were responsible for
ensuring that the content of the meals conformed to the seasons and to
dietary regulations, as well as for managing the delicacies sent to the
court as tribute. It was a rather small agency compared to the Service of
Radiant Emolument, which was in charge of banquets for imperial rel
atives, officials, and foreign legates as well as the food for state sacrifices.
That bureau had a kitchen staff of 2,000 under the direction of 10 su
pervisors and 15 recorders. It icluded 30 ale brewers, 120 ale servers,
23 makers of sauces, twelve makers of vinegars, twelve makers of fer
mented soybean paste, eight makers of pickled vegetables, and five mak
ers of malt sugar. When the number of guests at feasts was particularly
large, the throne called on both agencies to prepare the meals. In 644 the
throne feasted 1,100 elders from the region around Changan, for 3,500
officers of the Divine Strategy Army in 768, and for 1,200 women of the
palace and members of the imperial family in 826.
There were two types of occasions for which the throne bestowed
feasts in the Tang: the regular, whose dates were fixed by the calendar,
and the irregular, which took place as circumstances dictated or at the
whim of the emperor. The former included festivals and imperial birth
days. The latter encompassed a host of events that were worthy of cel
ebration. Feasts commemorating military victories and the voluntary
submission of foreign nations were common in the seventh century.
Throughout the dynasty the state provided banquets for emissaries sent
from abroad to present tribute and pay homage to the emperor after he
received them in audience. The sovereign usually attended such festiv
ities only when the envoys represented a powerful neighbor such as the
Turks or Tibetans. Normally officials in charge of foreign affairs handled
such matters.
Certain ceremonies-enthronements, the installation of an heir appar
ent, a military review, or the performance of time-honored rituals-were
also worthy of a banquet. More frequently an emperor bestowed a feast
to celebrate a happy event in the life of his family, such as the birth of
a son or grandson, the marriage of a prince or princess, a princess's or
empress dowager's move into new quarters, or a court visit to the man
sion or estate of a brother, son, or daughter. Imperial excursions and
j ourneys, including hunts and visits to the estates of high-ranking off
cials, entailed regalg members of the imperial entourage with food, ale,
Food and Feasts 133
and entertainment. Sometimes the throne conferred feasts as send-offs
for generals sent to the frontiers to bolster defenses, officials leaving for
Luoyang to make sacrifices at an ancestral shrine or returing to their
posts in the provinces (including one for An Lushan), or monks who
enjoyed imperial favor. Other diverse occasions for such festivities in
cluded the recovery of the emperor from an ilness, honoring former
aides, the completion of construction of a palace for the heir apparent,
abundant harvests, and celebrations for the appearance of auspicious
omens, such as red birds nesting in a palace gate.
The sites for feasts were as diverse as the occasions for them: palace
halls, a palace or city gate, palace gardens, the former estate or residence
of the emperor, a famous lake west of Changan, the Wei River north of
the capital, the homes of princes and princesses, government offices,
Buddhist monasteries and pagodas, the private mansions and country
estates of officials, and even palace polo fields. In 729 Illustrious August
established a new practice. He instructed officials to find a scenic spot
for convening feasts on their days off (one out of every ten, the length
of the week in the Tang). He promised to provide them with the money
to pay for the festivities. He also ordered the appropriate agencies to
supply tents and prepare food. That inovation became a custom in later
reigns. The location most favored by bureaucrats was the Serpentie
River park in the southeast comer of Changan. Emperors rarely attended
parties there, but they were willing to supply funds for them. In 788 the
throne established te following budget for each of three major festivals
during the year:
500,000 cash for chief ministers and officials in perpetual attendance
100,000 cash for the court academicians
1,000,000 cash for (officers of?) two imperial armies
200,000 cash for generals of the imperial guards
100,000 cash for other reporting officials.
The court was to disburse the funds-a total of 1. 9 million coppers five
days before each festival, and the regulation was to be effective for future
festivities. The throne also forbade the mayor of Changan to interfere
with officials traveling about and feasting. On occasions when the em
peror was not in attendance and the party took place outside the palace,
the throne dispatched eunuchs to convey food and ale to te site of the
feast.
Sometimes the guest list for imperial feasts included the entire bu
reaucratic corps present in the capital at the time. At other times the
throne invited only a very small number, officials of the fifth grade and
above, or those of the third grade and above. In some instances the em-
134 Daily Life in Traditional China
peror summoned local officials, such as goverors of prefectures and
county commandants, to his table. In others, invitations went out to man
darins holding specific positions-the Minister of the Department of Per
sonnel, the Commissioner for Transport or the mayor of Changan-and
officers of particular armies-commanders who fought in norther Ko
rea or led palace forces.
The rank of guests determined their place in the seating arrangement
at imperial feasts, and they became upset if they found themselves as
signed to places they believed were beneath their dignity. I 730, when
the legate of the Turkish khan in the north arrived for a banquet, he
discovered that the emissary of a Turkish tribe that lived in the west had
a higher seat than his. He declared, "Your nation is small and was orig
inally our vassal, so you cannot occupy a place superior to mine. " The
other envoy retorted, "This feast was arraged for me, so I cannot take
an inferior seat." To resolve the matter, Emperor Illustrious August had
two curtains hung, the one on the east side for the legate of the Turkish
khan and one on the west for the envoy of the smaler tribe. The Chinese,
too, could be sensitive about their status. In 632 the governor of a pre
fecture arrived at a feast and leared that his assigned place was lower
than another's. He angrily bellowed, "What rank have you, that you
should sit above me?" A prince who occupied the next place beneath the
governor's admonished him, but he would have none of it and beat the
prince with his fists until the noble's eyes nearly swelled shut. The in
cident displeased the emperor, who terminated the festivities. However,
he did not punish the offender, but only reproved him. Afterward the
governor became more prudent and got control over his anger.
The entertainment at imperial feasts in the Tang could include
tightrope-walkig, pole acts, juggling balls with the feet, sword dances,
dancing horses, trained elephants, tugs-of-war, football, polo, wrestling,
and even board games. However, the most common form of diversion
that the court provided was the performance of the Nine Ensembles. The
troupes consisted of seven to thirty-one musicians and two to twenty
dancers. Two of the ensembles represented native Chiese music (one a
mixture of Chinese and foreign tat developed in the northwest during
the fourth century), one Indian, one Korean, and five Central Asian. A
tenth was added in 642 after its king submitted to Tang suzerainty, but
it never caught on and vanished shortly afterward. The foreign troupes
were gifts sent to China by foreign kings as tribute to the emperor. Each
ensemble, native and foreign alike, had its own unique tunes, instru
ments (strings, winds, and percussion), costumes for both musicians and
dancers, and choreography. Some of them had a difficult time preserving
their scores. The Koreas, who had twenty-five airs in Empress Wu's
reign, later lost all but one. One of the ensembles came from fabled Sam
arkand, beyond the pale of the Tang empire. I one of its numbers, the
Food and Feasts 135
Wester Spinning Dance, young women dressed in scarlet tunics with
brocaded sleeves, green damask trousers, and red leather boots ad
vanced, retreated, and twirled atop wooden balls on a stage. Their feet
never touched the ground. The sound of the rolling balls resembled that
of thunder. In the early eighth century te court had a troupe of several
hundred that all performed at once. It became so popular that Yang
Guifei and A Lushan learned to perform it.
At feasts, guests dined in the open courtyard of a hall where te en
tertainers also performed. Consequently, when the weather turned bad,
the court canceled the festivities and rescheduled them. Deaths, burials,
droughts, and sieges of cities were also causes for calling off banquets.
Normally, feasts were all-day affairs. Some lasted well into the night,
so guests dined by the light of torches. On one occasion a banquet for a
high-ranking official went on for three days. Another that the throne
bestowed in 906 lasted five days.
It was customary for the trone to bestow gifts on its guest at the
conclusion of a feast. The most frequent article given was cloth: brocade,
silk, polychrome silk, or linen. In 620 the emperor, who was ecstatic over
a military victory that recovered his former base north of Changan, sent
his guests to an imperial magazine, where the official in charge presented
them with his entire stock of polychrome silk. On another occasion a
sovereign bestowed silk on all infants in the empire at a banquet com
memorating tl-: e birth of hs son. The throne also gave millet and cash to
guests. The emperor allocated the presents in amounts according to the
ranks of the recipients, those of higher grades receiving more tl"lan their
inferiors. Other gifts of a diverse nature, not disbursed according to the
status of the guest, included ginseng, gold seals with purple ribbons (for
two officials as a mark of favor), robes for officials, gold and silver vases
and platters, twenty-five cartloads of fodder and grain (on a military
governor; presumably for the use of his troops), and horses.
Tang sources rarely mention the fare at feasts. However, two menus
have survived from the early eighth century. One is a list of fifty-eight
courses served at a "tail burner. " Emperor Zhongzong bestowed it on
an official after appointing him to head the secretariat in charge of the
six departments of personnel, households, rites, the army, justice, and
agriculture. Folklore had it that when a tiger hansformed itself into a
man, its tail did not change, and had to be bured off to complete its
metamorphosis. The notion was that the feast marked the end of an
official's former career so that he could assume the dignity of his new
one. Zhongzong's feast took place on the banks of a lake in easter
Changan. The entertainment for the occasion was a boat race. Each craft
represented one of te six departents, and te Department of the
Army's took first place. The dishes served at the banquet included: short
breads cooked in separate compartments of a steamer; Noble Consort's
136 Daily Life in Traditional China
IIUB@IR07IB0I
Rouge (pink, flavored clotted cream) ; the Queen Mother's Imperial Yel
low (cooked grain with a covering of sculpted and imprinted lard); sau
sages of beef intestines filled with mutton fat and marrow; Glistening
Shrimp Roast; twenty-four varieties of wanton; thinly sliced crab rolls;
cold frog (actually clam) soup; octagonal cold food cakes formed in
wooden molds; perch; fish fry; strands of sheep hide a foot in length;
fish fermented in milk; onion and vinegar chicken; roasted sheep and
deer tongues; shredded goose; Snow Baby (water frogs with beans); the
Immortals' Slices (chicken marinated in milk); rabbit; pigeon roasted
alive; and a platter of lamb, pork, mutton, bear, and deer. A significant
proportion of the dishes served at the feast were pastries, dumplings,
cakes, and breads. The fare resembled what the Chinese now call dianxin
or dimsum, an often large variety of tasty snacks that come in small sizes
so diners can enjoy a wide range of foods, textures, and flavors.
There were also private feasts on a much smaller scale and far less
lavish than those given by the throne. The occasions for such festivities
were festivals, marriages, births, birthdays, send-offs, and more. The so
phisticated elite, hosts and guests, entertained themselves with perform
ances on the zither, mouth organ, or other musical instruments. Most
nobles and officials had troupes of female singers and dancers that pro
vided diversion at banquets. The second menu from the Tang is for a
private banquet. It appears in a novelette that relates the tale of a love
affair between an official traveling to a new post and a young noble
woman. The bill of fare included rice, chicken broth, pheasant soup,
softshell turtle hash, quail soup, a plump piglet, delicate carp, goose
eggs, duck eggs, pure white bear meat, pure yellow crab preserve, fish
Food and Feasts 137
Mouth Organ
hash, cold liver, grapes, sugarcane, jujubes, pomegranates, red oranges,
crabapples, melons, pears, plums, peppers, and purple salt.
It was customary at both imperial and private feasts for guests to write
poetry to commemorate the occasion. Those exercises were often com
petitions in which versifiers strove to outdo one another. In 709 the em
peror made an excursion to a lake west of Changan and commanded his
courtiers to compose verses during the banquet. After they fiished writ
ing, he gave the pieces, over 100, to his secretary to judge. She climbed
up a tower made of bamboo and polychrome silk and read the poems.
A moment later the papers started drifting down, and the autors scur
ried to retrieve their works. When only two were left, she hesitated for
a moment before dropping one of them. Te skill of both poets was
equal, but the winner's poem, which she retained, took first place be
cause it ended more vigorously.
Finally, there were Buddhist feasts, which were always vegetarian.
Judging from popular literature, two of the greatest sins for that religion
were the taking of animal life and eating meat. This notion went against
the grain of traditional Chinese culture because meat played a huge role
i festivities of all kinds. The occasions for vegetarian feasts included
Buddha's birthday (the eighth day of the second moon), birthdays of
emperors, anniversaries marking the deaths of previous sovereigns, the
completion of construction or renovation of a monastery, the installation
of a new statue, thanksgivings for rain or abundant harvests, compen
sation to a monastery for providing room and board, and funerals. The
sponsors included the throne, wealthy donors, monasteries, and societies
of laymen organized by monks for that purpose. The feasts were some
times called "Limitless Fasts" because there was no restricton on who
138 Daily Life in Traditional China
could attend. The number of guests who attended was usually 500, 1,000
or 5,000. In exceptional cases, those subsidized by the emperor, the figure
rose to 10,000.

Most feasts were times for joyous celebration. Occasionally, they were
the scenes of violence. O November 2, 619, the founder of the Tang
invited the khan of the Western Turks to an inner palace hall for a ban
quet. When the eating and drinking concluded, the emperor sent his
guest to a secretariat, where the legate of the Easter Turks, the enemies
of their wester brethren, murdered him. Gaozu permitted and abetted
the assassination because the Easter Turks were very powerful and had
provided him with assistance during his march on Changan. The episode
was a black stain on the history of the dynasty.
Sometimes guests became the fare at a feast. I 619 the throne sent a
commissioner to mollify an infamous rebel who had just submitted to
the suzerainty of the Tang. To reward him for accepting vassalage, the
court bestowed the office of governor-general on him and raised him to
the dignity of prince. During a banquet held for him, the Tang envoy
drank too much and tried to make a fool of the former rebel. "I have
heard, sir, that you are fond of eating human flesh. How does it taste?"
Not one to take a taunt lightly, the new prince delivered a riposte. "Eat
ing the flesh of a drunkard is just like eating the meat of a swine mari
nated in the dregs of brew. " Beside himself with fury at the explicit insult
and the implicit threat, the commissioner upbraided his host. "You de
mented brigand! You have become a member of the court, which makes
you a servant of the throne, and yet you would revert to eating human
fesh!" Tired of this sport and no doubt inflamed by his guest's fit of
pique, the prince gathered up the envoy and more than a score of men
in his service from their seats, and had them boiled to feed his intimate
aids. Then he fled to Luoyang, where he placed himself at the service of
a Tang enemy. Fate eventually caught up wit him. When Tang armies
captured the city in 621, they beheaded him.
BEVERAGES
The most common drink of the Tang was water. One medical authority
of the early eight century described the virtues of twenty-six varieties,
from rain to water found in pig troughs. He claimed the latter would
heal wounds left by snake bites when applied externally. Dew collected
from plants in the autumn improved one's complexion. Frost gathered
and melted in the winter could dispel the heat and redness of the face
resulting from drinking too much alcohol. Winter snow was an antidote
to all kinds of toxins, but spring snow contained "bugs" and was
therefore harmful to the health. Tang people also highly prized mineral
waters. Streams that fowed through "jade" -actually any sort of prized
Food and Feasts 139
rock-possessed life-sustaining powers. Drinking from such a brook that
cascaded down from Mout Hua just east of Changan prolonged the
lives of local people. Quaffing jade water also prevented the graying of
hair, a sure sign of advancing old age. Streams flowing from limestone
caves wit stalactites also promoted health. People who imbibed such
waters were fat and robust, and did not grow old. On the souther island
of Hainan, where springs and wells were scarce, the natives drank water
extracted from creeping vines.
The Chinese also had instant fruit juices in medieval times: Dry jujubes
in the sun, and boil them in a wok. Strain out the liquid and mash the
fruit in the bottom of a basin. Place the pulp in gauze and squeeze out
the juice. Plaster the mash on a plate or the bottom of a bowl, and dry
it in the sun. Then rub it into a powder with the fingers. When ready
for a drink, mix a spoonful of the powder into a cup of water. This sweet
and-sour ade was just the thing for slaking te tirst while traveling.
There were similar, but simpler, processes for making powders fom
apricots and crabapples that one could reconstitute as a juice. Vinegar
water was another thirst quencher drunk on hot summer days. Some
"fruit juices" care directly from the husk. Southerers drank coconut
milk, which did not cause intoxication.
Although 80 percent of modern Chinese do not have the enzyme in
their stomachs to properly digest milk, it was a beverage in the north
during the Tang, perhaps because so many Chinese there had intermar
ried with the pastoral peoples of the steppes in Tang and pre-Tang times.
Tang medical authorities contended that many northerners were plup
and robust because they drank cow and goat milk. Milk strengthened
and fattened their bodies.
Tea was originally a medicinal substance, but by the sixth century
southerners had taken to drinking it as a beverage. The homeland of the
plant was in the southwest near the Tibetan border, but it took root in
many areas to the east on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Im
bibing it as a beverage did not reach the north until the early eighth
century, when a Buddhist monk on Mount Tai in moder Shandong
province sipped it to keep himself awake while he practiced meditation.
His example led many others to take up the habit, first in neighboring
districts and then in Changan. Soon many teahouses selling boiled tea
opened in the markets of norther cities. It even captivated the Uighur,
who, when they care to Changan, rushed of on horseback to buy it in
the markets before doing anyting else. Barges and wagons carrying the
stuff from the Huai and Yangtze rivers supplied the demand of norther
aficionados. Lu Yu, a southerner raised in a Buddhist monastery, wrote
the oldest, surviving manual on tea shortly before 761. His work further
popularized the beverage. Tea merchants were so grateful for his assis
tance in promoting their trade that they had images of him molded in
140 Daily Life in Traditional China
clay and installed on their kilns. They worshipped him as the patron
deity of tea.
Te processing of tea in the Tang involved plucking the leaves from
trees in the spring. Then workers steamed, pounded, patted, and roasted
them in ovens or kilns. Afterward they packed them in paper bags to
preserve te flavor, and repackaged them in bamboo leaves or tree bark
for shipment. Roasting the leaves may have reduced or eliminated the
natural bitterness of the foliage and made it palatable to drinkers. Even
so, some aficionados took to mixing additives-onions, tangerine peel,
ginger, jujubes, pepper, mint, even clotted cream-to flavor it. In what
ever form, everyone appreciated it for its caffeine-a stimulant that re
lieved depression, drowsiness, and fatigue.
The most prevalent form of tea at the time was brick tea, now popular
only in Tibet. Brewing involved crushing the brick into small fragments
or grinding it into a fine powder, and infusing it in boiling water. Not
all varieties were the same. Some districts produced superior leaves be
cause of better soil, climate, or other factors. Furthermore, the quality of
the brew depended on the quality of the water used. In the ninth century
a scholar compiled a short list of the best rivers, springs, wells, and pools
to draw water from. The vast majority of them were in the south. Heat
was also a factor. One author wrote a short treatise on the best ways of
boiling water, sixteen in number, for making tea. Clearly, brewing had
become a ritual that only the leisure class or proprietors of teahouses
had the time to pursue. As the art developed, specialized implements
evolved for preparing and serving tea. Lu Yu described and provided
ilustrations of twenty-four utensils essential for those purposes.
Wine was not unknown to the Tang people. Centuries earlier the grape
made its way from te west to China, where three varieties-yellow,
white, and black-grew. Cuttings for a fourth-te purple "mare teat,"
so called because of its elongated shape-were brought back from Cen
tral Asia for transplanting in the emperor's park north of Changan. Sev
eral districts in north China grew grapes, and a monastery in Changan
had a vineyard. There was a small, native variety. Northerers also pre
pared wine from pears and jujubes. Although the art of making wine
had taken root in the lands of the Tang, it was a rare beverage, and
drinking it never became a widespread custom.
Northerners, at least in Changan, enjoyed koumiss, fermented mare's
milk, a gift from the pastoral peoples of the steppes. Southerners made
a wine from the fruit of the "chinese strawberry, " though Tang herbalists
warned that it injured the teeth and muscles. Natives of the south also
produced toddies from various palms, such as the flowers of the banana
and the sap of the areca (betel nut) trees. Among the preferred alcoholic
beverages in a list compiled in the ninth century were also three ferments
Food and Feasts 141
from different species of the myrobalan, a fruit native to India that took
root in the viciity of Canton during the Tang or earlier.
One might occasionally imbibe those exotics, but the real drink of
choice for the men of Tang was ale, known best in the west as rice wine.
It was an alcoholic beverage made from cereals-millet in the north and
rice in the south-in a manner similar to brewing beer. Making wine is
a simple process because fruits contain sugar that naturally ferments
once the juice has been extracted and bottled. The vintner can sit back
and wait for the molds in the juice to convert its sugar to alcohol. The
conversion of grains into alcohol is more complicated because its starches
must first be transformed into a sugar. This involves the manufacturing
of starters, ferment cakes, from air-bore molds.
The procedure for making one type of ferment cake called for sepa
rately grinding equal measures of raw, steamed, and lightly roasted
wheat to a powder, and then mixing them: Have a lad draw water before
sunrise and stir it ito the flour. Boys then form the dough into rounds
two and a half inches in diameter and almost an inch thick. They must
complete the task the same day. In a thatched hut with a foor of firmly
tamped earth and no loose dirt or moisture, divide the ground into four
squares separated and encircled by paths. Lay the cakes out to dry. Make
effgies of the gods of the fve directions with uptured hands. Place
jerky, wine, pastry, ad broth on their palms as a sacrifice, and pray.
Then seal the wooden door of the hut with mud to prevent drafts from
entering. After seven days open the hut, tum the cakes, and reseal the
door. Fourteen days later open the hut, stack the cakes, and resea the
door. After tenty-one days remove the cakes, place them in an earthen
jug, cap it, and seal it with mud. Twenty-eight days later, drill holes in
the cakes, string them on cords and dry tem i the sun. Wen they dry
totally, store them for use.
The process for brewing ale was nearly as complex as the manufac
turing of the starter. One method called for grinding the ferment into a
fine powder in a mortar and steeping it in a vat of water for three days,
until bubbles formed on the top. Then the brewer added half-steamed
millet, twenty-one parts to one part of ferment, in four stages over four
days and covered the pot. When the mixture smelled right and ceased
bubbling, it was ready to drink. Some varieties took little time to mature.
Cock Crow acquired its name because a brewer could mix it one day,
and produce ale by the time the cock crowed the next moring.
As with tea, water was a critical factor in brewing ale. River water
was the best, especially that collected at the time of the first frost in
November or so. If it was drawn in other months, the brewers had to
boil it five times before using it. Sometimes rainwater was an ingredient.
Thunder Ale was a variety of brew that relied on water collected during
summer thunderstorms. In localities where it was available, mieral wa-
142 Daily Life in Traditional China
ter was a prized element in brewing. Many people used water from
limestone caves that had stalactites because its alkaloids cut the acidity
of the ale.
Drinkers were not always satisfied with taking their brew straight, so
a variety of additives were used to favor ale during te Tang. One of
the drinks favored on New Year's Day was Black Pepper ale. A recipe
for that blend dating from te third century called for powdering seventy
kerels of pepper with dried ginger, mixing it with the juice from five
pomegranates, pouring it ito fine spring ale, and heating it until warm.
It was palatable when drunk hot or cold, and prolonged life. A man of
great capacity could drink a liter or more of it. It had the added virtue
of curing a hangover. Aother version of that recipe substituted honey
for pomegranate juice. One might also flavor ale with ginger, lotus or
bamboo leaves. One aficionado of exotic ingredients served Fish Ale at
the height of winter. He had camphor carved in the form of small fish.
When his wine came to a boil, he would toss one of the fish into it, thus
imbuing his brew with a fragrance that his contemporaries greatly es
teemed.
There were regional differences i the quality of ales. In the early ninth
century an author compiled a list of the sixteen best alcoholic beverages,
twelve of which were varieties of ale. Topping the list was Fu River,
produced in a prefecture of south central China. When an official dis
covered how good it was in the early eighth century, he informed the
emperor. Thereafter te court recruited master brewers only from that
district to make ale for presentation at its feasts. Actually, Fu River had
an ancient reputation for the quality of its product. Changan produced
three varieties-Melody of the Wester Market, Courtier's Clear Ale of
Toad Tumulus, and Old Woman's Clear Ale. They apparently were not
superior brews, for their titles appear at the bottom of the list. Brewing
was not a monopoly of professionals. An authority in the Tang declared
that men who got drunk on home brew were superior to those who did
so on the ale served at tavers in the lanes. In the early seventh century
renowned hermit, who was erudite and given to drinking, employed
several slaves for the purpose of making ale for him in the spring and
summer. In the mid-eighth century the household of an imperial prince
had a method for producing a ale called Sweet Dew. Both of those men
wrote manuals on brewing as well.
DRINKING
Ale was an essential offering at all rites, both the grand public rituals
of the court and the private observances of ancestor worship, in the Tang.
That fact explains why there was little stigma attached to drinking and
drunkenness among the upper classes. Custom dictated that the host of
Food and Feasts 143
a driking party supply his guests with more tan enough brew. In one
case a prominent official of the early eighth century had a serpentie
structure built for drinking that he called the Ale Grotto. On each of the
bricks, some 50,000, in the structure's floor he placed a bowl of ale to
completely satisfy the thirst of his friends when they came to visit.
The occasions for drinking were virtually the same as those for feast
ing. There were, however, several rites and celebrations in which drink
ing played a predominant role. One was the village drinking ritual,
which dated back to ancient times. Each year the governors of prefec
tures and commandants of counties invited the elders of their districts
to a banquet in the witer. The government supplied the food and liquor
as well as the musical entertainment. The custom disappeared after the
An Lushan rebellion. Festivals celebrating imperial birthdays, at least
from 730 to 755, were also occasions when the throne called for drinking
by all of its subjects.
It was permissible to drink almost anywhere: palaces, mansions, Bud
dhist monasteries (despite the fact that their rules forbade imbibing al
cohol), rapid relay stations, parks, even goverent offices. On the frst
day of 822 the throne demoted an imperial counselor and sent him out
to a provincial post after revelry at the office for compiling histories. It
was not the official's inebriation that disturbed the emperor, but the fact
that he had insulted a chief minister whle drunk. There was, however,
a certain risk to letting oneself go while inebriated. An emperor might
excuse a man of talent for appearing before him drunk, but the offender
might also lose imperial favor for it. The throne would not tolerate a sot
who was drunk all day in his office. Such an offense was cause for dis
missal. It was also acceptable to drink at almost any time. In the winter
a host might convene a party at dawn, to dispel the chill of the previous
night with ale before eating breakfast. The warming effect derived not
only from the alcohol but also from the fact that it was the custom to
drink ale warm. Generally speaking, however, day was the proper time
for drinking and night for sobering up, though tere was plenty of noc
tural imbibing.
Although servants, courtesans, waiters, and barmaids generally served
ale to guests at a banquet or to customers in a taver, there were also
machines for delivering it. In 647, at a feast for legates from several
Cental Asian tribes, the emperor had a tall stand with a silver pitcher
on top installed before a palace hall. From a reservoir in an easter pa
vilion ale fowed through a hidden conduit to the leg of te stand and
bubbled, like a spring, upward into te pitcher. When the brew reached
a certain level, the pitcher tipped to fill a huge silver basin below. Waiters
ladled ale from the bowl to fill goblets for the guests. The emperor em
ployed the device to impress the barbarians with the cultural (i. e. , tech
nological) superiority of China.
14 Daily Life in Traditional China
However, that machine paled in comparison to the inventions of a
county commandant who was both clever and fond of ale. He carved a
wooden monk from wood and dressed it in a suit of coarse, colored silk.
At the commandant's parties the automaton poured brew and handed
goblets to guests in a fixed order. He also made wooden chanteuses that
could sig songs and play the mouth organ. They were able to play and
sing in perfect accord with the rhythm of the music. If a guest did not
drain his goblet, the wooden monk would refuse to take the cup back
for a refill. If the guests had not finished drinking, the wooden chan
teuses would sing and play the fife to urge them on.
Another ingenious craftsman fashioned an ale mountain in the early
eighth century. The mountain, which had extraordinary and marvelous
peaks, was three feet tall and had a hidden, interior reservoir that held
more tha sixteen quarts of brew. It sat on a lacquered wooden basin
four feet, five inches in circumference that rested on a large tortoise. In
the belly of the turtle were a pump and a machine that drove the device.
An ale pool encircled the base of the mountain, and a rig of hills sur
rounded the pool. Lotuses with blossoms and leaves of wrought iron
rose fom the pool. The opened fowers and unrolled leaves took the
place of platters for serving jerky, meat jellies, and rare fruits to be eaten
with the ale. Midway up the souther side of the mountain was a dragon
with the front half of its body protruding from the slope. The beast
opened its mouth and spit brew into a goblet seated on a large lotus leaf
beneat. Wen the cup was 80 percent full, the dragon ceased spewing
ale, and a guest immediately seized the goblet. If he was slow in draiing
the cup and returing it to te leaf, the door of a pavilion at the top of
the mountain opened and a mechanical wine server, dressed in cap and
gown, emerged with a wooden bat in his hand. As soon as the guest
retured the goblet, the dragon refilled it, the wine server withdrew, and
the doors of the pavilion closed. Dragons of the same sort on the other
three sides of the mountain also disgorged brew. At two places on the
mountain there were tilting bowls. When empty, they tipped, and the
dragons filled them with ale. When half full, they rose to an upright
position, but when brimming, tey tilted again. A pump siphoned the
ale that fowed into the ale pool through a hidden hole and retured the
brew to the reservoir inside the mountain. It was so efficient that not a
trace of ale remained in the pool by the end of a feast.
There were also nonmechanical, but bizarre, contrivances for servig
wine. An aristocratic lady of the eighth century had deer guts suspended
from te beams in one of her halls. Whenever she threw a party, the
lady ordered her servants to climb up to the beams and pour ale into
the intesties. Guests who wanted to drink needed only to untie the
lower end of the guts to fill their goblets.
Most cups i the Tang were made of porcelain, an ancient Chinese
Food and Feasts 145
inve
n
tion. In the early eighth century the palace treasury had a goblet,
azure in color with a patter like raveled threads, that was as thi as
paper. On its foot there were incised words filled with gold: "self warm
ing goblet. " Whenever the emperor ordered ale poured into it, the chalice
heated the brew automatically. One record indicates that a type of por
celain, now called eggshell, was produced in Tang times. Another type
of vessel was made of lacquered wood, a kind of ware that the Chinese
had used for cups for a millennium before the Tang. More extravagat
were cups of silver and gold. Southerners tured the shell of the nautilus
with a red and blue-green surface into ale goblets. They adopted cara
pace of the tiger crab with a red-and-yellow striped exterior and a pearly
interior for te same end. Nor did southerners leave birds in peace. They
tured the skulls of horbills into cups for imbibing ale. They also filled
coconut husks with brew.
Then, as now, the Chinese rarely drank without eating. Snacks eaten
to "put the ale down" could be quite substantial. A list of tem, from
the novelette whose dinner menu appears above, included gray mullet
from the Easter Sea, deer tail, deer tongue, dried fish, roasted fish,
minced wild goose relish, preserved vegetables, quail soup, cinnamon
flavored gruel, meat pies, bear's paw, rabbit's haunch, the meat from a
pheasant's tail, and jackal lips. Those fourteen dishes were hors
d'oeuvres presented before a meal of some twenty-three courses. Either
the portions were small or the capacity of the diners was large. Another
food eaten while drinking was te crabapple. Southerners soaked the
fruit in honey and cinnabar (mercuric sulfide), and served it as a dessert
with ale. One snack that drinkers avoided while imbibing was the per
simmon. Medical authorities advised drinkers to abstain from nibbling
on it because it made one drunk quickly and caused heart pains so severe
that one wished to die.
In the Tang, drinking among the patricians was a contest. There were
a considerable number of games, including dice and riddles, designed
to keep the ale flowing and the guests inebriated. In one a host, guest
or courtesan spun a top carved in the image of a western barbarian.
When it stopped twirling, it fell over, and the guest at whom it pointed
had to drain his goblet. The largest variety of drinking games were the
Ale Rules. One involved a silver canister filled with lots in te shape of
oars with round handles and flat, rectangular ends. Guests drew the lots
from the canister in tur a11d had to obey the instructions, commands,
inscribed on the rectangular ends. The commands designated the person
who had to drink at that moment: the puller of the lot, the most honored
guest, the highest-ranking official, the taciturn, the talkative, the host of
the party, te drinker with the greatest capacity for ale, the youngest,
the last to arrive, and so forth. Some, however, were blanks that appar
ently gave the drinkers a short respite from imbibing. The instructions
146 Daily Life in Tmditional China
also specified the amount of ale-one, five, seven, ten, and forty mea
sures-that the designated tippler had to quaff.
To ensure that parties did not get out of hand, three officiants presided
over the game and assumed the responsibility for maintaining order: a
governor, who reviewed penalties; a registrar of the rules, who knew
the regulations and had a great capacity for ale; and a registrar of the
hor (fagon) . When a guest disturbed the gathering by laughing or talk
ing too boisterously, was rude or impolite, or rose from his seat, the
registrar of rules threw down a lot. The offender then confessed his trans
gression and drank a penalty cup. If he continued to violate the regu
lations, the registrar of the hor trew down a small, silver flag. The
guilty man acknowledged his error again and downed another goblet.
After the assessment of the third fine the governor stepped in to review
the case. The intent of this judicial system was to ensure a convivial
atmosphere in a situation that could easily become rowdy, given the
inebriated state of the guests.
Sometimes the fines and penalties levied at such games were so heavy
that violators could not endure them. A famous poet of the early ninth
century said that in his youth he had been out drinking for several
months in a row and had regularly served as the registrar of the hor.
On one occasion a guest arrived last and continued to commt infractions
of the Ale Rules. After downing twelve penalty cups, he could stand it
no longer and fled the party. The fraterity of te goblet had little sym
pathy for such cowardice. One regulation called for abandoning such
deserters, that is, not inviting them to further drinking bouts.
As might be surmised from this discussion, drinking was not only an
acceptable custom among patricians in Tang times, but also a necessity
for those who wished to be accepted and advance socially. One author
advised his contemporaries to increase their capacity for ale so that they
could win more contests and enance their reputations. That counsel
presumed a certain amount of self-control on the part of the person in
dulging. Outright drunkenness was not rare among the upper classes.
In the spring of 732 the emperor threw a feast for his corps of officials
on an island in a lake at the imperial park of Luoyang. At the conclusion
of te festivities the guests were so drunk that his majesty provided
litters with quilts to carry them home. Some artists apparently believed
that inebriation contributed to the excellence of their work. Wu Daoxuan,
the greatest artist of te Tang, always got drunk before painting. He is
said to have painted the outer facade of a gateway to a Buddhist mon
astery in a single night while intoxicated. When the abbot of a Buddhist
monastery wished to entice him to execute murals for the walls of build
ings that he had just erected, he arrayed vats containing 100 gallons of
ale on the porticos of the monastery and offered them to Wu if he would
set his brush to work. The quantity of the brew so impressed the artst
Food and Feasts 147
that he was only too happy to oblige. A painter of the ninth century
would get drunk and splash ink on a scroll, laughing and singing as he
worked. Sometimes he applied it with his hands. At other times he
would dip his long hair in the ink and brush his tresses on the silk to
execute his masterpieces. Some poets were also renowned sots. It was
the custom for the literate to write verses at imperial feasts and private
repasts while in a state of semi- or total inebriation. The second most
famous poet of the Tang, Li Bai, was a confirmed alcoholic as well as a
knight-errant who on several occasions cut down men to avenge injus
tices. When Emperor Illustrious August recruited him to serve as a
drafter of imperial documents about 744, he was invariably drunk while
on duty. Attendants had to trow water on his face to awaken him.
Nevertheless, he accomplished the task assigned him immediately, de
spite his intoxication. According to legend, he died while drinking on a
boat in a river. Seeing the refection of the moon in the water, he reached
over to embrace it, fell in the stream, and drowned. It is more likely,
however, that he expired at the age of sixty-one from overindulgence in
ale.
Medical authorities recommended soaking in hot water as a means of
curing a great drunk as well as for overindulgence in melons and other
fruit. There was also a plant with purple leaves that grew on the souther
banks of a lake in a palace at Changan that reputedly could sober a sot
immediately if he passed by it. One of the great medical compendiums
of the seventh century contains formulas for dispelling a hangover (i.e.,
a headache)-a soup of bamboo roots boiled with five chicken eggs
ad for allowing a person to imbibe without getting drunk-a powder
of cypress nuts and hemp seeds mixed with ale. The text also supplied
several prescriptions that would make sots give up alcohol: Mix the milk
from a white dog with ale and drink it. Combine the sweat scraped off
a horse with brew and imbibe it. Drop a powder of willow blossoms
and the skin from a rat's head into your libation and quaff it. A writer
in the ninth century warned that intemperance led to poverty and the
destruction of one's family. He also cautioned the official who drank to
take care in drafting his documents, so that he would not bring disgrace
upon himself.
The peoples of souther China as well as Southeast Asia had a differ
ent means of ensuring a convivial atmosphere at their festivities. They
chewed betel nuts-the acrid, slightly intoxicating fruit of a palm tree.
The natives peeled the nut and rolled it in the leaves of the betel pepper
along with lime derived from oyster shells. They believed that it was an
aid to digestion, and always presented it to guests at feasts.
FESTIVALS
7
leisure al
ltertailelt
There was plenty of leisure during the Tang, more so than in later
dynasties. By the middle of the eighth century Tang statutes recognized
twenty-eight holidays on which the governent granted a total of fifty
eight days of leave to all mandarins throughout the empire. The rest
of society-peasants, merchants, and artisans-alo celebrated festivals,
though probably with less time off. As already noted, the regulations
provided officials with one day off every ten days (a Tang week) . In
addition the state gave its high-ranking employees ffteen days off in
the fifth moon as a "farming holiday" and another fifteen days in the
ninth moon as a "holiday for te bestowal of robes. " I all of those in
stances government offices closed, permitting their personnel to spend
their free time at home or in places of amusement. Fially, there were
irregular vacations granted to officials individually. Those included the
following:
1. Thirty days off every three years for a visit to their parents, if they lived more
tan 1,000 miles away, or fifteen days, if they lived more than 167 miles away
(travel time not included)
2. Nine days for the wedding of a son or daughter, and fve, three, or one day
for the nuptials of other close relatives (travel time not included)
3. Three days for a son's capping (manhood) rite or one for another close kins
Inan's ceremony.
150 Daily Lie in Traditional China
Besides the time off allocated by statutes, oficials sometimes found
themselves in posts that required very little work and permitted them
to pursue their favorite diversions. Mandarins in Tang China were the
leisured class in every sense of te word.
There were two sorts of festivals in Tang China. The first were solar,
such as the summer and winter solstices. The second and more numer
ous were lunar, and often fell on double digits such as the third day of
the third moon. (Since it is the convention to refer to the twelve divisions
of the year in the solar calendar as months, we use the term "moons" to
designate the twelve divisions of the lunar year.) The lunar caledar
began sometime between mid-January and mid-February, the exact date
differing from year to year. There was scarcely a moon without festivals
to cheer the lives of the people.
The first day of the first moon, also called the day of the
New Year's
chicken, was the grandest of all festivals, a holiday of seven
days for governent officials. The court held a levee, a
grand audience, in the early hours of the day that civil and military
officials, as well as nobles and foreign emissaries, attended. It was an
occasion for reviewing the omens and disasters or blessings of the pre
ceding year for displaying the tribute submitted by prefectures and for
eign nations, and for the presentation of candidates whom provincial
governors had recommended for national examinations in the capitals.
Throughout the land, however, New Year's was mostly a private affair
celebrated in the home. It was a festival for dispelling evil, to ensure a
fortuitous future in the coming year. Householders rose at cockcrow and
threw segments of bamboo into fires that they had lit in a courtyard or
in front of their houses. When the heat expanded the air captured inside
the segments, the bamboo exploded with a loud bang. Folk beliefs main
tained that the noise drove away a malicious, one-legged specter that
was somewhat over a foot tall, was unafraid of humans, and caused
chills and fevers. After the eleventh century, firecrackers replaced the
bamboo segments. To further protect their abodes, people hung willow
branches on their gates to prevent ghosts from entering the premises.
Some county officials took extraordinary measures by slaughtering a
sheep, hanging its head on a gate, and covering it with a butchered
chicken. The sacrifice of the sheep, which ate the sprouts, and the
chicken, which ate the seed, would enable crops to grow. On New Year's
Day it was the custom for people to drink an ale called Killing Ghosts
and Reviving Souls, into which special herbs had been mixed. Imbibing
the brew would ensure tat they would not contract any illnesses in the
coming year. They also ate a platter of five bitters-onions, garlk leeks,
and the like-because it fortified their interal organs.
Leisure and Entertainment 151
This three-day event, held on the fourteenth, fif-
teenth and sixteenth days of the first moon, was the Lantern Festival
only occasion when the government lifted the curfew
so that citizens could freely stroll the streets outside their wards during
the night. It was a festival of light when the moon was full, and patri
cians sought to outdo each other in providing the grandest lamps. An
aristocratic lady of the mid-eighth century had a lamp tree with several
hundred branches that was eighty feet tall. When she lit it on Lantern
Festival, its light was visible for mies. It could not compare, however,
with that of Emperor Ruizong. He had a lanter wheel 200 feet tall
erected outside a gate of Changan in 713. The apparatus was clothed in
brocades and silk gauze, and adored with gold and jade. When he had
its 50,000 oil cups lit, the radiance burst forth like the blooms on a fow
ering tree. There were over 1,000 palace women present. They wore
gauze trails, embroidered brocades with lustrous pearls, kingfisher hair
pins, and fragrant makeup. Any one of their coronets or gowns was
worth 10,000 coppers. The cost for outfitting a single chanteuse was as
high as 300,000 cash. The court also skillfully selected more than 1,000
young female entertainers from Changan's two counties whose dress,
figured hairpins, and makeup were not inferior to those of the palace
ladies. The singers danced and sang under the lanter wheel for three
days and nights. Three years earlier Zhongzong had let several thousand
palace women-those enslaved there for the crimes that teir menfolk
had committed-leave their confines to view the lanters. Most of the
ladies took advantage of the opportunity, and fled.
This one-day festival took place on the third day of the
third moon (double-three). In ancient times that had been an Lustration
occasion for repairing to a river and bathing in waters
scented with the aromatic orchis plant. It was a rite for dispelling evil
and washing away defilement. By the Tang dynasty it had become a
time for merrymaking, specifically for drinking ale. As already noted, a
famous party in 353 established the conventions-feasting, drinking, and
writing poetry-for such festivities. During the Tang the throne pre
sented deep-fried pastries to officials on double-three, perhaps at the
Serpentine River park
This festival, so named because custom forbade the light-
ing of fres for three days, and therefore people ate cold Cold Food
food, was a solar celebration that fell on April 5. On that
Festival
occasion people went to the tombs of their ancestors to
sweep them, sacrifice to their forebears, and have a picnic. It was also a
time for indulging in diversions. Ladies amused themselves on swings.
Palace women as well as new graduates of the civil service examinations
played football. A imperial workshop manufactured the balls-proba-
152 Daily Life in Traditional China
bly leather spheres flled with feathers, as in previous times-and pre
sented them to the throne during the festival. Tugs-of-war and polo were
also part of the entertainment during the festivities. In 710 Emperor
Zhongzong had his chief ministers, sons-in-law, and generals participate
in a tug-of-war. When two of the oldest ministers fell to the ground, the
monarch laughed. Cold Food Festival also had something of the char
acter of Easter in the West because it was the custom in the Tang to dye
chicken and duck eggs ten. The throne presented porridge to officials
for their holiday.
Tis official one-day holiday commemorated the sui
Fifth Day of the
cide of a famous, upright statesman in the third cen
Fifth Moon
tury B.C.E. who seized a rock and leaped into a river
because his king had banished him for his criticisms.
According to folklore, witnesses to his drowning boarded skiffs and
rushed out in a futile attempt to save him. That tradition was apparently
the reason for the boat races, now called dragon boat races, during that
festival in Tang times. The special food for the fifth day of the fifth moon
was a dumpling made of glutinous millet or rice wrapped in leaves and
boiled. Officials in te capital received their portions from the palace. If
it was rainig on the fifth day, some people cut a piece of bamboo to
make a tube for collecting the "divine water." Then they mixed rain
water with the liver of an otter to form a ring that they ate to cure certain
illesses.
Tis one-day holiday for officials was a festival cele
Seventh Night
brating the love affair between the cow herder-the de
of the
ity of the star Altair in the constellation Aquila-and the
Seventh Moon
weaver maid-the spirit of the star Vega in the constel-
lation Lyra. Separated by the Milky Way, they could
cross it only once a year on a bridge of magpies. When they finally met,
they consummated their relationship during the evening. The festival
was basically for women, who prayed for enhancement of their skills at
sewing and weaving. In the palace at Changan during the early eighth
century, servitors erected a 100-fooHall hall by knotting brocades (to a
bamboo frame) and laid out melons, other fruits, ale, and roasts as of
ferings to the two stellar lovers. The emperor's concubines faced the
moon and threaded polychrome thread into needles with nine eyes. The
ritual was called "praying for skill [in sewing and weaving] . " The ladies
also captured spiders and placed them in lidded cases. The followig
morning they opened the boxes to see whether the webs were loosely or
tightly woven. Those whose cases contained tightly woven webs would
be skilled at their craft, and te others, inept. Commoners also performed
the ritual.
Leisure and Entertainmmt
The All Souls' Feast developed from the legend of the
bodhisattva (savior) Mulian, who found his sinful
mother suffering in the purgatory of hungry ghosts.
There she starved, because when she put food in her
mouth, it changed into buring charcoal. When Mulian
153
Fifteenth Day
of the
Seventh Moon
informed Buddha, the latter instructed him to make a sumptuous offer
ing, especially of fruit, on the fifteenth day of the seventh moon for
monks everyvvhere. The collective virtue of the clergy was powerful
enough to effect the salvation of seven generations of ancestors from hell,
from existence as hungry ghosts, and from rebirth as animals. By dint
of his effort Mulian saved his mother. Thereafter he asked Buddha to
make the day a permanent festival, and he agreed. The story became the
subject of a sutra translated into Chinese during te third century, and
the basis for the custom of the devout laity making offerings to monks.
Monasteries took te opportunity of All Souls' Feast to make ostentatious
displays of their treasures, probably to attract large numbers of donors.
They also gave dramatic performances for the diversion of the crowds.
This midautumn festival was a three-day vacation
for offcials. Today Chinese call it the Moon Festival.
In Tang times it was an occasion when esthete gentle
men admired the moon during the nght, at least
when the weather was clear enough to see it. Tey
Fifteenth Day
of the
Eighth Moon
saw in the moon not an old man, but a hare who was hard at work
grinding ingredients for an elixir, using a mortar and pestle. (That was
a Taoist image, for alchemy was Taoism's special field of endeavor. ) Not
everyone agreed on what the craters and plains of the lunar surface
depicted. Some saw a toad there. The moon was also the site of the ice
palace for tl1e moon goddess and her court. In the folklore of the Tang,
a magician escorted Emperor Illustrious August to that palace across a
silver bridge that he had conjured up by tossing his staff into the air.
During his sojourn there, on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon the
emperor witnessed a performance of the "Air of the Rainbow Robe and
Feathered Skirt" by immortal maids. He memorized the music, and on
his return to earth taught it to his performers. The tale is incredible, but
the piece was composed during the emperor's reign-an adaptation of
an Indian dance, and the most famous in Tang history. Whatever the
case, patricians and plebes alike enjoyed the festival. Those who lived in
the country, where the curfew did not apply, might repair to a mountain
to drink and feast throughout the night.
Another three-day holiday, this was an occasion,
like the Cold Food Festival, for picnicking in the coun- Ninth Day of the
tryside, specifically on a high elevation such as a
Ninth Moon
mountain. Urban dwellers, however, might convene
154 Daily Life in Traditional China
their feasts at the top of a pagoda or at the Serpentine River park in
Changan. There was an intimate association between the festival and the
chrysanthemum. The plant was thought to promote longevity because it
blooms in the autumn and mimics the life-giving sun with its yellow
center and white petals. During the Tang it was the custom to imbibe
chsanthemum blossom ale during the festivities. The stems and leaves
of the plant were gathered on the ninth day of the ninth moon, added
to fermenting grains, and allowed to brew for an entire year. Drinking
the ale on the festival the following year prolonged one's life.
The Last Day
of the
On this night the well-to-do invited Buddhist monks or
Taoist priests to recite scriptures at their homes. Then
they prepared ale and fruit to send the god of the stove
Twelfth Moon
on his way. It was that deity's duty to record the sins of
the family throughout the year and report them to
heaven on the last day of the year. Families hung an image of the god
painted on paper above their stoves on New Year's Day, and it remained
there all year long, noting all the transgressions committed by the house
holders. On the eve of the last day of the twelfth moon, the god of the
stove left the home and j ourneyed to the celestial realm. That was not a
pleasant thought to families, so they rubbed the dregs of ale on the
mouths of their images to get the deity so drunk that he could not make
his report to heaven.
GRAND CARNIVALS
Te roots of Tang carnivals lay in grand bacchanals that the throne
bestowed beginning in the late third century s.c.E. In 222 and 221 the
first emperor of China decreed that everyone in the empire should en
gage in great drinking revelries to celebrate his conquest and unification
of China. At the time there was a statute with the inscription "Three
people or more congregating to drink without cause are to be fined four
ounces of gold. " The emperor's edict suspended the regulation tempo
rarily. Hi s act belonged to a special class of indulgences known as
"Blessed (or Felicitous) Bestowals," which emperors throughout Chinese
history conferred periodically to celebrate momentous occasions and
manifest teir benevolence toward teir subjects. In the following cen
tury, when an emperor assumed the throne, he issued an amnesty that
granted a grand revelry of five days and bestowed beef and ale on his
subjects. The grand revelry thus became a sort of grand feast linked to
the promulgation of amnesties.
By the Tang dynasty the great feast had evolved into a more complex
form of diversion, though it still retained some of its older features. The
throne bestowed food and ale at least three times during the period.
However, the great feast had assumed te character of modern, West-
Leisure and Entertainment 155
ern carnivals in three respects. First, it was an occasion for eating, drik
ing, and merrymaking, though not in anticipation of fasting afterward.
Second, like Mardi Gras in New Orleans, it took place in the streets and
included parades. Last, the entertainment resembled that offered at car
nival sideshows, where professional performers did their acts in tents.
However, Tang carivals differed from those in the West as well as
from other forms of celebrations in China. They had no fixed dates (as
festivals did), no special foods, and no specific religious connotations.
Their existence depended solely on the emperor's generosity and special
circumstances.
The throne bestowed sixty-nine carnivals between 628 and 758, ap
proximately one every twenty-two months. One emperor granted one
every seven months of his reign, but Empress Wu took the prize for the
most, seventeen. Seventy-two percent of them were granted in conjunc
tion with grand amnesties. The first celebrated abundant harvest fol
lowing a disastrous drought and famine that forced families to sell their
sons and daughters to survive. The last commemorated the Tang's re
covery of Chagan, which had fallen to An Lushan the previous year.
The most frequent occasions for bestowing them were performances by
the emperor of great state sacrifices to the gods. Other circumstances
worthy of such imperial gifts were events involving the heir-apparent
(installation, birth, and marriage), and the assumption of new honorific
titles by the emperor. I every case te throne bestowed the boons to
the entire empire, so every district throughout the country celebrated.
The court usually limited the celebrations to three days, but under
certain circumstances indulged its subjects with carnivals of five, seven,
or nine days. They were all odd numbers since they corresponded to the
great powers of the cosmos: the gods of heaven, earth, and man; the five
planets that govern the elements; the seven stars in the Big Dipper; and
the nine heavens. On at least one occasion the emperor suspended the
curfew, and the carnival went on day and night.
Unlike the ancient Greeks and Romans, te Chinese did not erect are
nas, hippodromes, or amphitheaters to provide sites for their citizens to
enjoy the entertainments. There were entertainment "plazas" at Buddhist
monasteries, but they could not accommodate the huge crowds that at
tended carnivals. In general the only large areas of empty space to which
the populace had access were cit avenues. The best description of how
street parties were organized dates from the Sui dynasty, a decade or so
before the founding of the Tang, and concerns not carnivals but New
Year's celebrations. Each year the emissaries from the myriad nations
that recognized the Sui as their suzerain came to court for the Great
Levee on New Year's Day, and stayed on in the capital until the fifteenth
day of the first moon. During that period the main avenue in Luoyang
from the souther gate of the goverent compound to the southern
156 Daily Lie in Tmditional China
gate in the city's outer rampart was transformed into a vast, continuous
amusement area. That avenue, sometimes called Heaven's Ford Street,
was some 2. 5 miles in length and 492 feet in width. Chinese cherry,
pomegranate, Chinese elm, and locust trees lined its verges, and an im
perial way fenced off by a wall three feet high ran down its middle. On
those occasions the officials from a government bureau erected tents
where as many as 30,000 singers, dancers, and other entertainers per
formed to amuse the foreign legates and the citizenry of the capital.
In Changan an avenue that ran east to west between the centra palace
compound and the government compound was the site of a carnival in
713. Although at 1. 75 miles it was shorter than other streets in the capital
and its counterpart in Luoyang, it was more than twice as wide at 1,47
feet. The area was also more secure than the avenues of the outer city
since the headquarters for fourteen imperial guard units were located
south of the avenue. The authorities could easily call on those soldiers
to handle crowd control in the event of trouble. Two oter areas in
Changa served as entertainment centers. One was a huge plaza in front
of the main hall at the Darng Palace. That was more or less a public
area of the palace where the emperor received officials, foreigners and
commoners. The other was a square that Emperor Illustrious August had
constructed to the west of the Xingqing Palace in early 737. The work
basically involved broadening the street by demolishing parts of neigh
boring wards. That plaza was not as secure as the others. At one grand
carnival held during the emperor's reign, the people in the square be
came unruly. They pressed in on the zone where entertainers were per
forming and clamored. Gold Bird Guards rained blows on the spectators
with their staves, but failed to quell the disturbance. So the emperor, on
the ad vice of a eunuch, summoned an official named Yan who had a
reputation for being a cruel clerk. When he administered judicial beat
ings with the thin rod to the condemned, they could not rise afterward
and feared that they would not die. When he applied the thick rod to
the convicted, their blood flowed on the ground, and they wished to
expire. After the brute appeared in the plaza outside the Xingqing Palace,
he strode around the circumference of the arena, and with a wooden
plank drew its boundaries on the groud. Then Yan declared, "Anyone
who crosses this line will die. " On each of the carival's five days he
stood in the square and imposed order by virtue of his reputation for
savagery.
Gates in the capitals played an important role in the grand carnivals,
because it was from their upper stories that the emperor viewed the
performances that went on below or outside of them. They were essential
not only because te ruler i1 ancient China always sat above his subjects,
but also because they provided security. Imperial bodyguards always
stood before them to prevent rebels, assassins, and madmen from ap
proaching the throne.
Leisure and Entertainmmt 157
As with modern carnivals in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro, a parade
of foats drawn by horses or cows was one of the highlights of the fes
tivities. At least as early as the tird century, China had entertainment
wagons on which acrobats performed fying stunts at the top of poles
fastened to the wagons. However, they paled in comparison to Tang
floats, whose size and grandeur may have derived from great four
wheeled carts-some five stories high-that peoples of India and Central
Asia rolled into the streets on Buddha's birthday, the eighth day of the
second moon. By the early sixth century Buddhist monasteries in China
had similar vehicles for parading statues of Buddha and other holy per
sons through the streets on holy days. The floats at Tang carivals were
called mountain carts or drought boats. The former were wagons that
had superstructures hung with colored silks formed to resemble moun
tains. The latter, also draped with colored cloth, were ships made of
bamboo and wood. Men inside the boat floats carried them along the
avenues. Since they did not float on water, they were called drought
boats. Musicians rode on the tops of both vehicles and performed as they
moved along. Other carts carrying musicians, dressed in rich fabrics and
summoned from counties as far as 100 miles from the capital, were
drawn by bullocks covered wit tiger skis or outfitted to look like rhi
noceroses and elephants. Early in the sevent century an official in
charge of the music bureau composed music for grand carnivals. It was
perhaps his compositions that musicians on foats performed. On occa
sion the emperor offered a prize for those entertainers that he deemed
the best. By the mid-eighth century powerful families in Changan took
to building their own entertainment wagons, lofty structures covered
with colorful fabrics. They carried a score or more of female singers and
musicians and made their way around gardens. Both the carival floats
and private foats disappeared in China centuries ago, but vestiges of
them survive in Japan, where young men pull them down the avenues
of Kyoto during the July Gion Festival, which is supposed to dispel pes
tilence.
Grand carnivals died out with the A Lushan rebellion. For some time
after 758 neither the court nor local governments had the funds to spon
sor such lavish entertainents. Furthermore, the insurrection dispersed
the performers to the provinces, so it was difficult for the throne to pro
vide entertainment for them. It was not until after 960 that grand car
nivals reemerged.
ENTERTAINERS AND THEIR ACTS
The most numerous of all performers were professionals known as
"independent entertainers." In ancient China the term denoted a class of
performers who were not under the control of the imperial court or gov
ernment bureaus. Since they did not receive support fom the state, they
158 Daily Life in Traditional China
made their livelihood from whatever fees or donations their patrons or
audiences were willing to pay. However, by the begim1ing of the Tang
dynasty the court had incorporated some independent entertainers, no
doubt the best to be had, into a palace agency known as the Instruction
Ward. Tat bureau provided diversions for banquets and special occa
sions. Thus the performers were wards of the state and received support
in the form of stipends, food, and living quarters from the treasury. In
some cases a powerful prince might have his own troupe. Emperor Il
lustrious August had such a company before he ascended the thone. It
assisted him in deposing Empress Wei in 610. Strongmen were among
the performers.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of independent entertainers in the Tang
were not bound to the court. The state always viewed them with a j aun
diced eye because they were itierant. They arrived in a locality, ex
hausted whatever surplus it had to spend on amusements, and then
moved on to greener pastures. The government saw them as vagabonds
who made teir living from the surplus income of hardworking peasants.
In an effort to control them, it promulgated a statute that required all of
them to register with local authorities and obligated them to perform a
certain number of days each year for the state, as their shae of com
pulsory labor service. The latter regulation gave local authorities a ready
supply of performers on which they could draw for diversions at grand
carivals and other occasions, free of charge. Furthermore, in 714 the
throne forbade independent entertainers from traveling from village to
village where the government's control of the population was weakest.
It had no offices in the hamlets. Violators of the proscription were subject
to a beating of thirty strokes with the thin rod, a rather light punishment.
From te state's point of view the independent performers were suspect
elements of the population, like Gypsies in Europe, who might turn to
crime when times turned bad.
Finally, the independent entertainers suffered from a stigma imposed
on them by the classicists and moralists. In their view, the performers
did not provide the sedate, restrained, and cultured music, song, and
dance of the age-old rites maintained by the state. They were unortho
dox, and therefore illegitimate. Independent entertainers did not conform
to natural law, and as a result upset the balance and harmony of the
cosmos. In other words, they were boisterous, raucous, uninhibited, and
free. The distinction between the two classes of performers in the Tang
was rather like the distinction in moder times between opera singers
and circus clovns. Tang highbrows also objected to imperial patronage
of independent entertainers on the grounds that the throne was wasting
precious resources on frivolous amusements.
The term for the performances of the independent entertainers was,
literally, the "hudred acts." As the phrase indicates, it encompassed a
Leisure and Entertainment 159
host of diversions-snake charmers, sword swallowers, fire eaters, and
weight lifters, as well as more dignified music, singing, dance, and act
ing. Dwarfs played a role in the variety shows and were permanent
fixtures at the Tang court, as well as in the mansions of the patricians.
No more than three feet tall, they came from a southern prefecture. The
district sent them to the emperor as tribute until the late eighth century,
when the throne abandoned the practice at the instigation of an upright
governor.
There were a number of acrobatic acts, two of which fell
into the death-defing class. The first was tightrope-walking. Acrobats
Some performers, most of them women, sauntered along the
line with wooden platform shoes on teir feet; others paced it on painted
stilts, five or six feet in length, botmd to their shis. In one act the ac
robats formed a human tower of three or four performers, and the anchor
man nimbly danced along the rope in time to the music. I another the
acrobats in the pyramid somersaulted off the shoulders of those below,
one after the other, and landed on the rope without fallg to the ground.
Still others juggled balls, tured somersaults, or fenced with double
edged swords.
The second, and more spectacular, were the pole acts. Those feats re
quired an anchorwoman-most of the names for the performers that
have survived are feminine-who placed a tall, painted pole 70 to 100
feet long on her head. The shaft normally had a crossbar affixed to its
top on which slim young girls performed acrobatic moves such as hang
ing by their chins or doing handstands and somersaults. I one act the
pole was crowned with a wooden mountain carved to resemble the fair
yland of the immortals. A child climbed to the top and cavorted among
the peaks while singing and dancing. In another, five young girls bal
anced themselves on five taut bowstrings stretched across a frame at the
top of a shaft. They performed a martial dance that involved manipu
lating lances and spears. While all of that was going on aloft, the burly
anchorwoman walked about, weaving back and forth to enhance the
suspense in the audience.
Taoists had their own special acrobatic act, climbing the sword ladder.
They planted two very tall poles in the ground and bound rapiers be
tween them to form rungs. Then a priest climbed the ladder on his bare
feet and brandished a saber while balancing on the top rung. In the
middle of the eighth century a Buddhist prelate complained to the throne
about the act, and requested permission to have monks perform it in
order to outdo their rivals. He later claimed that the monks surpassed
the priests in their skill at climbing the ladder, not exactly an unbiased
opinion. Whatever the case, Taoists were still performing the stunt in
southeast China during the nineteent century, claiming it was effective
in dispelling epidemics.
1 60 Daily Life in Traditional China
Sword Ladder
Other acrobatic acts-juggling props such as swords, plates, pillows,
or pearls-involved feats of dexterity. Some performers kept small bells
in the air by kicking them with their feet. The best of the entertainers
must have been an armless panhandler in Luoyang who lived in the
second half of the eighth century. He begged money from passersby at
a bridge in the city by inscribing texts with a writing brush that he
grasped between the toes of his right foot. Before he set his pen to paper,
the mendicant tossed the brush a foot or more into the air two or three
times and never failed to retrieve it with his foot before it fell to the
ground. His calligraphy was not inferior to that of official scribes.
Leisure and Entertainment 161
Boxing was a sport in the Tang, but it seems to have been
an exercise for military training rather than a form of enter- Wresters
tainment. Wrestling was a different matter entirely. It was
one of the diversions that spectators could expect to enjoy at carnivals.
Known as "hor butting," it originated in the fourth or third century
B. C. E. During that period of disunity in China, wars increased in scale,
frequency, and brutality. The existence of a kingdom came to depend on
the quality of its warriors and that required improved methods of train
ing. One of te methods was wrestling. By te third century a new term
for it emerged, "paired shoving. " I Japanese the term is pronounced
sunw. Although usually thought of as a uniquely Japanese art, it existed
in China at least a millennium earlier than in Japan. Depictions of the
sport in Chinese art from 220 B. C. E. through the Tang show wrestlers
stripped to te waist and their bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder.
Their arms are wrapped around one another, and their hands grasp their
opponent's sashes from behind. It would be erroneous to assume that
the rules of the contest then were the same as those in Japan today, but
it seems clear that te objective of throwing your opponent or tossing
him out of the ring was the same.
In the Tang "horn butting" remained an exercise for training troops,
but it was also a diversion. During the early seventh century two wres
tlers, Peng and Gao, were members of opposing teams that were com
peting to determine which was superior to the oter at a carival in an
outlying prefecture. Peng grabbed a live suckling pig and gnawed it from
its head to its neck. Then he placed it on the ground, and it fed squea
ing. Not to be outdone Gao picked up a cat and devoured it from its tail
up, completely consuming its intestines and stomach. All the while the
creature whined and screeched. At that point Peng docilely conceded
defeat to Gao. Bravado was apparently an added attraction of wrestling
matches, in China then as in America now.
Some wrestlers were violent men. In 822 a cavalryman went to collect
a debt from a sumo wrestler. The wrestler, who was drunk, refused to
pay, and nearly beat the soldier to death. At that point the cavalier's
fourteen-year-old son picked up a chunk of wood and struck his father's
assailant on the head, cracking his skull. The wrestler died three days
later. I 828, 300 commoners sued for the return of their land in a ward
of Changan that had been confscated. The trone had bestowed it on
them more than forty years before, and they had paid no taxes on it. A
eunuch ordered fifty wrestlers to arrest the citizens. When they went to
carry out his command, they provoked a prolonged riot in the roads of
the ward. After the emperor heard of the matter, he returned the land
to the townsmen.
162 Daily Life in Traditional China
Magic was most popular with Tang spectators. According
Illusionists to ancient historians, masters of illusion made their way to
China from India when the Silk Route was opened in the
second century B. C.E. In the early fourth century an Indian who could
sever his tongue as well as spit fire arrived in south China. The residents
of the area gathered to observe his act. When he was about to cut off his
tongue, he would stick it out to show the audience. Then he severed it,
and his blood fowed out, covering the ground. He placed the amputated
piece in a bowl and passed it around to show the people. The spectators
could see both it and the stump still in hs mouth. Afterward he replaced
the tip of his tongue and rejoined it to the stump. Then he sat down to
permit the gathering to see that his tongue was just as it had been before.
Buddhist monks from India who came to China with the intention of
converting the natives to their faith also practiced illusions to attract
followers. In the early fourth century a monk from Central Asia had a
hole four or five inches in diameter beside his left nipple that he plugged
with some cast-off cloth. O fasting days he hastened to a river, removed
the rag, pulled out his intestines, washed them, and then restored them
to his belly. At night, when he wished to read, he plucked out the clot,
and his inner light fooded his room.
Other foreign religions also practiced magic as part of their rituals.
The Manichaeans from Persia had two churches in Luoyang where each
year western merchants prayed for wealt, cooked pigs, and slaughtered
sheep. They danced in a drunken revelry to the accompaniment of the
balloon guitar, drums, and fifes. After paying their respects to God, they
enlisted one of their number to be master and gave him cash. He seized
an extremely sharp sword, thrust it into his belly until it exited from his
back, and shook over and over. Blood fowed from h guts. In the twin
kling of an eye he withdrew the blade, spat water on it, and blessed it
with an incantation. His body was as it had been before.
Tang emperors did not always appreciate acts that involved simulated
mutilations of te huma body. In 656, at a grand carnival marking the
installation of a new heir-apparent, Gaozong saw a westerner lift a blade
and pierce his stomach. Revolted, he put an end to the performance and
subsequently issued an order to his border guards forbidding them to
allow magicians whose acts involved such illusions to cross the frontiers
of the empire. The proscription was short-lived.
China had its own well-developed tradition in the arts of illusion, a
tradition as old as the second century B. C. E. A Chinese magician who
flourished between 670 and 674 had a trick in which he suspended a
water jug from a beam and chopped the rope with a knife. Although he
severed the rope, the jar did not fall. He also installed a jug of water in
an empty room, placed a sword horizontally across the top of it, and
closed the door tightly. Sometime later spectators entered the room to
Leisure and Entertainment 163
Balloon Guitar
have a look. There they saw the dismembered body of the magician that
had been cut into five pieces (torso, arms, and legs). The jug no longer
contained water. Instead it was full of his blood. After they left and
closed the door, the magician reassembled his body and appeared to
them in his original state. He sold fortunes in a market and made 100
coppers a day. Later someone filed charges against hm at court. Te
magistrate sentenced him to death. While he was being led to the market
for execution, the expression on his face was composed, and there was
not the slightest sign of fear on it. The magician ordered paper and pen
to compose a brilliant final statement.
Tere was also a Taoist priest named Ye who was adept at performing
illusions. He placed peach and willow branches on the stomach of a
volunteer. Then he cast a magic spell on his sword, and with all of his
might brought the blade to bear, chopping at te man's stomach. Al
though the sword severed the branches, it did not injure the fesh. That
was just for openers. Afterward, wielding a pair of swords, he cleaved
a woman in two. Her blood fowed everywhere, and her family wept
copiously. Then the priest rejoined the halves of her body, spat water on
them, and cast a magic spell. In the twinkling of an eye the woman was
healed and retured to her original state.
Vanishing acts were also in the magician's repertoire. One morning,
whe riding down a small lane in a ward of Changan, Li Jiabo saw ahead
164 Daily Life in Traditional China
of him a short girl wearing mouning clothes who was about three feet
tall, but spoke like a woman. She was babbling as though she had some
-grievance. 'Patience!-afience! We will have a ueciSlVe bafei end!
In the end I will not release him! " She snapped her fingers several times
and muttered, "Really strange. Really strange." Confounded by her be
havior and not daring to make iquiries, Li rode away. For two days
the woman bewildered people on the streets. When Li next encountered
her, a large crowd surrounded her, and at the center countless children
pressed around her seat. When the dwarf woman came forward, she had
a veil over her head and spoke irrationally. The children laughed at her.
If anyone got close to her, she clutched them, so the children withdrew.
At noon, when she saw that she had attracted a throng, she sat down.
A child thrust himself forward and tore off her veil. The woman had
disappeared. Only a three-foot-long stick of green bamboo wit a skull
hanging on it remained. The irrational behavior of the performer was
apparently a come-on to attract spectators.
Another disappearing act purportedly permitted its performer to es
cape jail. While arranging for the performance of variety acts at a grand
carnival in the early eighth century, a county commandant and his prison
warden competed to see who could find the finest entertainer. The prison
officials were very keen on the idea and had their minds set on winning.
So they interrogated the inmates to fnd out if any of them could perform
an act. One convict smiled and said, "I can do a clumsy rope trick."
When te warden heard that, he asked what te inmate's crime was. His
clerk told him that the man had been implicated in the theft of tax cloth.
The warden asked the inmate what was special about his act, and he
replied, "The herd of rope artists all tie both ends of their ropes to the
ground and then walk, stand, turn, or whirl on the rope. I, on the other
hand, need only a rope fifty feet in length and the thickness of a finger.
I do not have to tie it down. I climb into the sky on it and frolic. There
is nothing I cannot do on it. " The warden was pleased. The next day a
guard led the prisoner to the carnival grounds. After all of the other
performers finished teir acts, he ordered the inmate to demonstrate his
trick. The convict walked into the arena with a coil of rope measuring
more than 100 feet in lengt. He placed the coil on the ground, took one
end of the rope, and hurled it into the sky. It straightened out like a
writing brush. The inmate climbed twenty or thirty feet up, then forty
or fifty feet. The rope rose straight, as if someone was pulling it from
above. The crowd of spectators was truly astonished. Finally, when the
prisoner climbed to a height of more tan 200 feet and he reached the
top of the rope, he acquired the power of a bird. He flew alongside the
rope for a while. Then he soared away into the distance and vanished.
Indians still perform this illusion, though they never climb to such spec
tacular altitudes or fly.
Leisure tmd Entertaillmellf 165
Vanishing and reappearing was yet another trick in the repertoire of
Tang magicians. "Penetating the Pot" was a Korean act adopted by the
Chinese. One performer descended into a jar on a table, and another
later emerged from a second jar on another stand. That illusion is not
difficult to understand, but "Penetrating the Horse's Belly" is. The act,
as depicted on a Japanese scroll of Tang entertaients that dates from
the twelfth century, apparently required three performers. One held the
reins of the steed, another entered the charger's anus, and a third
emerged from its mouth. The illusion must have used some sort of ap
paratus and employed two children or dwarfs.
Animal acts played an important role in diversions, car-
nivals and otherwise. The largest and most awesome were Animal Acts
those involving elephants. Although some of the creatures
still survived in souther China, those that performed at entertainments
in the capital were probably tribute sent from the countries south of the
empire to the court in Changan. When they arrived in the metropolis,
the throne assigned two grooms to care for them and supplied them with
rice, soybeans and salt for feed. Since the animals could not tolerate the
cold of the north, their keepers clothed them in sheepskins and felt dur
ing the winter. When the emperor called on them to entertain-in par
ticular at the New Year's levee-they danced and bowed in homage to
the strains of music. Incredibly, there were also tamed rhinoceroses that
performed the same act as their fellow pachyderms. When Changan fell
to An Lushan in 756, he had the beasts brought to Luoyang, his capital.
To impress envoys from foreign lands, he declared that the animals had
rushed north in response to his having received te mandate of Heaven.
They would dance and pay homage to him as their sovereign by bowing.
Then he ordered his servitors to lead in the elephants. However, when
they arrived, the pachyderms stared at him in anger and refused to per
form. Chagrined and enraged, An ordered his attendants to herd them
into a pit and roast them alive. The fate of the rhinoceroses is unknown.
Dancing horses performed for the amusement of the court. In the early
eighth century te emperor had trained steeds prance at a banquet for
Tibetan emissaries. The coursers were tinted with five shades of pigment,
adored with silk trappigs and gold fittings, and fitted with saddles
decorated with images of unicors and phoenixes. The chargers danced
in perfect response to the music until they came to the central piece. At
that point musicias presented them with ale, and tey took the goblets
in their mouths to drink. Then they lay down and rose again. The most
famous troupe of horses was that of Emperor Illustrious August. Num
bering 100, they were dressed in figured embroidery, adorned with pearl
and jade oraments attached to their manes and forelocks, and outfitted
with gold and silver halters. The coursers performed to the "Music of
the Upended Goblet, " which had ten parts. I the course of their act they
166 Daily Life in TraditioHal China
Penetrating the Horse's Belly
knelt, reared on their hind legs, clutched goblets in their mouths, and
got drunk. The denouement of the steeds' performance was when they
ascended a tree-tiered platform and whirled around on top of it. Some
times robust men lifted the platform while the chargers pranced. Some
of those admirable animals, like the elephants, met an unhappy fate.
They fell into the hands of An Lushan after he seized Changan, and he
sent a number of them to his base in the northeast. There they came ito
the possession of a subordinate officer who did not uderstand their
value. One day at a feast the chargers took up dancing in response to
the music being performed. Believing that the beasts had gone berserk,
their ignorant grooms beat them with brooms. The chargers, thinkig
that they were out of order, strove all the more to conform to the rhythm.
When the matter was reported to the officer, he ordered them thrashed.
The more the grooms beat them, the more the horses strove to conform
to the standard movements to which they had been trained. Finally they
succumbed to the beating.
Perhaps the most amusing of all animal acts were those involving
monkeys because their cavorting most closely resembled the behavior of
humans. They performed pole acts, at which they were most adept, as
well as somersaults. A man from westem China excelled at training them
and had at any given time more than ten of the creatures, large and
small, in his care. Purportedly they were able to utter human speech
because he fed tem mercury sulfide. In one act, wearing hats and boots,
they rode dogs. Spurring their mounts on with whips in their hands,
they shouted as they passed from the front to the rear of a hall. They
also performed a skit in which they emulated drunks and fell to the
ground. Despite efforts to revive them from their stupor, they would not
Leisure and Entertainment 167
rise even when their master . told them that te street patrolman was
coming. Only when he whispered to them that Attendant Hou-a fierce
official whom all men feared-was on his way would they jump to their
feet, eyes bulging in fright, and feign terror at hearing those words.
Everyone laughed at that.
Mountain man Wang had an insect act. While visiting an official's
home, he pulled a segment of bamboo and a small drum from his bosom.
Then he removed a plug fom the bamboo tube and beat a tattoo on the
drum with a broken twig. More than twenty spiders marching in a line
emerged from the tube and split into two companies facing each other,
as if they were forming a battle line. Sometimes Wang struck the drum
three times, sometimes five. Whenever they heard the sound, the spiders
maneuvered into a new formation. After performig more than twenty
of the configurations, they reformed their original companies and
marched back into the bamboo tube. Some animal handlers even man
aged to train hedgehogs. Citizens of Changan gathered in the streets to
watch a pair of them face each other and dance to the rhyth of music.
If one did not prefer the real thing, he might enjoy the mechanical.
There was a clever Japanese craftsman who appeared at court in the early
ninth century. He pulled a wooden box from. his bosom and took out
several hundred red spiders that he arrayed in fve troupes. The artisan
told the emperor that they could dance to a tune. His highness sum
moned his musicians to play the piece. The toys then wheeled and
turned to the music without skipping a beat. Whenever the air called for
lyrics, they chirped. At the end of the music, they assumed positions
according to their ranks in a file and withdrew into the box.
Dancing was an important form of entertainment, especially
among the nobility. Imperial princes received instruction in it at Dance
a very early age. For example, in 690, when he was five years
old, Emperor Illustrious August performed "The Long-Lived Lady" dur
ing a banquet given by Empress Wu. At the same feast another prince,
who was four years old, danced "The Prince of Lanling. " The Prince of
Lanling was a norther general of the sixth century who won a great
victory. Afterward his troops composed a song called "The Prince of
Laling Breaks Through te Battle Formation" to celebrate his triumph.
During the Sui and Tang dynasties te air evolved into a dance panto
mime. By the early eighth century it depicted the general as having the
face of a beautiful woma, so he wore a mask to strike terror in the
minds of his foes when he went into battle. In the course of its perfor
mance the dancer brandished a weapon as though thrusting and stab
bing at his adversaries. By the ninth century a whip replaced the weapon,
and the performer wore a purple costume with a gold girdle. It was a
"vigorous" dance in the Tang's system for classifying music.
Another vigorous dance was "The Prince of Qin Smashes Battle For-
1 68 Daily Lie in Traditional China
mations. " After Taizong, then Prince of Qin, defeated a rebel army in
622, his troops composed an air with that title to commemorate his tri
umph. Entertainers frst performed it at a banquet in 627. I 633 Taizong
drew a diagram for a dance that had a round formation to the left and
a square one to the right. He ordered one of his courtiers to train dancers
to perform it accordig to his drawing. The piece had three movements,
each consisting of four formations. Clad in silver armor and carrying
crescent-shaped spears, 128 boys pummeled and pierced to simulate the
ebb and fow of battle. After the first performance in that year, the em
peror had his ministers compose lyrics for it and renamed it "The Dance
of Seven Virtues. "
Military men also leared the art of dancing. In fact, dancing may have
been part of their training to handle weapons. I early 622 a rebel com
mander captured Goveror-General Li. The rebel admired the governor's
talents and wanted to make him a grand general in his army, but he
refused. Some of Li's former subordinates regaled him with food and
ale, perhaps as a farewell before his execution. At the feast he said to
them, "Gentlemen, you wish to console me with food and ale because
you lament my difculty and disgrace, so I shall carouse with you one
last time. " When they were all quite inebriated, Li spoke to the guards
who had him in custody. "I can perform the sword dance. Would one
of you be willing to loan me a blade?" One of them handed him a rapier.
When he finished dancing, Li heaved a great sigh. "How can a great
man, who has proved himself incapable of protecting that which he was
entrusted with to defend, live and breathe with honor i this world?"
Then he seized the sword and stabbed himself. His blood gushed out of
his stomach, and he died.
In the early eighth century General Pei Min asked Wu Daoxuan to
paint some murals on the walls of a Buddhist monastery in Luoyang.
The artist agreed to do it on the condition that the general inspire him
by performing the sword dance. Pei leapt on his horse. At a gallop he
wheeled to his right and then to his left, brandishing his rapier. Then he
abruptly tossed the sword hundreds of feet in the air. As it descended,
he extended his scabbard to catch it, but it fell through a roof instead.
Wu seized his brush and executed a mural that was the wonder of the
world. Earlier the general had put his skills to a more practical purpose
when he found himself surrounded by the Turks during a campaign in
the north. He did his dance standing on the back of a horse, and cut
down arrows shot at him by the enemy. They were so awestruck by the
feat that they left the field of battle.
There was a form of the sword dance performed by women. The
greatest of its artists-indeed, the only one who truly mastered it-was
a lady in Emperor Illustrious August's troupe durig the early eighth
centw-y. She taught the secrets of her craft to at least one other woman.
Leisure and Entertainment 169
Entertainers of that sort may have brandished two swords, but some
writers said they wielded silk ribbons with luminous objects at each end
instead.
The grandest of the "supple dances" was "The Air of the Rainbow
Robe and Feathered Skirt." Despite the legends of Emperor Illustrious
August acquiring it from the moon palaces, it was in reality a form of
entertainment that he adapted from Indian music. He often had it per
formed on his birthday. The female dancers wore costumes made of
kgfisher feathers-hence its title-and necklaces made of gems. They
were supposed to look like immortal maidens. In the ninth century they
also wore hats with strings of pearls hanging down. A single lady like
Yang Guifei or a troupe of them might dance it. In 836 300 women under
the age of nineteen from the emperor's Ward of Instruction performed
the act at court. The ballet was largely a palace entertainment, but oc
casionally the emperor bestowed treatises that contained instructions on
how to perform it on meritorious ministers.
Tang dramas, if they can be called that, combined dia-
logue, music, and dance. The only difference between them Theatricals
and other forms of musical entertainment was that they had
something of a story line. The Walking, Singing Wife was based on a sixth
century tale of a man who had an ugly, pockmarked face and claimed
to be an official when he was not. He was a lush who beat his beautiful
wife every time he care hore drunk. She resented his abuse and sued
him in her village. A male actor wearing women's clothing played the
wife and strode gravely onto the stage, singing as he went (hence the
title). A choir sang responses. The husband, whose face was painted red
to represent inebriation, entered next and battered his wife. Despite the
serious nature of the subject, the drama was a comedy.
Puppetry in the Tang was very similar to drama, in that it
involved song and dance as well as dialogue. There were Puppety
marionettes carved from wood, one of which was an old man
with chicken skin and white hair. Apparently te most popular of the
characters was Master Guo, who was completely bald and always
opened the show. He excelled at jokes and jests. Master Guo was so
popular that a man had a tattoo pricked onto his right arm that depicted
the head of the puppet protruding from a bottle gourd. Unfortunately,
there is no information on the plots of puppet plays.
Storytelling seems to have emerged as a form of profes-
sional entertainment in the Tang. The performers, men or Storytelling
women, told teir tales in the palace and on the streets.
Sometimes they had paintings that they unrolled to illustrate their talks,
visual aids of a sort. The scrolls sometimes had the texts of the poetry
that the entertainers read written on te back. Parts of some stories were
songs. If the audience was pleased with the performance, they would
170 Daily Life in Traditio1al China
toss coins to the narrator and shout "Bravo! " In the early eighth century
the military governor of a province in the southwest used storytellers to
draft troops from the unwilling lower classes. When the plebes flocked to
see the spectacles, his agents seized those of the audience who were poor
or had no relatives, placed them in fetters, and sent them off to the wars.
The tales could be secular or religious, but the story of Mulian's jour
ney through purgatory in search of his mother was probably the most
popular. It evoked popular sentiments of filial devotion to parents tat
were very strong among ancient Chinese. Furthermore, some versions
cont
<
ied vivid descriptions of hell that no doubt titillated audiences.
Metal barbs stabbed men in the chest, awls punctured women in the
back, iron rakes gouged out eyes, copper pitchforks plunged into their
loins. The pulverized flesh of sinners few everywhere, and their blood
soaked the roads. Such gory details were no doubt included to attract as
large an audience as possible.
SPORTS
In medieval China the mastery of archery was not merely a question
of acquiring a skill that enabled one to bring down game or slay enemies.
Among the ruling class, proficiency i it was a mark of manhood as well
as social status. There were three orders of difficulty: standing, sitting,
and mounted. Mounted archery required the bowman to let loose of the
horse's reins and guide his mount by the pressure of his knees only while
he shot. Even women mastered the skill. The art no longer exists in
China, but survives in Japan among a small number of aficionados.
The imperial arsenal manufactured four types of bows from the wood
of the mulberry tree: a long bow and a short bow for use by the infantry,
the "hor" bow strengthened with horn and sinew for use by the cavalry,
and a colored bow for use by imperial guards on ceremonial occasions.
It also produced seven types of crossbows. The arsenal made the shafts
of arrows from bamboo and wood. The wooden ones were resered for
target practice and hunting. The bamboo had an iron head for piercig
armor.
Archery contests, known as Great Shoots, enjoyed classical sanction.
Tang emperors revived the ancient rite. From 619 to 664 and 711 to 733
they issued decrees autorizing the performance of the ritual at halls or
gates of the imperial palaces. They invariably took place on the third day
of the third moon or ninth day of the ninth moon. On one occasion in
712 the contest lasted eight days. The throne specified the rank of officials
who had to participate in te event: sometimes the entire corps, but at
other times only those ranking fifth grade and above or third grade and
above. Whatever the case, mastery of the skill was clearly a requirement
for being a mandarin.
Leisure and Entertainment 171
Targets for Ceremonial Archer (Great Shoots)
Proficiency with the bow varied greatly. On the one hand, an archer
in the early eight century could without fail hit goose feathers tossed
into the wind while mounted on a horse. On the other hand, some of
ficials who participated in the Great Shoots had virtually no skill at it.
The worst was a kinsman of Empress Wu. When an official who had
served the Turkish khan returned to the capital, the empress was furious
at his treachery and ordered the bureaucratic corps to fill him with ar
rows while he was tied to a post. A grandson of her uncle, whom she
had dubbed prince, loosed three arrows from a distance of seven paces
and failed to hit him once.
Hunting, as entertainment, was a sport for aristocrats and
mandarins. In the early Tang they pursued it with passion. Hunting
One prince declared, "I can go without eating for three days,
but I can't go without hunting for a single day. " The grandest hunts
were the emperor's. They took place in the Forbidden Park north of
Changan, in regions close to the capital, or in wilderness areas near a
city that he visited. In all cases the court went with him and set itself up
at a clearing. Beaters drove the game toward the open field where the
emperor and the courtiers shot it down. Some of the rulers excelled at
the sport. Taizong once shot four arrows at a herd of wild pigs charging
from the woods and brought down four of the animals. Illustrious Au
gust once bagged two wild boars with one arrow. Afterward he ordered
an artist to paint a scene of his remarkable feat on a wall of the palace's
norter gate.
Like medieval Europeans, the upper classes of the Tang used raptors
to bring down prey for them. Because of their size, they used eagles to
hunt large mammals such as foxes, wolves, and small deer. Their falcons,
which knocked victims from the sky with clenched talons, attacked fowl;
the saker took herons and larger birds, while the smaller peregrine struck
down ducks and smaller game. Goshawks were the most favored of all
the raptors during this period because they were ferce and the most
competent in attacking prey, usually rabbits and pheasants. Sparrow
hawks, smallest of the raptors, killed their prey, usually lesser fowl such
as quail, by gripping them with needle-sharp claws and pinning them
to the ground.
1 72 Daily Life in Traditional China
Nah1rally the trone had the finest collection of raptors, along with
the best hounds and hunting leopards. Their keepers, eunuchs, were not
always scrupulous. In 806 they released goshawks in the mansions of
wealthy families in Changan and then demanded handsome compen
sation for retrieving them. About the same time they were in the habit
of spreading nets over the gates or wells of the well-to-do so that the
residents could not enter their homes or draw water unless they forked
over coppers or cloth.
Football was an ancient game in China that was still popular
Football in the Tang. There were football felds i the palaces of the
emperor and the heir-apparent at Changan. The mansion of a
princess had one that was sold to the residents of its ward after her fall.
In the early eighth century the emperor abolished the ancestral temple
for the daughter of his predecessor and bestowed the property on a
favorite, whose mansion was just to the north, for a football field.
The ball was probably a leather sphere filled with feathers, as it had
been i previous times. As in modem soccer, the objective of the game
was to keep the ball in the air by kicking it with the feet. The players,
who performed for the pleasure of the throne, were often soldiers in
imperial armies or members of the Gold Bird Guard. One military oficial
could loft the ball halfway up the height of a pagoda. However, intel
lectuals might also indulge in it. While an imperial academician was
playing football with his brothers at their mansion in Changan, the ball
struck him on the forehead and inflicted a slight injury. Just then he
received an urgent summons from the throne. When he arrived at the
palace, the emperor noticed the wound and asked him about it. The
scholar told him how he got it. His highness then bestowed two trays
with ten gold bowls on each. Altogether the bowls held twenty-five pints
of ale. The academician drank every last drop of ale, but showed no
signs of being drunk. When a courtier had no skill at the game, he might
ask the emperor to appoint him scorekeeper.
Polo, a sport imported from the west (Persia or Tibet) in the sev
Polo enth century, was immensely popular among the upper classes in
the Tang. There was a polo field in an imperial park and anoter
at a palace in Changan. Some mansions of the upper classes in the capital
also had such facilities. In the early eighth century the sons-in-law of the
emperor sprinkled oil on the ground to make the surface as smooth as
possible, so horses would not suffer injuries. Many provincial cities also
had polo fields. In 819 a general in the imperial army ordered his troops
to round up all the people in the market and wards of Yunzhou who
had given aid to a rebel and herd them into a polo field. Then he had
his soldiers behead them, more than 2,000 men in all. A similar incident
occurred at a field in Luzhou during 844. It appears that polo fields had
become convenient execution grounds for the military.
Leisure and Entertainmmt 173
At the imperial court, two teams of sixteen men dressed in elegant
outfits competed in a match to accompaniment of music provided by a
military band. Astride well-trained horses, competitors struck the ball
with mallets that had crescent-shaped heads. The objective was to put
the ball through a circular goal one foot in diameter that was set ten to
thirty feet above the ground. The sport was also played on asses.
Imperial armies selected talented troops to engage in te sport for the
emperor's amusement. However, virtually anyone-eunuchs, officials,
graduates of the civil service examinations-could play if he had a horse
and riding habit. Olce remarkable player could set up a string of ten or
more coppers on a playing field and, at a gallop, strike each with his
mallet, knocking them sixty or seventy feet in the air.
Polo was a dangerous sport for man and animal. In the early eighth
century a prince who fell off his horse was knocked unconscious. In 826
the emperor held polo and sumo matches at a palace. The entertainment
went on into the night and resulted in cracked heads and broken arms.
Emperor Illustrious August was something of a fanatic about the sport.
In 710, before he assumed the throne, Zhongzong ordered him and three
others to compete against a Tibetan team of ten that had defeated the
court's team. Illustrious August chmged east and west like a whirlwind
so no one could get in font of him to block his shots. As a result he ad
his teammates vanquished the Tibetans. During his reign he pursued his
passion to such a degree that horses suffered injuries and died.
Sports that involved pittig animal against animal-
ducks, geese, dogs, and elephants-were quite common Cockghting
in the Tang. In the late ninth century a prized male goose
was worth 500,000 coppers. The most popular form of such entertain
ment was cockfighting. In the early seventh century all royal princes
were aficionados of it. It enjoyed its golden age i the reign of Emperor
Illustrious August because he was bor under the astrological sign of
the cock. He established special coops for more than 1,000 of the birds
in Changan and assigned 500 young soldiers from his armies to trai
and care for them. As usual, aristocrats and even citizens of Changan
emulated the throne and took to the sport, sometimes going broke in
pursuit of their amusement. At the beginning of a match, their keepers
led the cocks out, and the birds arrayed temselves in a row, raising
their feathers and fapping their wings. Then they went into battle with
metal spurs attached to their legs. A single bird might fight more than
once in a day. A keeper might revive an injured gamecock by spraying
water from his mouth on it. When the contests were finished and the
keepers led them out, the winners took the lead with the vanquished
trailing in the rear. A superior bird could fetch 2 million coppers in the
late ninth century, when most emperors were fond of the sport and at
least one was fond of gambling on the matches. The Cold Food Festival
174 Daily Lie in Traditional China
was a favorite time for cockfighting, but the sport also had a role to play
at grand carnivals.
GAMES
The history of games in China is very old. Although the names of
many survive in ancient literature, with some exceptions the rules for
playing them have not. Some people did not play them solely for relax
ation, but for money as well. Although gambling was illegal in the Tang,
the law was probably unenforceable and unenforced. One emperor and
his princes in the late ninth century loved to wager on dice. I the early
seventh century one ace at a board game won several hundred thousand
coppers from a friend in his village and, when the friend could not pay
the debt, he took his wife. However, the champion had already com
mitted adultery with the woman, who was pregnant with his child. I
the early years of Illustrious August's reign the women of his harem
gambled by throwing gold coins to determine who would serve his high
ness that night.
One board game that was popular in the Tang, and has re
Weiqi maied so today, was weiqi (encirclement chess), better known
in the West by its Japanese name, go. The game requires a board
and stones, or round pieces. The board has a grid of nineteen vertical
and nineteen horizontal lines that yields 361 intersections. There are 361
stones: 181 black and 180 white. The game begins when the player
having the black stones places one at an intersection, and proceeds with
black and white taking alternate turns. Stones never change their posi
tions or leave the board unless captured. The winner is the player who
surrounds te most territory and captures the largest number of his op
ponent's pieces. It is a purely intellectual game of strategy. The game
was extremely popular in the Tang. One ace obtained a post in the most
prestigious imperial academy in Changan by virtue of his reputation at
playing the game. In 805 he led a clique that took over the government
for several months.
Pitch pot was one of the oldest games in China. A Confucian
Pitch Pot classic supplied an early set of rules for playing it. It required
a bronze pot one foot tall with a mouth three inches in di
ameter. Attached to the neck of the vessel were two ears, tubes, that
were one inch in diameter. The base of the pot was heavy and filled with
beans to prevent it from tipping over when struck and to keep arrows
from bouncing out. Each player received twelve arrows at the beginning
of the game. Made from mulberry branches, they were two feet, four
inches in length. Two men sat on mats and alternately tossed missiles at
their pots, to the accompaniment of zither music. The total number of
arrows landing in the pot and te difficulty of their placement-missiles
Leisure and Entertainment 175
10 Points 13 Points 20 Points 30 Points
50 Points II Points 50 Points HllCSS
Pitch Pot
falling into the ears counted more than those penetrating the mout
determined a player's tally. A guest kept track of the points with coun
ters, and 120 was a winning score. Although it appears to have origi
nated as some part of military training, pitch pot was a gentlemen's
game, an amusement for parties. Unlike weiqi it required dexterity and
hand-eye coordination. Some players were amazingly adept at it. One
who excelled at it in the early Tang boasted tat his arrows never missed.
He could toss the missiles over his shoulder into a pot behind him. For
every 100 throws, 100 arrows struck home. His tosses were like "d
r
agons
rising and hawks soaring. "
His physical prowess, however, could not match that of a general in
the late eighth century. At one of his banquets a guest picked beans,
counters for a game, out of a bowl and hurled them at fies, never miss
ing his target. Not impressed, te general said, "Quit wasting my beans. "
Then he snatched fies out of the air by their hind legs.
Travel aM
Tra1sportatio1
ON LAND AND WATER
In the late seventh or early eighth century a county magistrate stopped
at a prefecture in southeastern China during a jourey. The governor of
the district, who entertained the magistrate daily with sumptuous feasts,
offered to purchase two of his maidservants, but the magistrate refused
to sell them. After the magistrate's party departed, the governor sent a
band of brigands to pursue them. The bandits stole everything and slew
everyone, returning only with the magistrate's wife and daughter. The
wife begged to be taken in as a slave, but the goveror rejected her plea
and had her shangled. He spared only the daughter, whom he took for
himself. Subsequently, he treated every official's family that passed
through his district liberally throughout their stay. Then, after they went
on their way, he sent his marauders out to track them down, steal their
property, and murder them. No one escaped. Travel in Tang China was
not only arduous and time-consuming, but also perilous even in peaceful
times.
The most common means of getting from one place to another was
shank's mare. Walking was cheap and therefore readily available to all
classes. By modern standards it was incredibly slow. According to official
regulations the distance that a walker or rider on a jackass should cover
in a day was only seventeen miles. The goverment established stan
dards of that sort to provide minimal requirements for the transportation
of official goods, especially the revenues from grain and clot taxes, in
1 78 Daily Life in Traditiolal China
Bamboo Backpack
the provinces. Ermin, a Japanese Buddhist monk who visited the Tang
between 838 and 847, traveled long distances on foot through nortern
China. He walked twenty to thirty miles a day, considerably more than
the statutory limit. Te distance a traveler on foot could make in a day
varied greatly according to the strengt of the individual, the nature of
the terrain, the weather, and other factors. The fastest were te relay
runners, some 9,200 of them, who carried highly perishable items, such
as seafood from the southeast coast, to the imperial court at Changan.
Goods transported in tat manner might have sped along at 60 to 100
miles in twenty-four hours.
Transportation was equally simple. Peasants, urban laborers, and
slaves carried loads in baskets suspended by ropes from the ends of long
poles that rested on their shoulders behind their necks. Their spine and
legs bore all of the weight. When the weight was too heavy, two men
shouldered the pole, one at each end, with te burden suspended from
the middle. Poles were used to transport virtually everything that was
not too heavy or bulky-from grain, produce, and pigs to luggage,
household furishings, and coffins (empty or full). Backpacks, bamboo
frames, were convenient for toting light loads long distances. Buddhist
pilgrims favored them for conveying sutras from India to China across
the deserts. Women carried their infants on their backs. They tied the
bottom edge of a cloth around their waists, pulled it up over the child,
and knotted the upper edge of the cloth to the lower edge in te front.
Travel and Transportation 179
The next step up, literally, from shank's mare was the litter. In its
simplest form it was a wooden platform with poles attached to the sides.
Two or more servants-sometimes palace ladies-lifted it by the poles
and carried the rider, who sat on top. I also served as a stretcher for
moving the sick or injured. Fancier types were chairs with poles affixed
to teir flanks. Deluxe models had canopies to protect the passenger
from the
e
lements or curtained cabs that offered privacy as well. The
latter, known as palanquins or sedan chairs, became popular in seven
teenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. In Tang China the bearers held
the poles at waist level or placed them on their shoulders. The litter, in
whatever form, was a vehicle for the upper classes who owned slaves
or could afford to hire porters. The emperor had seven types of palan
quins with fifty-seven bearers and other attendants. He rode them for
short distances, specifcally from his apartments to the main palace hall
for the grand levees on New Year's Day and the winter solstice, and to
shrines or altars outside the palace for major sacrifices. He also employed
them for short trips around his palaces. Emperors provided them for
ministers who had trouble walking, so that they could attend audiences
in the palace. In one case a prince was so obese that the emperor ordered
him to ride in a palanquin when he came to court. Patricians probably
also rode i palanquins when they had to ascend mountains where trails
were too narrow, steep, or rough to accommodate carriages.
Men and women of means could avail themselves of several
types
o
f mounts. Gentlemen in north China kept double- Mounts
humped Bactrian camels for travel and transportation. They
were absolutely essential to merchants who traded along the Silk Route
that passed through the deserts north of Tibet. The beasts could sniff out
underground water and could detect the approach of deadly sand storms
(they snarled and buried their heads). The goverment was also in the
business of raising camels. It maintained herds of them in its pasture
lands to the northeast and northwest of Changan, and assigned one
herder to care for seventy dromedaries. The state's most pressing need
for camels was military. They provided the means for transporting pro
visions and equipment to garrisons stationed along the norther frontiers
and beyond. Camels, along with horses and elephants, strode in parades
along the boulevards of the capital on special occasions.
Camels were not the principal mounts for patricians, couriers, or sol
diers. Jackasses and horses were far more common. As might be ex
pected, the goverment raised the largest number of horses. At the
beginning of te Tang, te dynasty had only 3,000 stallions and mares,
which it had recovered from a marsh. Placed under able management,
the number grew to 76,000 by 666, and much more afterward. In 681 one
of the commissioners for herds reported the loss through death and theft
of 180,000 horses, along wit1 11,600 cattle, in his district north of
180 Daily Life in Traditional China
Changan over a two-year period. The horse thieves, probably Turks, also
killed or captured more than 800 herders and overseers. By 713 the
northwest pastures had 240,000 head. In 725 they had 430,000 horses
along with 50,000 cattle and 286,000 sheep. The numbers declined
thereafter. In 754 the commissioner for the herds in the same region
reported that he had in his charge a total of 605,603 animals, of which
325,792 were horses (including 200,080 colts), 75,1 15 were cattle (of which
143 were yaks), 563 camels, 204,134 sheep, and one donkey. Those figures
were for one area only. The totals for animals raised in the south, east,
and north are not available. There was a huge demand for horses by the
army and the rapid relay postal system. After the Tibetan invasions in
the mid-eighth century, the state lost all of the herds and pastures in the
northwest. Horses were hard to come by, and the govemment had to
buy poor-quality mounts from the Uighur at staggering prices.
Herdsmen were in charge of caring for the animals, which they
branded with the name of the inspectorate that cared for them. If more
than seven camels, six asses, ten horses, or fifteen sheep out of 100 died
in a year, herders were subject to a punishment of thirty blows with the
thin rod for the first animal, and more if the number exceeded one. They
received the same punishment if the animals did not produce sixty foals
or calves for every hundred female horses, cows, and asses. Am<ually,
herders of the northwest pastures selected 50 fine horses and 100 of lesser
quality to send to the imperial stables in the capital. The emperor had
six stables and twelve corrals staffed with 5,000 grooms, 500 trainers,
and 70 veterinarians. Tang statutes demanded that their caretakers be
respectful of the animals and not beat them.
In terms of comfort and speed, the horse was a major advantage over
shank's mare. The traveler did not have to exert himself or strain his leg
muscles. According to statutes, official goods transported on horseback
had to travel twenty-three miles a day, six more than by foot. That pace
was very leisurely compared with the speed required of official couriers.
When they were carryig copies of the Great Acts of Grace from the
capital to prefectures, the throne expected them to make 167 miles a day.
If they traveled both night and day, they were making seven miles an
hour. If not, they galloped along at a much greater rate of speed. When
horses sickened or were injured, couriers or officials who were riding
them were required to leave them at the nearest prefecture for medical
attention and feeding.
Even the peasant had wheels to relieve him of transporting
Wheels heavy burdens on his back. The Chinese invented the wheel-
barrow by the third century, a thousand years before it ap
peared in Europe. Unlike its Westem counterpart it had no barrow.
Instead, the load rested on a framework built on shafts above the axle
and on either side of the wheel. Consequently, most of the weight fell
Travel and Transportation 181
on the axle, and the man pushing it was mainly responsible for keeping
itfrom tipping. It could carry a heavier burden-a year's supply of food
for a soldier-and move faster than a porter carrying the same load:
twenty feet in te time that it took him to move six. To move a heavier
load faster, the peasant could hitch a horse or ox to the front of it. People
even rode on the wheelbarrow if something of equal weight was placed
on the side of the frame opposite them.
There were many types of wagons, carts, and carriages in the Tang.
The government depended on wagons-drawn by horses or oxen-to
transport grain and cloth levies where there were no waterways or boats.
In the early eighth century the state fixed the maximum load of each cart
at 1,500 pounds and the fee at 900 cash for a distance of thirty-three
miles. Taxpayers paid for it through a supplemental levy. The cost was
incredibly expensive: in contrast, the charge for transporting a load on
the Yellow Rver was fifteen coppers when the barges sailed upstream
and six when they floated downstream. Overland haulage was also very
slow. The statutory minimum was ten miles a day, seven miles less than
loads carried on foot. Carters were permitted to transport forty-fve
pounds of their private possessions on their vehicles.
Patricians owned carriages for getting around the city and countryside.
In the early Tang, women rode in them to avoid exposing themselves to
the ogles of men on the street. The emperor had five different types: one
for performing sacrifices and wedding an empress, which was azure and
adored with jade fittings; a second for makig offerings to the gods and
archery contests, which was red with gold fittings; a third for travelig,
182 Daily Life in Traditional China
which was yellow with ivory fittings; a fourth for making inspection
tours, which was white with leather fittings; and a last for hunting, which
was black with lacquer fittings. These did not include ceremonial coaches
that rolled along the streets of the capital during grand processions. On
such occasions imperial garages also dispatched special, fancy carriages
for mandarins to ride in.
Two vehicles with practical functions accompanied imperial parades
and progresses (ourneys). The first was an odometer. There was a drum
in the center of it, and wooden figures of men with drumsticks in their
hand before and behind the drum. When the cart had traveled one Chi
nese mile, the figures beat the drum. Emperors apparently were con
cerned with measuring the mileage that they traveled. The instrument
may also have been used to gauge distances along the empire's roads.
Highways had milestones, and government records contained fgures for
the exact distances of prefectures fom te capital and of counties from
prefectures. Odometers would have been excellent means for calculating
such distances. The second was the south-pointing carriage. It had a
wooden figure of a man with an outstretched arm at its center. As the
vehicle moved along, te arm always pointed south, regardless of which
direction the cart went. In short, it was a compass. The primary direction
in ancient China was south. Maps were drawn to be read from north to
south, that is, north was closest to the body and south farthest from it.
Both the odometer and the south-pointing carriages had mechanisms
beneath their beds that rotated the wooden figures by gears attached to
their axles.
The Tang had an offcial road system of perhaps 13,500 miles.
Roads The highways ran in all directions, but did not reach a large
number of cities, especially those directly south of Changan.
There must have been roads to those places, but they may have been
constructed and maintained at private expense. The method of construc
tion was the same as that for building walls: rammed earth. Roadways
were bowed in the center to force rainwater to the verges, and were lined
with trees. In mountainous areas with cliffs, engineers built plank roads
by applying fire to te rocks. The heat cracked the stones and created
holes. Workers inserted horizontal wood beams into the sockets and laid
boards on top to make a pathway on which men and horses could walk.
When highways crossed rivers, local goverents built and maintained
bridges and ferries. Some spans were made of stone, but there were
places with pontoon bridges, favored because they did not wash away
during foods. Some pontoon bridges consisted of large boats linked to
gether with iron chains. At crossings on broad rivers like the Yellow and
Yangtze, only ferries would do for transporting men, horses, and wag
ons. Where the traffic was heavy, the crossings had large numbers of
boats.
Travel and Tra11sportation 183
Te longest of the roads, the Silk Route, stretched from Changan to
the far end of the empire north of Kashmir. It had two branches. The
southern, though shorter, was more dangerous because it passed through
parts of the Takla Makan Desert, where the traveler might stumble on
the bleached bones of men and anials that had perished in the heat for
lack of water. The longer, norther route, one that skirted the desert was
somewhat less inhospitable, and therefore preferable. The goverment
maintained forts manned with soldiers along the way to defend it against
marauding tribes that were wont to attack caravans laden with rich
goods. The highway was mainly an avenue of trade.
Although internal roads also served as commercial arteries, te state
did not establish them to facilitate trade. Two-thirds of the highways in
the Tang ran north from Changan and Luoyang to the frontiers, a fact
that refects the state's primary concern for providing the means of trans
porting troops, weapons, and supplies to tose areas most in need of
defense. Its second concer was to provide channels of communication
between the capitals and the provices. To satisfy that need, it estab
lished the rapid relay system, a kind of a pony express. The system had
1,297 stations, one every ten miles along public roads, that kept mounts
readily available for couriers carrying orders from the capital and reports
from the provinces. They also provided room and board for the messen
gers as well as officials. One hundred officials in the capital administered
the system, which had 21,500 station masters and riders throughout the
empire.
The state was very sensitive about the speed and integrity of its postal
system. Couriers who were a day late delivering the mail were subject
to a punishment of eighty blows with the thick rod. As the length of
delay increased, so did the penalty. The harshest was two years' penal
servitude, meted out to riders who were six days or more behind sched
ule. If, however, the message concerned military matters requiring
greater speed, the punishments were more severe: from one year penal
servitude to exile at a place more than 666 miles from the man's home
district. If the courier's tardiness resulted in the loss of a battle, a city, a
fort, or the life of a single citizen or soldier, judges imposed a sentence
of execution by strangulation. Riders caried transmission tallies in the
shape of dragons and made of bronze or paper, on which the number
of stations that a messenger was to pass appeared: the higher the num
ber, the faster he had to ride. Te law also prescribed punishments for
couriers who turned documents over to others for delivery, conveyed
them to an incorrect address, took the wrong route, or used a horse when
a donkey was required. If, as a result of his passing a station without
changing horses, the animal died, the rider had to pay restitution to the
government. The state permitted couriers to carry only the clothes and
weapons that they needed for their journey, as long as the weight of
184 Daily Life in Tmditional China
them did not exceed fifteen pounds. The reference to arms is another
indication that travel was less than safe in the Tang.
At strategic places along highways and waterways the state set up
barriers where it collected customs. They were also checkpoints where
officials examined the credentials of travelers. Tang subjects were not
free to move as they pleased. The punishment for passing through a
barrier without the proper travel permits was one year of penal servi
tude, and for going around a checkpoint, one and a half years. Local
officials issued such documents. The goverment was specifically con
cerned with preventing the movement of soldiers and criminals. Officials
at the barriers also inspected baggage, wagons, and other objects to in
tercept contraband. Prohibited articles included armor, crossbows, long
spears, lances, astronomical instruments, star maps, and books on mili
tary matters and omens.
Smugglers in the Tang sometimes employed coffins to move illicit
goods because it was customary to ship the remains of te dead back to
their ancestral villages. No doubt officials were reluctant to open caskets
because they did not wish to disturb the dead or be exposed to decaying
corpses. In one instance guards at a ferry stopped a group of people
attempting to transport twelve coffins across a river to a district suffering
from famine. When the military goveror of the district leared that their
cortege contained an abnormally large number of cofins, he grew sus
picious, had his men break them open, and discovered that they con
tained rice. It is not clear why transporting grai was illegal at the time.
In another instance a band of five thieves tried to ship weapons in a
casket across a river so they could rob the residents of a neighboring
district. A garrison commander discovered their plot and had all of them
executed. Some thieves smuggled their loot out of the capital in a coffin
and buried their plunder in a grave to hide it.
The Tang had plenty of boats, at least inland. In 764 a great
Boats windstorm struck a city on the Yangtze River in central China
during the night. The gale spread fire, probably from an oil lamp,
to boats moored there and destroyed 3,000 of them. Then the fames
leaped ashore, consumed more than 2,000 houses, and killed between
4,000 and 5,000 people. Earlier, in 751, a fire broke out in government
transport barges on the Yellow River and burned up 215 vessels along
with 1,750,000 bushels of rice; 600 boatmen lost their lives. Several hun
dred merchant ships also went up in fames. Those figures represented
just a fraction of the total number of boats in the empire; only those
moored at two cities. All of the navigable rivers and lakes had watercraft,
but the southeastern region had the largest number.
Virtually nothing is known about shipbuilding in the Tang until after
756. The rebellions of the mid-eighth century destroyed much of the
government's shipping along the Grand Canal. The court sent one of its
Travel and Transportation 185
economic wizards south to deal with the problem in 764. He established
ten shipyards at a couty on the Yangtze. Their managers competed
with one another to construct barges with a capacity of t750 bushels of
rice at a cost of 1 million cash each. Oer a period of fifty years the
competition drove the price down to 500,000 coppers. For transporting
grain to the capital, ten barges were roped together. By 874 the quality
of production at the shipyards had greatly declined. Tey were building
barges with a capacity of only 875 bushels and using cheap, thin wood
to make them. The official shipyards manufactured only one type of
vessel. There were many other kinds, from small, painted pleasure craft
on which courtesans entertained their patrons to te Great Mother Ships
that could carry more than 15,750 bushels of grain. The latter had crews
of several hundred that spent their entire lives, from birth to death, on
board. Those giants made one round trip a year on the Yangtze and
Huai rivers, but reaped enormous profts. Private shipyards along the
great rivers must have built them along with a variety of other types,
though there appears to be no mention of them in Tang sources.
Tang statutory limitations for the transportation of goods on water
provide some notion of the minimum speeds that boats made on the
currents of Chinese rivers.
By a loaded boat traveling against the current
On the Yellow River
O the Yangtze River
On other rivers
By an empty boat traveling against the current
On the Yellow River
On the Yangtze River
On other rivers
By a loaded or empty boat traveling with the current
O the Yellow River
O the Yangtze River
O other rivers
10 miles
13 miles
15 miles
13 mies
17 miles
20 miles
50 miles
33 miles
23 miles
Again, speed on the waters, like traveling by shank's mare, depended
on several variables. Wind was a critical factor when the vessels had
sails. A strong breeze on the Yangtze could move a ship along at a much
faster clip than the official numbers given here. Conversely, weather
could be an impediment. Gales and flooding brought travel to a halt.
Physical strength, human and animal, was another important element.
Men and oxen towed the barges that floated up and down the Grand
186 Daily Life in Traditional China
CanaL Two water buffalo could pull forty barges lashed together by
hawsers.
Rapids were serious impediments to travel and transportation on some
rivers. The most infamous in the Tang were the Three Gate Rapids on
the Yellow River west of Luoyang. They interfered with the movement
of barges carrying grain to Changan. In the early eighth century Yang,
an imperial engineer, proposed constructing a plank road on the preci
pices at the gorge so towers could haul the heavily laden boats upstream
over the cataracts. The throne approved the project. Yang was a "cruel
clerk" who did not pay the towers' wages, ad beat them to death when
tow ropes or planks on the road broke.
All of the navigable rivers in ancient China fowed from west to east.
That was an enormous problem for the imperial government, which
needed to transport heavy loads of tax revenues from the rich regions
of the Yangtze River to the north. Yangdi, the second emperor of the Sui
dynasty, solved it by constructing the Grand Canal, China's second
greatest engineering achevement next to the Great Wall. He j oined older
canals and had new branches excavated to form a more extensive system
some 1,560 miles in lengt. It began at Hangzhou on the east coast, south
of the Yangtze, and ran north and west to a point east of Luoyang. From
there, branches stretched eastward to Mout Tai and northeast to a poit
southeast of present-day Beijing. On the southern route the emperor had
his crews build paths for towers, plant trees, and erect palace halls. He
loved Yangzhou in the south and several times transported his court
there in fotillas of more than 5,000 vessels. I Tang times no emperor
ever traveled south. For the most part the dynasty used the Grand Canal
to transport grain and silk from the sout.
There was a certain risk to traveling on inland waterways. Skippers
might steal the goods of passengers who rented their vessels. In one case
a boatman saw a merchant hide ten ingots of silver in his baggage. He
filched the trader's sterling and sank it in the water at the mooring. The
next day the boat sailed thirty-three miles and stopped at a military post.
Officers inspected the merchant's luggage, and the loss came to light.
The hader informed the authorities, who arrested the skipper. The com
mander of the garrison then sent some troops back to the embankment
where the craft had moored the previous night. The soldiers dragged
the river with hooks and brought up a basket containing the silver. It
still had the merchant's seal on it.
Although the Tang had a navy large enough to transport 100,000
troops across the sea for an invasion of southern Korea in 660, it was
not a dynasty noted for maritime enterprises, public or private. Foreign
vessels carried trade and travelers to and from China by two routes.
Manchurians, Koreans, and Japanese sailed southward from their home
ports and landed along the eastern coast. The best of the seamen at the
Travel and Transportation 187
time were the Koreans, who established large settlements on China's
seaboard as well as along the Grand Canal and the Yellow River. Japa
nese "traders, " often members of the crew or the embassies that their
ships transported, mainly purchased manufactured goods with gold or
other valuables. They appear to have had little in the way of wares that
the Chinese found attractive. It was tl1e merchants who arrived from the
south that brought the exotic commodities desired by the upper classes
in the Tang. Those sailors and traders were mainly Persians and Arabs
who sailed from as far away as the Persian Gulf in the winter to catch
the winds of the northeast monsoon that would carry them across the
Indian Ocean to Southeast Asia. From there they tured north on the
winds of early summer. The ships picked up goods from the countries
that they passed through-frankincense and myrrh from Arabia, cloves
from Indonesia, pepper from Burma, coral and pearls from Sri Lanka
among other tl1ings. Those were the wares that they sold after they ar
rived in the empire of the Tang.
Te largest of the oceangoing vessels-some 200 feet long and capable
of carrying 600 to 700 men-came from Sri Lanka. They had multiple
decks and towed lifeboats. The sailors believed that their rats were divine
because the rodents would desert a ship ten days before it capsized. They
also carried homing pigeons that could fy a thousand miles and inform
the people in their home ports that their vessels had sunk. Foreign ship
builders in Southeast Asia did not use nails to build their craft. Instead,
they lashed planks together with fibers from palm trees and caulked
them with oil derived from a fruit.
Sea voyaging was very hazardous. Ships had no power of their own
to propel them out of danger. When the vessel of Ennin, a Japanese
monk, arrived off the coast of China, a wind blew it onto a shoal and
waves crashed into the hull, threateing to break it in two. Instead, the
rocking back and forth on the sandbar smashed the bottom of the boat
and it settled into the water, drowning the cargo. The Japanese monk
was fortunate. He did not encounter the great typhoons that doomed
many a vessel.
WAYFARING AND WAYFARERS
Imperial journeys were progresses, large processions marked by all the
pageantry proper to the throne. In China any trip outside the palace,
even to a temple or mansion in the capital, was a progress. The court
often made short excursions outside the city to nearby palaces, spas, and
huting grounds. In such cases the entourage was small. Less frequently,
the destination was a considerable distance from the metropolis. Em
peror Taizong made the longest when he personally led his military
forces into northern Korea to conquer that kingdom. On his return he
188 Daily Life in Traditional China
visited Taiyuan, his father's base of power before the foundig of the
Tang. Taizong was away from Changan for seventeen months between
644 and 646, but part of his court remained in Luoyag during that
period. Twice, in 665--66 and 725-726, the imperial cortege traveled to
Mout Tai, where Gaozong and Illustrious August performed the sac
rifices to Heaven, the state's most powerful deity. The mountain was
around 357 miles from Luoyang, and the court took forty and twenty
six days, respectively, to make the trip. In 665 the cortege included mil
itary and civil mandarins, foreign legates-Turks, Persians, Indians,
Japanese, Koreans, and others-with their entourages, army troops,
guards, and wagons carrying ritual paraphernalia. It stretched out for
more than sixty miles. Horses and camels carried men, women, and bag
gage; cattle and sheep supplied food; and felt yurts and tents provided
shelter.
The most frequent long-distance journeys for the court in the early
Tang were those between Changan and Luoyang, undertaken to prevent
famines when food ran short in Changan. Between 637 and 735 the trip
of 285 miles, back and forth, was made no less than twenty-nine times.
It took twenty to twenty-five days to cover the distance. At eleven to
fourteen miles a day, the pace was slower tan the minmum statutory
limit for walking or riding a jackass. O each occasion the government
and the court accompanied the cortege. So frequent were the visits to
the eastem. capital that the aristocrats and ministers had mansions there.
The joureys were not only extremely expensive for the government, but
also very burdensome to the people along the route. They had to provide
provisions an.d labor for the imperial entourage. The throne frequently
bestowed tax remissions to subjects who lived in the districts along the
road, to furnish some relief for the hardships that they endured.
Traveling the road between the capitals could be dangerous even for
the emperor, who never went anywhere without a large body of guards.
In 682, when te court had to move to Luoyang because there was a
great famine in Changan, it feared that many bandits were lurking in
the underbrush to attack his cortege. So the emperor appointed a pa
trolling censor to take matters in hand. The man released a criminal who
was exceptionally eloquent from a prison in Changan. He took the con
vict's fetters off, dressed him in cap and gown, provided him with board
and room, and had him lead the imperial entourage. The ploy was so
successful that when the procession arrived in Luoyang, not a single
copper had been lost by the more than 10,000 members of the cortege.
However, many members of the entourage starved to death for lack of
food along the route.
Even the guards could pose a threat. In 61, while emperor Taizong
was making his way to Luoyang, two guards who detested serving on
compulsory travel duty shot arrows into the palace at the warm springs
Travel and Transportation 189
on Black Horse Mountain during the night. Five of the missiles landed
in te courtyard of the emperor's sleeping quarters. That was an act of
great sedition for which the guards paid with their heads.
The most prestigious visitors to the Tang were the emissaries of for
eign nations. Local officials met those who arrived by sea, and sent word
to the capital. The envoys then waited for authorization from the throne
before proceeding to Changan or Luoyang. Those who traveled overland
along the Silk Route from the west had to have credentials, which they
applied for in advance. The credentials, twelve in number, took the form
of bronze fish in two parts. Te goverment sent one half of each to the
foreign nation and retained the other. Both halves had the name of the
nation involved and a number specifing the moon (month) in which
the envoys were permitted to enter the capital. Tus, if an emissary ar
rived in the fourth moon with a tally bearing the date third moon, he
would not be received. If he arrived at the appropriate time, foreign
affairs officials matched his token with that kept in the capital to verify
that he was authorized to attend court. After 695 the goverment pro
vided provisions for the envoy and his party. The amounts differed ac
cording to the distance of the state from the Tang capitals: six months'
worth for India, Persia, and Arabia; four months' for the states of Cam
bodia, Sumatra, and Java; and three months' for a nation in what is now
southern Vietnam.
Emissaries did not always fare well with local officials when they ar
rived in China. In the mid-eighth century, after a Japanese ambassador
with a retinue of 500 men in ten boats disembarked, the local governor
met him, lodged the emissary and his party in a government hostel, and
abundantly supplied them with all their needs. He would not, however,
permit them to leave their quarters. During the night the governor seized
all their gifts and sank their ships. The next day he informed the am
bassador that all of his craft had foated away on the tide and their
whereabouts were unknown. After he reported the matter to the throne,
the emperor ordered him to build ten new boats and assign 500 sailors
to send the Japanese home. As they were about to set sail, the governor
addressed the Chinese crews saying tat since Japan was far away and
the waves on the ocean large, tey should seize the opportunity. With
that hint the sailors set off. After traveling for several days, the crews
slew the Japanese and retured home. Foreigners could also, however,
be troublemakers. In the early seventh century some westerners robbed
Chinese citizens in one of Changan's wards.
After an emissary arrived in the capital, the government saw to all of
his needs: lodging, sleeping mats, food, and medicine-as well as a
funeral, should he pass away. An official from the bureau of cartography
in the Department of the Army visited him to inquire about the geog
raphy and customs of his nation, so that he could draw a map for
190 Daily Life in Traditional China
submission to the throne. The interrogation was a form of intelligence
gatering; the information obtained would be of use against the envoy's
nation should war break out. In the seventh century court artists painted
scrolls depicting the emissaries bearing their hibute, standing outside
the main gate of the palace while waiting to be admitted for an audience
with the emperor. No doubt the work was helpful in identifying the
nationalities of envoys who came afterward.
On an appointed day the emperor received the envoy at an audience.
The emissary then kowtowed as an act of homage to the Son of Heaven
and presented his tribute. On such occasions renowned artists of the
court might paint the peculiar-from the Chinese point of view-ap
pearances of the outlanders to commemorate the ceremony. All states or
tribes, whether within the borders of the empire or not, were vassals of
the Tang throne as far as the state was concered. As such they had to
tender gifts of their goods to their liege lord, as a symbol of their sub
mission to his authority. In return the emperor bestowed a title, seal,
state robes, and reciprocal gifts from his stores, generally more valuable
than those received from the aliens. Some of those presents conferred on
Japanese embassies still survive in a treasury at a Buddhist monastery
near Kyoto. After the formalities the government hosted a banquet for
the foreign dignitary, and with that he made ready to depart China and
retur home.
Tributary missions were important to the Tang court because they af
firmed the suzerainty and power of the dynasty. In practical terms, how
ever, they were far more significant to the vassal states. In the frst place,
members of the envoy's party carried on trade even though doing so
was illegal under Chinese law. In the second, artisans, scholars, and
monks accompanied the missions. While in China, they acquired valu
able knowledge of advanced technology and ideas that they carried
home to develop their cultures. Such, at least, was the case for the Jap
anese.
Officials were frequent travelers, moving to new posts in the prov
inces, making inspection tours, and so forth. One of them, Li Ao, wrote
a diary, the oldest surviving example of the genre in China, of his jour
ney from Luoyang to Canton. It took him and his family 169 days to
cover the 2,500 miles, much of it by boat. However, they were in transit
only 117 days, so they traveled an average of twenty-one miles a day.
That was well in excess of the eighty days mandated for officials moving
to new posts that far from the capital. The family's pace was leisurely.
Like many mandarins, Li took time out for sight-seeing-visiting scenic
mountains, lakes, ad places of interest. Many of his compatriots made
such stops, not just to take in te countryside, but also to visit friends
and feast with them. The court sent legates to foreign nations who wrote
accounts of the places and peoples that they had seen. The adventurer
Travel and Transportation 191
who brought the king of Magadha back to Changan in the early seventh
century left a work in ten scrolls on the Indian kingdom. ln the same
period Emperor Taizong sent an emissary to invest a western Turk with
the title of khan. After he carried out his charge, he discovered tl'at some
tribes had cut off his only road home. He spent three years in Central
Asia, and put the time to good use by writng an account of the customs
and products in the various lands he visited. Since he had no access to
paper, he tore up his clotes and penned the record on the fabric.
Te state provided transportation for the families of officials moving
to new posts in the early eighth century, before the rebellion of An Lu
shan.
Rank Porters Carts Horses Donkeys
1 30 7 10 15
2 24 5 6 10
3 20 4 4 6
4 and 5 12 2 3 4
6 and 7 8 1 2 3
9 5 1 1 2
As usual, rank had its privileges, and the government dispensed its re
sources on tl1e basis of status, not need.
In the Tang there were many books about foreign lands-Korea, Man
churia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, and Central Asia-but almost all of them
have perished. The most notable exception is the record of the wester
nations written by a renowned Buddhist monk who spent sixteen years
on the road and in India. His account provides a rare glimpse of the
government, education, towns, clothes, science, customs, manners, fauna,
and flora of India and the nations of Central Asia during the seventh
century. Monks were also frequent travelers in China, where they moved
to find masters who had acquired reputations for their wisdom, or made
pilgrimages to sacred sites. Ennin, a Japanese monk who joureyed and
lived i eastern and northern China between 838 and 847, has left the
most valuable account of daily life in the empire. Unfortunately, not a
word has survived from the greatest of all travelers in the Tang, the
merchants who spent their lives on the roads or waterways, inside Chia
and outside.
ACCOMMODATIONS
There was a wide variety of accommodations, from palaces to tents,
for travelers. There were a number of detached palaces in the countryside
around Changan that provided the court with lodgings when it ventured
192 Daily Life in Traditional China
out for a hunt or other recreation. In 738 Emperor Illustrious August
ordered the construction of palace halls along the route from Changan
to Luoyang. Ironically, neither he nor any of his successors made another
progress east to the second capital until 904, when a warlord had his
troops cart the emperor from Changan to Luoyang.
Stations of the rapid relay postal system also provided lodgings for
travelers. Some of their overseers made great efforts to ensure that they
had sufficient provisions for guests. The manager of a station located
south of the Yangtze River gave the local goveror a tour of his facilities
and showed him three rooms for storing ale, tea, and pickled vegetables.
Outside of each was a painting of the patron deity of the goods stored
within. The god of ale, for example, was the mythological discoverer of
brewing. The goveror thought the elaborate scheme was unnecessary.
A traveler needed a permit issued by a local official to stay at a station.
During the early ninth century, an inspector impeached a bureaucrat in
southwest China for illegally furnishing such a certificate that allowed
the family of a military supervisor to stay in a station with the coffi
containing his remains. Sometimes the quarters were insufficient for the
demand, a condition that could cause violent conficts between guests.
The same inspector involved i the preceding case was lodging at a
station between Luoyang and Chagan. He had already taken off his
shoes when a eunuch arrived and demanded his room. When he did not
get it, the emaged eunuch kicked in the gate of the hostel, led the in
spector's horse out of the stable, and threatened to shoot him with his
bow and arrows. The inspector, in his stockings, fled to the rear of the
station, where the eunuch caught up with him and struck him with a
whip, inficting a wound on his face. There were also official inns in
large cities.
For those who could not acquire permits to stay in government quar
ters, there were private, commercial lodgings. Stores provided rooms
and meals to travelers. Some were located near bridges or post stations.
A innkeeper in southwest China poisoned a wealthy merchant who was
lodging in his hostel for the night. After the trader died, he stole his
money. Later, when a second merchant at the inn took sick and died,
the military goveror of the district became suspicious. He had the mer
chant's ledgers examined, but the audit yielded no evidence because the
innkeeper had altered its entries. So the goveror secretly interrogated
the residents of the ward ad the people in the hostelry. His inquiries
uncovered the truth. He learned that te innkeeper had covered up his
crie by bribing over twenty functionaries in te district with more tha
1 million coppers. The governor had the innkeeper and the venal officials
beheaded.
Buddhist monasteries and Taoist abbeys offered accommodations to
travelers. When the clergymen were on the road, they could receive room
Travel and Transportation 193
and board in the cloisters free of charge. However, on occasion monks
paid for vegetarian feasts as a form of compensation to the church, es
pecially when they lived there for extended periods. Smaller and poorer
monasteries were less than pleased to receive visitors. Ermin sometimes
got a cold reception from abbots when he stayed ovemight. Once two
monks were downright hostile and drove him away several times. He
had to force his way into the cloister and prepare his own meal. To their
credit, the Chinese monks later warmed up to their guest and made
noodles for him. Lay travelers also could find accommodations in mon
asteries. Students were particularly prone to reside in them for long in
tervals. In that case they rented rooms. Sometimes the members of
foreign embassies stayed in them. In some cases the clergy had aban
doned monasteries, they had fallen into disrepair, and laymen had taken
them over as living quarters. In one case an innkeeper had taken over a
monastery with two pagodas in front and converted it into a commercial
hostelry.
A network of national monasteries and abbeys was launched during
Empress Wu's reign and revitalized by Emperor Illustrious August in
738. They also offered room and board to lay travelers. A mandarin
traveling fom Luoyang to take up a post at Canton stopped at one of
the monasteries in 809. His pregnant wife could not go on, so the family
stayed there while she gave birth to a daughter and recovered from the
ordeal. They lived in te cloister for fifty-tvvo days. Since the govemment
funded monasteries and abbeys, one Taoist and one Buddhist in all 321
prefectures, it is probable that officials did not have to pay rent for their
stay in them. Sometimes govemment personnel occupied all of the cells
in a monastery, and monks could not find a room to stay in.
Finally, a pilgrim could fid lodging in Common Cloisters run by Bud
dhists on the major routes to Mount Wutai northeast of Changan. They
were located three to ten miles apart and provided room and board for
monks, nuns, and l aypersons at no charge. Some accommodated as many
as 100 visitors. During famines, however, they had no food for guests,
so travelers had to carry their own provisions with them.
A traveler who found himself off the beaten path where there were
no inns might find accommodations in a private home. The degree of
hospitality varied greatly. Ermi was able to find lodgings with generous
and friendly Chinese, but he also stayed with hosts who were surly and
stingy. On one occasion, after passing thirty houses without finding a
room, he forced his way into one and spent the night there. The Japanese
monk's perceptions of Chinese hospitality were colored by his presump
tion that he was entitled to free board and room even in private homes.
CRIME
Upon returning from a noctural fox hunt on January 9, 827, Emperor
Jingzong caroused in the palace with twenty-eight eunuchs and captains
of his polo teams. After he got merriy drunk, the emperor retired to
change his clothes in another chamber. Suddenly all of the lights in the
hall went out, and his drinking companions slew him in te dressing
room. This regicide was the fruition of a conspiracy whose objective was
to depose the king and install his uncle on the trone. A rival clique of
eunuchs, however, had other ideas. They induced Jingzong's brother to
issue an order authorizing the execution of te assassins. Imperial troops
duiy entered the palace and massacred the murderers the same day.
Jingzong's assassins were guilty of plotting rebellion, the first of the
Ten Abominations. The Ten Abominations were the most heinous of
fenses in the Tang law code and covered four categories of crimes, the
largest number of which pertained to the emperor. Threats to the sov
ereign's person included not only plotting or carrying out a rebellion,
but also endangering his life or health through incompetence or mal
practice. Servitors guilty of the latter offenses included physicians who
failed to follow the proper formulas when composing the emperor's
medicine and palace chefs who violated proscriptions in the Food Canons
when preparing the emperor's meals. The Food Canons were dietary man
uals that enumerated cooking taboos, such as mixing softshell turtles
with greens or j erky with glutinous millet. Other crimes against the
196 Daily Life in Traditional China
throne were acts that undermined the emperor's authority, such as un
founded criticism of the sovereign or forging his seals, and those that
involved the destruction or theft of his property-palaces, carriages,
quilts, cushions, clothes, and the like.
The second encompassed crimes against the state: switching allegiance
to a foreign ruler, betraying a city to a rebel, attempting to flee China,
and killing a superior civil or military official. Since the emperor was the
embodiment of te state, most of these were also offenses against him.
One of the most prominent prosecutions for treason occurred in te wake
of the An Lushan rebellion. Some eminent officials, who found them
selves trapped behind enemy lines, accepted appointments to posts in
An's government. After Tang forces recaptured Luoyang, more than 200
of the traitors fell into their hands. The throne sentenced thirty-nine to
death. The emperor ordered the entire bureaucratic corps to assemble at
the execution grounds to observe the beheadig of nineteen traitors be
neath the solitary willow.
The third involved offenses against the family: beating or murdering
grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, elder brothers or sisters, and hus
bands; selling close relatives into slavery; lodging accusations against
paternal grandparents, parents, or husbands; failure to provide elders
with adequate support; and incest. The power of elders was the same as
that of the emperor and his goverors, who thought of themselves as
the parents of the people. In the interest of maintaining social stability,
the state made every effort to maintain the authority of household heads.
Legally, it was perfectly acceptable for a father to flog his son, but a son
found guilty of whipping his father was subject to death. While hunting
in 662, the son of a chief minister trespassed on a farmer's fields and
shot te enraged man wit a whistling arrow. As punishment the min
ister beat him 100 blows with a rod. When word of the incident reached
the throne, the emperor cashiered the chief minister, not for whipping
his son but for failing to report the son's crime to te proper authorities.
Fathers also held the power of life and death over their sons, though
they might be subject to penal servitude for the murder. In 680 the em
peror instructed General Gao to admonish and reprimand his son for his
association with an heir to the throne who had been convicted and de
posed for plotting rebellion. When the son retured home and entered
the gate, his father thrust a dagger into his throat, his uncle stabbed him
in the stomach, and a cousin lopped off his head. The men then dumped
the son's remains in the streets of Luoyang. When the emperor learned
this, it displeased him, so he demoted te general to a post as prefect in
a district 940 miles from the capital.
The final category comprised depraved crimes. Those offenses in
cluded slaying three or more members of a household if they were not
guilty of a capital crime; dismembering or burning a body before, after,
Crime and Punishment 197
or in the process of murdering the victim; and sorcery with special ref
erence to gu poison. Gu poison was made by placing venomous creatures
such as snakes, toads, scorpions, spiders, and centipedes in a pot. Ac
cording to tradition, the animal tat survived combat with the others
and devoured them was the most noxious, by virtue of having absorbed
the others' toxins. When the sorcerer or sorcerers decided to kill some
one, he or she secretly injected the feces of the creature in the intended
victim's food or drink. The poison ten destroyed the victim's organs
and caused him to vomit blood. No one who consumed it survived.
Sorcery included other forms of black magic as well. Carvers of dolls
who stabbed the hearts, nailed the eyes, or bound the feet and hands of
their effigies to infict harm on their intended victims were subject to the
death penalty. So too were conjurers who uttered curses to cause mis
fortune and death.
The term "Ten Abominations" was a designation invented by legalists
to single out crimes that the state and society considered to be the most
reprehensible. Not all of the crimes were puishable by deat, nor were
other grave offenses subject to capital punishment considered to be
abominations.
ARREST
The duty of apprehending culprits fell to te Gold Bird Guards in the
capitals and to thief catchers in the prefectures and counties. The latter
included soldiers and constables who were underlings on the governors'
staffs. Those men usually had some experience in apprehending outlaws,
but the government did not rely solely on them. The law demanded that
bystanders apprehend and convey to the appropriate authorities sus
pects who committed assaults resulting in broken teeth and fingers or
more severe wounds, as well as tieves and rapists. Passersby on high
ways and byways, who were strong enough to subdue culprits, were
subject to punishment if tey did not come to the assistance of thief
catchers who needed help. The neighbors of victims whom lawbreakers
had robbed or murdered had to assist the government in apprehending
and prosecuting the outlaws. However, the law allowed relatives of the
culprit, people who dwelt with him, and his slaves to conceal his offense
from authorities. It also prohibited prosecution of the same people when
they informed the suspect that the authorities were searching for him.
Those exemptions did not apply when the crime involved rebellion, se
dition, treason, murder, or robbery by force.
Thief catchers, public or private, were not legally accountable if they
slew an armed criminal who resisted arrest, if they killed him in the
course of pursuit, or if the fugitive committed suicide. They were, how-
1 98 Daily Life in Traditional China
ever, subject to punishment if they injured or slew an unarmed suspect
who did not resist arrest.
In extreme circumstances the throne resorted to extraordinary mea
sures to capture criminals. In 815 assassins slew Chief Minister Wu in
Changan as he was making his way to an audience with the emperor.
Afterward the murderers sent written messages to the headquarters of
the Gold Bird Guards as well as the capital's municipal and county of
fices: "If you do not arrest us quickly, we will kill you first. " The threat
dampened te ardor of thief catchers, who did not rush out to chase
down the culprits. A great panic then broke out in the city, forcing the
emperor to station additional guards at all gates. To protect other chief
ministers he ordered dragoons of the Gold Bird Guards to escort them
with strug bows and unsheathed swords whenever they proceeded to
or retired from the palace. Left to their own devices, other officials armed
their servants to serve as bodyguards. Several days later, when all efforts
to apprehend the perpetrators had failed, the throne offered a bounty of
10 million coppers to anyone who captured the killers. Te throne also
issued a decree imposing the death penalty on officials fifth grade or
higher and their clansmen who dared to hide the culprits. So empow
ered, the authorities ransacked the capital, searching every nook and
cranny in the mansions of nobles and ministers. Seven days after the
assassination, constables hauled in eight men who were staying in
Changan witout proper passes. The suspects, soldiers or officials loyal
to Governor Wang, confessed and implicated eleven others. Despite
great doubts as to their guilt, the emperor ordered all nineteen executed.
Less than two months later an investigation into anoter rebellious plot
uncovered the innocence of the condemned, or so it seemed.
IMPRISONMENT
After arresting suspects, thief catchers hauled tem off to jail. In 754
there were somewhat less than 1,900 prisons with well over 10,000 ad
ministrators throughout the empire. Incarceration in Tang China was not
a form of punishment in itself. Jails were simply places for holding the
accused while the authorities investigated the crime and imposed the
sentence, a period rarely more than a few months. Abuses, however,
occurred now and then. In the early ninth century governors of one
district had incarcerated more tan ten men for failure to render the total
amount of taxes they owed the government. Te prisoners had lan
guished in jail for many years, so long that their wives had taken to
begging in order to provide them with food or had remarried. When
inmates died, the authorities seized their sons to take their places in the
prison. They remaied incarcerated for such a prolonged period not be-
Crime and Punishment 199
JudcR 1oo
1cg1tOn
UU00nW0u8
L8nguc
cause they were serving time, but because magistrates had not resolved
their cases or imposed sentences upon them.
Ancient prisons probably differed little from those of nineteenth
century China. They were a series of cells having three masonry walls
with a fourth opening barred by undressed timber. In the Tang, patri
cians occupied cells apart from plebes, and men and women were sep
arated, at least in the jails of the Service for Supreme Justice at the
capitals. Furnishings were spare: thick layers of rush mats for sleeping
and probably a bucket for collecting human waste. The law prohibited
family or j ailers from providing prisoners with pens, paper, alcohol,
gold, knives, or staves. The intent of the statute was to prevent the in
carcerated from escaping by bribery, force, or other means.
Since Tang jails were not the formidable stone, concrete, and iron dun
geons of the West, escape could not have been difficult. To prevent tat,
the law required wardens to keep dangerous inmates in fetters. The re
straints for male prisoners charged with capital crimes were cangues and
wooden handcuffs. Women subject to the death penalty and all suspects
charged with crimes punishable by exile or penal servitude wore cangues
only. There were exceptions to the rules. Mandarins ranked seventh
grade or higher enjoyed the right of wearing chains only. Dwarfs, preg-
200 Daily Life in Traditional China
nant women, the disabled, and inmates over seventy-nine years of age
awaited judgment unfettered. Prisoners suspected of minor crimes sub
ject to punishment by thrashing or scourging were kept in loose con
finement, that is, without restraints.
Tang statutes set standards for the sizes of fetters that differed accord
ing to the gravity of the offense. Those regulations set the lengths of
chains at eight to twelve feet long, and wooden handcuffs at one and a
half to two feet. The cangue consisted of two rectangular jaws made from
wood planks with a semicircular hole cut in one side of each. Wardens
j oined the jaws around the prisoner's neck to form a kind of collar and
locked them in place. It was a sort of a pillory without a post. According
to law, cangues were two and a half feet long and sixteen to eighteen
inches wide. Inmates so outfitted found it difficult to eat, sleep, or per
form any other bodily function.
It was the responsibility of the prisoners' families to supply them with
food and clothing. Only in cases where the accused landed in a jail far
from home did the authorities provide for such needs. Even so, when
his kinsmen arrived at the place of his detention, the law required them
to reimburse the government for the expenses incurred in caring for the
inmate. During the heat of summer, wardens allowed prisoners to bathe
once a month and supplied them with vinegar water to slake their thirst.
The code established standards for the humane treatment of the sick in
all prisons. When an inmate took ill, te administrators had to supply
him wit medicine. If his condition was grave, tey removed his fetters
and admitted a relative to care for him in his cell. In the case of the
highest-raking mandarins, tird grade or above, wardens permitted
two relatives-wives, daughters, sons, or grandsons-to enter and at
tend to him. In the first moon of each year the central government sent
agents to the provinces to examine the fetters, rush mats, and provisions
for the sick in local prisons. Wardens who violated regulations governing
the treatment of the ill were subject to punishment.
Jailbreaks occasionally occurred during the Tang. In the autumn of 775
a Uighur gutted a man with a knife in broad daylight at the East Market
of Changan. Bystanders seized the assailant and dragged him off to the
county prison. When te culprit's chieftain heard about the arrest, he
rushed to the j ail, rode in, and chopped the wardens with his sword.
Then he freed his compatriot and fed with him. The punishment for
inficting wounds during a jailbreak was death by strangulation. How
ever, the Uighurs were powerful allies of the dynasty, so the emperor
made no further inquiries into the affair, permitting the offender to go
unpunished.
Sometimes unscrupulous officials engineered the release of a prisoner.
In 656 Li, a powerful minister, took a fancy to a beautiful woman icar
cerated in the j ail of the Service for Supreme Justice at Luoyang. The
Crime and Punishment 201
minister, who wanted to take her as a concubine, ordered Bi, a judicial
review officer in the agency, to free her, in violation of the law. After
the matter became public, and the throne ordered investigation, Li
intimidated Bi so severely that the official hanged himself in the prison.
Even though a censor lodged an indictment against the minister, the
emperor did not pursue the matter because Li enjoyed his favor.
TRIAL
A trial began with the incarceration of a suspect whom thief catchers
had caught in the act or with the lodging of an accusation by a victim,
witness, or informant. In the latter event the magistrate who received
the complaint incarcerated the accuser if the crime was serious. Then he
dispatched thef catchers to arrest the accused. The pursuers had thirty
days to apprehend the suspect, after which they were subject to punish
ment.
Magistrates had to take great care in cases initiated by allegations be
cause many accusers filed false charges for personal gain, vengeance, or
other reasons. A court official in the late seventh century had a maid
servant named Bewitching Damsel who was not only beautiful, but
adept at singing and dancing. Te Price of Wei, Empress Wu's nephew,
borrowed her on the pretext that he wanted her to teach his women how
to apply makeup. Then he took her for a concubine and refused to return
her to her former master. The mandarin sent her a poem lamenting his
loss. Three days after receiving the verses, Bewitching Damsel threw
herself into a well and died. When the prince had her body pulled from
the well, he found the poem in her sash and flew into a rage. To get
even, he induced informant to lodge false charges against te man
darin. Te man was convicted and beheaded. Some plaintiffs went to
extraordiary lengths to establish grounds for their falsehoods. In 639
the emperor discovered that accusers were maiming their eyes and ears
to provide evidence for their lies in court. To prevent this, he added a
thrashing of forty blows to whatever punishments the courts had im
posed on the culprits.
The most infamous period for lodging false accusations was the reign
of terror under Empress Wu's regime. That was due to three factors. The
empress encouraged informers by offering them rewards in the form of
appointments to political posts or gifts of silk. She permitted provincial
accusers to ride the horses of the rapid relay system, supplying them
with food and lodgings fit for fifth grade oficials. Finally, her cruel clerks
compiled the Entrapment Canon. That text, in several thousand words,
provided detailed instructions on methods for informing and creating
frame-ups. So armed, the empress's agents fabricated charges on their
own or persuaded others to do so. Many innocent victims suffered unjust
202 Daily Life in Traditio11al China
punishments. In one instance an agent of the empress beheaded a man
without investigating the case, then fabricated a charge against him post
humously.
In most cases the officials responsible for conducting trials in the first
instance were the county or market commandants. County commandants
in particular were busy men charged with all govemmental affairs in
their districts-tax collection, famine relief, military defense, and public
works, to name a few. Most of them probably spent little time on legal
matters, delegating most of those duties to subordiates: the marshals
and provosts of law as well as to constables, bailiffs, j ailers, detectives,
and court reporters. Few of those men, including the commandant, had
any specialized legal training. There were no lawyers, prosecutors, or
judges in the modern sense. The presiding offcer, the magistrate, could,
however, avail himself of manuals that contained hypothetical judg
ments.
Investigation of a crime ilwolved examining evidence, and interrogat
ing accusers or suspects. The evidence might be physical. While out ca
rousing with his staff one night, an official noticed something false in
the cry of a woma who was wailing in mourning for her deceased
husband. The next day he sent a detective to bring the widow in for
interrogation. Despite two days of questioning she would not confess.
The detective, fearing that his superior would blame him for failing to
resolve the matter, stood watch over the corpse. Suddenly he notced
that large black fies were swarming around its head. He parted the hair
of the dead man and found the end of a nail protruding from the skull.
It turned out that the wife got her husband drunk and killed him by
pounding the spike into his brain. She wanted to get rid of him so she
could continue an adulterous affair.
Evidence might also take the form of documents. In the late seventh
century one of Governor Pei's subordinates cut up a memorandum writ
ten by his superior and pasted the pieces together to form a new docu
ment containing seditious remarks. He then submitted the forgery to the
authorities as proof for his accusation that the goveror had plotted re
bellion. Although Pei conceded that the handwriting was his, he denied
having written the document. After three investigations failed to resolve
the matter, Empress Wu sent a clever official to try his hand at it. While
the official was reclining on a couch and sunlight from a window struck
the back of the paper, he discovered the seams between the pieces. He
summoned Pei's accuser and dropped the forgery into a basin of water.
The water dissolved the glue and the pieces came apart. The culprit then
confessed, and was beheaded.
Nearly all trials included a confrontation between the magistrate and
the defendant. Except in cases of murder, robbery by force, flight, and
rape of a good woman, the law required magistrates to conduct those
Crime and Punishment 203
hearings on three different days. During the frst he took the suspect's
statement. That document served as the basis for the judge's oral ques
tions during the second and third sessions. Tere were five ancient prin
ciples for conducting such interrogations. Judges were to examine the
accused's statement to discover complications or inconsistencies in it;
observe his face to find any signs of blushing; watch his respiration to
detect irregularities i his breathing; test his ears to ascertain if he could
hear the questions addressed to him; and look into his eyes to see if they
were clear. The first three were techniques for detecting les, and the last
two methods for determining the competence of accusers or suspects to
stand trial.
Interrogation was an essential element of trials, though it did not al
ways yield the expected results. Four years after the assassination of
Chief Minister Wu, an official discovered a document among the papers
of Goveror Li after his troops assassinated h. According to it, Li had
rewarded sixteen of his men for killing Wu. The emperor had the sixteen
hauled to the capital and ordered an investigation into the matter. Al
though all of the prisoners confessed, an interrogator ucovered incon
sistencies in their testimony. When confronted with the discrepancies,
one of the suspects revealed that bot Governor Wang and Governor Li
had sent assassins into the capital to murder the chief minister. Before
Li's men could carry out their orders, they learned that Governor Wang's
agents had already murdered Wu. Undaunted, they retured to Li and
falsely claimed credit for the homicide so that they could reap the re
wards for the deed. Despite that fact that the true murderers had already
been executed, the emperor had all of the innocent men executed.
If, when a magistrate completed his investigation, the facts of the case
were in doubt and the defendant refused to admit his crime, he could,
with the approval of his superior or colleagues, apply judicial torture to
extract a confession. Under those circumstances a conviction required an
acknowledgment of guilt from the accused, not only as evidence of his
wrongdoing but also as a sign of his contrition and willingness to reform.
The only legitimate form of torture was scourging with the interrogation
rod, and the law code imposed limitations on its use. It prohibited more
than three thrashings and a total of no more than 200 blows. It also
stipulated that the three beatings had to be administered at least twenty
days apart. Furthermore, the code prohibited the thrashing of dwarfs,
mutes, morons, the disabled, and relatives of high-ranking officials who
were over sixty-nine years of age or younger than fourteen. If the suspect
still did not confess, then the magistrate had to release him. I all cases
that did not involve grave offenses, the judge then subjected the accuser
to judicial torture. If he confessed, the magistrate sentenced him to the
punishment prescribed for the crime that he had alleged. If he endured
204 Daily Lie in Traditional China
all 200 blows without admitting guilt, the j udge had to release him with
out punishing him.
During the Tang there were officials, known as "cruel clerks," who
fagrantly violated regulations by applying illegal forms of torture. Again
the most notorious era for such abuses was the reign of terror under
Empress Wu's regime. Her agents established a special prison inside the
southwest gate of Luoyang, a jail so infamous that the capital's citizens
said anyone who entered it would not leave alive. There her minions
applied subtle forms of psychological torture to elicit confessions by de
nyig suspects food or sleep, interrogating them night after night, tossing
manure into their cells, and confining them in underground pits. When
prisoners were obstinate and refused to admit guilt, they resorted to
more brutal methods: suspending them upside down with a rock tied to
their heads, filling their ears with mud, hanging them by their hair, sing
ing their ears, pouring vinegar into their nostrils, and jamming bamboo
slivers under their fingernails. One particularly fiendish brute devised
an iron cage that fit over a victim's head. Once it was in place, he drove
wedges into the sides of the cage that cracked the skull and caused the
brains to burst out.
Most of Empress Wu's "cruel clerks" met ignominious ends. In one
case someone accused one of them, Zhou, of plotting rebellion, and the
empress assigned the investigation of his case to another, Lai. While Lai
and Zhou were dining, Lai asked Zou, "What means should be em
ployed when a prisoner continually refuses to confess?" Zhou replied,
"That is quite simple. Take a large vat, place burning charcoal all around
it and order te prisoner to climb into the pot. How could he not con
fess?! " Lai obtained a great tub and surrounded it with fire. Then he said
to Zhou, "I have a decree from the palace ordering me to investigate
your case. Older brother, please climb into the kettle." Terrified, Zhou
kowtowed and admitted his guilt. Although his offense warranted death,
the empress exiled him to the far south. Someone who bore a grudge
against him for an injustice murdered Zhou while he was on the road
to the place of his banishment.
Once the defendant had been convicted, te magistrate passed sen
tence on him. The law required him to assign punishments in accordance
with provisions in the code or oter collections of statutes. To ensure
that all officials were well versed in the laws, the throne ordered that
the laws be inscribed on walls of offices so that officials could study them
while taking breaks from their duties.
PUNISHMENT
In its first chapter the Tang law code listed five major forms of pun
ishment. The first was thrashing with the thin rod and had five degrees:
Crime and Punishment 205
ten, twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty blows. Magistrates who failed to pass
sentences according to the laws were subject to thirty blows. Failure to
report a fire or assist in putting it out was punishable by twenty blows,
and illegal entry into a home during the night, by forty blows. The law
prescribed forty blows for masters of mad dogs that they did not kill, as
well as for owners of domestic animals and dogs that gored, kicked or
bit people. Furthermore, the code required that the owners cut off the
horns, hobble the legs, and cut off the ears, respectively, of the offending
creatures.
In 630, while examining an anatomical illustration, Emperor Taizong
noticed that the interal organs of humans were located just under the
skin of te back. To spare his subjects suffering, he ordered that magis
hates apply thrashings only to the buttocks and thighs when punishig
criminals.
The second was scourging with the thick rod and had five degrees:
sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, and a hundred blows. Shooting arrows
toward a city, home, or road was punishable by sixty blows. The maxi
mum penalty for debtors who failed to repay loans worth one foot of
cloth within 100 days after the date stipulated in a contract was sixty
blows. Eighty blows was the punishment for sticking objects into another
person's ears, nostrils or other orifices when the objects obstructed the
passage, and for pulling out a square inch or more of an adversary's hair
during a fight. Gambling on games of chance was punishable by 100
blows except in cases when te wager was food and drink, or the contest
involved archery and other martial arts.
The law set the lengths of all rods, cut from bushes, at three and a
half feet and required the removal of all knots. The sizes of the switches
differed only in the diameters of the sticks, the thin rod being the small
est and the interrogation rod being the largest. Unlike thrashings, the
law permitted magistrates to apply the blows to the back as well as the
buttocks and thighs. County and market commandants could impose
sentences prescribing thrashings and scourging without review by higher
authorities.
The third was penal servitude and had five degrees: one, one and a
half, two, two and a half, and three years. One year of penal servitude
was the punishment for destroying tombstones and for peering into an
imperial palace from a high place. Possession of armor and crossbows
was punishable by one and a half years, and possession of military trea
tises by two years. Artisans who failed to paint or embellish imperial
boats were subject to two years. Three years was the sentence for persons
who bured coffins while attempting to smoke foxes out of tombs. (The
folklore of traditional China depicted foxes as evil creatures.)
In the capitals, magistrates sent men sentenced to penal servitude to
labor on the construction of buildings, and women to toil at sewig for
206 Daily Life in Tmditional China
the court. In the provinces, judges set criminals to work on city wals,
moats, granaries, and warehouses, or employed them for miscellaneous
tasks in their offces. In either case the convicts were confined at the
offices of the agency involved. The law required that prefects review all
sentences to penal servitude that county or market commandants im
posed.
Te fourth was exile and had three degrees: 666, 833, and 1,000 miles,
with compulsory labor added in some cases. Those who submitted anon
ymous accusations or lodged them under false names were subject to
banishment at a place 833 miles from their homes, as were thieves who
stole armor or crossbows and Chinese men who married aliens (Persians,
Indians, and te like). In 680 the throne sentenced a man to exile in the
farthest reaches of the empire for compiling a book of jokes. When the
heir apparent was deposed for treason, a friend of his went to retrieve
the collection of jests tat he had given to the prince. The emperor was
angry when he leared of this, and banished the author to Hainan Island.
In the early eighth century the wife of a general died, leaving him with
five children, so he remarried. His new wife was very cruel and fogged
her stepchildren daily. Unable to bear the pain, they went to te grave
of their mother and wept bitterly. Suddenly her ghost rose from the tomb
to comfort her offsprig. Then she wrote a poem on silk to her husband,
complaiing about the abuses of te stepmother. The children took the
poem to their father, who informed his superior about the crimes of his
wife. That official submitted a report to te throne. The emperor sen
tenced the stepmother to 100 blows of the thick rod and banished her to
Lingnan.
The most forbidding destination for an exile was Lingnan, the south
ermost region of the empire that included Hainan Island and northern
Vietnam. Imperial decrees referred to it as tat "distant, evil place. " Al
though Chinese had largely settled the region by Tang times, the abo
rigines remained a constant treat, and frequently attacked the
immigrants. The climate of the area was intolerably hot, and periodically
suffered devastating typhoons. It was a poisonous land, home of serpent
eagles whose fesh was lethal because it ate venomous snakes, and of
toxic plants that caused istant death if consumed. The food of the na
tives did not sit well on the stomachs of the exiles. But the worst of all
were Lingnan' s noxious miasmas that killed many a northerer con
demned there. It was not, of course, the fogs of the damp region that
caused men to sicken and die, but the mosquitoes carrying malarial pro
tozoa that thrived in the swamps. One poet declared it unft for human
habitation.
The evil reputation of Lingnan instilled great fear in many northerners.
One man had long harbored an obsession that he would suffer exile,
could not bear to hear the names of cities in Lingnan, and would close
Crime and Punishment 207
his eyes whenever he came upon a map of souther China. When he
became chief minister, he found a chart on the wall of his office that he
could not bring himself to look at for several weeks. When he fil<ally
glanced at it, he discovered that it was a map of Yai on Hainan Island.
His worst fears came to pass in 805, when the throne demoted hin to a
minor post at Yai, where he soon died, at slightly more than forty years
of age.
In exceptional cases, usually political crimes, the condemned might be
transported to their places of exile in prisoner vans. Those vehicles prob
ably evolved from mobile cages used for transporting dangerous animals
such as tigers, bears, and panthers. Unlike the creature cages, which had
bars, the convict carts were crates on wheels, entirely enclosed by planks.
The boards were glued or lacquered so that no one could see into them
no doubt to conceal the identity of the prisoner, so that his sympathzers
or relatives could not attempt to free him. A hole in te top, as depicted
in a seventeenth-century illustration, or perhaps a door, was provided
so that food could be given to the prisoner and waste could be removed.
Whatever the case, transport by this means was not pleasant. Two Tang
princes sent out in prisoner vans did not long survive their joureys.
Occasionally, a rebel in te provinces was sent to the capital for execution
in such a vehicle. Oe of them spent thirty-seven days in a convict cart,
traveling from Chengdu to the capital in 806.
The objectives of exile were to send offenders far from the capital and
the imperial court, to separate them from their clans and hometowns,
and to prevent them from performing their sacrificial duties to their an
cestors. Both prefectures and the Department of Punition in the capital
had to review sentences of exile that county and market commandants
imposed.
The gravest of punishments in the Tang was, of course, execution.
There were two forms, strangulation and decapitation. According to the
law code there were 144 crimes punishable by the former and 89 by the
latter. The emperor had to personally approve all executions.
Strangulation was the punishment for lodging an accusation against
grandparents or parents with a magistrate, scheming to kidnap and sell
a person into slavery, and opening a coffin while desecrating a tomb.
Executioners throttled the condemned by placing a noose around the
convict's neck and twisting the rope until he suffocated. In Tang China
hanging was a means of committing suicide, not a form of capital pun
ishment.
Although strangulation entailed more prolonged pain and suffering,
it was preferable to decapitation for most Chinese. They believed that
their bodies were gifts from teir parents and that it was most disre
spectful to their ancestors to die without returning te gift to the grave
intact. The behavior of Emperor Daizong perhaps best illustrates that
208
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Daily Life in Traditional China
Strangulation
point. While he was heir apparent, te power of the eunuch Li at court
appalled him. When he came to the trone, however, he could not pub
licly execute the eunuch because Li had been instrumental in his acces
sion. So Daizong secretly sent an assassin to slay him. The agent entered
the eunuch's home at night and chopped of his head. After he left the
mansion, the murderer dropped the head in a privy. Even though the
emperor had engineered the death of Li, he retained a sense of propriety.
Since the whereabouts of the eunuch's head were unknown, Daizong
had a wooden head carved and placed in Li's coffin.
In the capitals most executions took place at the western market be
cause i Chinese cosmology, metal, the executioner's sword, was the
element of te west. However, on occasion authorities used the eastern
market, post road stations, palace halls, ball felds, and various other
sites for that purpose. Nearly all executions were public, in order to warn
citizens of the dire consequences that would befall them if they should
contemplate committing capital crimes. It is not unlikely that they were
also a form of entertainment, spectacles that titillated thrill seekers. After
decapitations, the heads were displayed on poles or spears and the bod
ies thrown on te ground beneat. When local authorities beheaded
criminals, they boxed the heads and sent them to the capital to confirm
the identity and death of the culprit.
By and large men sentenced to death met their fates silently. However,
when the injustice of a judgment was particularly egregious, the convict
might create an uproar. In 688 an official in the heir apparent's house
hold was found guilty of plotting rebellion on the basis of a false accu
sation lodged by one of his slaves. When he arrived in the market, he
loudly excoriated Empress Wu and divulged secret evils that had taken
Crime and Punishment 209
place in the palace. Then he seized sticks of firewood from a vendor to
assault his executioners. Soldiers of the Gold Bird Guard attacked en
masse and slew him. Thereafter, to prevent such embarrassing outbursts,
judicial officials stuffed wood balls in the mouths of men about to be
executed. Te custom persisted until 705.
As always, rank had its privileges. When a high-ranking minister, fifth
grade and above, received a death sentence, the throne might grant him
a special dispensation by bestowing suicide on him in lieu of imposing
strangulation or decapitation. The strong-willed accepted such "gifts"
gracefully by bathing, composing themselves, and writing a last state
ment before killing themselves. The weak-willed could not bring them
selves to take their own lives. I 777 a chief minister imprisoned in a
county jail at Changan begged the warden to kill h. The man com
plied, taking off his filthy socks and stuffing them down the minister's
throat to asphyxiate him. When the emperor did not confer that boon,
officials of those ranks still enjoyed some privileges that men of humbler
status did not. The law required that their keepers provide them with
food and ale (a last meal?) and transport them to the execution grounds
in carts.
When the state sentenced a convict to decapitation for rebellion or
sedition, it also imposed punishments on his relatives-whether they
were guilty or innocent of participating in the crime-by reason of as
sociation. Fathers under the age of seventy-nine and sons over the age
of fifteen were strangled. Sons under the age of fifteen, mothers, daugh
ters, wives, concubines, grandfathers, grandsons, brothers, and sisters
were enslaved. The women were imprisoned in the Flank Close, and the
sons were sent to the Service of the Provost of Agriculture. Uncles and
nephews were banished to the farthest reaches of the empire. Finally,
the government confiscated all slaves, personal retainers, fields, homes,
and movable property owned by the condemned. On occasion the throne
also ordered the tombs of their ancestors leveled, and had their cofins
destroyed and their bones scattered.
The number of people condemned to strangulation, exile, or slavery
by virtue of association with a relative convicted of rebellion could be
quite large. In 688 judicial authorities sentenced 5,000 persons in a single
district to those punishments because they were related to a Tang prince
who revolted against Empress Wu. Only the intervention of a humane
governor, who informed the empress that the verdicts were erroneous,
saved them.
In early 747 Emperor Illustrious August, who had a strong regard for
life, abolished the death penalty. He ordered his officials to refer to the
nearest regulation by analogy when sentencing those guilty of crimes
calling for execution. Thus, severe scourgings with the thick rod and
exile to Lingnan took the place of capital punishment. However, some
210 Daily Life in Traditional China
officials, who apparently did not share the emperor's humane senti
ments, resorted to executing criminals by beating them to death. The
throne restored the death penalty in the summer of 759 in the wake of
the A Lushan rebellion.
There were other forms of punishment besides the five listed at the
beginnig of te Tang code. The law demanded restitution when the
crime involved the destruction of property. Reckless drivers who injured
or killed domestic animals, and arsonists had to compensate the injured
parties for their losses. For minor infractions the law required mandarins
to resign their posts for one year. For more severe offenses the state
revoked all of the oficials' titles for six years. Some forms of punishent
were extralegal. The government fined officials by docking their salaries
when fires broke out in their agencies. The throne often demoted man
darins to posts outside the capital, generally for political rather than
criminal transgressions. Demotion was actually a mild form of exile, for
it did not entail dismissal from all offices. Occasionally the demoted
sneaked back into the capital, dressed as women to avoid detection, and
restored themselves to the good graces of the throne.
At least two types of capital punishment were extralegal. Throughout
the Tang, scourging to death with the thick rod was a common form of
execution applied especially in cases of gross corruption. On occasion
the throne also employed it to make an example. I the spring of 716
the emperor ordered his brother-in-law beaten to death in front of all
his officials for having ambushed and assaulted a man in the lane of a
ward at the capital. In that instance the emperor imposed the sentence
to serve as an apology to the bureaucratic corps for the misbehavior of
his relative. By far the most brutal sort of execution was truncation, cut
tig in two at the waist with a fodder knife. The condemned, who had
committed some crime considered to be particularly treacherous or re
pugnant, slowly and painfully bled to death.
CLEMENCY
By moder standards the legal system of the Tang may seem to have
been inhumane and discriminatory, but it was also incredibly merciful.
Status played a role in te granting of leniency. Except in cases involving
the Ten Abominations or the death penalty, the code established an au
tomatic reduction of one degree in the punishment for crimes committed
by relatives of the emperor; men of great talent, virtue, and achievement;
and mandarins ranked seventh grade or higher. Criminals under fifteen
or over sixty-eight years of age and the impaired were exempt from all
punishments except the death penalty; those under seven or over eighty
eight were exempt even from te death penalty. The impaired included
the mentally ill. Those exclusions did not, however, apply to those sen-
Crime and Punishment 211
tenced by reason of association with convicts condemned to decapitation.
The law also conferred on all of those groups immunity from j udicial
torture and the right to redeem their punishments by payments of cop
per.
Common criminals who did not enjoy such privileges could expect to
have their sentences nullified or commuted by one of the numerous par
dons that emperors bestowed as acts of benevolence. The throne ab
solved individuals; groups of individuals, such as officials forced against
their will to serve rebels, defeated barbarians, or soldiers serving on mil
itary campaigns; classes of convicts such as exiles; and all offenders in a
specific district. Emperors also regularly reduced the sentences of crim
inals, commuting the death penalty to exile and exile to penal servitude.
The most generous of such indulgences were the Great Acts of Grace
that the throne bestowed on special occasions, such as the emperor's
performance of rites, the conferral of imperial titles, the installation of
heirs apparent, and the celebration of military victories. At those times
the emperor ascended to a hall atop a souther gate of the palace early
in the moring. In the street below, a grand assembly of officials attired
in their court vestments stood in orderly rows, the civil to the left and
the military to the right. Beyond them waited a throng of the capital's
citizenry, their carriages and horses choking the roads that led to the
gate.
After the emperor arrived, an official led shackled prisoners from jails
in the capital, often more than a thousand, into the square before the
gate. As soon as a drummer caught sight of them, he beat a tattoo of
1,000 strokes on his drum, tossing his drumstick with each stroke. When
the prisoners reached their appointed stations, they tured to face the
emperor, setting the stage for the climatic event of the day.
A tall pole, some sixty-seven feet high, rose in front of the gate. Affixed
to the top of it was a small platform from which hung scarlet ropes that
fell to the ground. The Gold Chicken, a statue five feet tall with a head
made of gold and a silk banner futtering from its beak, perched on the
platform. With all eyes fxed on them, young men from the Instruction
Ward, a court school for training acrobats and other entertainers, seized
the scarlet ropes trailing from the platform and shinnied upward. The
first lad to reach the platform seized the banner and brought it down.
He received a reward called "chicken feed," an increase in his monthly
salary by tree piculs (more than one and a half bushels) of grain.
Afterward an official stepped forward and proclaimed the Great Act
of Grace, reading the text aloud to the assembled multitude. The main
clause of the amnesty probably read something like the following:
All those who have committed offenses prior to dawn of the twenty-third day
in the month of January in the year seven-hundred and five-whether thei
212 Daily Life in Traditional China
crimes are heavy or light, whether they are subject to capital punishment or lesser
forms of punition, whether they have already been revealed or remain as yet
concealed, whether they have been adjudicated or not-convicts incarcerated and
prisoners present, are forthwith amnestied and pardoned.
As the last words of the edict resounded in the square, wardens undid
the fetters binding their prisoners and released them to go their separate
ways. In the provinces governors also had the Great Acts of Grace read
and liberated inmates in their jails-without, however, the pole-climbing
spectacle.
In principle the amnesties pardoned and freed all convicts, emptying
all prisons throughout the empire and nullifying the sentences of all
criminals from murderers to petty thieves. They also forgave offenders
whose cases had not yet come to trial or whose crimes had not yet come
to the attention of the authorities before the hour of the day stipulated
in the decree. In the latter event the perpetrators had 1 00 days to turn
themselves in and confess if they wished to receive absolution.
In reality provisions in the Great Acts of Grace often excluded convicts
guilty of committing one of the Ten Abominations and political crimi
nals. Occasionally they also denied clemency to murderers, exiles, cor
rupt officials, robbers, and others. Furthermore, there were articles i the
law code that circumscribed the sweeping pardons of the amnesties. For
example, sorcerers who employed gu poison did not enjoy full exoner
ations. They received a reduction in their punishments from death to
exile. Finally, although the Tang issued a Great Act of Grace every
twenty-two months, on the average, the distribution was uneven. One
emperor bestowed three in one year, and another granted none for ten
years. A convict's chances of being fully pardoned depended on the in
cliation of the sovereign on the throne at the time.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of criminals, those who had not com
mitted a heinous or political crime, could expect some modification of
their sentences, either by pardon or by commutation. The convicts who
benefited most from imperial indulgences in the Tang were those con
demned to penal servitude or exile, because their sentences were the
longest. The extent of clemency in the Tang was far greater than that in
modern times.
VENGEANCE
In a society where false accusations were common, nobles or manda
rins abused their power to subvert the law, and the courts failed to ap
prehend culprits, injustices occurred. Since the victims of such inequities
or their relatives could find no remedies in public courts, they occasion
aly resorted to private vengeance. I the early seventh century, a man
Crime and Punishment 213
named Wang got in a brawl with a fellow villager name Li. I the course
of the struggle, Li killed Wang. Wang's wife reported the crime to the
county court, but Li had fled his home and could not be found or ar
rested. Some twenty years later, after the founding of the Tang, Li no
longer feared punishment because times had changed, and therefore the
new officials would not be interested in the legal matters of the previous
regime. Furthermore, he believed that Wang's son, who had been five
years old at the time of his father's death, was too humble to exact re
venge. So he went to the prefecture to confess. The son waylaid the
murderer. He pulled a knife from his sleeve and stabbed Li. Then Wang
cut open his stomach, excised the liver and heart, and ate them. After
ward he went to the goveror of the prefecture and tured himself in.
Mandarins there sentenced him to death, but the emperor issued a spe
cial decree pardoning him because of his filial devotion to his father.
Vengeance based on one's duty to avenge one's father, a principle much
esteemed in ancient China, did not always spare the murderers fom
execution, however. When the sons of a provincial governor slew the
official responsible for his execution in 735, the emperor would not ex
onerate them, and had tem executed. In Tang times there were also
men, knights-errant, who murdered to settle scores for others-not for
money, but because their sense of justice compelled them to right
wrongs.
1 0
Siclttess at( Healtl
ILLNESS
In the early seventh century the mother of Wei, a wealthy man, suddenly
lost her sight. The son consulted a fortune-teller, who told him, "Next
year someone wearing black garb will come from the east on the first
day of the third moon. His therapy is guaranteed to heal your mother. "
On the appointed day a stranger wearing a short robe woven from
coarse, black thread approached Wei's home. Wei invited the man in
and spread a lavish feast for him. The man clad in black said, "Your
humble servant knows nothing of medicine, but I do know how to make
plows. I will make one for you." He took an ax and wandered aound
the dwelling, looking for wood to fashion the plow shaft. He found a
crooked branch on a mulberry tree that had grown over a well, so he
cut it down to make the plow. At that moment the mother's vision sud
denly retured. Her blindness was caused by the mulberry's crooked
branches and leaves covering te mouth of the well.
According to ancient Chinese tought, the causes of diseases were su
pernatural, natural, or a combination of both. They were also internal,
external, or neither (overindulgence) . I general, folklore and religion
were the sources for beliefs in superatural agents. Observations of the
environent and human beings were the bases for theories that patho
gens originated in nature. The story above is a curious combination of
the two. Superatural agents that caused maladies included gods, ghosts,
demons, and magic.
216 Daily Lie in Traditional China
Merchant Wang, who accumulated a fortue of 10 million cop
Gods pers, had a daughter thirteen or fourteen years of age. She was
beautiful and clever, but two polyps (swollen tissue) more than
an inch long hung down from each of her nostrils. They resembled bath
beans, and had roots that were as fine as hemp thread. Whenever she
bumped them, excruciating pain shot through her heart and marrow.
Her father spent millions of cash to cure his daughter, but nothing
worked.
One day an Indian monk came to his gate beggig for food, and said,
to Wang, "I know your daughter has a strange illness. I can cure it. Will
you let me have a look at her?" The merchant let the monk in to examine
his girl. The monk took out a pure white herbal powder and blew it into
the daughter's nostrils. A moment later he plucked off the polyps. They
exuded a small amount of yellow fuid, but the girl suffered no pain
whatsoever. The merchant tried to give the Indian 100 ounces of gold as
a reward for his services, but the monk refused, saying, "I'm a man who
practices the faith, and cannot possibly accept your munificent gift. I only
wish to ask for the flesh I removed. " He left after receiving the polyps,
departing with such speed that he seemed to fly.
When the monk was five or six wards away, a handsome young man
rode up on a white steed and knocked on Wang's gate. The visitor asked,
"Did a wester monk come here just now?" The merchant quickly in
vited the youth in and told him all about his encounter with the men
dicant. The lad sighed unhappily and said, "My horse stumbled a little.
Consequently, I arrived after the monk left. " Wang, bewildered, asked
what the reason for the sigh was. The young man replied, "God on High
lost two of his divine physicians. He recently leared that they were
hiding in your daughter's nose. I am a celestial, and came here to ap
prehend the doctors in obedience to the god's command. I will receive
a reprimand because the monk seized the physicians [the polyps] first. "
Disease-causing deities need not be exteral. According to the Taoists
three internal gods, literally "the Three Corpses," reside in the body: one
in the head, one in the chest, and one in the abdomen. They record the
sins that the individual commits. Once every sixty days they ascend to
heaven during the night and present scrolls listing the transgressions to
celestial officials. The heavenly mandarins then prescribe appropriate
punishments in the form of illnesses tat the three deities inflict when
they return to the person's body. The head god caused heaviness of the
head, dim vision, deafess, loss of teeth, and the like. The chest god
produced burning in te heart, a muddled mind, constant forgetfulness,
and so on. The abdominal god caused hundreds of diseases. One could
avoid contractig the illnesses inficted by the Three Corpses by staying
awake the entire night of their departure. They could leave and report
only when the person was asleep. If one dared to ingest cinnabar (mer-
Sickness mzd Health 217
Head Chest Abdomen
The Three Corpses
curie sulfide) and magic mushrooms, the action of the drugs would de
stroy the three gods. The Buddhists also had a notion that bad behavior
was the source of disease. They believed that illness was caused by evil
karma, sin. However, according to their tenets, the transgressions that
produced ailments could have been committed in previous incarations.
The afficted was not conscious of such misdeeds, but was punshed for
them anyway. That doctrine explained why infants were born with con
genital deformities and why the upright suffered even though they had
done no wrong.
One moring courtier Zhou was making his way to his office
in the palace. On te way a physician saw a ghost, who had Ghosts
pinched the courtier's head between its fingers, drag the man
through a gate. Two ghosts carrying staves followed the pair. The doctor
reported the matter to Empress Wu, who ordered a servitor to look into
the matter. He reported that since there was no business requiring his
attention at his office, Zhou had retured to his room after eating lunch.
During the afternoon he had gone to the privy. In a while his chief
assistant began to wonder what was taking him so long, so he went to
see what was te matter. He discovered that his superior had fallen flat
on his face in the outhouse. The man's eyes stared straight ahead, he
could not speak, and spittle dribbled from his mouth. The empress con
sulted her physicians about the case. She asked, "How long can this go
on?" They replied, "If the progress of the disease is slow, he will live
three days. If it is fast, he will die in one day." She provided a brocade
quilt to cover the courtier and a litter to carry him home. He died in the
middle of the night.
218 Daily Life in Traditional China
One of the oldest characters for disease depicts a man lying on a bed
with an arrow at his side. The notion that contracting a disease was akin
to receiving a wound from a weapon was obviously very old in China,
dating from the second millennium B. C. E. Tere is no answer to the ques
tion of who fired the missile in that period, but the identity of te mal
efactor is quiet clear in the folklore of the Tang, if not earlier. Hong
claimed that he could see ghosts and converse with them. Wen he was
in the south, he saw a huge spirit carrying a lance. A retinue of subor
dinate specters followed in his trail. Te ghost seer was terrified, so he
left the road. After the large ghost passed by, Hong accosted one of the
minor spirits and asked about the spear that the large ghost was carry
ing. It replied, "He uses the lance to kill people. Everyone dies when the
spear pierces his belly. " Hong asked, "Is there no remedy for the ail
ment?" "Rub the blood of a black chicken on the stomach, and it will
cure the disease," said te specter. The ghost seer then inquired, "Where
are you going?" "We're on our way to Jingzhou and Yangzhou," replied
the ghost. Soon afterward an epidemic of stomach ailments spread
throughout the two districts, and everyone died except those whom
Hong had taught. He instructed people to kill black chickens and rub
the blood on their abdomens. Eight or nine out of ten that he taught,
survived.
Ghosts could also heal the sick, according to Chinese folk beliefs. Mr.
Liu's wife was seriously ill. One night before Liu fell asleep, a white
haired woman three feet tall stepped from the shadows, into the light
under his lanter. She said to him, "I a the only one who can cure
your wife's illness. Why haven't you prayed to me?" Liu had always
been very proper, so he cursed her. The ghost folded her hands and
exclaimed, "He won't repent! He won't repent! " Then she vanished. Liu's
wife was suddenly struck with heart pains and appeared to be on the
verge of dying. Her husband had no choice but to pray to the old
woman. When he finished speaking, she appeared again. Liu saluted her
and invited her to sit. She asked for a cup of tea, then faced the sun, as
if praying, tured her head and ordered Liu to pour the tea down his
wife's throat. As soon as the tea fowed into her mouth, his wife's pain
subsided. Thereafter the ghost often visited Liu's house, so his family no
longer feared her.
Taoists saw the world as a space besieged by homicidal de
Demons mons, most of whom dispatched their victims by propagating
diseases. The devils came in all shapes and sizes. Tere were
monsters with two, three, or twelve heads; three legs; vertically arranged
eyes; red noses; and three faces with one eye. The fiends executed their
murderous missions in a variety of ways. Grass demons hid in the fields
to poison people who came to gather vegetables. Drowning devils, three
feet, two inches tall, slew men in rivers. Female, "red rope" monsters
Sickness and Health 219
killed male children in the spring, female children in the autumn, the
young in the winter, and the old in the summer. White-headed giants
who had black faces and white hair, and stood thirty feet tall, spread
ninety types of disease. Black-footed titans, thirty-six feet tall, changed
themselves into birds tat few onto the roofs of people's homes and
infected them with acute illnesses. The fiends often wielded red staves,
striking their victims, who then sickened and died. They attacked only
evil men who were unbelievers, the godless, slanderers of Taoist priests,
and raligners of scriptures. Buddhists also had their demons. They im
ported the yaksa, flying Hindu deities, from India. The yaksa were eaters
of the living and inficted all sorts of injuries on humans.
Madam Su was married to Mr. Li, who was more interested
in one of his maidservants than in her. The servant maliciously
Magic
asked a sorcerer to bewitch Su. The wizard buried a talisman in
a pile of manure on Li's property. He then hid seven effigies of the wife,
each a foot long and made from multicolored cloth, inside a cavity that
he dug in the easter wall of the hore and covered wit clay. Sometime
later, after the maid had passed away, and Madam Su was a widow
living alone in the house, the effigies appeared and haunted the dwel
ing. As a result she became extremely ill. For a year she invited exorcists
to expel the evil spirits, but to no avail. Nevertheless, the wizards per
sisted, and managed to capture one of the efigies. It squirmed in their
hands. They struck it with their swords, and it gushed blood on the
ground. Then te wizards bured it on a pile of firewood. As te thing
went up in smoke, the oter effigies appeared and wailed. Some stood
on the ground, and others few above. In half a year the sorcerers caught
all but one of te remaining effigies. The last one escaped and dived into
the manure pile. Madam Su then directed more than 100 men to excavate
the heap, and at a depth of seven or eight feet they unearthed the tal
isman. It provided a clue that led the men to the hiding place of the last
effigy. After they disposed of it, Madam Su recovered her health and
nothing untoward happened to her again.
Proponents of the theory that illness sprang from nat-
ural causes contended that the interal state of the mind
Natural Causes
and the body was the critical factor in bad health, and
that environmental forces, not spirits, were the external agents that at
tacked the body. They saw the body as a repository of vital energies and
essences. Good healt depended on preserving and nurturing those life
forces. If a person was moderate in his lifestyle and took measures to
conserve inner resources, then his skin became an impenetrable husk that
prevented energy and essence from leaking out, and an impregnable
bulwark that thwarted attacks from exteral disease-causing agents.
They contended that anyone could expect to live for 120 years in good
220 Daily Life in Tradi
t
ional China
health if he followed the proper practices. Otherwise, people would suf
fer from ailments, decrepitude, or senility. They would die prematurely.
According to . the advocates of the naturalistic conception of disease,
the "nurturing of life" and promotion of longevity required the conser
vation of at least three things. The most important was qi, the life force
within the body. The original meaning of the word was vapor, steam
rising from a cooking pot. At some point it assumed an enormous im
portance in the thinking of the ancient Chinese. It became a cosmic force
that controlled the environment as well as the body. In man it was breath
(also thought of as energy). It was the first thing given to a human being
at conception and the last ting to depart from him at death. Between
those two poles qi circulated throughout the body, and good health de
pended on its uninterrupted fow. It also manifested itself as yin and
yang, as well as the five elements (wood, fire, metal, water, and earth).
The second was saliva. The Taoists thought of it as the "jade liquor." I
was the sweet dew that watered the internal organs, moistened the torso
and limbs, and enabled qi and blood to circulate through the various
conduits of the body. Therefore, one should not spit, to prevent expend
ing it. The last was essence, blood and semen. Blood circulated through
the body in the vascular system and, of course, had to be preserved lest
death result. Semen (menstrual discharge in women) was a nourishing
fluid particularly important for vitalizing the brain. Ideally, a adept
striving to prolong his life should not eject it.
Diseases resulted when those resources were depleted or obstructed.
Depletion, a disease in itself, resulted from overindulgence. On the one
hand, excessive manual labor caused perspiration, drained away yang
energy, and therefore led to an excess of yin. It also caused fuid retention
by obstructing the body's orifices. On the other hand, reading too many
books and immoderate preoccupation with deep thoughts muddled the
brain, caused tumors, and induced melancholy. Those conditions might
ultimately lead to the complete loss of the mind and a shortening of the
life span. Loss of eyesight resulted from playing board games and gam
bling incessantly, or from inordinate sexual intercourse. A Tang writer
recommended that people thirty-nine years or older should keep their
eyes shut unless they had some urgent matter requiring their attention.
Unrestrained sexual intercourse exhausted the body, weakening the
joints so that one could not lift his limbs to his head. It could even cause
death.
The notion of excess causing deficiency and disease in the body also
had a psychological basis in traditional Chinese thought. Medical au
thorities contended that strong emotions, five in number, were the roots
of ill health. They specified the maladies that resulted from such im
moderate passions:
Sickness and Health 221
1. Joy: rapid heartbeat, insomnia, and mental bewilderment
2. Anger: flushed face, stuffiness in the chest, hypochondria, headache, dizziness,
and coma
3. Grief or sadness: difficulty in swallowing, emaciation, weakness, restlessness,
and shortness of breath
4. Anxiety: poor appetite, anorexia, indigestion, flatulence, and loose stools or
diarrhea
5. Fear or terror: irritability, incontinence of urination or bowel movements, and
nocturnal emissions.
Inordiate desire, linked to the senses i traditional medicine, also
caused outflow of energy and essence, resulting in disease. Clealy, a
tranquil mind was the foundation for nurturing life. It sealed the skin,
forming a means of defense against external threats.
When depletion and imbalance enfeebled the body, tey weakened its
armor, permitting exteral forces to attack, invade, and wreak havoc.
The naturalists established six categories of exteral pathogens, based on
climate, seasons, and geography, that created imbalances of yin and
yang.
1. Wind (yang that damages interal yin): dizziness, fainting, convulsions, trem
ors, and nLm1bness
2. Cold (yin that injures internal yang): chills, headaches, and general aching
(winter, north)
3. Heat (yang fat harms interal yin): fevers, fuirst, and sweating (summer,
south)
4. Damp (yin that damages interal yang): swellings, lassitude, heaviness in
limbs, and j oint pains (spring, east)
5. Dry (yang that injures interal yin): dry throat and skin, coughing, sore throat,
and constipation (autumn, west)
6. Fire (yang that harms internal yin): fushed face, bloodshot eyes, and infam
mations.
The notion here was that unseasonable cold in the summer, excessive
rains in the autumn, and so forth had catastrophic effects on one whose
body was vulnerable. Similarly, the consumption of foods associated
with the spring in the autumn, the wearing of heavy clothes in the sum
mer, and other habits of unprepared people invited disease.
The concept of depletion and imbalance had its limitations. It was
difficult to prove that a man could make himself invulnerable to exteral
diseases when he took ill even though he was prudent in his lifestyle
and took measures to strengten his internal resources. Furthermore, the
222 Daily Life in Tmditional China
naturalists themselves recognized pathogens that attacked the body
without regard to the state of its health. Parasites were one of them.
Chinese of the medieval epoch had no knowledge of bacteria or vi
ruses, having no microscope to observe them. Tey were familiar, how
ever, with parasites living in the human body. One of their conceptions
of pests was partially supematural, or at least imaginary, and partiay
natural. It was the belief in the "Nine Vermin. "
The "ambush worm" was azure and four inches long. It had whiskers
and teeth. The pest gnawed on human blood and was fond of eating
fesh. It made men feeble and short of breath, caused excessive urination,
and inflicted pain in the viscera. It traveled up and down the torso,
agitating the chest and ribs. If the affliction from this parasite reached a
critical state, the victim would die unless he ingested a mixture of alum
and cinnabar (mercuric sulfide).
"Revolving (screw) worms" were black and one foot long. They came
in pairs, male and female, and resided above and below the heart, where
they drank its blood. Screwworms caused heart pains, rapid breathing,
heaviness in te limbs, and difficulty in urination. If they penetrated the
heart or spleen, the victim would experience unbearable pain, and die.
To kill tem required writing a talisman with cinnabar ink and swallow
ing it with mercury in two gulps.
"White inchworms" were one to five inches long. They caused men to
be fond of eating raw grains, tea, fish, and fruit, as well as charred meat.
The vermin drained the viscera, emaciated the body, induced excessive
discharges of phlegm and mucus, and imparted a yellow tinge to the
face. They gnawed into the stomach, inficting unbearable pain, engen
dered dysentery, and displaced the rectum. A mixture of mercury and
cinnabar would exterminate them.
"Flesh pests" were black and looked like rotten plums. They fed on
human blood and exhausted men's qi. The bugs weakened the muscles
and back, caused intense itching on the skin, and dried out the flesh.
They induced a lust for women and a hunger for bloody meat. Swallow
ing cinnabar in two gulps would annihilate them.
"Lung bugs" were azure and resembled silkworms or red ants. They
fed on human semen and energy, causing excessive phlegm and cough
ing, loss of hair, a lackluster complexion, and weak respiration. One
would die prematurely from a deficiency of breath if one did not take a
powder of toxic minerals to kill them.
"Stomach worms" look like earthworms. They consume the food in
gested by people and so make them famished. The vermin empty the
viscera, reduce the skeleton, parch the lips, block nasal passages, produce
sores in the mouth, and induce vomiting when drinking ale. Absorb the
energies of the sun and moon through visualization during meditation
to dissolve the worms.
Sickness and Health
Ambush Worms Revolving Worms White Inchwors Flesh Pests
Lung Bugs Stomach Worms Diaphragm Pests Red Slugs Wriggle Bugs
The Nine Vermin
223
"Diaphragm pests" befuddle the senses and induce frequent sleeping
with nightmares of traveling to distant places on boats that sink or falling
from peaks while climbing mountains. This is a case of yin disturbing
yang. Obtain some black sulfide of mercury and take it. Rub blood on
your flesh and you will live.
"Red slugs" sapped men's energy. They darkened vision and deafened
the ears with ringing. The pests caused itching in the genitals as well as
sores, swelligs, paralysis, ulcers, skeletal pain, and rumbling in the gut.
The Drug for Soothing the Soul would melt the slugs.
224 Daily Life in Traditional China
"Wriggle bugs" were black and had countless small mites crawling
around them. The pests caused sores, itching, ringworm, ulcers, hem
orrhoids, and rheumatism. They fed on the teeth, which then fell out,
and they caused madness.
Only three of the nie parasites can be identified with actual worms
that infest human beings: the revolving worms, white inchworms, and
wriggle bugs. The most familiar are the frst two: te roundworm and
the tapeworm, respectively. The illustrations shown here apparently
were first drawn in the Tang dynasty.
Another type of worm hid in the teeth and caused toothaches. To
extract it, Tang physicians placed the seeds of black henbane, leeks, or
onions in a bottle with red-hot copper coins. When the seeds smoked,
they withdrew the smoke with a bamboo tube and blew it on the infected
tooth. The pain ceased immediately.
HEALERS AND HEALTH CARE
There were several kinds of healers in Tang times. The oldest were the
shamans, medicine men or women. They were exorcists who had been
practicing their occult arts sice the dawn of Chinese civilization. They
possessed magical powers that they wielded to cure illnesses as well as
to make or stop rain and purge palaces of noxious vapors, serpents, and
oter pests. The character for shaman, a pictograph depicting a dancer
with feathers or some other ornaments attached beneath his or her arms,
appears in the most ancient Chinese script, found on the shoulder bones
of cattle or the shells of tortoises. Dancing was an essential element of
the shaman's art throughout the ages, perhaps because it enabled the
exorcist to put himself or herself into a trance.
A class of true physicians emerged by 600 B. C. E. Unlike their prede
cessors they were distnctly secular doctors who thought of diseases as
springing from natural causes, not fom demonic possession, ad whose
treatment of maladies normally did not entail much in the way of ritual
or magic. I the Tang tl1ere were two sorts, the public (employed by the
state) and the private. The public practiced their healing arts in the cap
itals and the provinces. The Office of Supreme Medicie in Changa and
Luoyang had twenty doctors with a staff of 100 medics and forty stu
dents. It also had ten practitioners of acupuncture, four master masseurs,
and sixteen practitioners of massage. The agency kept records of the
number of cures effected by physicians and medics. How well they per
formed determined how many merits they acquired. The sum of the
merits that a man eared was the basis for promoting him if it was high
enough. The service also had masters of apotecary gardens, who were
in charge of planting and collecting herbs according to the proper sea
sons. The state set aside forty-two acres of the best land in the capital
Sickness and Health 225
for such gardens. Young men between the ages of fifteen and nineteen
cultivated them. There were 656 officially recognized medicinal sub
stances, which included minerals and animal products. In addition to the
resources close at hand in the capitals, the prefectures also annually sent
medical materials from their districts as tribute. The best of them went
to the Office of Supreme Medicine.
The Ofice of Supreme Medicine was also a college that offered instruc
tion in four areas, for each of which there was one professor and one
assistant professor. The first department was general medicine, that cov
ered the materia medica, acupuncture, and diagnosis by taking pulse.
The instructor divided his students into groups for learning five spe
cializations: eleven students concentrated on the healing of the body;
three on the treatment of tumors and abscesses; three on children's ail
ments (pediatrics); two on the care of eyes, ears, mouth and teeth; and
one on an unidentified subject. The course of study for the first special
ization was seven years, five years each for the second and third, and
two years each for the last two. Te second department was acupunctue.
The professor taught students about the conduits of qi, arteries, body
orifices, and acupuncture points. Students had to master three texts and
take an eight-part examination on them. The third field was massage/
exercise, and had fifteen students. The instructor trained students in the
art of "guiding and stretching," a Taoist form of self-massage combined
with exercises. According to the wisdom of the time, it was capable of
healing eight types of illnesses by eliminating excessive accumulations
of qi in internal organs and the extremities. The fourth was the depart
ment of exorcism, literally "incantations and interdictions. " Its professor
taught fve methods of exorcism, including visualizations, the Pace of
Yu, and mudras (hand gestures).
Early in its history the throne took a keen interest in the health of its
subjects. In 629 the emperor established medical schools at the seats of
all prefectures. By 723 the system had fallen apart in remote districts,
and people of the lower classes who took ill had no one to tur to for
help. Therefore, Emperor Illustrious August reestablished positions for
professors of medicine in each of the empire's prefectures and ordered
all of the goverors to keep copies of the materia medica and The Col
lection of One-Hundred and One Certifed Prescriptions on Hand. I 739 he
ordered the goverors of prefectures with more than 100,000 households
to admit twenty students to their schools, and those with less than
100,000 to admit twelve. He directed all of the students to tour their
districts and treat the ill. At some point in that period Illustrious August
also instituted positions for assistant professors of medicine in prefec
tures. He charged them with conducting examinations of the students
and explaining the procedures for touring and curing to them. The sys
tem apparently suffered greatly during and after te rebellion of An
226 Daily Life in Trditional China
Lushan. In 796 the throne ordered governors of prefectures to select the
best qualified physicians to fill vacant district medical professorships.
The emperor, however, took no action with regard to finding personnel
to fill the assistant professorships.
The contents of medical examinations during the first half of the Tang
are not clear. However, in 759 they included questions on the materia
medica, diagnosis by taking the pulse, treatment of diseases involving
fevers, and miscellaneous medical procedures for curing ailments. Ac
ceptable answers to seven out of ten questions was a passing mark.
Those who successfully answered the required number of queries en
tered the national medical system, and those who failed were sent home.
Emperor Illustrious August also strove to supply his subjects with the
proper remedies for their ailments. In 723 he disseminated throughout
the empire a five-chapter collection, Prescriptions for the Comprehensive
Relief of Suferers, which he purportedly compiled himself. In 746 he or
dered senior oficials in counties and prefectures to select the most im
portant formulas in the text and record them on large boards. After
completing the task, the officials were to erect the boards on main roads
of villages and urban wards so that the people had access to the pre
scriptions. The emperor sent out inspectors to ensure that the local man
darins carried out his command and made no errors. I 796 one of his
successors published another edition of the book, also in five chapters.
There was a set of etical precepts, set forth in a great medical com
pendium of the seventh century, that served as a guide for the conduct
of secular physicians in the Tang. First and foremost, a doctor must be
compassionate. He should dedicate himself to relieving the suffering of
all mankind by curing illnesses. The doctor should not reject a patient
on te grounds that he was noble or base, poor or rich, old or young,
Chinese or outlander, intelligent or simple. Second, a physician should
be single-minded in his determination to cure the sick. He should be on
call at all times of the night or day, in cold weather or hot, on good roads
or bad, when hungry, thirsty, or tired. Third, the doctor must maintain
proper decorum. He should talk little, criticize even less, never jest or
gossip, refrain from faunting his reputation, and never disparage the
skills of other doctors. Fourth, a doctor should not strive for material
rewards to the detriment of his humae service. Fifth, he should be
leared. He must master not only medical works but also the Confucian
classics, histories, and works of philosophers. Sixth, he should be precise
and accurate in his judgments.
Taoists also played an important role in medicine, especially preven
tive medicine. From 300 to 700 they made great contributions to com
piling and editng the materia medica, as well as to assembling
collections of formulas for prescriptions. They were the chief theoreti
cians and practitioners of massage/ aerobics, visualization, and dances
Sickness mtd Health 227
Finish
The Pace of Yu
such as the Pace of Yu, which were among the fields incorporated into
the curriculum of the Office of Supreme Medicine. Visualization was a
kind of meditation in which the adept conjured up the images of the
deities residing in hs viscera in order to fix them in place, seal the body
to prevent the escape of vital resources, and circulate qi. The Pace of Yu
was a dance tat could expel all demonic and noxious entities that
caused diseases within the body. Some of the Taoists' exorcistic tech
niques evolved from the arts of shamanism. However, their particular
forte was preventive medicine: breathing exercises, aerobics, dietetic reg
imens, and sexual therapies.
The Buddhist clergy does not appear to have played much of a role
as physicians during the Tang. They were, however, caregivers. Impelled
by their devotion to the rule of compassion, they operated Fields of Com
passion that not only offered treatment and medicines to the sick, but
also cared for the orhaned, aged, and destitute. They used the income
from monastic estates to fund those institutions. In the early years of the
eighth century, Empress Wu appointed secular officials to take charge of
the foundations. The men who served in those posts were unscrupulous.
228 Daily Life in Trditional China
They took advantage of their positions to make a profit for temselves.
Furthermore, under their leadership the Fields of Compassion became
havens for outlaws. Later, one of Emperor Illustrious August's officials
recommended that he abolish the institutions, then reconsidered and
suggested placing the Buddhist clergy in control of them again. The em
peror declined to accept either proposal, and apparently government
commissioners continued to manage tem for some time.
During te persecution of Buddhism in 845, the defrocking of the
clergy and the confiscation of monastic estates left the Fields of Com
passion without managers or funds to maintain their charitable work. A
prominent minister, fearing that te poor and sick would have no one
to appeal to for assistance, proposed that the state take them over. He
suggested that their names be changed to Wards for Nurturing the Sick,
and that offcials of the capitals and prefectures select men of reputable
conduct and absolute honesty to take charge of te foundations. He also
recommended that the state allocate the income from lands it had seized
from the church to the wards: 140 acres for those in the two capitals, 98
acres for large prefectures, and 70 acres for smaller districts. The emperor
approved the proposal, and the state assumed full control of the chari
table institutions.
There were also medical missionaries among the Buddhist monks. One
of them, who died in 654, took up residence in the Lepers' Ward at a
city on the Yangtze River. There he tended the sick, sucking the pus
from their abscesses and bathing them. He also preached to them. Com
passion and spreading the doctrine went hand in hand.
Occasionally, a faith healer appears in Tang literature. In the late sev
enth century a young man named Yang, who was more than nineteen
years of age, was working as a hired laborer at the Mount Wen Abbey.
He had a daydream in which a Taoist deity appeared to him and said,
"My sanctuary is in ruins. If you rebuild it for me, I will endow you
with the power to heal all illnesses." When Yang woke, he was delighted.
He tested his therapeutic powers, and found that there was no malady
that he could not cure. A village chief had a swelling on his back the
size of a fist. The laborer cut it wit a knife, and the chief recovered in
a few days. Yang's cures brought in 10,000 coppers a day and enabled
him to reconstruct the deity's hall at the abbey. When it was completed,
his therapeutic powers gradually faded.
Finally, there were quacks who deluded the masses with trickery. In
the seventh century Liu the Dragon's Son made a gold dragon head to
which he attached a sheep's intestine full of honeyed water. He tucked
the dragon head up his sleeve. Whenever Liu gathered a crowd, he
would pull out the dragon head and declare, "The holy dragon head
spews water that will cure all te illnesses of tose who drink it. " Then
he twisted the sheep's gut hidden beneath his clothes, and the honeyed
Sickess and Health 229
water fowed out of the dragon's mouth for the credulous to drink. After
he dispensed his miraculous elixir, some of his henchmen would falsely
claim that they had been cured. Subsequently, Liu committed sedition,
and fed when his crime care to light. After a long time, arresting offi
cers finally caught him, and executed him in the market along with more
than ten of his cohorts.
TREATMENT
To determine what sort of treatment he would use for an ailing patient,
a Chinese physician made a diagnosis on the basis of four methods. First
he conducted a visual inspection of the sufferer's physical appearance
face, tongue, lips, and teeth-to find signs of disease. Besides looking
for obvious manifestations of a pathological condition, such as ulcers,
tumors, rashes, swellings, and the like, he watched for abnormal skin
colorations tat indicated problems in an organ. For example, a bluish
tinge indicated a dysfunction in the liver and a red tinge, in the heart.
He checked facial expressions that reflected suffering. In the early sev
enth century a disease that caused swellings struck a preeminent official,
so the emperor called in a physician to make a diagnosis. After looking
the patient over, the doctor declared that he would die at noon eleven
days later. The minister expired precisely on schedule. A diagnosis was
sometimes a prognosis as well.
Second, the doctor carried out an auditory and olfactory examination.
He listened to the patient's breathing and voice. The physician was in
terested in detecting coughing, panting, or wheezing, which were symp
toms of lung diseases. A feeble voice or delirious speech indicated
debilitating illness or madness, respectively. He also took notice of foul
body odor, bad breath, and malodorous feces. Some amateurs went to
repulsive extremes with regard to the latter examination. In 692 Guo Ba,
a sycophantic subordinate of Censor Wei, who was abed with an. illness,
paid a visit to inquire after his superior's health. Distressed and alarmed
by Wei's appearance, Guo asked to see his stools. After tasting them,
Guo declared, "If your excrement had been sweet, ten you would prob
ably have had no chance for a cure. However, its favor is bitter, so you
will certainly recover."
Thrd, the doctor interrogated the patient about his symptoms. Aside
from questions about pains and other problems, there were inquiries
about dreams because they were supposed to refect the state of interal
organs. When yin was at its peak of power, one had terrifying dreams
of wading through water. Conversely, when yang was at its strongest,
the patient had visions of conflagrations.
Last, he took the patient's pulse. The Chinese system of palpation was
far more complex than that of the West. There were three points on each
230 Daily Life in Tmditional China
wrist that the physician felt simultaneously with three of his fingers to
make a diagnosis. From the throb-superficial or deep, fast or slow-at
each of the six points the doctor could determine the state of interal
organs, ascertain what the illness was, and judge whether the ailment
was life-threatening or not. Medical authorities considered pulse-taking
to be the most important tool for detecting illness. All others were sub
ordinate to it.
Taoist Wang was skilled at making diagnoses on the basis of pulse,
and was able to determine the time of a man's death as well as his length
of life. When called in to examine the son of a government minister who
had suddenly taken ill, he spent a long time taking the young man's
pulse. Afterward Wang declared that the patient was not suffering from
any affliction, boiled some powdered drugs, and gave them to te son,
who recovered. The father asked about the ailment, and the physician
replied that it was a case of food poisoning from eating a carp that had
no gills. The father did not believe tat, so he ordered his retainers to
eat a hash made from carp without gills. They all became sick.
Healers had many options open to them for treating ailments. With
the exception of Indian methods introduced by the Buddhists, all of them
were indigenous and had developed in China over many centuries.
According to the theory of acupuncture, the body contais
Acupuncture a network of invisible conduits, analogous to arteries or
the nervous system, through which qi fows continuously.
The system consists of twelve major channels that run under the surface
of the skin from the extremities to the head or chest, and a web of minor
branches connecting neighboring channels. Along the course of the chan
nels there are minute cavities or pores that serve as regulators of the qi's
current. Initially, the medical canon identified 365 points, but by the Tang
the number had grown to 670.
The major theory of acupuncture's salutary effects is that it keeps qi
circulating in the body's network of conduits. Ill health occurs when the
energy encounters impediments, and death results when it stops flowing
completely. Ailments arise when an agent, such as cold, enters the tracts
and obstructs or retards the current. That causes an imbalance in the
system, part of which then has a surplus of qi and part of which has a
deficit of it. A physician can restore the normal rate of fow and redress
imbalances in the network by inserting needles into the cavities or points
situated along the ducts. In the Tang tere were nine varieties of needles
that served different purposes:
1 . The chisel (1. 6 inches long): for soothing fevers in the head or body
2. The round (1. 6 inches): for dissipating qi in joints and tissue
3. The spearhead (3.5 inches): for expelling noxious qi
Sickness and Health 231
6 2
4
3
9 7
5
8
Acupuncture Needles
4. The lance point (1. 6 inches): for treating abscesses, fever, or bleeding
5. The probe (2.5 inches) : for ministering to large carbuncles exuding pus
6. The round and sharp (1.6 inches): for attending to carbunces or acute paral-
ysis
7. The hair (3. 6 incl1es): for alleviating cl1ills, aches, or paralysis i the arms
8. The long (7 inches): for contracting deep-seated qi or persistent paralysis
9. The large or fire (4 inches): for reducing excess qi in the joints.
Actually, the uses of the needles were far more numerous than indicated
here. When the physician applied his needle, he might heat it before
insertion, preferably over the flame of a candle so it would not leave a
black scar. No doubt that precaution also prevented infections.
Traditional medical authorities attributed a host of therapeutic benefits
to the use of acupuncture. Its advantages included the healing of diseases
and disabilities, relief of pain, alleviation of symptoms, and mitigation
of emotional disturbances. A list of maladies that it was supposed to be
effective in treating during the Tang would include te following (aster
isks mark those that modern Chinese physicians still apply their needles
to):
1. *Malaria, *epilepsy, *apoplexy (strokes), *h!berculosis, *paralysis, gonorrhea,
blindness, beriberi, *insanity
2. *Nearsightedness; glaucoma; *deafness; loss of smell, voice, taste, and *ap
petite
3. Pain in the *head, *teeth, *shoulder, *back, or *knee
4. *Dizziness, *nausea, *fever, *coughing, wheezing, *shortness of breath
232 Daily Life in Traditional China
5. *Jaundice, *diarrhea, *constipation, *difficult urination, thundering noises in
the bowels
6. Melancholy, depression, irritability, morbid grief, fear, uncontrollable laugh-
ter, rage
7. *Inability to raise arms, spasms, *muscle cramps
8. *Hemorrhoids, *goiters, tumors, carbuncles, swellings, hernias
9. *Impotence, infertility in women
10. *Noctural emissions, bed-wetting, runny noses, spitting blood, *vomiting
1 1 . Intoxication, insomnia, *indigestion
12. Yawning, *belching, fatulence, bad breath, violent death, many dreams
This list represents a small fraction of the ailments that Tang physicians
claimed they could cure with their needles. Acupuncture was a sovereign
treatment, perhaps second only to drugs as the most popular remedy in
ancient China.
Some medical works in premoder times made exaggerated claims
about acupuncture's efficacy. When Taizong's empress reached term, she
was unable to give birth for several days. The emperor summoned a
physician, who took her pulse and declared, "The infant has seized his
mother's heart with his hand, and therefore she cannot give birth. " When
Taizong asked what should be done, the doctor said that if he saved the
child, the mother would not survive. If he saved the mother, the child
would die. The empress chose to save her unborn infant because he
would perpetuate the glory of the dynasty. So the physician inserted his
needle into her chest until it penetrated her heart and reached the child's
hand. The procedure killed the empress, and her son, who became Em
peror Gaozong, was born with a scar on his left hand. The story is a
complete fabrication, for Gaozong was bor in 628, and his mother
passed away in 638.
Nevertheless, the story illustrates the point that deep penetraton of
the body with a needle could have disastrous consequences. The canons
of the profession warned that a patient would die within a day if the
needle penetrated the heart, within a day and a half if it penetrated the
bladder, three days if the lungs or kidneys, five days if the liver, and
fifteen days if the spleen. He would also expire if the physician punc
tured a major blood vessel in the ankle or groin. Less serious disabilities
would occur when the needle penetrated less vital points. Piercing the
kneecap improperly, so that fuid flowed from it, caused lameness. If a
needle penetrated too far under the tongue and broke blood vessels, the
patient would lose his voice. If it reached the bone marrow in the ver
tebrae of the spine, he would become a hm1chback.
Sometimes doctors inserted acupuncture needles to draw blood from
a patient. In late 683 Emperor Gaozong was gravely ill, perhaps from a
Sickness a11d Health
The points needled to draw blood from
Emperor Gaozong's head
Acupuncture Points and Tracts
233
stroke. He was suffering from a heaviness in the head and could not see.
He summoned his attending physician, Chin, to make a diagnosis. After
conducting his examination, Chin said he could cure the malady if the
monarch granted him permission to needle his head. That angered Er
press Wu, who was sitting behind a curtain in the hall. She iterrupted,
"You should be beheaded for seeking to draw blood fom the sovereign's
head by needling! " The physician kowtowed and begged for his life.
Gaozong, however, agreed to undergo the procedure. Chin pierced the
emperor at two acupuncture points on the back of his head. Afterward
Gaozong said, "My eyes seem to have cleared." The empress declared,
"This a gift from Heaven. " Then she bestowed 100 lengths of polychrome
silk on the physician. Empress Wu had, however, just cause for concem
about the dangers of the procedure. Instantaneous death would have
resulted if Chin had pushed his needle too far into the Brain's Door, a
point at the base of te skull. The physician could have penetrated the
brain when he needled that spot.
Moxabustion was a therapy that called for buming
cones of dry, powdered rugwort-a shrub with strong- Moxabustion
smelling leaves-on acupuncture points. The area
scorched could not exceed three-tenths of an inch. When it was used to
relieve pain, the physician repeated the process until the discomfort
ceased. That meant using as many as 50, 100, or more cones. Moxabus
tion was often employed after acupuncture to enhance its effects. It was
234 Daily Life in Traditional China
Guiding and Stretching Exercises
thought to facilitate the flow of qi throughout the body. However, it also
had its particular therapeutic benefits. Doctors bured the cones on boils
and carbuncles to burst them so that their pus would fow out. Whenever
a snake bit a person, mugwort was burned on the wound. A single burn
ing would cure the victim immediately if he acted quickly. If he did not,
he would die at once.
The cauterization left scars that usually disappeared in a short time.
When they did not, one could apply the ashes from burned cow dung
to remove them. As with acupuncture, there were certain dangers to
employing the procedure. I the physician bured the cones on a point
along the hairline of the head, he might cause blindness. If he placed
them improperly behind the kneecap, the patient might suffer loss of
mobility at all joints of his limbs. If he positioned them at an acupuncture
point located on the foot below the ankle, loss of voice and speech could
result.
There were at least two forms of massage in the Tang,
Massage/Exercise one Indian and the other native. The latter was a Tao-
ist technique and named after its sage, Lao Tzu. Mas
sage had the same effects as exercise, tat is, it resolved congestion and
improved the circulation of qi within the body. It differed from exercise
in that a therapist performed it on a patient. The leading authorities on
exercise were the Taoists, who practiced "guiding and stretching. " It was
a series of movements involving the stretching of limbs that was per
formed in a closed room. The person exercising stood, sat, or reclined.
Of the three, sitting (on a mat or, better yet, on a couch) was the most
common. As an element of regimes for "nourishing life," it was inti
mately linked to breathing exercises. When practiced daily, it prevented
Sickness and Health 235
illness and prolonged life. As a therapy it was a temporary cure for
deafness, muscle tension, rheumatism, dizziness, paralysis, epileptic sei
zures, digestive problems, and back pain.
Unquestionably the most prevalent remedy for treating
illnesses in traditional times was drugs and prescriptions. Drugs and
In 657 the Tang court published the first official materia
Prescriptions
medica in Chinese history. When the emperor commis-
sioned the project, he ordered local officials to have pictures of curative
substances in their districts drawn and sent to the capital. The drawings
became illustrations for the compilation. The new materia medica con
tained descriptions of 833 substances, of which, however, 175 had no
known medicinal value. There were eight sections to the text:
1. Stones, mierals, and metals, as well as the dirt from the top of an easter
wall and the dust on house beams (83 items)
2. Plants, as well as the soles of old hemp slippers and the ash of straps for
wooden clogs (256 items)
3. Trees and shrubs, including bamboo (100 items)
4. Animals and birds, including human beings (56 items).
5. Reptiles, insects, and fsh (7 items)
6. Fruits and nuts, as well as honey and cane sugar (25 items)
7. Vegetables (36 items)
8. Cereals, seeds, and beans, as well as malt sugar, ale, vinegar, and sauces (28
items).
Each class was subdivided into three grades: the superior, which nour
ished (prolonged) life; the mediocre, which remedied depletions; and the
inferior, which cured diseases. For each entry the compilers characterized
the substance's taste as sweet, sour, bitter, salty, or pungent; specified
whether its efect was to heat or to cool; and rated its toxicity. Then they
described its therapeutic benefits and indicated the locations where it
could be found. To give some idea of traditional concepts in the Tang
materia medica, an account of some substances is provided below.
Stones, minerals, and metals. Mica cleared the eyes, stopped dysen
tery, lightened the body, and prolonged life. Coral removed the film
from eyes. Powdered coral blown into the nostrils stopped nosebleeds.
Bronze from a crossbow trigger enabled a woman who was having trou
ble giving birth to deliver, and dislodged menstrual discharge tat
would not fow.
A physician ordered a man who had fallen off his horse and broken
his leg to mix copper dust with ale and drink the liquor. The victim took
the potion, his leg healed, and he was as good as new. Some ten years
later he died. When hs family exhumed his remains for reburial, they
236 Daily Life in Traditional China
examined the fracture on his shinbone, and discovered that the copper
filings had knitted the broken bones together.
Plants. Seaweed was the sovereign treatment for goiter because it con
tained high levels of iodine. Ginseng cured cold in the stomach and
bowels, as well as throbbing pain in the heart and belly. Apothecaries
recommended Chinese rhubarb for fevers, and blood congestion in the
vagina and womb. Aconite, one of the most poisonous plants in the
Chinese materia medica, was used to abort pregnancies. Crossbow
strings were effective in treating difficult chldbith: Wrap them around
the woman's waist, heat the trigger of the crossbow until red-hot, place
it in a cup of ale, and have the woman drink the brew. Drinking the
liquid in which the soles of old hemp slippers had been boiled counter
acted poisons acquired from eating beef and horse meat. It also took care
of flatulence.
Trees and shrubs. Medieval Chinese esteemed the pine over all other
trees because it was evergreen, and therefore represented long life. Leg
end had it tat a man who ate only pine nuts could live to be 200 or 300
years old. It was, however, the resin that physicians found useful for
treating maladies. They plastered it onto sores exuding bloody pus and
packed dental cavities with it to kill the bacteria eating the teeth. The
bark of the Chinese cinnamon tree (cassia) yielded an oil that was ben
eficial to the liver and lungs. It was also effective for treating headaches,
coughs and nasal congestion. It could also abort fetuses. Thunder balls
were a parasitic growth on trees, small nodules less than an ounce in
weight. They were beneficial to men but not to women. Made into an
ointment, tey could cure all kinds of children's ailments.
Animals and birds. Human milk made one fat and fair. A man who
subsisted on it lived for more than 100 years, and was as fat and fair as
a gourd. Rhinoceros horns were an antidote for poisons and relieved
headaches. Ingesting the velvet from the hors of the sika deer grew
teeth and eased the pain of arthritis. One authority recommended eating
the flesh and blood of the gibbon to cure hemorrhoids, and suggested
that sitting for a long time on its hide offered relief to sufferers of that
affiction.
Taken iternally, bat brains cured forgetfulness. The blood and bile of
the bat dripped into the eyes kept one awake and enabled one to see in
the dark. Eating dried, pure white bats that fed on stalactites made a
person fat and robust, and prolonged his life for 1,000 years.
Reptiles, insects, and fsh. Southerners administered dried and roasted
sea horses to women who were having difficulty in childbirth. Physicians
administered sharkskin to patients for heart problems and for over
coming infections. The venom from toads was mixed with ci abar and
musk, formed into pills, and given to infants for malnutrition. Firefies
cured night blindess. A roasted and pulverized dung beetle applied to
Sickness and Health 237
the skin with vinegar was effective against eczema that resulted from
consuming too much honey.
Lu contracted leprosy. The base of his nose was the only part of his
body that did not rot. As the fifth day of the fifth moon approached, the
medical officer of the prefecture in which he was living wanted to give
him the gallbladder of a python. Some people said the fesh of the snake
could cure leprosy. The physician fed him a slice of python meat. Within
three to five days, Lu began to show signs of gradual improvement, and
100 days later he recovered completely from the illness. There was also
a man in Shangzhou who contracted leprosy. His kinsmen built a
thatched hut for him in the mountains because his appearance nauseated
them. A black snake fell into his vat of ale. Unaware of the fact, the
afficted man drank the brew, and gradually recovered. Only when the
level of the ale dropped to the bottom of the barrel did he notice the
snake's skeleton, and understand the reason for his cure.
Fruits and nuts. Sour pomegranates cured red and white dysentery.
Eating cherries gave one a fine complexion. Pistachios dispelled cold qi
and made the body fat and robust. Betel nuts slew the Three Corpses.
Indian pepper warmed the innards and eliminated phlegm. A compound
of walnut and lead applied to the head cured baldness. One expert rec
ommended almonds for curing beriberi, a disease caused by vitamin B
deficiency.
Vegetables. Winter melons were a tonic that prevented hunger, pro
longed life, and made the body light. Leeks stopped vomiting. Garlic
had a particular power over the kidneys, spleen, and stomach. It was
effective in eliminating rheumatism. It could not, however, be eaten too
often because it could injure the health.
Cereals. Sesame filled depletion, improved vision and hearing,
strengthened bones, and prevented aging if consumed for a long time.
Barley slaked thirst (cured diabetes?) and dissipated heat. Vinegar dis
solved carbuncles and swellings.
In traditional China there were few hard distinctions between what
was food and what were drugs. Mercury, for example, was an ingredient
in some dishes for the table.
Most of the substances in the materia medica were rarely used alone.
An apothecary or physician mixed a number of them together according
to formulas provided in readily available manuals. They also combined
them with ale for ingestion. Altough ale was classified as a toxin, it was
thought to activate medicines.
One Tang physician stumbled upon a unique means of determining
the proper medicine for curing one of his patient's ailments. There was
a scholar in Luoyang who contracted "echo illness. " Whenever he spoke,
his words reverberated in his throat. He consulted a skilled doctor, who
238 Daily Life in Traditional China
ruminated on the problem overnight before he hit upon a solution. He
gave the man a copy of the materia medica and ordered him to read it
aloud. The scholar's voice echoed in his throat until he reached a passage
that frightened him. At that point his speech ceased to echo. The phy
sician then transcribed the prescription in the passage. He selected the
herbs it called for and mixed them to make a pill. Immediately after
ingesting it, the man was cured.
A medical text of the Tang period supplied a host of advice
First Aid on how to treat injuries, ailments, and other health problems.
The following is a short list of examples.
For those who commit suicide by hanging, but who retain signs of life: pulverize
soapbeans, place the powder on an onion leaf, and blow it into the nostrils of
the victim. Or take the dust lying on a beam, insert i into four bamboo tubes,
and have four men blow it into the ears and nostrils of the victim simultaeously.
For those who have drowned: hook their shins over the shoulders of a stading
man so that the two are back to back, and pour fine ale in the victim's nostrils.
Or stuff soapbeans wrapped in a cloth into the victim's rectum. The objective of
the treatments for hanging and drownig was to restore consciousness to the
victim.
For snake bites: wash the wound with boiling water or, if that is not available,
human urine.
For tiger bites: wash the wound liberally with molten iron. That was a method
of cauterizing the ptmcture to stop bleeding and kill infections.
For hornet stings: make a plaster of a roasted wasp nest and smear it on the
sores.
For bites from a rabid dog: roast a dried snake, remove its head, pound the
body into a powder, ad ingest.
To stach the flow of blood from a wotmd inflicted by a metal weapon: sift
together the pollen from the cattail and Chinese angelica, mix with ale, and in
gest. Or plaster with spiderwebs, or apply human semen, or drink ten pints of
urine.
To extract an arrowhead that wil not come out: collect a woman's menstrual
cloth, burn it to ash, and take the ash with ale.
For poison arrows: extract the water from Chinese foxglove, form the residue
into pills, and take them for 100 days. The arrowhead will then push itself out.
For needles broken off during acupuncture treatments: make a powder by
scraping elephant ivory, mix it with water, and smear it on the spot where the
needle was inserted. The end will then come out by itself.
Other maladies for which the compendium offered treatments included
demonic attacks (heart attacks and the like); heat prostration; stings from
scorpions, bombardier beetles, and spiders; bruises resulting from fist
fights; injuries from falls of horses and carriages; broken bones; concus
sions; burns; scalds; and much more.
Sickness m1d Health 239
Surgery was not a common treatment in traditional China.
Autopsies also were rare, because it was a fundamental tenet Surgery
of ancestor worship that the body should retur to the grave
in the original, unmutilated state that parents had given it at birth. How
ever, necropsies on criminals were sometimes permissible, on the
grounds that their nefarious acts had disqualified them from humane
and civilized consideration. The first scientific autopsy took place in the
year 16. The emperor dispatched his chief physician, a skilled butcher,
to conduct it on a rebel that had been captured and, presumably, exe
cuted. The imperial decree ordered the doctor to dissect the whole body,
remove its organs to weigh and measure them, and to trace the course
of its veins by inserting bamboo probes in them. The emperor believed
that the autopsy would help physicians cure diseases. It is not clear
whether the acquired knowledge was passed down to later ages, but
Tang Taoists and physicians certainly had a fair, if elementary, under
standing of human anatomy, especially te shapes, positions and sizes
of the viscera in the chest and abdominal cavities.
Tang physicians did perform some fairly simple surgeries involving
wounds. In 693 or shortly thereafter someone falsely accused Empress
Wu's second son (Emperor Ruizong), whom she had deposed, of secretly
plotting against her. The empress ordered the chief of her dreaded se
curity service to conduct a thorough investigation of the prince's asso
ciates. The chief, who had eared a notorious reputation for his cruelty,
interrogated the suspects. Unable to endure the torment of torture, they
readily confessed, all save one. A minor official named A Jinzang re
fused to betray his friend. When he appeared before the grand inquisitor,
he yelled, "Since Your Lordship will not take my word for it, please cut
out my heart as proof that the prince is not rebellious. " He then drew a
dagger from his belt, thrust it into his stomach and ripped open his belly.
His entrails fell out, his fowing blood blanketed the ground, and he
fainted. When the empress learned of this dramatic tur of events, she
sent a litter to fetch the dying man and dispatched a physician to attend
to his wound. The doctor restored the viscera to the abdominal cavity
of the man, sutured the laceration with white mulberry bark thread, and
applied a medicinal plaster that enabled An to recover within a fortnight.
Despite the terrible trauma An survived for decades after the incident,
and subsequently died of old age.
A medical compendium of tl1e Tang recommended the following pro
cedure for cases in which horses bit off men's testicles, undoubtedly a
very rare occurrence: Push the testicles back inside the body and suture
them with fine mulberry bark thread. Cut open a black chicken, remove
its liver, mince it finely, and smear the paste on the wound. Apparently,
there were some instances of reattaching body parts in ancient Chinese
history.
240 Daily Life in Tmdit ional China
A somewhat more complicated operation involved a war wound. A
rebel commander of the early seventh century had an arrowhead em
bedded in his jaw. He summoned a physician to extract it, but the doctor
told him that the arrowhead had penetrated so deep it could not be
removed. Enraged, the commander beheaded the man and called for
another doctor. The second said that he feared it would be very paiful
to pull the arrowhead out. The commander decapitated him as well, and
summoned yet another physician, who informed him that he could ac
complish the task. Te doctor drilled into the bone and drove a wedge
in the hole. The wedge opened a crack in the j aw more than an inch
long, so the physician was finally able to extract the arrowhead. In grat
itude the rebel rewarded the doctor with performances of his female
singers and feasts of rare fare.
A Tang doctor wrote the oldest Chinese treatise on treating fractures
in 841. In it he described how to wash the wound, apply traction, and
bind the limb with splints. In cases where bones protruded from the
flesh, he advocated surgery to reset the bones. He was not the only phy
sician performing such operations. When a soldier came to a doctor with
a broken shinbone, he gave the man some medicinal ale to anesthetize
him, cut open his flesh, and removed a bone fragment the size of two
fingers. Afterward the doctor sealed the wound with a plaster. The sol
dier was as good as new i several days. Two years later, however, his
shin began to ache, so he retured to the physician and asked him about
it. The doctor replied tat the bone fragment he had previously removed
was cold and causing the pain. They foud the splinter undereath a
couch, washed it in hot water, and wrapped it in refuse silk. Thereafter
the pain in the soldier's shin ceased.
There were several other surgical procedures performed in the Tang.
At least one doctor repaired harelips surgically. Another devised a
means of curing obstructed urination. He formed a catheter from the
tubular leaf of a scallion, inserted it into the urethra, and blew into it.
His breath iflated the urethra, permitting the urine to flow out. Physi
cians in the Tang also performed cataract surgery, a technique imported
from India. A Taoist leared it from a wester foreigner. The operation
involved the use of a metal "sickle," apparently a knife of some sort, to
remove a green screen from the eye that was obstructing the vision. The
source of that information also mentions the use of needles, instruments
more familiar to Chinese doctors.
Taoists and Buddhists performed exorcisms during te Tang,
Exorcism but shamans were the oldest experts in its arts. A demon had
possessed a village girl and caused her to go mad. During her
fits she occasionally inficted injuries to her body by leaping into fires
and throwing herself into rivers. At the same time her belly gradually
grew larger, as if she were pregnant. Her parents, who grieved for her,
Sickness a11d Health 241
sent for a shaman who claimed that she possessed the power to drive
out evil affictions. After she arrived, she erected an altar in the girl's
room and laid the girl beneath it. Then the shaman dug a large fire pit
next to the altar and over te fire heated an iron cauldron until it was
red-hot. Next she danced to te rhythm of a drum that she beat, and
called for her spirit. In an instant he descended into her. She poured a
libation for him and intoned an incantation, "Quickly summon the de
mon forth. " When the shaman fiished speaking, she stepped into the
fire pit and sat. The expression on her face did not change. There were
no signs of pain or discomfort. Some time later she adjusted her robes
and rose. She took the red-hot cauldron, placed it on her head and
danced to the beat of her drum. When she finished her song, the shaman
removed the cauldron and ordered the afficted girl to bind herself. The
girl placed her hands behind her as if they were tied. The shaman then
ordered the fiend to confess, but at first the girl wept without speaking.
That enraged the shaman. She seized her dagger and struck te afflicted
gil. The blade passed through her, but her body remained the same as
before. The attack, however, unloosened her tongue. She declared, "I
submit. I am an old otter. I found the girl delightful when she came to
the Huai River, my home, to wash clothes. Now unfortunately I have
encountered you, sage priest. 1 beg you to drive me from here, but it
pains me that my children in the maid's womb will not be raised. Is
there no hope that you will refrain from slaying them and will return
them to me if they are born?" When she finished speaking, the girl cried
and, although she was illiterate, she seized a writing brush and wrote
an elegant farewell verse to the otter. Afterward she fell asleep. When
she awoke the next day, she was free of the demon. She said that when
she went to wash clothes at the river, she met a handsome young man
who seduced her and slept wit her. Ten days after awaking, the maid
gave birth to three otters. I accordance with the demon's wishes, some
one took the pups and released them in a lake, where a giant otter took
them on its back and sank into the waters.
Although the story is far-fetched, it clearly depicts the essential ele
ments of haditional Chinese shamanism: spirit possession, ecstatic
dances, trial by fire, incantations, and threatening gestures with a sword.
1 1
life C1clc
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE
Gaozu, the founder of the Tang, was an extraordinary man in more ways
than one. He had a purple birthmark shaped like a dragon, a sure sign
of a future emperor, below his left armpit. He was also a superb archer
and used his skills to win his wife. The woman's father was so impressed
with her that he decided he could not marry her to just anyone. She
should have a worthy man for a husband. So he had two peacocks
painted on the leaves of his gate and gave suitors two chances to shoot
them. He and his wife secretly agreed beforehand that they would be
troth the daughter only to the archer who could place his missiles in the
eyes of the birds. Scores of men tried, but failed to hit the mark. Gaozu
was the last to arrive. He shot both of his arrows into the peacocks' eyes.
Love matches were nearly as rare as archery contests for betrothals.
Marriages were almost always arranged. Two men, usually close friends,
might reach an agreement to engage their children when they were in
fants. Sometimes the motive of a father in contracting a marriage was
less than honorable. A eminent minister in the seventh century be
trothed a younger daughter to the son of a souther half-breed-a rich
chieftain who put down a rebellion of aborigines living along the coast
west of Canton in 631-because he would receive a hefty bride-price
from the man. In the eyes of high society the union was scandalous.
When the minister died in 672, an oficial suggested that the throne con
fer "Erred" as his posthumous title on him for the indiscretion.
24 Daily Life in Traditional China
Marriages were very important in China even for the dead. Marshal
Wei was responsible for arresting a thief. The thief's uncle, a Buddhist
monk, harbored him, but the marshal pardoned him for having com
mitted the crime of concealing a criminal. Wei's superior, goveror of
the prefecture, reprimanded him for being too lenient and conducted his
own interrogation of the monk, who confessed. Te governor then had
the priest executed. The marshal took ill and died. After they coffined
his corpse, his family posthumously married him to his uncle's daughter.
Although the account of this marriage comes from a ghost story, it was
not at all uncommon for kinsmen to arrange unions between the soul of
a dead loved one and that of an outsider. Even the parents of children
who died young had postumous marriages performed for them.
In almost all cases, families relied on outsiders to arrange marriages.
The expert at providing such services was a matchmaker, who was al
ways a woman. As such she held an advantage over a man because she
had access to the women's apartments in homes. The matchmaker could
enter the inner quarters, converse with the mother and examine the pro
spective bride. Afterward she would convey the information she gleaned
there to the intended groom's father. There was also a more compelling
reason for employing matchmakers. The Tag code of laws required it.
The state did not issue marriage licenses or conduct weddings. Therefore,
there was no occasion for it to inquire about the fitess of the union. But
it did have an interest in preventing fraud and violations of its laws.
Fraud might involve misrepresenting the age of the prospective bride or
groom. Legally the marriageable age for males was fourteen, and for
females, twelve. Furthermore, a man could not marry a woman who was
half his age or younger. The deceit might be a false claim that one of the
pair was a adopted child or the child of a concubie instead of the
wife's child. Finally, one of the families might conceal their child's dis
ability. As defined in Tang statutes, the impaired included the blind (in
one or both eyes), te deaf, the dumb, dwarfs, hunchbacks, the insane,
and the dismembered (loss of one or two limbs). A matchmaker could
prevent such duplicity because she was able to examine the pair physi
cally and question the family about their status.
The state also undertook to enforce long-standing customs that forbid
incest. The definition of incest in traditional China was extremely broad.
According to the law, marriages between fourth cousins on the father's
side were punishable by 100 blows of the thick rod for both husband
and wife; between third cousins, by penal servitude of one year, and
between first cousins, by exile to a district 833 miles away. The law also
prohibited marriages between men and women who shared the same
surname, a crime punishable by two years of penal servitude. The prin
ciple was that they might be distatly and unknowingly related. The
government annulled all such unions.
L!fe Cycle 245
Once the matchmaker completed the arrangements, the "marriage
master" (normally the father, grandfather, uncle, or older brother of the
prospective groom) drew up a contract and sent it to the woman's fam
ily. Her senior male relative signed and returned it. If thereafter the
woman's family broke the agreement, her marriage master was liable for
a punishment of sixty blows with the thick rod. If the man's family can
celed it, its marriage master suffered no punishment, but he could not
keep betrothal gifts. The prospective groom's family sent betrothal gifts,
tokens of good faith, to the prospective bride's hore when they received
the signed contract or shortly thereafter. In Tang times they included
symbolic articles: glue and lacquer for cementing the relationship, a pair
of stones for establishing a firm base, silk floss for ensuring meekness,
and two mats for assuring that the will would submit. Acceptance of the
presents was a legally binding pledge of engagement even when there
was no contract established between the two parties.
Marriage was an agreement between families rather than individuals,
whom marriage masters apparently did not consult before hand. Gen
erally speaking, children went along with the wishes of their marriage
masters. Occasionally, however, they went to extreme lengths to oppose
their elders' agreements. I one case a young man who wanted to take
vows as a Buddhist monk and take up a life of celibacy cut off his penis.
Naturally that put an end to his parents' plans. One official did not
marry because he feared that bringing a woman from aother family
into his would alienate his two younger brothers, to whom he was
deeply devoted. His parents no doubt were dead, for he was the head
of the household. Therefore, they were unable to interfere in his life.
Sometimes daughters could also defy the wishes of their elders. One
young woman whose father died when she was seven years old, cut off
her hair and swore an oath to remain single when she reached wom
anhood and her mother wanted to marry her. She got away with her
disobedience because she devoted herself to looking after her mother for
the rest of her life.
The male's marriage master selected an auspicious day for the wed
ding. On the eve of the wedding, the parents of the bride visited the
home of the groom and arranged the furnishings of the bridal chamber:
bed, bed curtains, quilts, and the like. For that reason they were called
the bedfather and bedmother. The following day the groom arrived at
the bride's home to escort her to his house, usually with members of his
family or friends. When such processions involved females of the im
perial family, they were quite elaborate. I 608, when Princess Anle mar
ried for the second time, Emperor Zhongzong granted her the unusual
indulgence of allowing her to use the empress's cortege. The train in
cluded more than 700 officials, attendants, guards (some bearing swords,
bows, and crossbows), and others. That figure did not include palace
246 Daily Life in Traditional China
women or the ffe and drum corps that provided march music for the
procession. Te carriage bearing the princess was blue with gold ora
ments, and was drawn by a team of four steeds. Five additional coaches,
red and yellow with gold fittings, also rolled down the streets, pulled
by bay horses with black manes and by bullock<. Banners, pennants, .
streamers, and canopies futtered in the breeze as the cortege paraded
through the avenues of Changan. The wedding of Princess Taiping in
681 took place at night, so imperial minions installed torches along the
procession's route. The heat of the fames killed many of the trees along
the boulevards.
Normally a family of means sent the bride to the groom's home in a
carriage. She arrived there veiled and immediately became a member of
his family although she retained her surame. The groom did not see
her face until the evening of the wedding day. To celebrate the occasion,
his father threw a banquet that only men attended. Sometimes he rented
a mansion for the occasion, perhaps because his dwelling was in another
city. For some unknown reason Emperor Gaozong convened the feast
for Princess Taiping's wedding in the compound of a county adminis
tration at Changan, even though he had held other banquets in palaces.
Women, but not men, were supposed to remain virgins until their
wedding nights. The reason was quite simple. The husbands wanted to
be absolutely certain that their first male child and heir was theirs. Some
Chinese took curious measures to ensure that their daughters did not
have premarital sex. They fed lizards ten pounds of cinnabar over a
period of time and pulverized the reptiles when they had eaten it all.
Then they smeared the bloody dye on their girl's legs. It would remain
on the body until the daughters had intercourse.
Tang society was monogamous. A man could have only one wife. The
punishment for taking a second was one year of penal servitude and
annulment of the marriage. That did not mean that he could not install
other women in his household. In fact it was customary for patricians to
do so. Since affection was rarely a basis for matrimony and fidelity to a
wife was not one of their virtues, they took concubines, sometimes a
large number of them. Under Tang law the distinction between a wife
and a concubine was that the latter could be bought and sold. Legally,
betrotal presents were pledges that sealed a marriage contract, not a
bride-price.
The Tang law code declared that the union of husband and wife was
unalterable throughout teir lives, and that they must dwell together
even in the grave. That was the ideal marital state, but the law also
recognized that divorce was acceptable and even desirable under certain
circumstances. It sanctioned separations on the grounds of mutual in
compatibility. In all other cases, however, divorce was a male prerogative
only. A woman who left her husband without his consent was subject
Li Cycle 247
to two years of penal servitude if apprehended. The law recognized
seven legitimate grounds for such separations. Failure to bear children
was the first. That rule applied specifcally to sons since they carried on
the family line and were in charge of maintaining sacrifices to ancestors.
Daughters did not count because tey left the family upon marriage. A
man could divorce a wife for barrenness only when she reached the age
of forty-nine an
d
had failed to produce a son. However, he need not
divorce her, since he could legally make the eldest son bor to one of
his concubines his heir. If he had no male offspring, he could adopt a
son, in which case te boy or man had to be related to him by blood.
The second ground was adultery. A extramarital affair was unac
ceptable because the woman might bear a child that was not of the hus
band's bloodline. In some instances the state intervened to rectify the
problem. In the late eighth century te wife of a villager pretended that
she had come down with tuberculosis. She told her husband that a phy
sician had recommended eating dog meat as a cure. Since they had no
dogs, she instructed him to kill a neighbor's dog. He complied. After
eating some of the flesh, she told the hound's owner to inform the court
that her husband had slaughtered the animal. When the husband ap
peared before the magistrate, he recounted what his wife had said. The
judge believed him, conducted a thorough investigation, and discovered
that the wife wanted to get rid of her husband because she was having
an affair with another man. The punishment for adultery was two years
of penal servitude for both te man and the woman.
In ancient China there was a belief that some women were naturally
inclined to adultery, a trait that was written on their faces. The concubine
of one patrician was a beauty. Once she went to consult a face reader
for a prediction about her longevity and destiny. He told her, "Madam,
your eyes are long, and tey seductively leer at men. According to the
manuals, 'pig gaze' is the sign of a lewd nature. Your irises are sur
rounded by white, so five men will spend the night in your quarters.
Madam, debauchery will destroy you. You should be prudent in your
conduct." The lady laughed and departed. As predicted, she later had
several affairs for which she was enslaved in the Flank Court as punish
ment.
Some women were paragons of fidelity. When a man named Fang took
ill and was on the brink of dying, he told his wife, who was still young,
to marry after he passed away. She crawled behind his bed curtains and
plucked out one of her eyes, to show him that she could love no one but
him.
The third j ustification for divorce was a wife's refusal to serve her in
laws. Obedience to the will of a husband's parents or grandparents was
as important as, if not more important than, obedience to him. It was
248 Daily Life in Traditional China
dificult for a man who detested his wife to divorce her when his parents
were fond of her.
The fourth ground was talkativeness. According to a Tang ballad, a
young, newly married woman wandered alone in the market, insulting
her husband and abusing her in-laws, so he divorced her with her con
sent. Women were outsiders who might also spread discord in the family
by pressing the interests of their husbands against those of his brothers.
The fifth ground was jealousy. It was considered a cause of dishar
mony. Because men took concubines, contention between those women
and his wife could easily develop as they competed for his affection and
favor. In the early seventh century Emperor Taizong bestowed two pal
ace women of outstanding beauty on one of his ministers, Ren. Madam
Liu, Ren's wife, was a j ealous woman and burned the hair off the
women's heads. The emperor sent a eunuch to present her with a gold
pitcher of ale and tell her, "If you drink this, you will die immediately.
Your husband is an oficial of the third rank, so it is fitting that he should
have concubines. If henceforth you cease being jealous, don't drink this.
If you do not change your ways, drink it." Liu opted for the latter course
and drained the pitcher. Although she lost consciousness, she survived
because the ale contained no poison. Taizong then installed the palace
women in a separate dwelling for Ren.
The sixth ground was theft, particularly of her in-laws' property. The
last was contracting an incurable disease. A woman with such an ailment
was not permitted to prepare food for offerings to the dead, and
therefore could not carry out her duty with regard to the rites performed
for her husband's ancestors.
Even if a husband had legitimate grounds for divorce, there were three
instances when he could not renounce his wife: she had observed the
twenty-seven-month mourning period for his parents; she had married
into the family when its status was humble or poor, and it subsequently
acquired higher status or wealth; and she had no family of her own to
which she could retur. A man who divorced his wife under those cir
cumstances was subject to a beating of 100 blows with the thick rod and
was compelled to take her back.
CHILDBIRTH AND CHILD REARING
The function of marriage was to produce male children who would
perpetuate the husband's line. Procreation, terefore, was the paramount
duty of husband and wife. To ensure that they would conceive a child,
a Tang medical text recommended that they each drink a cup of rain
water before retiring to the bedchamber. Men in traditional China seem
to have had a great deal of anxiety about their potency, and that led
herbalists to suggest various remedies to treat the problem. One claimed
L{fe Cycle 249
that pistachio nuts were a marvelous treatment for impotence. He rec
ommended extracting the juice by frying, then bathing the genitals in it.
The repute of that cure was so great that by the eighth century, men
often applied it before bedtime. Whether because of such balms or not,
some men in the Tang were amazingly prolific. One Tang prince fathered
fifty-five children.
A bride may have received instructions on sex from her mother before
her wedding night, but sometimes the groom might also be of service in
that regard. There was a sex manual, titled Canon of the Plain Maid, that
couples read together before retiring to the bedchamber. It had both
illustrations showing various positions for performing sex and written
directions. The text also contained taboos about copulating during cer
tain times. Children conceived during the day would be prone to vom
iting; at midnight, would be mute, deaf or dumb; during a thunderstorm,
would be insane; after overeating or intoxication, would suffer from u
cers and hemorrhoids; during a full moon, would become bandits; and
so forth.
Conception occurred when the yang qi (sperm) of the man united with
the yin qi (menstrual fuid) of the woman. The coalescing of the two
energies generated a third, the original qi, that would create the fetus.
The Chinese believed that conception took place ten months before birth,
and measured age from that time. They rounded off the number so an
infant was one year old when delivered. Traditional medical men be
lieved that the behavior of the mother during pregnancy affected the
health and character of the newbor. They cautioned women to avoid
eating certain meats: mountain goat caused the child to be sickly; rabbit,
to have a harelip; chicken eggs or dried carp, to suffer from suppurating
sores or ulcers; chicken with sticky rice, to be afflicted with tapeworms;
turtle, to have a short neck; and so forth. If a mother wanted offspring
that would be loyal, humane, righteous, intelligent, and free of disease,
she should burn fine incense, recite poetry, dwell in a quiet place, sit
properly, and strum the zither during her pregnancy. That sort of con
duct was called "fetal teaching" because it was thought to affect the
moral development of the child. The woman went into seclusion the
mont before the birth and emerged one month after. She did not have
any contact with her husband in that period.
Multiple births were acceptable as long as they were twins. Triplets
were abnormal, and quadruplets a bad omen reflecting an over
abundance of yin or feminine energy in the cosmos. Occasionally, a
woman gave birth to Siamese twins. When the wife of a guardsman bore
a son and daughter conjoined at the chest in 678, someone attempted to
separate them, but both infants died. Medical technology was not so
phisticated enough for such a difficult operation. Later the same woman
250 Daily Life in Tmditional China
gave birth to another set, both boys, whom she raised without trying to
have them parted.
Chinese physicians had a fair idea about the early stages of an infant's
development. At sixty days its eyes were fully developed, and it could
laugh in response to an adult's voice. At 100 days the child could turn
over on its own. At 180 days its pelvis was completely formed, and it
could sit by itself. At 210 days te bones in its hands were mature, and
the infant could crawl. At 300 days the child's kneecaps were fully de
veloped, and it could stand by itself. At 360 days it could walk.
I most cases mothers were responsible for child care. If a mother died
in childbirth or thereafter, a relative might take over the task. An aunt
raised Du Fu, China's greatest poet. In his infancy he and her son took
ill, so she invited a sorceress to her house for advice on what to do. The
woman predicted that only the boy placed in the southeastern corner of
her bedroom would survive. The aunt removed her own son from the
crib in that corer and placed Du i it. As a result he lived and his cousin
died.
In the homes of the well-to-do, wet nurses took over the duty of suck
ling infants, and in some cases nursed children for years. Physicians
warned families to avoid choosing women with obvious maladies:
goiters, swellings, eczema, scabies, baldness due to fungal infections,
stuffy noses, deafness, and body odor. The conection between a child
and his wet nurse was intimate and enduring, especially when his
mother did not attend to his upbringing or died when he was young.
Both Emperors Zongzong and Illustrious August ennobled theirs; the
first, because his mother, Empress Wu, did not rear him; and the second,
because his mother died in his infancy. In 684 Zhongzong attempted to
appoint the son of his wet nurse to a goverment ofice ranked fifth
grade. The wet nurse of Han Yu, the most renowned master of prose in
the Tang, refused to leave him after his parents died before he was two
years old. He kept her in his household throughout the remainder of her
life. On festivals he, his wife, and their children visited her to pay their
respects and on bended knees tendered their best wishes. They also at
tended her funeral at graveside. Sometimes the relationship endured af
ter death. Emperor Yizong had Princess Tongchag's wet nurse buried
with her.
Other alternative caretakers were stepmothers. Tey might be loving
substitutes for the natural moters who had died, but they could also be
abusive, unjustly thrashing their stepchildren or even attempting to mur
der tem. They could be cruel because they did not have the materal
affection of a birth mother, but also because they saw the eldest son of
the first marriage, the husband's heir, as an impediment to the interests
of their own sons. She might even harbor malice against an adult step
son. When legate Lun retured home after a lengthy mission to Tibet,
Lie Cycle 251
his wife, Madam Li, greeted him dressed in shabby garb. He asked her
why, and she replied that Yan, a county marshal and his son by a former
wife, had not provided her with food or clothing in his absence. In a
towering rage Lun summoned his son. He ordered his servants to drag
Yan to the foor and bare his back so he could flog him. The marshal
wept, but would say nothing in his own defense. When the legate's
younger brother heard that, he rushed over, shielded his nephew, and
said, "Every moon Yan has sent his salary to your wife. I know all about
it. How can she claim that he has not supplied her with food and cloth
ing!" Lun's temper cooled, and thereafter he paid no attention to his
wife's slader. After he died, the marshal was even more attentive in
serving his stepmother. Her natural son took out loans and had the lend
ers draw up contracts that made Yan responsible for their repayment.
Yan always made restitution.
Conversely, stepsons could be as vicious as stepmothers. After the
demise of his father, a man of means began to behave disrespectfully
toward his stepmother. After he paid his respects to her on New Year's
Day, she presented him with a goblet of ale. He pretended that the brew
contained poison; spilled it on the ground, where it foamed suspiciously;
and accused his stepmother of tryig to murder him. When the case
came to court, te magistrate interrogated the son and discovered that
his wife had brought the goblet tat the stepmother had presented to
him. The judge sentenced the couple to be punished according to the
appropriate statute.
Sometimes stepmother and stepson got along a little too well. In the
early sevent century charges of committing incest were lodged against
a man named Li and his stepmother. Before having the pair brought in
for trial, County Marshal Wang ordered one of his underlings to hide
under the cloth covering his bench and listen to what was said in the
court. Then he called Li and the stepmother in and interrogated them.
They would not confess. During the questioning one of his subordinates,
acting on his orders, entered and reported, "The Senior Secretary has
summoned you. " Wang locked the room and left. After he departed, the
pair agreed that they would never admit anything and talked about their
private secret. When the county marshal retured and opened the door,
the underling hiding under the bench rose. Li and the stepmother, sur
prised, acknowledged their guilt. The judge imposed the death penalty
on them. Death by strangulation was also the punishment prescribed for
illicit sex with a father's or pateral grandfather's concubine.
After the birth of an heir, the father threw a feast to celebrate his good
fortune. According to an ancient and revered classic on rites, the banquet
took place on the third day after the birth and was the first time that he
held his son in his arms. Emperor Taizong bestowed feasts to celebrate
the births of his grandsons in 638 and 643. At some point after the i-
252 Daily Life in Traditional China
fant's third month, the father selected a given name for it. The choice
was never haphazard, for the words affected the future fortune of the
child. The given name was taboo, that is, not used by family or outsiders.
Children never referred to their parents by their personal names in
speech or in writing. A son would have to decline an appointment to a
political post whose title contained a character from his father's or pa
teral grandfater's given name. If he did not, he was subject to one year
of penal servitude. The punishment for using the emperor's given name
was much greater: three years of penal servitude. To avoid using it,
writers used synonyms as substitutes.
By the seventh century birtl1day celebrations in adulthood, if not child
hood, had become commonplace. The tradition apparently originated in
the middle of the sixth century when an emperor convened vegetarian
feasts and lectures on his birthday. In the Tang many festivities retained
their Buddhist favor. A infamous chief minister held vegetarian feasts
for Buddhist monks at his mansion on his birthday. On one occasion he
gave a saddle worth 70,000 coppers to a monk in appreciation for his
chanting. He presented another who was famous for his voice with a
casket containing what appeared to be a rusty nail. When the monk took
it to the wester market in Changan, a foreign merchant informed him
that it was a Buddhist relic wort more than 1 million coppers.
The grandest of all birthday parties were those for te emperor. They
began as court feasts at which mandarins offered their wishes for the
sovereign' s long life. In 729, however, Illustrious August made his birth
day a national festival at the suggestion of his ministers. The following
year he issued a decree declaring that all villages in the empire were to
sacrifice to the White God of the West, who was his patron deity, and
afterward sit down to drin to the emperor's health. He also made it a
three-day holiday. In Changan the celebration took on the character of
a grand carnival. His famed trained horses performed, and female en
tertainers danced a version of the "Smashing Battle Formations. " Illus
trious August set the precedent that most of his successors followed.
They established festivals for celebrating teir own birthdays. The festiv
ities, however, were usually lectures given by Confucians, Taoists, and
Buddhists on their doctrines.
The state divided childhood into three periods: infancy (one to two
years of age), childhood (three to fourteen), and adolescence (fifteen to
nineteen). Some fathers believed that discipline should begin as soon as
a child could recognize the facial expressions of adults that expressed
approval or disapproval of its behavior. They favored training the infant
to be obedient and started using a bamboo rod to instill obedience sev
eral years after its birth. Strictness tempered with tenderness led children
to be respectful. Other fathers were indulgent, preferring love to
Lie Cycle 253
Pig's Eye Dragon's Eye
discipline, praise to blame. Children did as they pleased. Moralists con
tended that sort of upbringing produced arrogant scoundrels.
According to medical experts, one could determine with a good level
of probability how long a child would live by examining its disposition
between the ages of two and nine. Most of those who were exceptionally
intelligent, perceptive, understanding, and clever would die young. Most
of those with well-formed bones, impressive dignity, serenity, and pol
ished spirit would live long.
Physicians were not realy in the business of fortune-telling. Face read
ers were. When Emperor Taizong was four years of age, one of them
visited his home, saw him, and told his father, "He has about him the
air of the dragon and phoenix, and the outward appearance of the sun.
When he is about twenty, he will save the world and pacify the people. "
Based on the prophecy, Gaozu chose World People for his son's name.
Taizong was in his early twenties when he won battles that were instru
mental in establishing the Tang dynasty. When Empress Wu was very
young, a face reader visited her mansion and told her mother that she
had given birth to noble children. After examining her sons, he saw the
girl, who was wearing boy's clothing, in the arms of her wet nurse and
asked that she be put down and allowed to walk. As she passed his
couch, he had her raise her eyes, and said in amazement, "This child has
the pupils of a dragon and the neck of a phoeni
x
. She is the epitome of
nobility. " Then he turned her to her side and declared, "She is most
certainly a girl. It is truly unfathomable, but she will later become the
ruler of the empire. " "Dragon pupil" and "phoenix neck" were terms for
the characteristics of body parts (like pig's eyes) in te jargon of face
reading. Although these anecdotes smack of political propaganda de
vised much later to justify usurpations (Taizong seized the throne from
his father), they nonetheless reflect a very common practice in the Tang
of consulting face readers to make prophecies based on te physical as
pects of the individual's body.
Education began during te second period, usually about the age of
six, and continued through te third, adolescence. Peasants passed their
agricultural knowledge on to their sons orally, and artisans taught their
sons their crafts by training them on the job. Some of the latter-brewers,
swordsmiths, and the like-whose crafts involved various forms of tech
nology, often swore their progeny to secrecy because disclosure entailed
254 Daily Life in Traditional China
the loss of their monopoly on production and the income derived
therefrom when competitors acquired their secrets and sold their goods
at market. The child of a patrician leamed the rudiments of reading,
writing, and arithmetic. A precocious child might lear to write poetry
at the age of five or six and master it by nine years of age. Sometimes
the instructors were fathers, and many bf them had high expectations
for their sons. Such was the case for the greatest of the Tang historians.
He had houble with one text that he could not recite or memorize, so
his father beat hm frequently. Later he discovered an innate bent for
history, which he easily mastered and could explain to hs older brothers.
At the age of twelve he memorized one of the longest chronicles in one
year. Some fathers were harsh in their discipline. The son of Fan, the
governor of a prefecture, requested permission to return to the family's
native village so that he could prepare for the civil service examinations.
The govemor tested him and found his knowledge of the classics want
ing. He summoned his staff, had his son beaten with the thin rod, placed
him in the cangue, and forced him to stand at the city's gate as a dem
onstration of his rectitude in dealing with his kin.
If a father had died or was serving in a post at a distant district, a
mother might take over the task of teaching her son. It was common for
literate families to educate their daughters. As already noted, palace la
dies received instruction in a host of subjects, and patrician families,
which often adopted court fashions, probably followed the same practice.
Well-to-do families did not have to burden their women with the duty;
they hired tutors for their children. There were plenty of learned men
who failed to pass te civil service examinations or find employment in
the government who needed money. Some families pooled their funds
to support private schools for their sons. Finally, a boy could enter the
schools run by the state.
Adolescence for boys came to an end with "capping" at the age of
nineteen. The father took his son to the ancestral shrine, if he had one,
on an auspicious day and placed a cap on him before the spirits of the
family's forebears. Capping was a rite of manhood, and for that reason
there was no coronation ceremony for emperors. After the ritual con
cluded, the son took a new name, a style, that he usually used in signing
his literary works. In the Tang, most men went by their styles. The end
of adolescence came earlier for girls wit "pinning" at te age of four
teen. Their mothers did their hair up on top of their head and inserted
a hairpin to keep it there. It was a rite of womanhood that signified the
girl was eligible for marriage. Females also took styles at age fourteen.
FORMAL EDUCATION
There were at least two forms of institutional education in Tang China,
one religious and the other secular. Written scriptures were the foun-
Li Cycle 255
dations of both Buddhism and Taoism, and the means of perpetuating
their doctries. Their rituals involved oral recitation (chanting) of the
texts, and therefore monks and priests had to be literate. Codes of reg
ulations govered life in and the administration of their monasteries.
They compiled histories and biographies to establish the continuity of
their orders, legitimize their existence, and inspire piety among their
members. Consequently, they had to educate novices so that they could
qualify for ordination and assume the duties of the priesthood. Usually,
a master passed knowledge on to a disciple, and the bond between the
two became very close and endurig.
During the Tang heated debates, oral and written, raged among Bud
dhists, Taoists, and Confucians. The issues were numerous and complex,
but they all boiled down to the question of which religion or doctrine
was superior. I addition, the imperial court sponsored lectures on the
three teachings, especially on the emperor's birthdays. Both debates and
lectures required knowledge of the opponent's literature, so monasteries
and abbeys amassed large libraries of their own and their rivals' scrip
tures, and secular texts. Te secular texts included not only the Confu
cian classics but also works on etiquette, divination, medicine, and
music; collections of jokes and poetry; short fiction; and dictionaries,
almanacs, histories, and biographies. One Taoist abbey in Changan had
50,000 scrolls of secular works, and became a center of intellectual activ
ity frequently visited by renowned scholars in the middle of the eighth
century. Because of their libraries, monasteries and abbeys became con
venient places for lay students to pursue their learning. One eminent
statesman and poet of the late seventh century left his village school in
his youth to study in a classroom behind a Taoist abbey on a mountain
in southwestern China.
The educational opportunities offered by religious establishments
paled in comparison to those provided by the state. Eight days after
ascending the throne in 618, Emperor Gaozu established three colleges
in Changan for somewhat more than 300 students. Six years later he
ordered prefectures and counties to institute schools in their districts. In
738, Emperor Illustrious August issued a Great Act of Grace containing
a stipulation that vastly expaded the system. He ordered all prefectures
and counties to establish schools in their villages and supply them with
qualifed teachers. Three years later the emperor founded a network of
schools in the capitals and prefectures that ofered instruction in the
classics of Taoist philosophy. According to the census of 754, the empire
had two capitals, 321 prefectures, 1,538 counties, and 16,829 villages. If
all local officials carried out Illustrious August's instructions to the letter
of the law, tere were approximately 19,000 schools (excluding the med
ical schools already mentioned) throughout the lad. In the mid-eighth
century the total enrollment of students in the capitals and provinces
was around 63,570 (and may not have included pupils in village schools).
256 Daily Life in Traditional China
The total number of students supported by the goverment-icluding
specialized schools, and those for imperial guards, militia, and others
came to around 130,000. The number of the empire's subjects at the time
was 48,909,800. That means that students constituted 0.25 percent of the
population. By modem standards the number is small, but it is enormous
for premodern societies.
Originally, Tag statutes restricted admission to the three capital col
leges-the Colleges for Sons of State, Grand Learng, and Four Gates
to sons of fathers whose ranks were grades one to three, four to five,
and six to seven, respectively. In 733 the emperor added 800 seats in the
Four Gates College for sons of officials of eighth and ninth grades, as
well as talented commoners recommended by the goverors of prefec
tures. A goverment agency had to certify the rank of a student's father
or, in the case of commoners, give a test to the candidates seeking to
matriculate. The colleges accepted young men between te ages of four
teen and nineteen except for commoners, who could register as late as
twenty-five. Age, not social status, determined the rank of a student in
the student body. On their first day of class, students had to present
their teachers with a gift of silk, jerky, and ale. Afterward the state pro
vided a stipend in the form of grai and a place to live. Senior officials
in prefectures and couties selected students between the ages of eigh
teen ad twenty-five for admission to their schools. Pupils in prefectures
and counties were required to study marriage and funeral rites. When
they became proficient in them, they performed the ceremonies for of
ficials and commoners.
Confucian or Taoist classics were the curriculum for government
schools in the capitals and provinces. There were two facets to education
in the Tang: memorization by the students and lectures by te faculty.
Teachers expected students to commit portions of a text to memory be
fore they arrived in the classroom. Professors and assistant professors
expounded on the meanings of the assigned passages during class time.
In their spare time students practiced calligraphy and composed trial
answers to examination questions. Every ten days the masters gave
examination on the materials covered during the week. It consisted of
one fill-in question for every 1,000 words of text memorized (students
had to supply from memory a passage of which they received only the
beginning sentence) and one interpretive question for every 2,000 words
of text covered in lectures. A passing mark was satisfactory answers to
two out of three questions. The faculty also gave a year-end examination
to determine the progress of students. It consisted of ten oral questions.
A passing mark was four or more acceptable answers. If a student failed
that examination three years in a row or had been in school for nine
years without graduating, he was dismissed and sent home.
The government also offered education in specialized fields. Except for
Lfe Cycle 257
medicine, instruction in them was available only in the capitals. The
areas of study included law, mathematics, calligraphy, astronomy, calen
drical science, divination, and ritual. The texts for the law school were
the Tang code, statutes, ordinances, and regulations. There were ten text
books for mathematics that students were expected to master in fourteen
years. Students of calligraphy studied the classics as engraved in three
styles of script on stone tablets, as well as two dictionaries. The course
of study had to be completed i six years. Instruction in the remainig
felds took place in the appropriate bureaus of the central government.
The behavior of students in capital schools was sometimes less than
desirable. An imperial decree of 791 notes that some of them hired sub
stitutes to take their examinations. A report to the throne from the dean
of capital schools says that some of his students were shiftless. They
gambled, drank too much, quarreled, and showed no respect for au
thority. Perhaps their most outrageous act took place in the early eighth
century. A senior officer of capital schools discovered that students had
become more and more slack in their class work. He exhorted them to
be more diligent in pursuing their studies and applied the whip a little
to prod them. The students resented that, and vilified him. Under the
cover of darkness they trashed him in the streets. When the emperor
leared of the incident, he had the recalcitrant students beaten to death.
Everything settled down after that.
Some directors of the colleges in the capital indulged and protected
their charges. When Yang Cheng assumed the post in 795, he told the
students that their business was to lear loyalty and family feelings.
Then he suggested that tose of them who had been away from home
for a long while should take leave immediately. When the faculty took
attendence the following day, they discovered tat twenty or so of the
students had departed. Later the throne sent him out of the capital to a
post as governor in a remote prefecture because he was caught conceal
ing a student wanted by constables in his home.
EXAMINATIONS
The aspiration of most young men who received an education was to
acquire a government post, civil or military. To achieve that goal, they
had to take examinations given by the goverment. The breadth of Tang
examinations was greater than those of any dynasty before or after it.
Among other things, it had a test for child prodigies. The state assigned
bureaucratic ranks to children nine years or younger who could recite
the Classic of Filial Piety and the Discourses of Confucius from memory and
answer ten out of ten questions on the texts. The government did not
appoint them to offices at such tender ages. The ranks were presumably
entitlements to take posts of those grades when they reached maturity.
258 Daily Life in Traditional China
The state granted degrees, privileges to take political offices, to students
who passed examinations in all of the fields mentioned above. The three
most important examinations were the Classical Masters, Advanced
Scholars, and Elevated Warriors.
The deans of capital colleges recommended candidates who had
passed school examinations to the Department of Rites. The goverors
of prefectures forwarded worthy aspirants, students in public or private
schools, to the same agency in the capital. They conducted preliminary
examinations consisting of five essay questions on current political prob
lems and a few questions on the classics. The goverors had to take care
in their j udgments. If a goveror recommended an unworty candidate
lacking virtue, he was subject to one year penal servitude. However, if
the man failed the examination, the law imposed only a beating of ninety
strokes of the thick rod on the goveror or dean. After the provincial
examinations te goveror convened the Village Drinking Ritual in the
autumn, to honor the candidates and local elders.
One well-to-do father sent his talented son to the capital for the ex
aminations, his horses and carriages burdened with provisions for a two
year stay. Another sent his son to the capital with more than a score of
wagons to carry his baggage, and ten grand horses. Candidates assem
bled in the capital during the elevent moon, in the middle of winter.
There they registered and submitted credentials to verify their social
status so that officials could reject sons of merchants and other undesir
ables. Next they appeared at the grand levee on New Year's Day, at
which the emperor examined the tribute sent from the provinces and
foreign states. The candidates were part of the districts' tribute.
During the interval between their arrival in the capital and the ex
aminations, candidates for the Advanced Scholars' examination who did
not prowl the Gay Quarters or haunt the tavers spent their time trying
to influence the examiners. Except for a short period during Empress
Wu's reign when slips of paper were pasted over the candidates' names
on test papers, examiners knew whose work they were evaluating. Can
didates did not necessarily contact the examiners directly. Instead, they
visited the gates of eminent offcials and handed scrolls with their own
poems and highly fattering letters to the gatekeepers for presentation to
their masters. In that manner they sought to establish great reputations
for their literary abilities with the leading figures in the goverment. If
they succeeded in attracting favorable attention fom the mandarins,
their fame would spread throughout high society and the examiners
would hear of their superior abilities. A single scroll might do the trick,
but a second might have to be submitted. On one occasion a scholar sent
forty scrolls to the official in charge of the examinations, in defiance of
the latter's order that candidates could not submit more than three. If
fortune smiled on the candidates, officials might receive them for an
L(fe Cycle 259
interview. If it did not, they never got beyond the gate. Sometimes the
gatekeepers or maids intercepted the scrolls and sold them. Sometimes
the master of the house would not invite tem in or do anything to help
them. One scholar was remarkably persistent, haunting the doorway of
a mandarin for ten years without success.
Scroll presentation, as it was known, was not really a form of cheating.
After all, the candidate's patron was not likely to recommend to exam
iners o
i
other officials a man whose poetry was mediocre or worse. He
had his own reputation to maintain. However, it might result in a higher
ranking in the final results of examinations for talented writers who were
otherwise inferior in their abilities. Some scholars were not above re
sorting to plagiarism. A senior secretary received some scrolls fom a
student, and upon opening them discovered that they were poems he
had circulated just before passing the examinations. When he confronted
the student, the man confessed that he had purchased them at a book
store for 100 cash.
The examinations in the capital took place in the spring. In the early
years of the Tang the most prestigious was the Classical Masters. In 740
it had four parts: sixty-five fill-in questions for eight classics, an oral
examination, ten questions on te interpretation of the classics, ad three
essays on contemporary problems. The Advanced Scholars examination
had three sections: ten fill-in questions on one large classic with a com
mentary, five essays, and compositions of poetry and prose poems. The
Advanced Scholars became popular after the throne added the poetry
section in 681. It eventually surpassed the Classical Masters examination
in prestige, probably because it placed considerably less emphasis on
memory and considerably more on mastery of prose and verse. Exami
nation poetry, however, never eared a reputation for excellence.
Empress Wu founded the military examination in 702. As with other
examinations, both capital and provincial officials recommended candi
dates, who came to the capital to take it. It had seven parts:
1. Long target archery: shooting at a taget 105 paces away, using a bow with a
pull of 180 pounds
2. Mounted archery: shooting at a target having two small deer-five inches long
and three inches tall-at a gallop
3. Pedestrian archery: shooting at a straw man while walking
4. Lance manipulation on horseback: knocking two-and-a-half-inch-square plates
off four wooden figures-two on the right and two on the left-with a twelve
pound lance (eighteen feet long and an inch and a half in circumference), at
a gallop
5. Physique: men over six feet ranked first
6. Discourse: speech that reflected leadership abilities
260 Daily Life in Traditional China
Mounted Archery
7. Weight lifting: raising a bar seventeen feet long and three and a half inches
in diameter ten times and carrying eight and three-quarter bushels of grain
on one's back for twenty paces.
Candidates from the provinces accompanied local officials who went to
the capital in the eleventh moon to make their reports to the throne. The
Department of te Army was responsible for checking their credentials
and conducting the examination.
After the list of the men who had passed the Advanced Scholars ap
peared, the successful candidates visited the mansion of te examiner
and gathered in his garden to express their gratitude to hi. They in
troduced themselves, giving their names, ages, and seat numbers at the
examination hall. The meeting established a strong bond between the
examiner and the Advanced Scholars he passed, and among the gradu
ates themselves. Later in their careers they would assist one another in
times of need. The examiner invited the graduate who scored highest
into his house for a reception. The state held a feast of congratulations
for the graduates at which te finest food and premium ale were served.
The graduates organized feasts for themselves in parks and scenic pa
vilions of the capital: the Serpentine River, apricot grove, Pavilion of
Buddha' s Tooth, and others. It was their custom to select two of their
number to hunt for the most beautiful fowers in Changan. If someone
found a more lovely blossom, the men had to drink a goblet of ale as a
Lie Cycle 261
penalty. After they dined, the men rode off to admire the flowers that
took the prize. Finally, the graduates inscribed their names in one of the
city's pagodas.
Successful passage of a national examination in te capital did not by
itself guarantee the graduate an office in the government. He had to
remain i the capital and take the "selection examination" with candi
dates from the provinces. In the fifth moon governors of prefectures and
commandants of counties submitted the names of men they wished to
recommend. In te tenth moon the candidates assembled i te capitat
where officials checked teir cr

dentials to make sure there were no un

desirables, such as merchats, amo them. Afterward, the examiners
evaluated them on their physique, speech, calligraphy, and judgment.
The last part required a written composition and covered all kinds of
decisions, not just j udicial ones. If all applicants achieved equal ratings,
the examiners then ranked them according to their virtue, talent, and
merit. Passig that examination might not result in an appointment ei
ther. A graduate's chances depended on vacancies in the bureaucracy,
and the examination system was not the only avenue to office. I the
680s an official estimated that only 10 percent of qualified candidates
received appointments. If there were no openings, the graduate would
have to return home and take the examination another year.
The administration of the selection examination in the early eighth
century was corrupt. The venality of the official in charge of it was stag
gerig. O
n
ce, while candidates were being led to the examination, he
noticed that one of the men had 100 coppers tied to his bootstrap. He
asked the man why. The candidate replied, "Given the nature of the
examination system these days, one cannot get by without cash." The
examiner kept his silence.
OLD AGE
According to Tang statutes, the mandatory age of retirement was fifty
nine. That regulation, however, applied only to peasants, and was the
measure that the state used to redistribute land to the younger genera
tion. The law did not apply to merchants and artisans, who could not
own land. Furthermore, once the equal fields system broke down after
756, it was meaningless. By law mandarins had to remain in office until
the age of sixty-nie. Those ranked fifth grade or higher could then per
sonally submit a request to the throne for release from duty. In special
cases the emperor rejected such appeals. The Department of Personel
submitted such requests for lower-ranking bureaucrats. Officials who re
mained fit could continue to serve in their posts past sixty-nine. The
general who conquered norther Korea in 668 was seventy-four at the
time. I one case the throne would not accept an eminent minister's
resignation until he was eighty. In another, a general who partcipated
262 Daily Life in Tmditional China
in the Korean campaign and later rose to become a chief minister died
in office at the age of eighty-three.
In most instances families were responsible for the care of their aged.
That was both a traditional obligation and a legal one. According to Tang
statutes, everyone seventy-nine to eighty-eight was to be furnished with
an attendant; those aged eighty-nine to ninety-eight, with two; and those
over ninety-nine, with five. The caretakers were first selected from the el
der's adult chldren or grandchildren. If tere were no adults, then adoles
cents served. If the seniors had neither, then close relatives assumed the
burden. If they had no kinsmen at all, then the state appointed an adult or
adults from the community to undertake the assignment. The government
was reinforcing deeply rooted social mores and conventions with that law.
Families inculcated respect for elders, especially parents and grandpar
ents, i their children from a very early age. Men ad women procreated
in part to provide themselves with social security in their old age.
This is not to say that the state did not provide for the welfare of the
aged. Although in theory a farmer lost 80 percent of his fields by his
sixtieth birthday, Tang land statutes set aside 40 percent of his land as
an allotment for his care until his death. As long as he remained vigor
ous, he presumably cultivated it. When he was no longer able to work,
his sons apparently assumed the task. The law provided for the main
tenance of the disabled in the sqme manner. The regulations also pro
vided for widows, who received 30 percent of their husband's allotment
unless they were the head of a household, in which case they received
40 percent.
Sometimes the throne bestowed direct assistance on the old. The occa
sions for dispensing such philanthropy included imperial progresses and
the proclamations of Great Acts of Grace. Usually age was a determining
factor in the qualification of the elders so blessed. For example, Emperor
Illustrious August once ordered officials to present three lengths of silk
cloth (money) and three and a half bushels of grain to caretakers of all
men and women seventy-nine to ninety-eight years old, and five lengts
of silk cloth and five bushels of grain to those tending seniors ninety-nine
years or older. Other gifts included canes, quilted coats, ale, and felt
frocks. Sometimes the throne invited the elderly to the palace for a feast.
At other times it sent agents to inquire after the health of the old. In rare
instances the emperor personally undertook the task himself. In 645 Tai
zong visited the hut of a man who claimed to have attained the ripe old
age of 145 years by ingestig gold. The intent of bestowing the gifts was
less to furish support for the old than to provide an example of the em
peror's veneration of the aged and his benevolent concern for them. The
court often restricted the recipients to a small number of subjects living in
one locality. Even when it presented gifts to "all people of te empire,"
the number who acquired the gifts must have been very small, given the
restrictions on age, usually seventy-nine and older.
L{fe Cycle 263
Carving Flesh 0Feed an Ailing Elder
Aging usually involved illness of some sort, and the responsibility for
nursing elders fell to their sons, daughters, daughters-in-law, or other
family members. Wang was most filial. When his father was critically ill,
he looked after him, serving medicine and food. His devotion to his fa
ther was so great that he did not change his clothes for more than a
month. Later, because he was exhausted from the constant nursing, he
dozed off while sitting next to his father's bed. In his sleep Wang
dreamed that he heard some ghosts speaking. They were planning to in
vade his father's stomach. One of them asked, "How are you going to get
into his guts?" The other replied, "I will wait until he eats his gruel. Then
I will foat down into his belly with the porridge." After the ghosts set
tled on their plan, Wang woke with a start and bored a hole in the bot
tom of a bowl. When it was time for his father to eat gruel, he plugged
the hole with his finger and placed a small jar under it. Then he poured
porridge into the bowl and released his finger. The gruel and the ghosts
flowed into te fask. Wang sealed the mouth of the jar, placed it in a pot
of water, and heated the water to a roaring boil. When he opened the
fask to have a look, it was full of fesh. As a result of his quick thinking,
his father recovered from his illness. Those who discussed this affair later
believed that the cure was effected by Wang's pure filial devotion. The
ghost story is unbelievable, but the sentiments expressed in it are not.
264 Daily Life in Tmditional China
The obligation to care for parents in their later years was deeply rooted
in the psyche of Tang Chinese. Even Taizong felt compelled to discharge
the duty after he usurped the throne from his father. In 630 Gaozu took
ill, so the emperor canceled his audiences-that is, he stopped attending
to political affairs-in order to personally oversee his medicine and
meals, as a good son ought. When his father recovered seventeen days
later, Taizong held a feast to celebrate his good fortune.
Some dutiful children went to extremes in preparing medicine for their
elders. A pharmacologist in the early eighth century declared that human
fesh was a remedy for ailments. At that time and later, sons and daugh
ters were wont to carve muscle from teir body to feed their parents.
The preferred location was generally the tigh, though sometimes it was
the arm. One man sliced off three-quarters of a pound from his hip to
prepare a remedy for his mother, who was suffering from tubercuosis.
Some intellectuals decried the custom, but the children who sacrificed
themselves enjoyed the respect of their contemporaries for their devotion
to their parents. The throne bestowed honors and rewards on twenty
nine people for mutilating themselves in that manner.
12
Deatl at tle Afterlife
DEATH
Since the Chinese believed that breath, qi, was the vital energy on which
life depended, they took the cessation of breathing as evidence that death
had occurred. A famiy member, friend, or outsider leaed over and
placed his face close to the mouth of the unconscious person in order to
determine if there was any movement of air coming from the lips. If
there was not, he or she assumed that the person had expired, and made
funeral arrangements. There was a certain danger in using that method.
In some cases the breathing was too slight to detect. In 801 an official
awoke after lying in his coffin for thirty days. His, however, was not the
worst fate. In 885 a man who was walking past a grave heard someone
calling to him fom beneath the ground and alerted the family of the
entombed. They dug up the grave and found its occupant alive. He died
for good more than a year later.
Folklore had a more sinister notion about the cessation of breathing.
In the nint century a general halted for the night at a rapid relay station
and took lodgings. In the middle of the night he suddenly awoke because
he felt something pressing down on his body. The officer, who was quite
strong, rose from his bed and grappled with the ghost. It withdrew un
der his fierce assault. During the struggle, the general wrested a leather
bag from the specter. In the dark the ghost begged for the return of his
bag. Te officer refused and said, "If you tell me the name of this sack,
I will return it to you." The specter hesitated for a long while ad then
266 Daily Life in Traditional China
said, "That is the 'harvesting breath bag.' " The general picked up a tile
and threw it at the ghost. It ceased speaking immediately. The sack had
a capacity of several pints, was green in color, and appeared to be made
of thread. When thrust into the sunlight, it cast no shadow.
The Grim Reaper did not always resort to bagging breath. He had
other means at his disposal for slaying his victims. Laborer Liu was
rooming with a house servant who had been ill for several months and
was about to die. One day, while Liu was out and te servant was lying
in bed, a man wearing purple robes with broad sleeves ad a tall hat
suddenly appeared. His face was gaunt; his body, emaciated. He had a
large nose and long beard. The stranger came through the door, and
from the foot of the servant's bed said, "You are about to rise because
your illness has run its course. " Then he helped the man to a sitting
position with his back against the wall. There was a dining table standing
next to the east wall. Several dishes lay on it in orderly rows. The
stranger reached into his sleeve and witdrew a handful of something
from it. The objects in his hand were shaped like rice kernels, but were
black. He placed more than ten of them in the dishes and said, "I am
not from the world of the living. In obedience to a command I have
come now to summon Liu. He will eat these and die. While he is eating
them, you must not reveal a word of what I am telling you. Otherwise,
misfortune will befall you." After the ghost fnished speaking, it disap
peared. When Liu returned that day, he was red in the face and panting.
He said, "''ve developed a fever fom having an empty stomach, and it
is almost beyond relief." He picked up the dishes, consumed their con
tents, and died.
Sometimes the minions of the unseen world were incompetent and
summoned souls before teir time. Scholar Jia died from a sudden ill
ness. An usher led him to Heaven, where he had an audience with the
Provost of Fate. The god checked his records and discovered that the life
span allotted the scholar at birth had not yet run out, so he ordered him
retured. However, Jia was unable to reach home because he had excru
ciating pains in his legs and could not walk. This was a source of concer
for the underlings in charge of conveying him back. "If Jia cannot return
to the world of the living, we will be charged with the crime of having
wrongly taken his soul." They went to see the Provost of Fate and ex
plained their dilemma to him. He pondered the problem for quite a
while, then said, "Kang Yi, the western barbarian that we just sum
moned, is outside West Gate right now. That man died at his appointed
time, and his legs are quite robust. Swap them for the scholar's. It will
do no harm to either of them." The lackeys left to carry out his command.
Kang's body was really ugly, and its legs were particularly repulsive.
When the officers were about to make the switch, Jia saw the legs and
refused to go through with the exchange. The officer i charge told him,
Death and the Afterlie 267
"If you do not swap legs with the western barbarian, you must stay here
for eterity. " Jia had no choice but to yield. The officer ordered the two
men to close their eyes, and the switch took place instantly. An usher
then led the scholar back to his home. Jia retured to life suddenly and
took a look at his legs. They were indeed the westerer's. Their thick
hairs were knotted together, and they stank of barbarian B. O. Te scholar
was a man of breeding, and admired his hands and feet. He loathed his
new legs and hadn't the slightest desire to see them ever again. For the
rest of his life he wore double layers of clothing, even in the scorching
heat of summer. The legs were never exposed for a moment.
A man might receive a premonition of impending doom from the spir
its of his body. When the Director of Personnel was returng to Chang
an from Luoyang, he made a stop at Mount Hua. Five men appeared
suddenly and came into the reception hall of the prefecture. The director
asked them what they were doing there. They replied, "We are the spirits
of your five viscera. " He said, "You spirits are supposed to reside in my
body. Why have you come out to visit me?" They replied, "We are the
guardians of your energies [qi], so when they're used up, we disperse. "
The official inquired, "Judging from what you say, am I about to die?"
The spirits confirmed his suspicion. The director hastily pleaded for an
extension of his life for a short time so that he could compose some
documents. They agreed. After completing his reports, he bathed,
donned new clothes, lay down on a bed, and died.
As soon as the family determined tat their loved one was dead, they
began to wail. After exhausting their grief they undressed the corpse,
washed it with perfumed water, placed a piece of jade in its mouth to
prevent the body from decaying, clothed it in grave garments, and
placed it in a coffin. When a commoner's wife died in childbirth, a black
mark was impressed on her face so her spirit could not harm members
of her family. A man might purchase his own coffin while alive and
store it in his dwelling. Otherwise the family had to purchase one on
short notice. Coffins, at least those of the upper classes, were made of
sturdy wood and sealed tightly because the family kept the corpse in the
hore for some time or sent it to a storage area in the city. The reason
for the delay i most cases was that burial had to take place on a proper
day according to the alrm"lac or that the tomb had not been completed.
In one extreme case the coffin containing the corpse of a man was kept
in the hall of a house for ten years, probably because the family did not
have the money to purchase a burial plot and pay for a funeral. When
an official died in a district far from his native place, a family member
or the government transported his remains home, an undertaking that
could take weeks or months. The goverment provided ice for bureau
crats ranked third grade and higher who died during the summer, pre-
268 Daily Life in Traditional China
sumably to prevent rapid rotting of the corpse before it was placed in a
coffin.
On the day of death or shortly thereafter, the family made a sacrifice
to the deceased. For the humble the offering consisted of a simple meal
with ale to nourish the soul in the afterlife. For the nobility the sacrifices
were opulent. One of the grandest was that rendered to the spirit of
Emperor Yizong's eldest and favorite daughter, Princess Tongchang,
who died on September 14, 870. The emperor was so overwhelmed with
grief that he lost his senses. He had a court physician and more than a
score of other men executed for failing to cure her. After her remains
were returned to her husband's mansion, the emperor granted civil and
military officials the privilege of making sacrifices to her soul. They sent
carriages, gowns, and ornaments adorned with gold and jade to his
home, where they were burned in the courtyard to send them into the
spirit world. When the fires died out, members of his family fought each
oter to grab the treasures from the ashes.
If the family were devout Buddhists, they arranged services for the
departed. The rites were known as Seven-Seven Feasts. Buddhists did
not believe in the existence of the soul. After death a person's karma
passed into a barely perceptible body and entered a state of suspension
during which its ultimate fate was uncertain. Karma was the conse
quence of the deeds, good and/ or bad, that one performed during life.
It determined whether a person would be reborn as a god or spirit,
human, animal, denizen of hell, or hungry ghost. If after the first seven
days the temporary body had not acquired enough merit to be rebor,
it would die and come to life again for another seven days. The cycle of
dying and reviving continued for seven weeks, at the end of which the
karma would automatically pass into a new state of existence. The forty
nine-day interval gave the family of tl1e deceased the opportunity to alter
the departed's fate by accumulating merit. Meritorious acts included
sponsoring vegetarian feasts at a nearby monastery every seven days.
Kinsmen also sent clothing for the deceased on those occasions. In return
monks chanted sutras, burned incense, and uttered prayers for the sal
vation of the dead loved one. If the departed had no family or had not
accumulated meritorious deeds during its lifetime, it would be reborn in
hell. Taoists also conducted seven-seven memorial services for the dead.
FUNERALS AND ENTOMBMENTS
There were firms, at least in Changan, that provided exorcists, singers,
hearses, and other equipment for funerals when the family had the
means to pay for them. If the deceased was a mandarin, the state con
tributed to his funeral expenses: from 200 lengths of cloth and 350 bush
els of millet for those of the first grade to ten lengths of cloth for those
Death and the Afterlie 269
Hearses
of the ninth. Those who could afford to pay received nothing, however.
Furthermore, if a bureaucrat died in the course of a military campaign,
while serving as a member of the imperial entourage when the court
traveled, or when carrying out public business on a commission, the
government supplied a coffin for him and paid for shipping his remains
back to his home. When the man was not an official, his family bore the
entire burden of the funeral expenses. According to Tang statutes, if a
man died without family (male heirs), his daughter or nearest relative
had to sell his slaves, shops, homes, and other property to pay for his
funeral and burial. If he had neither a daughter nor close kinsman, then
an official undertook the task, presumably drawing the money from gov
ernment funds.
A funeral required a cortege made up of several elements. Chief
among them was a hearse. In the Tang hearses were carts with bamboo
poles affixed to their beds. A oiled cloth covered the bamboo frame
work like a tent. Oiling the fabric made it waterproof and protected the
coffin from rain damage. Paintings of dragons adored the side panels
of hearses for mandarins of the third grade and above. Officials of that
rank were entitled to an escort of six guides, who walked along the sides
of the hearse to prevent it from tipping over; six bearers of wooden
standards; six bell ringers; and thirty-six singers, called pall pullers, in
six files. In ancient times cofins were dragged along on sledges. That
custom disappeared long before the Tang, but the name stuck to the
dirges and the singers of them in later times. Poets and even emperors
wrote lyrics for the songs. Wooden standards were poles that had square
plaques with cloud designs on their tops. Square-faced exorcists accom
panied the funeral processions of mandarins fifth grade and above. They
wore square masks with four golden eyes. Clad in black tunics and ver
milion skirts they carried lances and shields, weapons they wielded to
threaten and drive away demons. Mandarins of fifth grade and above
were also permitted to have banners on poles nine feet tall in their cor-
270 Daily Lie in Traditional China
Square-Faced Exorcist
teges. If the deceased had been well-to-do, his funeral train also had carts
for carrying grave goods.
In te early Tang funerals were fairly spartan afairs except in the
imperial clan. During the prosperous times of Emperor Illustrious Au
gust, they became more lavish. People began to erect tents along city
streets where corteges passed. Inside they placed artifcial flowers and
fruit, as well as human figures made from dough, as offerings to the
dead. The tents never exceeded ten square feet in area or several feet in
height. After the rebellion of An Lushan the arrangements became ex
tremely extravagant displays, especially among the regional military
governors. The tents soared to eighty or ninety feet high and contained
200 to 300 shelves for holding platters of offerings. When one of the
governors died in 775, his subordinates erected such sacrificial stations
every sixth of a mile for more than seven miles. When another died in
768, one of his associates added a clever innovation to the array of plat-
Death and the Aftrrlie 271
ters. He had automated puppets installed that portrayed a great battle
between a heroic Tang general of the seventh century and the Turks. A
mechanism, perhaps powered by water, drove the wooden figures,
which were completely lifelike in their movements. After the sacrifice
finished, the cortege was on the verge of leaving when a subalter re
quested that it wait because the show was not over. The mourners dried
their tears and watched another drama. New puppets acted out a famous
incident when a retainer of the first emperor of the Han saved him fom
assassination during a sword dance at a banquet.
Funeral processions could be quite large. Even a humble one in a vil
lage could attract more tan a thousand mourners. One of the grandest
of them, organized for the pampered Princess Tongchang, carried her to
her last resting place in te easter suburb of Changan on February 7,
871. It included 120 carts, one for each item of grave goods. The escort's
standards, banners, and umbrellas filled the streets, blocking out the sun.
The splendor of the train stretched out for seven miles on its way to the
tomb. The emperor bestowed 6,342 quarts of ale and thirty camel loads
of pastry to feed the men in charge of moving grave goods and other
vehicles.
Graves were almost always in the countryside rather than in cities.
According to the religious beliefs of premodern Chinese, the land be
neath ground level belonged to the gods, and digging into it to construct
tombs offended them unless the family of the deceased purchased the
site from the deities. Consequently, the deceased's kinsmen drew up a
contract to buy the plot. They deposited te document in the sepulcher
to resolve any legal problems that might arise for the departed in the
afterlife. The agreement contained the dead person's name, titles, and
date of death; the exact dimensions of the plot; the price paid for the
land-usually 99,999,000 coppers-and signatures of witnesses. Figures
with multiples of nine were auspicious because nine was the number of
yang, te life-sustaining force. The ideal age for dying, for example, was
eighty-one, nine multiplied by nine.
Of course the money referred to in the contact was not genuine. No
one, except perhaps the emperor, had access to such huge sums of cop
pers. By the Tang the belief had emerged that human money could not
circulate among the spirits. The gods and souls of the dead required cash,
silver, gold, and silk made from paper for their needs. So it became the
custom to substitute phony money for the real thing. A man could pur
chase 100 sheets of paper at the market for sixty cash and cut from them
1,000 cash wit scissors. By themselves artificial coppers were as useless
as metal money. Souls could use them only if tey were burned. Incin
erating the paper transformed it into ethereal matter tat the dead could
employ in the afterlife, especially to reduce tl1eir suffering by bribing
officials i the uderworld. Sometimes the soul of a man who died had
272 Daily Life in Traditional China
to buy off the functionaries of hell to obtain his release even though the
mandarin in charge of the place had already authorized his retur to
life. Since paper coppers were cheap, mountains of them were shipped
to and burned at tombs during the Tang.
Some categories of mandarins received goverment assistance in con
structing their tombs. The state provided the labor for building the tombs
of mandarins: 100 men for grade one, eighty for grade two, sixty for
grade three, forty for grade four, and twenty for grade five. In all cases
the grave diggers had ten days to complete the work. Tang statutes reg
ulated the size of plots for mandarins, permitting the highest-ranking to
secure parcels ninety paces square, and the lowest, parcels twenty paces
square. The tombs were earthen tumuli resembling overturned bowls.
The law also imposed limits on their heights. By law those of the highest
ranking officias could not exceed eighteen feet, and the lowest-ranking,
eight feet.
The tombs of aristocrats and patricians had paths leading to their tu
muli along which stone fgures of men and animals stood. Tang statutes
permitted mandarins of the third grade or higher to erect six statues,
and those of the fourth and fifth grades, four statues. The tombstone was
located at the end of the paths, in front of the grave. Tang statutes spec
ified that statues for bureaucrats fifth grade and higher were not to ex
ceed nine feet in height, and those for officials of the sixth and seventh
ranks, four feet. They also permitted the former to have stelae with horn
less dragons engraved at the top, and bases of carved tortoises. The latter
had to settle for rounded tops and square bases. The epitaph on the
tombstone was the biography of the deceased, often quite lengthy. Ac
cording to law their authors, many of whom were authors of note, were
to relate the facts of the person's life without excessive praise or embel
lishment.
Chambers within the tumuli provided space for the coffin and grave
goods. Grave goods included not only such everyday items as clothing,
but also figurines and models. According to Tang statutes the families
of mandarins third grade ad above could install ninety of the latter;
those of the fourth and fifth ranks, sixty; and those of the sixth or lower
grades, forty. The figurines and models included the following:
1 . The four divine beasts (azure dragon, red bird, white tiger, and black tortoise),
camels, horses, and men, not to exceed one foot in height
2. Entertainers and escorts, not to exceed seven inches in height
3. Houses and gardens, not to exceed five square feet in area
4. Slaves, not to exceed twenty in number and four inches in height.
During the Tang the figurines were ceramic statuettes done in a style
called tricolor. As might be expected, the grave goods for Princess
Death and the Afterl!fe 273
Tongchang's tomb were exceedingly extravagant. Her father withdrew
camels, phoenixes, and unicorns, all made of gold and several feet high,
from the imperial treasury to provide her with a guard of honor in the
grave. He had several model palaces-replete with countless dragons,
phoenixes, flowers, trees, people, and domestic animals-carved from
wood and placed in her tomb. Its fixtures also included drapes of fine
embroidered silk into which gold, pearls and lapis lazuli had been sewn.
The grave goods in all tombs were for the use of the deceased in the
afterlife.
In the event that the remains of te deceased were missing-for ex
ample, when a general died in battle and the enemy disposed of his
corpse-his relatives could perform or have performed the rite of
"summoning the soul." Around 680 the court had the consort of Emperor
Zhongzong, then a mere prince, deposed and imprisoned in the agency
for eunuchs. When she died there in solitary confinement, the eunuchs
or other palace attendants buried her corpse. After Zhongzong died in
710, Ruizong decided that she should join her husband in his tomb.
However, no one could find her remains. A professor in a bureau for
supervising rites recommended performing the ritual of summoning the
soul for her with the ceremonial robes appropriate for a queen. It was
an ancient rite performed at funerals. The individual in charge of it called
out to the soul of the deceased, asking it to return. He had garments that
the departed had worn in life at hand so that the wandering spirit would
recognize ad reenter them. In the case of Zhongzong's consort, offici
ants at the rite placed the garments in a soul cart after the ceremony,
performed a triple sacrifice to the dead, and transported the gowns to
the emperor's tomb. There they installed the garments to the right of the
pedestal on which the emperor's coffin rested and covered them with a
quilt. The robes took the place of the corpse.
Given the fact that tombs were prominent landmarks and that they
contained valuable grave goods, it is not surprising that they often at
tracted grave robbers. In 740 more than twenty men, all j unior members
of noble families and totally lacking moral character, constructed a sham
crypt a hundred paces or so from the tomb of imperial consort Hua at
Changan. From inside their vault they dug a tunnel straight to the con
sort's grave. After breaking in, tey ripped open her coffin. Discovering
that te lady's face looked as it had in life and that her limbs were still
fexible, they gave rein to their depraved passions and cruelly defiled
her corpse. Then the robbers chopped her hands off at the wrists to
remove her gold bracelets. They also cut out her tongue, fearing that her
ghost would otherwise talk to the living in dreams. Afterward the
thieves fled with the treasures that they found in Hua's tumulus, trans
porting them down the tunnel to their sham tomb. They spent an entire
night loading their booty into empty coffins on hearses and oter funeral
274 Daily Life in Traditional China
wagons. Then they retured to the capital. Meanwhile the ghost of Con
sort Hua, naked and disheveled, appeared to her son in a dream. She
informed him that grave robbers had opened her tomb, butchered her
corpse, and raped her. Then she gave him a complete description of the
thieves. The next moring the prince reported the matter to the throne.
The emperor summoned the mayor of the capital and the count com
mandants. He ordered them to conduct a search for the culprits with
utmost haste. When the thieves tried to enter one of te capital's gates,
its keeper searched their wagons, found the grave goods, and took the
entire band into custody. Te authorities tortured them, and they all
confessed. The prince requested that five of the leaders be turned over
to him so that he could exact private vengeance. The emperor agreed.
The consort's son ripped the guts from their bodies while they were still
alive, cooked the offal, and offered the innards to the soul of his departed
mother. Executioners beat the remaining robbers to death outside one of
the city's gates.
MOURNING
A family's mourning began at te moment of deat, and sometimes
the grief was overwhelmig. After his mother passed away, one man
cried without restraint until he went blind. Another's anguish over the
loss of his father was so great that he coughed up blood. When the
parents of a third died while he was away on a military campaign, he
did not speak for thirty years. When his relatives made inquiries of him,
he wrote out his replies. As a sign of filial devotion some sons erected
mounds over their parents' graves themselves.
Mouring continued after the burial of the dead, its length determined
by the relationship of the mourner to the deceased. According to ritual
regulations, a man was supposed to mourn for his brother's son for one
year, and his uncle's grandson for five months. The longest period,
"tree years," was that for parents and grandparents, except in the case
of army officers, when it was 100 days. The three-year mouring period
was actually only twenty-seven months, but imposed great hardships
nonetheless. All mandarins had to resign from their posts the moment
they learned of their parent's or grandparent's deat, don mournig
dress, and remain in retirement for the duration of the period. The of
ficial lost his salary and had to find other means of supporting himself
and his family in the interim. At the end of twenty-seven monts he
could retur to government service at the same rank that he held before.
Failure to inform one's superior or to mourn was an offense punishable
by exile to a place 666 miles from his place of residence.
Custom and the law demanded that the son or grandson adopt an
austere lifestyle during the twenty-seven months. Removing mourning
Death and the Afterlie 275
clothes and donning ordinary garments was punishable by three years
of penal servitude. So was listening to or performing music. The Tang
law code defined music as playing instruments, singing, and dancing,
but the proscription undoubtedly applied to other forms of amusement,
such as the variety acts of the independent entertainers. That regulation,
of course, effectively prohibited all convivial gatherings with friends and
kinsmen. Those convicted of playing board games could receive one year
of penal servih1de. If a son or grandson encountered a performance of
music or other form of amusement by chance, he would receive a beating
of 100 blows with the thick rod if caught and found guilty. The law
banned marriages during the mourning period, imposing a punishment
of three years of penal servitude on violators. Mourners had to abstain
from sex for twenty-seven months as well. The law specified a sentence
of one year of penal servitude for those who conceived or gave birth to
a child during that time. The regulation did not apply to children con
ceived before, but delivered during, the mourning period. There was an
escape clause to that article of the code. If the offender confessed before
his crime came to light, he was not subject to pw<ishment. Most of the
rules also pertained to women. The objective of all of them was to ensure
that mourners maintained a proper state of grief and refrained from
enjoying any pleasure. There were also Days of National Mourning for
deceased Tang emperors and empresses. Tang statutes forbade all sub
jects from indulging in entertainment on those anniversaries.
In 817 the authorities leared that an imperial son-in-law, the son of
his father's concubine, had indulged himself wit a nocturnal feast dur
ing the mourning period for his father's principal wife. The court
stripped him of all official and noble titles, had him beaten forty strokes
with the thin rod, and settled him in (banished him to) a prefecture away
from the capital. A guest at tl<e festivities received the same beating and
exile to a distant prefecture.
Some mourners went to extremes in their expression of gr
i
ef. One
withdrew from public life for more than ten years. Several took to dwell
ing in huts they built next to the graves of their parents. After the death
of his mother, a man erected such a hut, stopped bating, ceased comb
ing his hair, gave up eating meat, and drank only water. Another planted
more than 1,000 cypress and pine trees on the site of his moilier's grave.
After the three-year mouring period concluded, a man-or occasion
ally a woman in cases when no male descendants survived-had to
maintain reverence for forebears. That obligation, best known as ancestor
worship in the West, consisted of sharing food. The eldest son performed
the ritual that took place on the anniversary of his father's death. The
government granted one day of leave to mandarins so they could attend
to it. The rite embraced all male forebears of the son to the sevent
generation, from his great-great-great-great-great grandfather to his fa-
276 Daily Life in Traditional China
ther. If he had the means, he erected an ancestral shrine where he dis
played the spirit tablets for all of tose ancestors. Otherwise, he arrayed
them at an altar in his home. Spirit tablets were oblong wooden boards,
square at the bottom and round at the top, on which the name of the
deceased appeared, written or engraved. Durig the sacrifice, the eldest
son invited the soul of the deceased to descend into the spirit tablet by
burning incense. He then presented the offering of cooked food, usually
pork, fish, and chicken along with ale. The ancestor partook of the vict
uals' essence. The family would eat its physical substance.
In the early seventh century a senior secretary from the world of the
dead informed a medium that souls needed but one meal a year. In the
Tang, descendants usually provided two: one in the home on the anni
versary of the ancestor's death and the other on April S, during the Cold
Food Festival. If the spirits did not receive it, they would steal food or
perhaps beg for it. The number of ghosts for whom no one provided
sustenance was enormous. Once two officials spent the night at an inn.
The hostelry provided them with food and ale. The men sat facing one
another and ate well ito the night. Suddenly tey saw a pair of hairy
black hands appear beneath teir lanter. The hands made a gesture as
if asking for something to eat, so each man placed a piece of roasted
meat in one of the hands. A moment later the hands reappeared. They
made a gesture as if cupping something, so each of the officials poured
a goblet of ale and gave it to one of the hands. The hands did not appear
again. When they finished eating, the men turned their backs to the lan
tern and went to sleep. In the second night watch (9 P. M. to 1 1 P.M.) they
heard a voice calling from the street. "A villager twenty miles due east
of here has spread a feast for the gods, and the food and brew are abun
dant. Can you come?" A voice speakig from under the lanter replied,
"I am already drunk wit ale and stuffed with food." The spirit outside
then departed.
THE AFTERLIFE: SOULS
Ancient Chinese believed that a multiplicity of souls inhabited the hu
man body. A time-honored medical canon contended that each of the
five viscera-liver, lungs, heart, spleen, and kidneys-had its own spirit.
Religious Taoists went to extremes in their beliefs about the residents of
the body. They claimed that it was the abode of 36,000 gods. The con
sensus, however, was tat there were only two. They represented, and
were produced by, the cosmological forces of yin and yang.
The po soul was a manifestation of yin-earth, water, and the
The Po dark. It was the governor of te physical nature of man and
gave form to the fetus in the womb. The po was the animal
nature of man, instincts and urges that first became apparent after birth,
Death and the Afterlie 277
when the behavior of an infant was clearly centered on the fulfillment
of its self-centered needs. Later in life the soul expressed itself as emo
tions: joy, anger, sorrow, sadness, glee, love, and hate. The po was fixed
to the body, a after death retured to eart, where it moldered in the
soil and lodged i the bones at the grave.
That belief led to some strange notions about the behavior of the dead
among Tang Chinese. The wife of a village headman had just died. One
evening at dusk, before her family had coffined her, the sound of music
entered the room where her body lay, and her corpse rose to dance.
When the music departed, the dead woman followed. After her husband
returned home that evening and heard about his wife, he fortified him
self with some ale, broke a branch from a mulberry tree, and went look
ing for her. He found her in a grove of cypress i a graveyard, where
she was still dancing to the music beneath the trees. Te headman struck
the corpse with his stck. Te body fell to the ground, and the music
ceased. He carried the body of his wife home on his back. In this story
the music aimates the cadaver by exciting its passions, its po.
When it did not receive a proper burial, the po might resort to clever
ruses to remedy its predicament. During the night the skeleton of a
young child paid a call on a family of brothers who were teachers. It
entered their hall, cried out, "Mother, suckle me! " and romped about as
nimbly as a monkey. The brothers struck the ting with staves. Each
time a staff struck home, the spirit's bones scattered like falling stars.
The bones ten gathered themselves, put the skeleton back together, and
shrieked, "Mother, suckle me! " So the men caught the thing, stuffed it
into a linen bag, and tossed the sack in a dry well. Te next night the
skeleton returned with the linen bag in its hand. The brothers stuffed it
into the bag again, tied a rock to the bag wit a rope, and heaved it into
a river. While they were disposing of it, the spirit spoke: "I will return
to be your guest, as I was last night. " True to its word, the skeleton
arrived at the house once more, with the bag in its left hand and the
rope in its right. The family was better prepared for it the third time.
They had chiseled out the core of a large log to make a canister into
which they stuffed the thing. Then they capped both ends of the log with
iron plates and nailed the plates to the wood. They attached an iron lock
and tied a huge rock to the log. As the brothers were rushing off to set
it adrift in a large river, the ghost spoke. "Many thanks for providing
the coffin for my send-off." The tale clearly attests to the importance that
ancient Chinese attached to interring the bones of te dead, even if they
were not those of your own kinsmen.
The Chinese of medieval times had a peculiar obsession with te eyes,
which they believed lived on after death. Physician Wang was a skilled
acupuncturist. I 831 he died, but revived the following day to tell his
tale. In his coma he had traveled to a place where he treated an abscess
278 Daily Life in Traditional China
on a man's shoulder, extracting more tha a pit of pus. The patient
directed a subordinate dressed in yellow robes to escort the physician to
a courtyard. When the doctor entered it, he saw several thousand human
eyes stacked to form a mountain. They were sparkling and twinkling.
The yellow-clad officer said, "These are 'ends.' " Presently two men of
imposing stature appeared. They took positions to the right and left of
the mountain, then swung giant fans. The fans stirred a breeze that
wafted over the eyes. Some of them flew away on the currents of air.
Others rolled away on the ground. All of them vanished in an instant.
The physician asked the reason for that. The officer replied, "All living
things become 'ends' just after they die." Eyeballs, po, survived after
death. It is not clear what the source of that belief was, but there were
several tales about the strange behavior of eyes.
The hun soul was a manifestation of yang-heaven, fire, and
The Hun light. It governed the intelligence of man. At birt it was
weak, but evolved and strengthened as the child's reason de
veloped, especially after the age of six, when education began. It reached
full maturity at the age of twenty, but did not fully perfect itself until
the age of fifty. The hun governed the character of man: his benevolence,
righteousness, decorum, knowledge, and trustworthiness. In the Chinese
mind, all of those attributes were distinctly Chinese. Te hun was qi,
breath, and therefore not attached to the body. It was free to roam, in
life as well as in death. Some of its wanderings occurred during sleep
when a person had dreams. At death it retured to heaven but, when
summoned, visited its family for sacrifices at the hore or its grave.
Some people had a good idea of what the hun looked like. Several
spirits care to haunt the hore of Teacher Yan. After several attempts
to exorcise them failed, he fell ill, and his condition took a tur for the
worse. In his delirium he had a dream in which a man dressed in ver
milion robes and a black bandanna appeared. Standing in midair, the
spirit said, "I am returning your soul to you. " Then it tossed what ap
peared to be more than twenty orange robes at the teacher. Yan gatered
them up. The next day he recovered from his illness. The notion that the
soul resembles clothing may have developed from the pivotal role that
the deceased's garments played in the rite of summoning the soul. This
ghost story also reveals another ancient Chinese belief about the soul.
Some illnesses are occasions when the soul is absent from the body. Tis
was true especially for ailments that involved comas and cataleptic
trances. In such cases herbalists concocted a remedy called "soup for
returing the soul [to the body] for administation to the patient.
Intellect and culture were superior to emotions and urges, so the hun
controlled the po while it resided in the body. That belief led the Chinese
imagination down some bizarre paths. A judge sentenced a county cor
mandant to death for committing a crime. After the executioner be-
Death and the Afterlie 279
headed him, his body did not die, and his family carried it home on a
litter. Every time the commandant was hungry, he wrote the word "fam
ished" on the ground. His kin then minced food and stuffed it down the
hole in his neck. When he was full, he wrote the word "stop" on the
ground. Whenever anyone in the family committed an offense, he wrote
a punishment for the person on te ground. Since the passions of the
living had not abated in him, he slept with his wife, who bore him an
other son. Things went on like that for three or four years. One day he
wrote, "I will die tomorrow [i.e., my hun will depart], so prepare the
funeral paraphernalia. " His family did as they were told.
Sometimes the body that the hun animated was not its own, but a
borrowed corpse. Marshal Guo and Liu were good friends, so they made
a compact. Whoever died first would retur to tell the other about the
world of the shades. Several months after Liu died, the marshal heard
the sound of his friend's voice speaking outside his door during the
night, and invited him to enter. Liu asked Guo to put out the candles,
which he did. Guo ushered his friend in, the two sat together on a couch
and chatted about the otherworld. After midnight the marshal suddenly
smelled a putrid odor all around him. The stench quickly became so
strong that he could not stand it. His suspicions aroused, the marshal
felt the body of the ghost with his hands and discovered that the corpse
was very large, unlike Liu's body. Guo pulled the specter to the ground
and lay on it with his hand covering his nose. When the sun was about
to rise, the spirit became quite agitated and asked for permission to de
part. Guo would not give it. After dawn broke, Guo saw that he was
lying on the corpse of a western barbarian. Te body was over seven
feet tall and appeared to have been dead for several days.
Ghosts had the same needs, appetites, and passions as the living. Sev
enth Daughter, a courtesan, had had an affair with General Wang. He
took ill and died, but six months later she still did not know that he had
passed away. At the beginning of autumn he suddenly appeared at her
brothel and lingered tere until dusk. In the twilight te general asked
her to accompany him to his house. The courtesan was reluctant to leave,
and asked him to stay at her bordello, but he insisted that they go. He
set her behind him on his horse, and the pair rode off. After they arrived
at his mansion, they joined in pleasure as they had when he was alive.
The next moring a maidservant discovered Seventh Daughter among
the blankets on the general's coffin trestle, and rushed off to inform the
Wangs. His sons went to have a look for themselves, and asked the
courtesan how she had come to be there. After she explained, they sent
her back to the brothel. The hun was supposed to be the rational force
that controlled urges like sex, but popular religious beliefs were often
paradoxical.
Vengeance was as strong a passion as sex in traditional Chia. The
280 Daily Life in Traditional China
soul of a murder victim might, like Consort Hua, appear in a magistrate's
dream to reveal the killer who had escaped j ustice. On occasion a ghost
might exact retribution on its own for an offense committed against it.
When Marshal Li was in the capital, he tried to take a concubine, but
the mother of the women he desired would not grant her permission.
So he told her, "I vow never to marry." She then relented. Several years
later the concubine died. A year after she passed away, the marshal
arranged a marriage with the daughter of Commandant Shen. On his
wedding day, while he was bathing in the bath house, Li saw the dead
woman march straight forward to his tub with herbs in her hand. She
told him, "You promised me that you would never marry. Today you
will become the Shen' s bridegroom. I have no wedding present for you,
but I will give you these herbs to perfume your bathwater." She scattered
the powdered herbs in the bathtub and, after stirring the water with her
hair pin, vanished. Li felt very uneasy. He became so bloated that he
could not drag himself from the bath, and died there. When they found
his corpse, its limbs and torso were as soft as silk foss because the bath
powder had dissolved his tendons and bones. This was a cautionary tale
for people, who gave their solemn word, that they would suffer dire
consequences if they broke it.
Sometimes rehibution for murder was very swift, effected by a ma
gician without the aid of the spirits. Du saw a Buddhist monk pass by
with a trunk. Thinking the chest contained valuable silk, Du devised a
Death and the Afterlie 281
plot with his wife to steal it, and they beat the priest to death. Before
the monk expired, the couple heard him mutter a magic spell or two.
Afterward a fly few up Du's nostril and plugged his nose for a long
time. Du's eyes and nose turned down. His hair and eyebrows fell out.
In a daze, he lost his bearings. His vitality ebbed and faded away. I a
short while he came down with a demonic disease and died before a
year passed. As he approached his end, the fly flew out of his nose and
into his wife's. She took ill and passed away a little more than a year
later.
Where does the soul go after death? There was a tale written in the
Tang about a Ghost Country on an island in the sea, but it was the
product of te overactive imagination of its author. It should be quite
clear by now that, as far as popular religion went, ghosts and men in
termingled and interacted in very intimate ways on the same plane. Peo
ple of all stripes-emperors, mandarins, intellectuals, merchants, and
peasants-saw the spirits of the dead anyvvhere and everywhere. In one
tale the ghost of a merchant meets a monk who was a friend while he
was alive. After consuming dumplings in an eatery the pair strolls along
a lane in the market and meets a woman selling fowers. The spirit says
to the monk, "This woman is a ghost, and the fowers she sells are for
the use of specters only. They're invisible to the living. " He takes out
several coppers, buys some flowers, and gives them to his friend. Then
he adds, "All those who smile when they see these fowers, are ghosts,"
takes leave of the monk, and vanishes. As the monk walks back to his
monastery, many people on the road see his fowers and smile. The
ghosts are all around, but only ghost seers can detect them.
There were special, invisible cities or bureaus in heaven, beneath holy
mountains or at unspecified locations-the unseen world-where the
gears of the otherworld's administration ground on inexorably. The gov
ernment of ghosts was a mirror refection of the government of the liv
ing, at least in the sense of the judicial system. The duty of the Provosts
of Fate in heaven and beneath Mount Tai on earth was to examine the
dossiers of the dead and determine if the life spans allotted them at birth
had expired. They also reviewed the ledgers of the deceased's merits,
and sins based on reports submitted by the three corpses and the god
of the stove. They deducted 300 days from the soul's birthright for trans
gressions of great enormity and three days for minor infractions. Re
solving lawsuits was the responsibility of j udges in the netherworld. The
souls of the dead could fie complaints against the living who had com
mitted crimes agaist them while tey were alive. Coffin Head Li was a
bully who often stole cats and dogs in the easter market and ate them.
One day two men dressed in purple approached him. One of them said,
"We have business. Is there someplace we can talk in private?" The tluee
of them walked several paces and halted at a spot away from the crowd.
282 Daily Life in Traditional China
The man then said to Coffin Head, "The provosts of the unseen world
have sent us here to apprehend you. You must go with us at once." At
first the bully didn't get it, so he asked, "You are men. Why are you
putting me on?" The man replied, "To the contrary, we are ghosts. " Then
the spirit took an official document from his bosom. The seal on it was
still wet, and Coffin Head could clearly make out his name written on
it. The paper recounted the details of charges that 460 cats and dogs had
lodged against Coffin Head with the magistrates of the shades.
After death a sou might have to appear in court to answer charges
lodged against it. Ushers led the spirit of Commandant Yang, a high
ranking minister, into the tribunal of te king of hell. The monarch asked
the commandant, "How did you manage to accumulate so many idict
ments of your sins while you were alive? Since there are so many, how
will you be able to redeem yourself?" Yang retorted, "I am truly sinless! "
The king ordered the registers brought to him. A moment later a yellow
clad clerk arrived with the books in hand and recited te commandant's
sins.
In 692, when the norther prefectures fell to the Turkish khan, the munber of
troops that the dynasty sent to save the districts was small, so the armies were
no match for the invaders. Someone sent a document up to the throne that cen
sured the government for this decision, but Commandant Yang ignored the ad
vice and sent the armies forward anyway. The khan defeated those forces and
slew more than 1,000 1nen.
In 701 locusts ravaged the region north of the Yellow River, and no one had
a kerel of grain to eat. Yang would not open the granaries to supply relief to
the afficted population. That caused commoners to leave their homes and mi
grate. More than 20,000 starved to death.
Yang's statecraft was uneven, and his application of it injured nature's har
mony. As a result a great flood struck three prefectures south of the Yellow River,
and thousands of people drowned.
There are another sixty-seven indictments of Yang's sins just like these.
The clerk showed the dossier to Commandant Yang, who then acknowl
edged his transgressions. Suddenly a hand the size of a couch, with
frightening bristles, appeared and seized the commandant. With Yang's
blood dripping from its fingers, it rose into space and disappeared.
It was the magistrates of the dead who dispatched bailiffs to appre
hend the souls of the living whose terms of life had expired. They might
charge teir minions with the task of gathering in a host of spirits. In
that case epidemics broke out in various regions of the empire. A band
of them could arrive at a mansion with a wagon full of fire and toss into
its flames the soul of a man who had relished delicacies that required
roasting j ackasses and potting geese alive. Usually, however, the bailiffs
confronted a single victim in a conventional setting.
Deatlz and the Afterlie 283
The bailiffs could be fexible in carrying out their duties. Sometimes
they spared a man if he could find a substitute who looked like him.
Sometimes they were willing to take a bribe. Coffin Head Li begged the
spirits that accosted him for a little extra time. After some deliberation
they agreed. "If you can manage 400,000 coppers, we will grant you a
stay of three years. " Coffin Head agreed to this, and the three fixed noon
of the following day as the time for the bully to pay. At the appointed
hour he prepared the money that he'd pledged, and burned it. As it went
up in smoke he saw the two ghosts take the cash and vanish. Three days
later he died. Three years in the world of the shades was the equivalent
of three days among the living.
After the bailiffs escorted the soul to a court in the unseen world, the
spirit might have to endure interminable delays due to the red tape of
its bureaucracy. Comely Countenance, whose mistress had murdered
her, retured to life and told her tale to a descendant of her mistress's
husband. "As soon as I died, two men clad in black led me away to a
place with great gates and spacious halls. I paid homage to the king
inside, and he made a brief inquiry into the facts of my case. My black
clad escorts muddled their report of the evets that led to my death fom
beginning to end. I did not correct them, however, because I dared not
accuse your ancestor's wife of murder. A little later they led me to a
bureau where I saw documents and files stacked up to the ceiling. A
knot of clerks was bustling about, examining and searching the papers.
One of tem, with my dossier in hand, was the first to interrogate me.
After inspecting my file, he declared that my demise did not agree with
the fate that had been assigned me in the document. It was his judgment
that eleven years be deducted from my mistress's life and given to me.
Another official reviewed my case, and affirmed the decision of te first.
However, the second was cashiered as punishment for some reason. As
a result my dossier was shelved, and my case remained closed for more
than ninety years. Yesterday a celestial mandarin suddenly arrived to
search for long-pending cases that the bureaucrats of the unseen world
had shelved. He resolved all outstanding cases, including mine. I lost
none of the eleven years that the frst j udge had awarded me. "
Comely Countenance was fortunate in one respect. When a soul's case
remained unresolved, the ruler of the underworld smeared a potion on
its corpse so that it would not decay. Others were not so lucky. The body
of Li, whose soul the bailiffs mistakenly seized, had rotted away by the
time bureaucrats corrected the bailiffs' error. So te functionaries of the
otherworld chose the body of a man who had just died, and compelled
Li's soul to enter it. He woke to find himself in a house 300 miles from
his own. When he reached home, none of his family recognized him.
Only his behavior and voice convinced them of his true identity.
Punishment for si did not always take place in the world of the
284 Daily Life in Traditional China
shades or involve the dead. A general once asked ghost seer Hong to
find out why he had no son to be his heir. Hong encountered the specter
of the general's father, who informed him that his son had slept with a
maidservant when he was young and vowed to her that he would never
marry. Later he broke his word. The maid had died and filed a complaint
against him in Heaven. The judgment of the celestial magistrates was
that the general should have no sons.
There were some skeptics in the Tang who refused to believe in the
existence of specters. They did not fare well in the literature of the times.
Li often boastfully told his guests that he did not dread ghosts. One day
a red face over one foot in length appeared on te south wall of his
dwelling. It had a bent nose, sunken eyes, pointed teeth, and a sharp
mouth. All in all, the face was quite repulsive. The sight of it enraged
Li, so he struck it with his fist. It vanished the istant that his knuckles
hit it, then reappeared immediately on the west wall, now white. Then
it showed itself on the east wall in azure. Each time the face disappeared
when Li struck it. Finally, a black face popped up on the north wall. It
was twice the size of the others and far more terrifying. It aroused greater
rage in Li. He dealt it several blows, but it would not vanish. He drew
his sword and stabbed it. When his blade struck home, the face left the
wall and enveloped him. L pushed it with his hands, but he could not
rid himself of it. The black face then fused itself to his face. Li took on
the color of glossy black lacquer, toppled to the ground, and died. When
they laid him to rest in a coffin, the inky hue of his face had not changed.
BUDDHISM
The highest state of spiritual attainment for Buddhists was nirvana, a
state of extinction attained by suppressing all desires and delusions in
order to terminate suffering, obliterate karma, and escape from the per
petual cycle of rebirth. It was a form of individual salvation that required
a monk or nun to live a life of asceticism, self-denial, and meditation in
near total isolation from his or her family. The idea did not sit well with
most Chinese, but one school of Buddhism offered another, more attrac
tive alternative.
It was Pure Land, a paradise located somewhere to the west of the
world. From its gold ground spring jeweled trees that make music when
their branches are moved by gentle breezes. Stairs adorned with gold,
silver, lapis lazuli, and crystal lead down into bathing pools filled with
cool, sweet, thirst-quenching water. I beds of gold dust blue, red, white,
and yellow lotus blossoms grow. Four times a day flowers rain down
from above, and focks of birds-peacocks, egrets, and parrots-with
elegant plumages sing songs expounding Buddhist tenets. Ethereal mu
sic resounds perpetually. It is a paradise of pure bliss in which noting
Death and the Afterlie 285
unpleasant exists. Dwellers there are free from all suffering, having es
caped from the endless cycle of rebirth.
Amitabha, the Buddha of Boundless Light, reigns in Pure Land with
out a bureaucracy of any sort. That was no doubt an appealing notion
to the Chinese, who had long suffered under the yoke of imperial offi
cialdom. Out of infinite compassion for all sentient beings, he created
Pure Land, and promises that everyone who truly believes in him will
be rebor in his paradise. His right-hand man is Guanyin, who travels
everywhere to bring the faithful to the paradise. The secret to gaining
admission to Pure Land is utterig the name of Amitabha with true
sincerity. Devotees who have total faith in Pure Land will be rebor
there, sitting cross-legged on open lotus blossoms. Skeptics who utter
the name of Amitabha, but doubt the existence of the paradise, will be
reborn in a closed lotus and spend 500 years there before emerging. In
either case, gods and humans will enjoy bliss eternally in Pure Land until
they attain nirvana. The appeal of Pure Land doctrines was not so much
that they offered an idyllic existence as that they presented an easy
means of acquiring salvation. A believer did not have to practice asce
ticism and accumulate merit to attain paradise.
Buddhism not only brought to Cha the belief in a paradise for the
faithful, it also introduced the notion of three woeful modes of existences
for sinners: rebirth as a hungry ghost, as a denizen of hell, or as an
inferior being in a future life. The belief in hungry ghosts was very old
in China, but the notion had no stigma attached to it. The famished
spirits were simply unfortunate souls who had no descendants to supply
them with sustenance. Buddhism saw them in a different light. Starving
specters were suffering as punishment for violating religious ethics.
When Mulian encounters his mother in the beyond, her throat has con
tracted to the size of a needle's eye, and no water can pass through it.
She sees a clear, cool river in the distance, but, as she approaches it, it
changes into a stream of pus. His mother receives delectable food, but it
immediately transforms itself into fire.
The Buddhist notion of hell was different from that in the West. It was
not an infero of eternal damnation for sinners. Instead hell was a kind
of purgatory in which the damned suffered torment for limited, albeit
lengthy, terms. When they completed teir sentences, they assumed new
forms in another life. King Yama reigned over the netherworld, but ox
head and horse-head minions actually ran the place. They prodded the
condemned on with pitchforks and truncheons. There were special sec
tors for the punishment of specific sins. In one people who damaged the
property of monasteries, ate their fruit or stole their firewood had to
climb knife trees that slice off their skin. In another men and women
suffered for having illicit sex on the beds of their parents. The women
were forced down onto beds of iron nails that thrust up through their
286 Daily Life in Traditional China
bodies while the men were compelled to embrace red hot copper pil
lars.
Hunters received the worst punishments because the taking of life was
an anathema to Buddhists. Archer Li slew enormous numbers of animals
with his arrows and caught countless fish. In 645 he died after being ill
for several days. A ghost led him to hell, where he entered a walled
courtyard full of flying birds and running animals. The creatures pressed
closer and closer to the bowman, and demanded his life for having
slaughtered them. A bitch whom he had shot dead came straight up to
him and bit his face. Then the dog gnawed his body until there was not
an inch that was free of wounds. Aferward three large ghosts, more
than ten feet tall, appeared. They fayed the archer's skin and fesh. In a
moment they had completely butchered Li, leaving only his face, eyes,
bones, and innards. The fiends divided the meat and fed it to the birds
and beasts. The bowman's skin and fesh grew anew, so the ghosts fayed
him again. The butchery continued repeatedly for three days, during
which time Li was beyond himself with excruciating pain and misery.
When it was over, the specters and the creatures disappeared. The archer
climbed over a wall and ran sout wit no idea of where he was going.
Just when he thought he had escaped, another spirit chased him down
and slapped an iron cage over him. Inside, innumerable fish nibbled on
him. When they finished devouring him, the fiend and the fish vanished.
After Li revived, he discovered that he had been dead for six days.
After sinners completed their sentences in hell, officials of the unseen
world assigned them new destinies among the living. If their transgres
sions were minor, they stood a good chance of being rebom a human
beings of prominent social standing or as gods. Sometimes their sins
were so trivial that they passed straight through hell without suffering
any punishment whatsoever. Occasionally, problems developed in the
transition from one incamation to the next. The daughter of a governor
had often been ill since infancy. It was as if her spirit lacked strength.
The governor asked Recluse Wang, who was a master of Taoist magic,
about her condition. Wang said, "This girl is not sick. When she was
bom, her hun soul did not attach itself to her body. The commandant of
such-and-such a county has your girl's former body. He should have
died several years ago. Since he has been a good man troughout his
life, the powers of the unseen world have allowed him to live beyond
his allotted time as a reward for his merit. He is now over ninety years
of age. On te day of his death your daughter will recover. " A month
later the govemor's daughter suddenly woke, as if from a drunken stu
por, and her illness was cured. The goveror sent an agent to check on
the commandant. He had died without suffering an illness on te same
day that the girl recovered.
If the transgressions were grave, the mandarins in the netherworld
Death and the Afterlie 287
might consign the sinner to an aimal's body. During a jourey, monk
Lingyin saw a bamboo sedan chair moving ahead of him. A maidservant
dressed in the hemp sackcloth of mouring was following it. He fol
lowed the palanquin for several days, but never saw its occupant. So he
went up to the litter, quickly drew the curtai aside and peaked in. The
monk saw a very imposing woman who had a human head and a
snake(s body. That shocked him. The woman told him, "Because the
karmic retribution for my sins was so heavy, my body changed into that
of a serpent. Why did you have to look at me?"
A person reincarated as an animal could accumulate merit and earn
a promotion to a higher state of existence in its next life. The aunt of
Goveror Lu had a dog named Blossom of which she was very fond.
One day someone killed it. Several months later the woman died sud
denly and had an audience with Judge Li in the world of the shades. He
told her, "Madam, when the life span that heaven accorded you was
about to expire, someone spoke up for you forcefully. So you will live
for another twenty years. " The woman thanked him and left. As she was
walking along a boulevard, she passed a mansion. A beautiful woman
with more than ten maidservants sauntered out from behind the spirit
screen in front of its gate. The woman asked the aunt if she recognized
her. "No, I don't remember you," she replied. "I am Blossom. I am in
debted to you for not treating me cruelly, like a domestic beast, when I
was alive, and for constatly nurturing me. I am now the concubine of
Judge Li. I was the one who spoke on your behalf yesterday. The pro
vosts of the unseen world did not want to grant all the years I requested
for you. They would give you only one degree, but I altered the numbers
in the records from twelve to twenty, in order to repay you for your
kidness." When the women parted, Blossom said to the aunt, "Please
gather up my bones and bury them for me. My remains lie beneath a
wall on a street in such-and-such a ward. Someone threw them on a
dung heap. " After the lady recovered consciousness, she found the dog's
bones just where Blossom said they'd be. She buried them with the same
rites that she would have used for her own children. Blossom then ap
peared in her dreams to thank her. Blossom had apparently acquired
great merit in her existence as a dog, enough to warrant rebirth as a god.
Regardless of whether one was rebor as an animal in this world or
as a deity in the netherworld, reincarnation was always someting of an
unwelcome event because it did not liberate one from suffering.
TAOISM
Taoism emerged i the second century as an outgrowth of China's
indigenous religions. It adopted and reordered popular beliefs in the
afterlife, the courts and justice of the unseen world. Its innovations con-
288 Daily Life in Traditional China
sisted of vastly expanding the bureaucracy of the dead by populating it
with the souls of its deceased adherents, creating a priesthood that could
intervene wit spirit officials on the behalf of the dead and devising
rituals for the salvation of the departed. Taoism also assimilated Bud
dhist doctrines. I embraced the notions of a subterranean hell and re
incaration. One of its priests' duties was to pray and accumulate merit
for the salvation of ancestors. In their rituals they kowtowed, beat their
brows, and begged the gods to release souls from helt liberate them from
the consequences of their karma and the endless cycle of reincarnation,
and permit them to ascend to te chamber of bliss in heaven.
Taoism differed from popular Chinese religion and Buddhism in its
belief that both po, the body, and hun, the spirit, survive after death. For
the vast majority of its adherents, salvation meant resurrection of the
body and the soul. After death the corpse underwent refining in a realm
at the northern reaches of the universe. The process destroyed all of its
corruptible substances, the agents of aging and dying, and transformed
it into imperishable matter. The person then became an immortat and
therefore qualified to hold office in the bureaucracy of the otherworld.
Those who did not perform good deeds during their life time passed
into a netherworld, where they perished.
The Taoists also restructured the geography of the unseen world, cre
ating complexes of subterranean realms in addition to celestial kingdoms
for the immortals. The grandest were the thirty-six grotto paradises lo
cated beneath holy mountains. Taoist notions about those imaginary cav
ers sometimes stimulated authors to write tales about journeys to them
by ordinary mortals.
In 705 a rich man had a well dug on his property. His workers spent
two years on it and dug more than 1,000 feet without striking water.
One day they heard the sound of barking dogs coming from the welt
so they cut a lateral tunnel and broke through the roof of a cavern be
neath which was a mountain peak. One of the diggers lowered himself
onto the peak and found himself in an extraordinary world illuminated
by its own sun and moon. It had mountain ranges and rivers that
stretched out for miles. Gold and silver palaces nestled in the mountains.
Butterfies the size of fans fluttered about giant trees with purple blos
soms. The worker climbed down the mountain and came to a gate with
a sign reading Celestial Cassia Mountain Palace. Two men rushed out
of te guardhouses on either side of the portal to confront him. They
were over five feet tall and had j adelike faces with red lips, pearly teeth,
and blue hair like silk threads. They wore gold hats and robes so light
and fine that they seemed to have been woven from white fog and green
smoke. The gatekeepers asked the digger how he came to be there. As
he was explaining, more than a score of men came out of the gate, com
plaied about the foul order emanating from the worker, and scolded
Death and the Afterlie 289
the guards. Terrified, they were giving their explanation of events when
a mandarin dressed in dark red robes appeared with a decree orderig
the men to treat the stranger kindly.
The gatekeepers suggested that they take the digger for a stroll. They
led him to a spring, where he bathed and washed his clothes to get rid
of his stench. The water was as sweet as milk. Afterward they toured
the realm and came to the capital of the land, where all of the palaces
were made of gold, silver, and jade. There the guards informed him that
the grotto paradise, Celestial Cassia, was a way station. Immortals dwelt
there for 1,918 years before they ascended to a celestial domain. They
then led him to a gate through which he passed into the world above
ground. When he retured to his village, the worker discovered that the
year was 791 . His brief stay of less than a day in the grotto paradise was
equivalent to eighty-six years among the living.
The cavern realms were fit abodes for lesser immortals who evaded
death by good living and rituals. There was also a very small elite of
Taoist holy men who transformed their bodies into imperishable matter
while still living. They accomplished the feat through a variety of meth
ods. Some abstained from eating cereals, meat, and ale. They consumed
only cypress or pine seeds, conifer resins, and mica. Occasionally, the
adepts actually mummifed themselves, and their corpses did not decay
after they died. However, that was not the objective-an immortal did
not leave his body behind-nor were dietary regimes the preferred tech
niques for refining the body. I medieval times Taoists relied on elixirs
to convert mortal flesh and bones into immortal matter.
Elixirs, which adepts concocted through the elaborate processes of al
chemy, were extraordinarily toxic mineral compounds. One formula
called for eight ounces of gold, eight ounces of mercury, one pound of
arsenic disulfide, and one pound of arsenic trisulfide. The allure of im
mortality was so powerful that even emperors were willing to take the
risk of ingesting them anyway. At least five of the twenty-one Tang
emperors died from swallowing those potent potions. Taoists were well
aware that elixirs were deadly poisons. In one prominent case a young
man received a summons to take an office in the bureaucracy governing
a grotto paradise beneath a moutain. In accordance with istructions
given him in a vision by two emissaries from the unseen world, he took
an elixir made of mercury sulfide and committed suicide. After the death
and burial of a Taoist adept, the corpse would disappear from the coffin.
Sometimes disciples or kinsmen would find only a sword or slipper
when they opened the casket. In some cases, however, after transforming
their body into light matter on earth, the immortals might ascend directly
to heaven in broad daylight.
piloslc: Te Fall
With the assistance of the Turks, imperial forces recovered Changan on
May 18, 883. Huang Chao's retreating rebels and the goverment's in
vading troops laid waste to the capital. Between 60 and 70 percent of its
palaces, office buildings, and the dwellings in its markets and wards
went up in flames during the pillaging. Since there were no quarters for
him to occupy, Emperor Xizang ordered the mayor of the city to rebuild
the metropolis. There was a shortage of labor and funds, so he was able
to restore only 10 to 20 percent of the destroyed structures in the twenty
two months before the emperor returned to Changan in 885. While Xi
zang moved ito a domicile befitting his dignity, his officials had to take
up residence in abodes unbefitting teirs. Fires had consumed many of
the mandarins' mansions. Consequently, high-ranking officials resorted
to living in the bordellos of North Hamlet, the courtesan district.
Xizang's sojourn in Chang an was short-lived. Altough he brought
with him the Army of Divine Strategy-some 50,000 troops-it was no
match for the forces of military goverors in the vicinity of the capital.
The emperor directly controlled only two prefectures and the capital
itself. Independent military goverors ruled the provinces, as they had
after the rebellion of An Lushan, and he could count on very few of
those warlords for support. Nearly all regions of the empire had ceased
forvarding taxes to the court, so he had few funds to raise and maintain
armies. Eleven months later the dynasty's Turkish ally-offended by the
court's failure to support him against a rival-swept down on te capital
292 Epilogue: The Fall
and Xizong fed again. When the emperor returned to Changan in 888,
he found the palaces and gates in ruins. He died fourteen days later.
His successors fared no better than he. Zhaozong abandoned the cap
ital in late summer of 895 after he narrowly escaped being shot with an
arrow during a battle between rival factions of his own armies. He
headed for the mountains to the south with more than 20,000 citizens
patricians and commoners-in his train. O1.e-third of the people follow
ing him died fom thirst. When he reentered Changan a couple of
months later, the emperor had to move into an office building because
none of his palaces survived. During his second fight the following year,
pillagig soldiers demolished all of the reconstruction undertaken from
883 to 885.
The fate of the Tang dynasty was sealed in 903 when Zhu Wen, a
powerful warlord, seized control of the region around Changan and the
imperial court. He had his troops herd all of Zhaozong's senior eunuchs,
perhaps as many as 700, into their headquarters and behead them. On
February 10, 904, Zhu ordered the evacuation of the capital and changed
the registration of its citizenry from that city to Luoyang. Te next day
his soldiers drove the people out of Changan and down the road to the
east. It took more tan a mont for the procession to travel the 285 miles
to Luoyang. The imperial cortege departed on February 16. After it left,
the warlord ordered his army to dismantle all the palaces, office build
ings, and homes of commoners-whatever had been rebuilt since 896-
and float their timbers down the Wei and Yellow rivers to Luoyang. He
sent more than 20,000 carpenters to reassemble the structures in the east
er capital. Because the emperor's quarters were not ready, his entourage
had to halt along the way for several months. Just before entering Luo
yang, Zhu Wen invited more than 200 of Zhaozong's young eunuchs
and child polo players to a feast in a tent, then had them all strangled.
Then he replaced tem with his own people.
Zhu Wen reduced Changan, probably the greatest city of its time, to
a wasteland. In a final act of destruction one of his subordinates razed
its outer wall. Then a great windstorm, which blew for several days,
struck the Serpentine Park. The gale caused great waves to form, and
the lake vanished in a single night. The demise of the dynasty soon
followed the ruin of its capital. Zhu Wen had Zhaozong put to the sword
on September 22, 904, and placed the emperor's ninth son on the trone.
Three years later, on June 1, 907, the last Tang sovereign abdicated. Zhu,
who assumed the throne and founded his own dynasty, had him poi
soned on March 25, 908, and bestowed the posthumous title Pitiful Sov
ereign on him.
The demise of the Tang was also the death of a way of life. Its aris
tocracy and its military ethos passed away. The rulers of the Song dy
nasty (960-1279) took deliberate steps to reduce the power of warriors
Epilogue: The Fall 293
so that they could not pose a threat to civilian authority, as the separatist
governors had from 750 to 961. As a result the Song never recovered
Chinese territory south of the Great Wall that the Khitan had seized nor
the northwest territories that the Tibetan Tanguts had occupied. Al
though it maintained a huge standing army, it preferred to bribe the
pastoral peoples with more than half a million ounces of gold and
400,000 lengths of silk annually. The dynasty came to depend more heav
ily on its navy than its army for defense. It was the first Chinese dynasty
to become a great naval power. It had inherited gunpowder from the
Tang and developed an arsenal of new weapons-bombs, flame throw
ers, and guns-that assumed an important role in its efforts to fend off
its northern enemies.
Since the Song lost control of the Silk Route, merchants in the south
east developed maritime commerce and challenged Arab dominance of
sea trade as far west as the east coast of India. Shipbuilding boomed in
China and fortunes were made on sea trading. Anyone, even poor peas
ants, could invest in such trading argosies. Internal markets and com
merce also enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. To facilitate trade,
governments began issuing the world's first paper currency.
Under the Song dynasty the population doubled from 50 million or
60 million to llO million by 1200. By the same year 20 percent of the
empire's subjects were residing in cities, in contrast to 5 percent during
the Tang. The vacant lands cultivated in Tang cities disappeared com
pletely, and large suburbs grew outside city ramparts. Half of the capi
tal's citizenry in the early thirteenth century-some 2 million people
lived in the metropolis's suburbs. Internally, walled wards and markets
gave way to roads lined with shops. The curfew survived, but watchmen
patrolled the streets to ensure that no one was buring lamps at night
as a fire prevention measure, not as a means to prevent people from
traveling. The capital had seventeen amusement quarters where per
formers entertained into te wee hours of te moring. The Gay Quarters
survived, but catered to a more diverse clientele, including merchants
and anyone else who could afford the pleasure.
Population pressures led to the construction of new forms of housing.
Multistoried tenements appeared in which single families lived on one
floor. With the exception of some streets, the broad avenues of Tang
Changan vanished, and the spacing of apartment buildings was so close
that their eaves touched. As a result, huge conflagrations devastated cit
ies. A fire in Hangzhou that burned for four days during 1208 consumed
58,000 dwellings and blackened more than three square miles of te cit.
To avoid such destruction, merchants, empresses, and eunuchs built
warehouses tat had moats surrounding them. The breakdown of walled
markets chaged the character of the hang. They were not simply lanes
devoted to a single commodity or service within the bazaars, but guilds
294 Epilogue: The Fall
that had patron deities and heads who looked after the interests of the
members.
The center of the empire shifted eastward permanently. Changan,
which had served as its capital off and on for nearly two millennia,
would never do so again. Buddhism lost the vigor that it had had in the
Tang, and Taoism experienced a burst of creativity that produced new
sects and scriptures. Taoists, however, ceased to be a major factor in
medicine, yielding their position to secular physicians, the "Confucian
doctors." Cremation, formerly confined to Buddhists, became a popular
means of disposing of the dead for all sorts of people. Women (at least
aristocratic women), who had enjoyed a modicum of independence in
the Tang, lost it in the Song when binding the feet-a deformation of
the feet that made walking difficult-became fashionable. There was an
explosion of printing that led to a wide diffusion of learning. The ease
of reproducing books lowered their cost, facilitated the exchange of
ideas, and stimulated interest in technologies of all sorts. It also contrib
uted to a certai amount of social leveling, permitting men of low stand
ing te opportunity for social advancement and acquisition of wealth.
These changes and many more created a new culture in China tat
was more "modern," though not in the sense that the term has been
applied to Europe and the rest of the world in recent centuries, than that
of the Tang. The fall of the Tang in 907 marked the end of the medieval
period in Chinese history.