The Everlasting Empire (20 page)

In every generation there are talented people. I am only concerned that
one may not be able to recognize them. If one is able to recognize
them, why should he be concerned that there won’t be enough of
them? The so-called ‘talented people’ are like useful tools. If they re-
fuse to exercise their usefulness, they are no different from people
without talent. What do I do with them if I do not execute them?
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The veracity of this anecdote is of minor importance; and Emperor Wu’s attitude toward the literati was surely more complex than what is implied here. Yet it is symptomatic that a supposedly “Confucian” monarch is cited as humiliatingly equating intellectuals with dispensable “tools,” in an indirect reference to the famous Confucian dictum “A superior man is not a tool.”
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This anecdote hints at the irreversible decline in the literati’s position vis-à-vis the emperors. This decline is duly observable in every aspect of court life: from court rituals, which increasingly emphasized the ministers’ inferiority and subservience, to the self-deprecating language routinely adopted by the ministers in their correspondence with the throne, to the proliferation of the lèse-majesté laws, to the introduction of humiliating corporal punishment for ministers in the late imperial period.
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In this increasingly unfavorable situation regaining the high moral ground and preserving one’s dignity was a challenge.

The depreciation of their status in the imperial court was extremely frustrating for the proud literati. Having remained committed to the idea of serving the throne, they had to accept an inferior position vis-à-vis the monarchs, whose moral and intellectual qualities the literati often held in low esteem. In their capacity as the ruler’s servitors they owed him absolute obedience: but how to distinguish between this mandatory obedience and the groveling subservience of the despicable “petty men”? How to preserve one’s proud stance as the ruler’s guides—without jeopardizing the norms of ruler-minister relations? How to retain a critical attitude

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toward the throne, as appropriate to the “Men of the Way”—without endangering one’s personal safety? So strong was the tension surrounding these questions that Liu Zehua went so far as to diagnose the imperial literati with “psychosis”—a kind of mental disorder stemming from their inability to maintain their double roles as moral guides of society, the emperor included, and as the rulers’ “slaves.”
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Harsh as it is, this formulation encapsulates well the predicament of the imperial intellectuals who had to navigate between the Scylla of self-deprecating servility and the Charybdis of self-destructive haughtiness. Countless men of letters had to pay a high price for straying from the middle course.

To be sure, not all literati endorsed the critical stance at the expense of their hard-won careers. Many silently compromised their ideals, preferring not to alienate the ruler and their superiors; others developed the art of silent noncompliance with some of the monarch’s decisions, while refraining from open criticism. Yet there were also those who were both conscientious and courageous enough to confront the sovereign. These men had two major options for demonstrating their moral superiority: either to shun service in protest against the restrictive and humiliating court atmosphere, or to remain in the court, while adopting an overtly critical attitude toward the emperor and toward insufficiently upright colleagues. Although both kinds of protesters were often perceived by the rulers and even by some of their colleagues as a nuisance, their radical stance had deep consequences for the balance of power between the ruler and his aides. The radicals’ readiness to sacrifice their careers, and even their lives, reasserted the position of these individuals, and by extension of their stratum as a whole, as the ruler’s moral superiors, and as exclusive possessors of the True Way. As such, the purists served the essential interest of the literati.

Let us begin with disengagement from public service, a complex phenomenon that gained prominence in the first imperial millennium, especially in the second-seventh centuries CE. Multiple philosophical, religious, or personal factors influenced individual recluses. Some, under the impact of Daoism and later of Buddhism, eschewed office in earnest, disengaging not just from political service but from the entire elite system of social and intellectual conventions. Others, on whose behavior I focus here, considered disengagement a temporary measure. As Confucius and Mengzi had done, they left service primarily to protest against the abusive and corrupt atmosphere at court, demonstrating thereby their moral purity. This protest could well be effective, since the upright monarch was expected to be able to attract the worthiest and most talented subjects into his service, and massive disengagement of supposedly gifted intellectuals could become a source of embarrassment for him. Hence not a few rulers in the tumultuous age from the end of the Han up to the estab

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lishment of the Tang dynasty invested considerable effort in bringing the worthy recluses back into service.
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The culture of réclusion was the most curious by-product of the mindset according to which every gifted man was supposed to hold an office. It could proliferate only among a relatively well-defined group of men who were expected—owing to their pedigree, renown, or previous administrative experience—to pursue government careers. Having refused to serve, recluses demonstrated their integrity and became objects of admiration and emulation. While only a few literati shunned service in earnest, countless more expressed their admiration of réclusion, celebrating this ideal in poetry and painting, and through other means of artistic expression. Many rulers shared this admiration, and courted lofty recluses, pressing them to come and serve the throne. Curiously, for rulers and courtiers alike, the refusal to enter government service was the strongest manifestation of the recluse’s fitness to serve.

Fascination with réclusion as the ultimate manifestation of one’s integrity brought about manifold complex phenomena, from acting officials’ adoption of the recluses’ conventions to the fashion of “feigned disengagement”: namely, pretending to shun the service only to enhance one’s price in the ruler’s eyes. The rulers had to distinguish carefully between the true recluse and the hypocrite who “hides his name in order to attract titles and salaries” and sees réclusion as a “shortcut to officialdom.”
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The first could risk his life should he stubbornly defy the ruler’s summons; the latter would risk his reputation (and, occasionally, his life as well) should he respond too hastily. Numerous anecdotes feature rulers who tolerated the recluses’ affronts but mercilessly punished feigned recluses for being insufficiently pure.
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The admiration of recluses by officeholders—and even by emperors— persisted until the very end of the imperial period, and culturally réclusion remained a highly respected ideal. Politically, however, réclusion as a means of protest lost its importance from the Tang dynasty on. As the social basis of the officialdom expanded, and examinations replaced recommendations as a primary means of selecting officials, fewer individuals could rely on their reputation’s being so brilliant that their shunning office would attract the ruler’s concern.
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Thenceforth, the most audacious attacks on the rulers came not from those who eschewed service but rather from acting or aspiring members of the officialdom: from students in the imperial educational facilities to petty officials and high-ranking ministers. These men definitely wanted to serve, but they wanted to do it on their own terms: not as the ruler’s tools, but as his mentors and moral superiors. Their struggle to reassert themselves against the throne fills the pages of dynastic histories: they became the true heroes of the literati.

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A reader of Chinese historical records cannot but be impressed by the persistent willingness of officials or would-be officials to confront the emperor. Some voiced their criticisms as part of their role as “remonstrating officials,” censors, or tutors, while others overstepped their bureaucratic responsibilities; some couched their criticism in conciliatory language, while others were more provocative; some employed celestial or terrestrial omens and portents to criticize the monarch, while others spoke on behalf of canonical wisdom or on behalf of “the people”—but each could expect his words to incite the emperor’s wrath. Every dynasty has its list of martyrs; almost every reign has a much lengthier list of those who escaped execution but were incarcerated, dismissed, demoted, or otherwise humiliated or punished for their outspokenness. Nonetheless, punishments do not appear to have been effective; criticism of the throne lasted throughout the imperial millennia, and the critics’ voices were not silenced even under the reign of the most ruthless monarchs.

What are the reasons for this recurring ministerial willingness to criticize the monarch and to pay the price? Surely, plenty of substantive issues prompted ministerial dissatisfaction, from the emperor’s military or economic policies, to his excessive expenditures, to his ritual or religious policies, and the like. The emperor’s personal misbehavior was another perennial issue for which ministers faulted the sovereign, since only a very few monarchs could satisfy the strict demands of their Confucian advisers. Yet beyond specific political and moral issues it is difficult to avoid the feeling that at least for some of the critics the main goal was to confront the emperor simply for the sake of confrontation, or, more precisely, in order to reassert their moral superiority over the ruler. Speaking on behalf of the True Way, these critics enjoyed huge popularity among the literati, impelling some rulers to complain that their opponents simply “fish for reputation and market uprightness.”
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Radical critics of the throne played a dangerous game, but the risk may have been well calculated. To illustrate this, let us turn to the most famous case of radical remonstrance. In November 1565, a minor official, Hai Rui (d. 1587), submitted a scandalous memorandum to the Ming emperor Shizong (r. 1521–1566). The document went far beyond the limits of acceptable remonstrance, as it did not focus on a single fault of the monarch but rather condemned his behavior in its entirety. “The enumeration of [Shizong’s] sins included his failure as a father, husband and ruler. The monarch was described as vain, cruel, selfish, suspicious and foolish… The caustic tone of the memorial culminated with the sentence, ‘It has already been some time since the people under Heaven started to regard Your Majesty as unworthy.’ ”
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Although the screed ended with an optimistic promise that it was not too late for the aging

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monarch to rectify his ways and attain equality with the paragon rulers of the past, this did not soften its harshness.

The addressee of Hai Rui’s memorandum, Ming Shizong, was one of the most ruthless, capricious, and autocratic-minded emperors of the Ming dynasty, who had brutally silenced oppositional voices in the past.
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Not surprisingly, his first reaction was that the offender must be quickly seized and tried for the obvious lèse-majesté. Yet the enraged emperor was astounded to learn that Hai Rui was making no attempt to escape: rather, the remonstrator had already fully prepared himself for the inevitable death penalty, departed from his family, and even bought himself a coffin. At that moment Shizong realized that he was no longer acting as an individual in a circumscribed moment but rather was taking part in a historical spectacle watched not just by contemporaries (some of whom were not very happy with Hai Rui’s eccentric purism in any case) but by posterity as well. The emperor hesitated: though he put Hai Rui in jail, he could not decide whether to punish his critic or to pardon him. The notoriously vindictive ruler, who did not hesitate to execute courtiers for minor offenses, was suddenly powerless before a petty official who sought martyrdom.

What emboldened Hai Rui and softened Shizong? I believe that the answer is the power of the literati’s public opinion, as generated through what may be called the “literati-oriented discourse.” This discourse, maintained through the huge corpus of historical, philosophical, and literary works, produced by the literati and for the literati, decisively shaped their mind-set; moreover, it had considerable impact on the emperors as well. The literati-oriented writings disclosed the hollowness of the emperor’s sagacity, emphasized the perennial bifurcation between political and moral authority, and lauded courageous individuals who preserved their integrity and dignity vis-à-vis erratic rulers. The diachronic public opinion expressed in these works served as a major source of inspiration to the dissenters and empowered them in relation to the throne.

By boldly assaulting the emperor, the dissenters were acquiring the reputation of true “superior men,” which promised lasting admiration not just from contemporaries but also from posterity. This support of the literati’s public opinion was crucial for the dissenters in two ways. First, it could save them from execution: the emperor, fearful of being identified as an evil persecutor of superior men, might decide to exercise restraint. A prudent dissenter could anticipate that after an almost inevitable career setback, expulsion, incarceration, or even public flogging, he would still have a chance of being recalled when the ruler decided to mend his relations with the literati and display magnanimity, or when a new emperor ascended the throne. Second, even in the worst case, the admiration of the

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literati could turn execution into the dissenter’s real triumph. It would ensure him such “commemorative immortality” as was due to a Confucian martyr; and in a highly history-oriented Chinese society, such immortality was no less significant for many literati than promises of Paradise have been for religious martyrs elsewhere.
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The would-be martyrs’ saying, “Even if I die, my name will linger for posterity,” recurs too often in dynastic histories and other writings to be dismissed as purely a literary convention.