Li Yousheng (continued)

IV. The emperor’s throne rotates, next year it’ll be my turn.

1) The ideal politics of Confucianism: Chinese history is a history of gradually moving towards the ideal politics of Confucianism. [15] The separation of the upper and lower classes is the key to this political ideal of Confucianism, which makes it possible for hundreds of millions of peasants to still live in a quasi-primitive society and for Confucian bureaucrats and intellectuals to pursue “not being useful and not being a tool” and to get rid of secular life. The author said, “This social structure of separation of the upper and lower classes and the insurmountability of the two-tier society caused the periodic turmoil and stagnation of social structure in Chinese history.” [16] That is, the social structure is super stable, so much so that the population was halved during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, but he still sat on the throne. Compared with the West, the dynasties lasted for a longer period of time, but the turmoil accompanying the change of dynasties was greater, and at the same time, there was a lack of value orientation for social reform and progress.

2) The Thick Walls of Chinese County Towns and the Zero-Size Society: One impression Western scholars have of ancient China is that its vast territory was dotted with walled cities. The author once visited a medieval castle in France: perched on a small hill, surrounded by a series of discontinuous stone walls, only a foot or two thick and about the height of a person. When the castle was attacked, nearby serfs would seek refuge inside and could also join the fight. The author also visited the walls of Chester, England, which were similar in structure and size to the French walls. In Europe, the actual castle owners and the surrounding serfs formed a unified entity facing the threat of war.

Chinese county towns, however, were different. They didn’t form a unified entity with the surrounding farmers; farmers didn’t seek refuge in the county town from the chaos of war. Compared to the ancient European city walls the author had seen, Chinese city walls were so thick that carts could drive on them, so tall that attackers needed to use ladders, and they were also surrounded by moats. Why were the county magistrates, who were supposed to be the “parents’ officials,” so afraid of their peasant subjects?

According to data provided by John King Fairbank, the number of registered officials was: 18,000 in the Tang Dynasty, 20,000 in the Song Dynasty, and 20,000 in the Qing Dynasty. According to these figures, the number of government officials did not increase due to the disappearance of the feudal lords and nobles, nor did it increase due to population growth. Fairbank said, “Nowhere else has there been an example of so few people ruling so many people for such a long period of time.”[17] There were one or two thousand counties in Chinese history, but the Chinese bureaucratic system only went down to the county level, and each county could have hundreds of thousands of farmers, while the number of officials and their assistants in the county town was probably less than ten. The thick walls served a purpose, making the small number of bureaucrats who managed so many people relatively safe, and also represented the insurmountable gap between the primary society and the secondary society, which were completely different lives, and also represented two worlds separated by the upper and lower social structures.

On the other hand, outside these thick city walls lived the aforementioned farmers who “lived peacefully and contentedly,” while inside were bureaucratic intellectuals and officials cultivated by Confucianism. Therefore, both sides of the city walls were merely accustomed to peaceful life and unaware of how to cope with war. This differs from the frequently war-torn medieval Europe; China experienced relatively few wars. These city walls were more than sufficient to deal with the small number of vagrant outlaws mentioned above, but if millions of peasants were to rise up in rebellion, it would be a different story—fortunately, such events were rare.

Thick walls and small governments cannot transform the forces of confrontation into forces of progress, forces that drive society forward. Marxist class struggle theory holds that class struggle is the driving force of social evolution, but this class struggle also has a side of fighting without moving forward, that is, fighting back and forth, both sides are exhausted, but there is no social progress. This is the so-called zero society concept. [18, 19] This is also the same meaning as the author’s talk of the pancake-like revolution. [20] This theory says:

The so-called “zero society” refers to a social game in which one party gains while the other inevitably loses, and the sum of gains and losses is zero, resulting in no increase in the overall social benefit. The energy transformation in a zero society is a complete transformation; it’s either a complete victory or a complete defeat, ultimately resulting in a winner-takes-all scenario.

Author Philip Kuhn (2012) recounts the sorcery panic in Qing China in 1768. At the height of power and prestige, the Qing Empire was plunged into chaos by a sorcery called “soul-calling.” In the months from spring to autumn in 1768, this sorcery swept across half of China, causing widespread fear among the people, officials to run around in panic, and even Emperor Qianlong to lose sleep over it. The author shows how people lost their basic rationality in this zero-sum society of “either complete victory or complete defeat.” [19]

3) Comparison between peasants and emperors: The lines that Ah Q sings: “I’ll beat you with my steel whip!” and “I regret that I killed my brother Zheng while drunk” are lyrics from the local Shaoxing opera “Dragon and Tiger Fight”. Here, Ah Q plays the role of Emperor Taizu of Song, Zhao Kuangyin. Wang Xuetai said that the highest ideal of vagrants is: emperors take turns, next year it will be my turn. [6] Although Ah Q has the identity of a vagrant, he is the representative of the Chinese peasant masses in Lu Xun’s writing. According to the author’s experience in his hometown, ordinary peasants like the emperor and general play in “Dragon and Tiger Fight”, which is not a hobby unique to Ah Q. Like Ah Q, Chinese peasants regard the emperor and general play as a kind of pleasure based only on aesthetic meaning, without any intention of their connection and meaning to their actual life. This is like the revolutionary party behavior in Ah Q’s mind, which is just him walking around Weizhuang Street in a crazy way. The revolution of the fake foreign devil and Brother Hong is the real revolution of the secondary society. Similarly, emperors and generals were like dreams in the minds of Ah Q and ordinary peasants; they did not know the position of emperors and generals in society or their connection to their lives.

The author lived in the mountainous region of Guizhou in the 1970s. When he first arrived, he was often told that the long robes worn by local farmers were Ming Dynasty clothing. The farmers were unaware of the difference between the Ming and Qing Dynasties, let alone the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Local village leaders did not change with the dynastic government. Legend has it that one village even used a lottery system to elect its leader: a black bean was placed in a jar of soybeans, and the men of the village would draw one; whoever drew the black bean would become the next village leader. Due to its remote location and limited contact with the outside world, the mountainous region of Guizhou preserved many ancient customs, thus reflecting the realities of ancient Chinese society. For example, local women did not bind their feet; judging from the practice of foot binding, Guizhou farmers were still living in a pre-Song Dynasty era.

According to Zhang Hongjie’s statistics, the emperor was the most unfortunate person. There are 209 emperors in history whose exact birth and death dates are known. The average lifespan of these 209 people was only 39.2 years, which is nearly 18 years lower than that of ordinary people. In the history of Chinese dynasties, including the great dynasties that unified the country and the small dynasties that were in a corner of the country, there were a total of 611 emperors. 272 ​​of them died abnormally, which is 44% of the abnormal death rate, which is much higher than that of other social groups. [21] The above-mentioned peasant king’s self-reliant statement shows that peasants do not understand the actual operation of secondary society, let alone know that Qin Shi Huang had to review 120 catties of documents every day. They have a purely aesthetic understanding of emperors and generals like Ah Q, and think that it is an extremely comfortable and easy thing. That is why Chinese peasants compare themselves to kings.

Similarly, in the 1970s, many farmers in Guizhou dreamed of becoming emperors. Rumors circulated that an emperor had already been born, or even that a certain boy was destined to be emperor. More extreme, you might be walking alone in the mountains when several people would suddenly kneel before you, calling you “Your Majesty the Emperor.” You might say this is just superstition. A more accurate explanation is that their ideal emperors and generals were like this: ordinary farmers, ignorant of social and political affairs like Ah Q, suddenly transformed by some mysterious opportunity. According to Wang Xuetai, Chinese history seems to have played a joke: it allowed ordinary farmers like Liu Bang and Zhu Yuanzhang to become emperors. There’s a vast distance between an ordinary farmer and an emperor, separated by a class of bureaucratic intellectuals armed with Confucian and Mencian doctrines. Such dynastic changes are neither as easy as those in the ancient Roman or Byzantine Empires, nor are they like the replacements by existing vassal states during the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties. Usually, a large and prolonged period of turmoil is needed to transform an ordinary person into an emperor wielding immense power and commanding millions of people.

literature

[1] Yousheng (2012): On Confucius’s idea of ​​aestheticizing human social life. (Xue Deng, Issue 21) (http://confucius2000.com/writer/yousheng.htm)

[2] You-Sheng Li (2005): A New Interpretation of Chinese Taoist Philosophy. London, Canada: Taoist Recovery Centre.

[3] Li Yousheng (2009): Looking at life and the world from a different perspective: Chinese Taoism in the 21st century. Beijing: Thread-bound Book Bureau. pp. 253-56; 189-194.

[4] Eckhart Tolle (1999): The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. Novado, California: New World, 1999.

[5] Yang Xiaogang (2011): Mr. Lu Xun’s evaluation of Taoist thought. (http://www.scuphilosophy.org/research_display.asp?cat_id=93&art_id=9352)

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[6] Wang Xuetai (1999, 2007): Vagrant Culture and Chinese Society. Tongxin Press, 2007.

[7] Jaynes, Julian, 1976, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the

Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.

[8] Marshall, G., 1994, The concise Oxford dictionary of sociology: human nature.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[9] Li Yinghua (2004): Sage Kings and Philosopher Kings: A Comparative Study of the Ideal Ruler in Pre-Qin Ancient Greece. From “A Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Political Thought”, Hainan Publishing House, 2004.

[10] Buck and Ernest (2003): Greek Political Theory. Translated by Lu Huaping. Changchun: Jilin People’s Publishing House. (pp. 491-492)

[11] Zhou Ruizhi (2012): The Dictatorship of Philosophy—Notes on “Greek Political Theory”. Source: (http://www.scuphilosophy.org/ Philosophy section: 2012/10/21).

[12] You-Sheng Li 2008): Julian Jaynes’ Theory of the Bicameral Mind and A Different Path to Subjective Consciousness in China. (http://taoism21cen.com)

[13] You-Sheng Li (June 2012): The Ancient Chinese Super State of Genetically Coded Primary Societies and its Implications for Modern Democracy. Submitted to and accepted by the Ninth ISUD World Congress. ISUD=International Society for Universal Dialogue.

[14] Force (2003): China’s land reform. China Economic History Forum.

[15] Li Yousheng (2012): The Imperial Examination System and Plato’s Republic: An Analysis of the Historical Success and Possible Prospects of the Confucianization of Chinese Politics. (http://taoism21cen.com/Chinesechat/wenzhangjijin.html)

[16] Yousheng (2012): The Differences Between Eastern and Western War Cultures: A Case Study of Duke Xiang of Song’s Defeated Defeat by Chu Due to His Adherence to the Rules of War. *Xue Deng*, Issue 24. (http://confucius2000.com/writer/yousheng.htm)

[17] John King Fairbank (1995): John King Fairbank on China. Translated by Xue Xuan. Taipei: Zhengzhong Book Company.

[18] Shi Jingwu (2012): “Zero Society” in a Prosperous Age: The “Soul-Calling Case” of 1768 as an Example.

Source: (http://www.scuphilosophy.org/research_display.asp?cat_id=94&art_id=10527)

[19] Philip Kuhn (2012): Soul Stealers: The Chinese Sorcery Panic of 1768. Translated by Chen Jian and Liu Chang. Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company.

[20] You-Sheng Li (2010): The Ancient Chinese Super State of Primary Societies: Taoist Philosophy for the 21st Century. Bloomington, USA: Author House. p293-307.

[21] Zhang Hongjie (2007): Five Fates of Chinese Emperors. Taiyuan: Shanxi People’s Publishing House, 2007.

author By Dr. You-Sheng Li

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