Li Yousheng
Abstract: This paper uses Lu Xun’s *The True Story of Ah Q* as a case study and, combined with the author’s personal experience, analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of the hierarchical system in ancient China. It irrefutably demonstrates the existence and severity of this division: after dividing human society into a genetically encoded primitive society and an artificial secondary society, the author finds that this division reflects the essential differences between the primitive and secondary societies and the insurmountable gap between them. Finally, the author analyzes the impact of this hierarchical division on Chinese history, noting that Chinese history lacked the impetus to drive class and ethnic conflicts towards the development and progress of a secondary society.
Keywords: Ah Q, spiritual victory method, primitive society, social hierarchy, city walls
After dividing human society into the genetically encoded primitive society and the artificial secondary society, the author found that these two societies are fundamentally different, just like Chinese characters and articles, belonging to different levels. The author once summarized the differences between the two social lives as follows: 1) Primitive society: aesthetics, pleasure, instinct, intuition, harmony, unity of man and nature, the original world of man; 2) Secondary society: utilitarianism, struggle, rationality, directionality, contradictions and conflicts, the separation of man and nature, the world of gods that has not yet been grasped by man. [1]
Because the society during the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties in China was still at the level of primitive society or a quasi-primitive society similar to primitive society, Laozi and Confucius both advocated a system of separation between the upper and lower classes, that is, the separation between the ruling class and the common people. [2, 3] Laozi said that the existence of a good government is not perceived by its people. Confucius said “the wise are above and the foolish are below” and “the people can be made to follow, but not to understand.” Due to the influence of Confucianism and Taoism, China has largely retained the tradition of separation between the upper and lower classes since the Qin and Han dynasties entered the imperial era. Compared with the West and contemporary society, the separation between the upper and lower classes in ancient China was even more obvious, to the point that Zhu Yuanzhang issued an order strictly prohibiting officials from going to the countryside. Judging from “The True Story of Ah Q” and the actual situation in rural areas, ancient Chinese peasants knew nothing about how the court government operated and were almost unable to truly perceive its existence. The contemporary electronic age has brought everyone into an unprecedented era of proximity, and mankind has entered the so-called postmodern era. A fashionable trend among people in the West today is to live only for the present: decades ago, Chinese peasants also lived only for the present, just like Ah Q. [4] The author believes that in the early 1950s, rural China was still at a quasi-primitive social level. Generally, illiterate peasants did not know how the government above them operated, nor did they know what the human world on earth was like. This article uses “The True Story of Ah Q” as an example to analyze the meaning and essence of the division between the upper and lower classes, and then analyzes the specific manifestations and consequences of the division between the upper and lower classes in ancient Chinese society.
I. The hierarchical division in Chinese society as reflected in “The True Story of Ah Q”
The difference between primitive society and secondary society is like the relationship between Chinese characters and literature. The meaning of literature is derived from the arrangement and combination of Chinese characters. This is similar to how a frog eating insects is beneficial to the balance of species in the biosphere, thus benefiting agriculture. The same act of eating insects is a simple pleasure for the frog, but in the biosphere, it represents the balance of species and a bountiful harvest. The Chinese society depicted in “The True Story of Ah Q” is similar: the government executes Ah Q to change its image of incompetence in solving cases, and Ah Q uses this unfortunate situation to demonstrate his extraordinary nature, gloriously becoming a revolutionary. Although both the government and Ah Q consider the issue of face, only Ah Q’s consideration is purely about face without any material benefit; for government officials, face is related to promotion and even salary increases or decreases. Only primitive society represents a purely aesthetic social order; secondary society is already dominated by interests and wealth. The author agrees that Lu Xun satirized the Daoist tendency to find joy in inaction[5], but Lu Xun’s thinking was profound and his vision broad. Among the many characters in “The True Story of Ah Q,” Ah Q is the only one that Lu Xun sympathized with. As far as the author knows, Lu Xun’s “The True Story of Ah Q” is the first work to depict the hierarchical system of Chinese society using literary techniques.
1) The two incompatible worlds represented by Ah Q and Hu Shi’s disciples: In the preface to the first chapter, after listing many unresolved problems regarding Ah Q’s name, place of origin, etc., Lu Xun wrote: “I only hope that Mr. Hu Shi’s disciples, who have a penchant for history and textual research, might be able to find many new clues in the future.” The author clearly regards Hu Shi’s disciples and Ah Q as representatives of two worlds separated by social hierarchy; the former also includes Master Zhao and his son, Maocai Gong. The gap and contrast between these two worlds constitute the humor and interest of the novel. Mr. Lu Xun considers himself a person of Ah Q’s world, so he uses phrases like “peddlers and vendors” and “not belonging to the three religions and nine schools” to apologize, but at the same time, it shows that Mr. Lu Xun sympathizes with Ah Q, because Ah Q is the real peddler and vendor.
Ah Q himself is not a typical Chinese peasant; he fits Wang Xuetai’s definition of a vagrant. Lu Xun wrote about Ah Q based on a real-life prototype, who was a vagrant without a fixed occupation. Ah Q has the characteristics and faults of a vagrant as described by Wang Xuetai: he only cares about the present and gambles away money when he has it; he bullies the weak and fears the strong, and abuses women in a weak position. [6] These bad traits are not found in the hardworking and simple peasant masses, so Ah Q and Xiao D together may represent the image of Chinese peasants. On the other hand, as a vagrant, Ah Q comes from the peasantry, and his special living environment of not having land or houses and moving between cities and villages creates many of his weaknesses.
In the preface to *Call to Arms*, Lu Xun wrote, “A nation that is weak and ignorant, no matter how healthy or robust its physique, can only serve as meaningless exhibits and spectators; it is not a misfortune for them to die of illness. Therefore, our first priority is to change their spirit.” When discussing the origins of *The True Story of Ah Q*, he said he wanted to “write about the soul of a modern Chinese person.” Lu Xun used the character of Ah Q to depict the suffering, misery, and ignorance of the vast, exploited and oppressed working class, hoping to awaken the slumbering masses. In short, Ah Q represents the common people of China and the peasantry, the majority of the Chinese population. While most Chinese peasants owned their own land, Ah Q had neither land nor a house, yet he had been to the city—a minority of peasants. The following analysis of the character of Ah Q, created by Lu Xun, examines the characteristics of early Chinese society to demonstrate his keen observation and profound understanding of Chinese society.
2) The Contemporary Relevance of Life in Primitive Society and the Linear Historical Perspective of a Secondary Society: Today, the name Ah Q has entered the daily lives of ordinary Chinese people and become part of their everyday speech. Using Chinese characters and articles as an analogy, an essay discussing the long-term population of a specific Chinese character leaves a lasting impression on a certain group, but this doesn’t indicate that the character is any different from other characters. Like the Western postmodern trend of living in the present, Ah Q lacks the linear historical concept of a secondary society; he only knows how to live in the present. Western modern people need self-cultivation and guidance from psychologists to simply live in the present, while Ah Q lives in the present from birth because he hasn’t acquired the modern linear historical perspective of a secondary society. The author firmly believes that the social life of Chinese peasants has not changed much in Chinese history because primitive society is determined by heredity, and there is only one type; changes are limited to the government and intellectual classes. On his way to the execution ground, Ah Q saw Wu Ma and wanted to sing a line from a traditional opera: “The Little Orphan Visits the Grave,” “Dragon and Tiger Fight,” or “I’ll beat you with a steel whip.” In Ah Q’s eyes, these operas only had a dreamlike aesthetic, without any historical or rational moralizing. To Ah Q, historical dramas and fantasy dramas, tragedies and comedies, were all the same—another world far removed from his own, serving only an aesthetic entertainment purpose and bearing no real-world significance.
3) Name and Subjective Consciousness: When we mention the name Lu Xun today, the image of Mr. Lu Xun will appear in our minds, and we will think of his life, his works, and his status and influence in Chinese history. Generally speaking, this is also roughly Mr. Lu Xun’s impression of himself, reflecting a mature writer’s profound understanding of society and his own position in society. Johnny believes that human subjective consciousness is a cultural construct based on language, which is the popular saying that “man is made by himself”. [7, 8] For the sake of elegance, we will call this artificial person: artificial person, to distinguish it from the natural person before civilization. In “The True Story of Ah Q”, only the gentry, Master Zhao, the scholar, the fake foreign devil and the government judge are artificial people, while Ah Q is still a natural person. Although both types of people have the subjective consciousness that Johnny calls them, they are essentially different. Artificial people choose and create their own unique life from the many possibilities provided in the secondary society, while natural people are not like this. Their choices are limited to the scope of life and aesthetics, so they are not conscious participants and creators of the linear history of the secondary society. Here, we can use a cliché from the Chinese Cultural Revolution era: the presence or absence of class consciousness determines whether a person’s behavior is conscious or spontaneous. As a member of the peasantry, Ah Q did not possess the conscious class consciousness of peasants, nor did he have any intention of representing the peasant class in the struggle against government officials, Master Zhao, and the fake foreign devils to strive for the greatest interests of his own class. To be precise, Ah Q merely lived within the familiar circle of Weizhuang, a quasi-primitive society, with no understanding of the upper class. To illustrate this vividly, Lu Xun said that Ah Q had no formal name or surname. From his own statement that his surname was Zhao, which was then reprimanded by Master Zhao, and his subsequent denial, we can infer that Ah Q had no formal name or surname. In a close-knit circle of acquaintances, a formal name is unnecessary. Another way to express this issue of names is: natural beings are determined by heredity and possess homogeneity; people in secondary societies are essentially heterogeneous, and the culture of secondary societies creates countless different people. Therefore, Master Zhao, living in a secondary society, scolded Ah Q for not being worthy of the surname Zhao.
4) Ah Q’s Spiritual Victory Method and the Aesthetic Order of Early Society: Ah Q’s spiritual victory method, as depicted by Lu Xun, seems comical, but given his situation, it was a wise move. If we, living today, were in Ah Q’s position, we would almost certainly be miserable to the point of not knowing how to survive. Among the men of Weizhuang, Ah Q could only manage a draw with Xiao D. Lu Xun wrote about Ah Q sitting down next to Wang Hu: “He then sat down side by side. If it were any other idle people, Ah Q wouldn’t have dared to sit down so casually. But next to Wang Hu, what was there for him to fear?” Yet, Wang Hu still gave Ah Q a severe beating. This shows that Ah Q feared all the men in the village and dared not sit on equal footing with them, otherwise he risked being beaten. In such a living environment, Ah Q did not suffer from the depression common today; moreover, while maintaining a balanced mindset, Ah Q constantly displayed an arrogant optimism. Thinking about all this, we might forgive Ah Q for his occasional bullying of the weak, even though this weakness of Ah Q, as depicted by Mr. Lu Xun, is merely a manifestation of the collective problem in Ah Q.
Ah Q’s folly is most evident in his being made a scapegoat by the government and executed, yet he still believes it was due to his revolutionary rebellion. Ah Q had been a thief and even sold his stolen goods in the village; the villagers could have easily reported him and sentenced him to death. At the time, the government merely used the excuse of a habitual thief who had escaped justice to cover up its current case-solving responsibilities, which was hardly a big deal. In the early 1970s, the city where the author lived was abuzz with rumors that the city police had arbitrarily executed someone to let the real murderer, the bureau chief’s son, go free. Ah Q believed he was being executed for being a revolutionary, and in his mind, revolutionaries were white-armored, brazen robbers, so being executed was a glorious thing. That’s why he shouted the boastful words, “Twenty years later, I’ll be a hero again,” eliciting cheers from the crowd. Exchanging the crime of a cowardly thief for a seemingly glorious death sentence in the eyes of his revolutionary self, Ah Q’s spiritual victory has real psychological and aesthetic value.
During the Taiping Rebellion, both Zeng Guofan’s and Hong Xiuquan’s armies were composed entirely of peasants. Their confrontation resulted in the beheading of 20 million peasants. The deaths of those peasants were far more uninteresting than the death of Ah Q.
5) Different hierarchical levels lead to different understandings and meanings of the same event: Our universe operates in different levels. In the physical world, it is divided into: elementary particles, molecules, objects, planets, galaxies, the universe, etc. In the biological world, it is divided into: DNA, cells, tissues, organs, the human body, primordial society, secondary society, etc. The existence of the lower level in these levels itself constitutes the meaning of the higher level, just as mentioned above: a frog eating insects has meaning for a farmer’s harvest. This distinction can also be represented by the Liberal Party and the Persimmon Party: the Liberal Party conveys the meaning of freedom and human rights, while the Persimmon Party, in the eyes of an illiterate farmer, is only comical and absurd, that is, purely aesthetic.
“The True Story of Ah Q” provides many descriptions of this. For example, Ah Q boasts that his surname is Zhao, which leads to a scolding and a slap from Master Zhao. However, this brings Ah Q immense benefits. The book states, “Although Ah Q was often the winner, it was only after Master Zhao slapped him that he became famous… Ah Q was quite pleased with himself for many years afterward.” Ah Q’s courtship of Wu Ma, regardless of their compatibility, is evident in his unwavering affection for her even after his death, a pure expression of love that ends tragically: a beating and the loss of his job. Wu Ma’s suicide farce demonstrates the incomprehensible divide between the upper and lower classes. Ah Q undoubtedly deserves to participate in the revolution, but the upper-class pseudo-foreigners show no consideration whatsoever. When Ah Q himself takes to the streets to revolt, shouting, “Rebellion! Rebellion!”
“The people of Weizhuang looked at him with fear. This pitiful look was something Ah Q had never seen before, and upon seeing it, he felt as comfortable as if he had drunk snow water in June.” Master Zhao and Zhao Baiyan timidly tried to strike up a conversation with Ah Q, hoping to get information about the revolutionaries. Ah Q’s execution, a seemingly happy ending, satisfied everyone: the government was able to change its image of being incompetent in solving cases, and Ah Q finally became a glorious revolutionary in his own mind.
II. The Social Structure and Primary Level of Ancient China
Plato’s Republic is divided into three levels: rulers, warriors, and laborers. These three levels represent different types of minds, representing human wisdom, courage, and desire. [9, 10, 11] As mentioned above, Lao Tzu and Confucius both advocated a social ideal with a hierarchical structure. Due to the dominant position of Confucianism in Chinese history, the following three-tiered social structure was formed:
The imperial court and its family represent a quasi-primitive society (Huang-Lao Legalism).
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The bureaucratic and reserve intellectual group constitutes a secondary social unit (Confucianism).
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Village families (citizens) Quasi-primitive society (Taoism)
The above social model represents the social structure of China after the Qin and Han dynasties, mainly after the maturity of the imperial examination system in the Song dynasty, forming a bureaucratic intellectual class with Confucian and Mencian thought as its main ideology, numbering in the hundreds of thousands. In the diagram of ancient Chinese society above, the three levels are separated, largely becoming their own worlds. If we were to summarize these three levels with a philosophy of life based on their attitudes towards life and cultural traditions, the most accurate terms that come to mind are Huang-Lao Legalism, Confucianism, and Daoism. The Han dynasty rulers described themselves as a mixture of benevolent and hegemonic practices, and with concepts like “inner Legalism and outer benevolence,” and “inner Huang-Lao and outer Confucianism,” Huang-Lao Legalism is used here as a representative. The vast majority of peasants lived in a quasi-primitive society, while Daoists, advocating small states and few people, adhered to Lao Tzu’s tenets of primordial society, preferring seclusion to compromise with the secondary society of the imperial era. As a result, Daoist thought often became the spiritual source of peasant uprisings throughout history, and the Yellow Turban Rebellion at the end of the Han dynasty marked the beginning of Daoism in China. The degree of separation between the three levels has not received the attention and research it deserves from academia.
The human brain is divided into left and right hemispheres. People who have half of their brain removed in childhood due to illness can still have normal intelligence. Because the connections between the two hemispheres are limited, impressions and feelings obtained by the right brain may need to be encoded before being transmitted to the left brain, while the language center is located in the left brain, and rational thinking is also a function of the left brain. The functions of the right brain are closer to aesthetics. The author speculates that the division of labor and connections between the left and right hemispheres of the human brain may be the neurological basis for the construction of secondary societies by humans, to explain the different levels of difference between primitive society and secondary society. The division of labor between the left and right brains discussed here refers to most people, and the division of labor between the two has a certain degree of relativity and variability. Just as language and rational thinking can also evoke a person’s aesthetic feelings and experiences. The essence of the two social lives, primitive society and secondary society, is different. [12, 1]
The above mentions the natural person and the artificial person, who are similar to the Daoist True Man. The important difference between these two types of people is that the subjective consciousness of the artificial person is first influenced by social ideology and shaped by secondary social culture. As a result, the natural person views the world and life with an amateur mentality, while the worldview and philosophy of life of the artificial person are influenced by social goals. The author writes: “In short, a specific culture and religion at the secondary social level is just a form of play in the original society. The diversity of the secondary society is comparable to the diversity of play in the original society. Lao Tzu and Confucius still viewed life through the lens of the tradition of play in the original society’s leisure time, that is, the aesthetic life.” [13, 1]
III. Verification through the author’s own experience
1) Examining the social divide depicted in *The True Story of Ah Q* from the author’s own experience: The author uses his experience living in a rural northern China during the 1950s to illustrate the descriptions in *The True Story of Ah Q*. He first points out that in his village of 300 people, he saw no Ah Q-like bullying, cowardice, or theft, nor any figures like Master Zhao, but there was a scholar. In the late Qing Dynasty, scholars, licentiates, and jinshi were equated with primary school, middle school, and university graduates, respectively. The scholar in his village was far inferior to the scholar’s family in *The True Story of Ah Q*; he was merely more literate than other farmers. In the author’s eyes, these 300 people all belonged to the lower strata of society, like Ah Q and Little D: they were simple and hardworking, cooperating closely and without distinction in large-scale labor such as harvesting and house repair. The difference between rich and poor among them was not significant; during the land reform, among the 300 people, there were only rich peasants and poor peasants, no landlords or hired laborers. During the land reform in China in the 1940s and 1950s, there were 4 million landlords in the country, accounting for 3.79% of the total number of households. These landlords owned a total of 21.88 million mu of land, accounting for 4.75% of the total land area in the country. This figure shows that more than 95 percent of the farmers in China were peasants, and more than 90 percent of the land was in the hands of peasants. [14] China at that time was undoubtedly a world of small self-cultivating peasants. In this light, the author’s hometown is more representative of the actual situation in rural China than “The True Story of Ah Q”. As a literary work, “The True Story of Ah Q” cannot be regarded as reality, so the author discusses it here in combination with personal observations.
In the 1950s, when movies were just starting to be shown in rural areas, I remember watching a film with some farmers and listening to their discussion afterwards. They noticed how the transparency of the projector could talk, how unrealistic the images were, how clumsy the characters’ movements were, and of course, they also praised a certain character’s agility, suggesting he might have some martial arts skills. Because it was their first time seeing a film, they talked about it for days. My impression is that none of them paid attention to the plot or the messages and meanings the film was trying to convey. In other words, the farmers had a purely aesthetic perspective, not the habit of connecting the film characters to their own lives, but rather seeing them as coming from another fantastical world. Similarly, Ah Q didn’t have the habit of pursuing the secondary social meanings and power struggles behind the surface; his vision remained at the superficial level, which is why he believed he was executed for being a revolutionary.
Looking at the 300 people in my village, they have been farmers for generations, and life has offered them no other possibilities. Although some of them occasionally talk about “getting ahead and bringing glory to their ancestors,” they know in their hearts that such things are far beyond their reach. On the other hand, they have the self-deception of Ah Q, but they are not like Ah Q, bullying the weak and fearing the strong, and no one around them bullies them. For these people who are content with their current situation, life can be as beautiful as paradise, at least in their minds.
Farmers in northern China at that time called themselves “Kings of Freedom,” meaning they lived leisurely and contentedly, like kings in their own land. Except during periods of war, drought, or flood, rural life was relatively stable, largely as Lao Tzu described: “They find joy in their food, beauty in their clothing, peace in their dwellings, and delight in their customs,” leading a simple yet joyful life. They had plenty of leisure time, at least half the winter months were uneventful, and they devoted their free time to spiritual pursuits, including religious pilgrimages. The sheer number of festivals, the grandeur of weddings and funerals, and the frequency and scale of various recreational activities often meant that farm work was frequently neglected as everyone pitched in—something that would surely evoke envy in today’s urban office workers. Compared to modern life, their lives were closer to those of prehistoric, primitive societies.
These people who reign supreme in their own little world also need entertainment and dreams. They don’t dream of an attainable world, because that would require effort. They dream of a fantastical, magical world, which serves only as entertainment for them, because it’s a world that exists only in dreams and is unattainable. Like Ah Q singing “The Dragon and the Tiger Fight,” the farmers in my village watched ancient costume dramas about emperors and generals, and listened to storytellers reciting stories from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin. When I was in elementary school, I was invited to read these kinds of books to the farmers, and they all enjoyed them very much. When they gathered together, the main topic of their conversation was these dramas about emperors and generals, which continued year after year. They had a purely aesthetic eye, only talking about those exaggerated, comical, and dramatic plots for entertainment. I never heard them glean any life lessons from them. They also often talked about the experiences of villagers for entertainment, and at these times, they, like Ah Q, ridiculed others. The difference was that their ridicule was benevolent, deliberately emphasizing the humorous side of life. My father studied in the city when he was young and later participated in the War of Resistance Against Japan. He once told me that Guan Yu died because of his pride, and Zhang Fei died because of his temper. Only someone with a broader perspective on society could speak of such life lessons. Even in today’s society, historical dramas about emperors and generals are full of human emotions and life lessons. Because of this, our lives are a cultural construct. In short, ancient Greek mythology and Jewish biblical stories place life under the name of God, the Book of Songs expresses the personal emotions of primitive society, and under the empire, rural peasants in quasi-primitive society in China, like Ah Q, pursued purely aesthetic fantasies, rather than the thematic meaning understood by modern readers and viewers.
2) The Social Division in Ancient China as Seen Through the Concept of Gender Equality in Rural China: Generally speaking, the biology of love between men and women supports gender equality, albeit with differences: women invest far more in reproduction than men, and biology makes men more sexually driven, thus giving women a superior position in choosing men. After humanity entered civilization, frequent wars and the production of wealth gave men a social advantage, leading to a patriarchal society. If concubines and imperial consorts are all categorized as wives without distinction, both Eastern and Western history have been dominated by monogamy, with polygamy existing to varying degrees. Polygamy was far more prevalent in Chinese history than in the West, which explains why the story of King Henry VIII of England wanting a divorce and remarrying only occurred in the West. This is because ancient Chinese society was divided into upper and lower classes, while Western society had various channels of communication, leading to the formation of the public discourse circle of the ancient Greek citizen assembly. This public discourse circle had a restraining effect on the resented phenomenon of polygamy. In the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties of China, the social division between upper and lower classes, coupled with the mobility of peasants and their right to choose their states, forced those in power to be more approachable, but this had a weaker effect on restraining polygamy because it was far removed from the lives of ordinary peasants.
Before the 1950s, rural China was at a quasi-primitive social level. People lived together in close proximity. How did they view gender equality and polygamy? Within a few dozen miles of the author’s hometown, the only polygamy he heard of was among a few capitalists and warlords who had left the area. The phenomenon of Communist Party cadres remarrying while away from home for extended periods is understandable and not included in this case. Undoubtedly, the reality of close living together in this quasi-primitive society led people to voluntarily adhere to monogamy. Although modern anthropologists tend to believe that there was no stage of group marriage in human history, and that the nuclear family of monogamy existed in prehistoric times, prehistoric monogamy was certainly not as strict as in rural China.
36. A Study of the Hierarchical System in Ancient Chinese Society Through “The True Story of Ah Q” (Part 2)
author By Dr. You-Sheng Li
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