by Ling Zhang
Cultural, Socio-Economic, and Political Autonomy
For readers who have learnt about Hebei through the scholarship of late imperial China, Hebei was a “land of famine” in its recent history.30 Located south of the metropolitan area of Beijing, capital to the Jin 金, Yuan 元, Ming, and Qing dynasties and present People's Republic of China, Hebei was where these late imperial states deployed massive amounts of soldiers and conscripted large numbers of corvée laborers, where roads and waterways spread all over not to benefit the locals but to deliver grain and wealth from south China straight to Beijing. In recent centuries, the land increasingly suffered from hydraulic breakdowns and environmental disasters; its human population was frequently struck by agricultural failures, hunger, and demographic losses. For many recent centuries, this region was not a significant player in the arena of political and socio-economic contestations among various regions; rather, it has become one of the poorest, most powerless parts of China. This impoverished image of Hebei is very different from how the region looked before the eleventh century. In the following pages, we shall trace the historical evolution of a militarily strong, politically independent, and economically self-sufficient Hebei before the eleventh century. For many early centuries prior to the eleventh, the geographical enclosedness of Hebei had interacted with the people living there and produced a society that enjoyed a history and culture quite different from people in neighboring regions. Hebei's uniqueness lies in its ethnic, economic, and cultural hybridity, its military tradition, and its political autonomy.
Back in early China, the land of Hebei was a contested region where multiple feudal states of the Spring and Autumn 春秋 (700–476 BCE) and Warring States 戰國 (476–221 BCE) periods vied. It was a borderland – an ethnic, economic, and cultural melting pot – between the sedentary, farming Han Chinese and non-Han peoples, including the horse-riding nomads and semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers who arrived from the Mongolian Steppe and northeast Asia. Either through violent territorial disputes and military struggles or through peaceful economic exchanges and intermarriages, these ethnic groups intermingled to produce a population that was known as the “men of Yan and Zhao (Yan Zhao zhishi 燕趙之士)” in many later centuries. These people, also known as the Hebei people after the geographical name “Hebei” came into common use, were a kind of hybrid between two ethnic, socio-economic, and cultural traditions.
Before the imperial times, the early Hebei people were distant descendants and subjects of the Han Chinese culture. In comparison with those living to their south and west, they did not strictly observe state rituals and social norms derived from the tradition of the Zhou 周 Dynasty that had dominated the lives on the central North China Plain. They were not well acquainted with Confucian philosophy, ethics, and literature, which had formed a basic ethos for the men of China's ruling classes. Hebei men did not produce famous thinkers or writers like Confucius and Mencius, whose moral and political teachings defined the Chinese society and its individuals since the second century BCE. Neither did they produce powerful politicians like Guan Zhong 管仲 (of the Qi 齊 state in Shandong) and Lord Shang 商鞅 (of the Qin state in Shaanxi 陝西), whose political sophistication helped build strong states that led toward the rise of imperial China.
Instead, the early Hebei people were known for their martial and heroic characters. King Wuling of the Zhao Kingdom 趙武靈王 (340–295 BCE) was famously known for promoting non-Han culture, such as horse riding, archery, and nomadic styles of clothing, in order to improve his state's military strength. Jing Ke 荊軻, a strong man from the northern land of Hebei, became one of the most renowned individuals in the literature of this era for his assassination attempt of the king of the Qin, later the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty. Literature from early China gives us a general impression that, in the land of Hebei, even ordinary farmers knew how to ride horses and shoot an arrow. When not farming, they hunted or practiced martial arts, or sauntered around with swords hanging from their belts. These men were born soldiers because of the region's martial tradition and strong sense of honor and personal worth. Open, friendly, and blunt, they made acquaintance with strangers easily and often developed their social lives through drinking. These qualities, however, could get them into trouble too. When offended, they would not hesitate to provoke a fight. They would avenge any slight of family or personal honor and were known to become outlaws.31
Teeming with heroes and strongmen, Hebei had for centuries been the breeding ground for fearless warriors and powerful military leaders. Their armies could provide the force for the rise of a central authority. The founding emperor of the Eastern Han 東漢 Dynasty, Liu Xiu 劉秀 (6–57 CE), for instance, pacified rebellions and unified China under one central rule. He achieved this because he gained support from Hebei warlords and built a political and military foundation inside Hebei. From the late Han through the Three Kingdoms period, Hebei acted like a military powerhouse. Prominent contenders for the imperial throne, like Yuan Shao 袁紹 (d. 202), Cao Cao 曹操 (155–220, whose family established the Wei 魏 Dynasty), and many others, established their military and political careers here and used Hebei as the base for their military expansion toward the rest of north China. Dominating the civil war in north China, Hebei warlords often resisted centralized control coming from the outside; they cared more about their own interests and political autonomy. In this sense, Hebei men were the most disobedient subjects an imperial state had to deal with. Even worse, an ambitious Hebei warlord could easily rally his own troops and expand beyond Hebei to challenge the state in central north China, while the central state often experienced difficulties in entering highly independent Hebei: the land's geographical barriers, in particular the Yellow River, effectively blocked most invasions from the south.
Through the early seventh century, China was wracked with civil war. Various non-Han ethnic groups streamed into China proper from the Mongolian Steppe and northeastern Asia to participate in political and military competitions. Both disturbed by and forced to absorb these populations, Hebei's military culture and tradition of political autonomy were further strengthened. Households of wealth and high social status amassed weaponry, raised horses, and trained their own militants for self-protection. In this period, a manorial economy thrived. Large estates owned enormous plots of land and commanded the labor of multiple households to engage in various kinds of production. The manor produced both agricultural and non-agricultural products to guarantee a highly self-sufficient economy, which relied very little on exchanges with the outside world. This economy allowed estate owners to develop their military forces and gave them enough freedom to emerge as local political leaders and compete for power at higher levels both within Hebei and in interregional or even national arenas. These “strongmen from east of the [Taihang] mountains (Shandong haojie 山東豪傑)”32 in Hebei acquired extraordinary political and military power in north China from the third century on. They participated in north China's political contentions and simultaneously protected their homeland from falling prey to any external authority.
From the mid-sixth century, northwest China saw the rise of strong regimes, which eventually suppressed the powers in the northeast and conquered Hebei. The Sui and Tang dynasties both acquired Hebei as a northeastern province of their imperial empires. This repression of the “strongmen from east of the mountain” has long been considered a major transition in Chinese history, representing the political and cultural integration of different regions, like Hebei, into a centralized imperial state.33 All over China, the manorial economy slowly gave the way to a more diversified agro-market, empire-wide economy. Thanks to a peaceful political environment from the early seventh century, small landowners were released from the control of the large estates and thrived in various specialized modes of production.34
By the mid-eighth century, Hebei had become a major agricultural producer in the empire and contributed greatly to the state's finances.35 Its grain products traveled over a thousan
d kilometers westward to feed the population in the imperial capital of Chang'an in Shaanxi; it was also known as the largest supplier of refined silk in the empire. Meanwhile, trade boomed and market towns mushroomed, especially along streams that provided convenient water-based transportation. Inside Hebei, the Yongji 永濟 Canal (known as the Yuhe 御河 Canal in the Northern Song period) was built in the early seventh century. This north–south waterway linked Hebei's local rivers with the Yellow River that skirted Hebei's southern border; it carried goods in and out of Hebei and distributed them to various parts of the plain. With this additional means of transportation, commerce flourished. Qinghe 清河 County in central Hebei, for instance, gained so much wealth that people called it the “northern warehouse of the empire.”36 Hebei's booming regional economy, considered the strongest in the Tang empire, led to an increase in population, and by the mid-eighth century, it enjoyed the largest regional population among the empire's various provinces.37 Its registered households accounted for 20 percent of the entire empire, and its population density was the second highest in the empire, just barely behind the metropolis of Chang'an (see Illustration 5).38
All these political and socio-economic changes, however, did not seem to have fully incorporated Hebei into the rest of China, nor reduced it to a submissive subordinate to the imperial state. As the state remained wary of the burgeoning region, Hebei and its people sustained their regional identity as a geographically distant, economically self-sufficient, and politically semi-independent area. Its vigorous economic growth and population increase enriched its regional authorities and military forces; it endowed Hebei's generals and later warlords with immense confidence and strength in terms of resisting or even challenging state rule. This sense of superiority and political semi-autonomy eventually led to the An Lushan Rebellion in 755.39
This rebellion, which nearly tore the Tang empire apart, was initiated by non-Han generals like An Lushan 安祿山 and Shi Siming 史思明 from northern Hebei. It then exploded into a multiplicity of regional warlords and political factions throughout China, who fought with each other and grabbed as much land and population as possible to enlarge their domains. Among them, Hebei warlords were particularly powerful and arrogant. While most other regional powers formed checks and balances in military, civil, or economic terms and helped preserve the central authority of the Tang, Hebei warlords kept full control of their territories and often threatened the stability of the imperial rule. They rejected any intervention from the central authority, demanded honor and gifts from the state, monopolized wealth in their areas, refused to contribute taxes to the central government, summarily expanded their own militaries, and invaded their neighbors and annexed land without heeding the opinion of the central government.40 Hebei's extraordinary military strength and unbridled ambition to supersede the state were analyzed by the late-Tang poet official, Du Mu 杜牧. The land of north China centering Hebei was something that “A king cannot be a king without owning it; a hegemon cannot be a hegemon without owing it. A cunning thief who wins this land is able to disturb everything under Heaven.”41
The resurgence of Hebei's military tradition was reinforced by this region's ethnic hybridity and mixed social and cultural practices, which continued to produce the kind of “cunning thief” that pro-state, non-Hebei native like Du Mu complained about. The cosmopolitan empire of the Tang drew non-Han ethnics from Inner Asia and North Asia, some conducting trade with the Han Chinese while many settling down in north China to become farmers or join the Tang's armies. For centuries, Hebei, like other north China regions like Shanxi and Shaanxi, hosted a highly mixed population: Han, Sogdian (like An Lushan and his fellow soldiers who originated from central Asia), Bohai (from the modern China–Korea border), and Khitan co-inhabited and intermarried here. Being Han was not necessarily superior in either ethnic or cultural terms; instead, being non-Han sometimes suggested better physical conditions and higher military capacities, which were welcomed and respected in a time of constant war. One's personal worth was considered to be more valuable than ethnic or family background. Social relations were formed in a variety of ways. To trace blood kinships and lineages to common ancestors – a practice that organized the Chinese Confucian society – was just one way. Under the influence of non-Han and especially nomadic practices, sworn brotherhoods and loosely formed social-professional alliances became prominent. This was particularly true within the military, in which the ratio of non-Han was higher than in the civilian population. In armies, due partly to nomadic influence and partly to high mortality, the practice of adoption was popular. People of superior social and political status adopted orphans or inferiors as their children, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds. An adopted son was generally given the same opportunities as his foster siblings and, if he proved himself talented and capable (often in the martial sense), he might make an equal claim to the adoptive father's inheritance, including his political and military power.
In addition to speaking Han Chinese as a common language, it was not unusual for the Hebei people to communicate in other languages, either in the market places or in armies. The average literacy level was low, and the Hebei men in this period were not known for scholarship or literary sophistication, unlike the more educated population in central and south China. A good example is Zhao Pu 趙普 (922–992), a native of Hebei who became a chief advisor to the founding emperors of the Northern Song Dynasty and served as their Grand Councilor for several decades. Although he helped the emperors to establish the state and guided them in nearly every significant political decision, Zhao was said to have gathered his intelligence from merely half a volume of Confucius's The Analects. This anecdote might be an exaggeration or a fabrication by political rivals to blemish Zhao's reputation. Nevertheless, it suggests that during the turbulent tenth century, a culture based on the standards of Han Chinese Confucian teachings might not be what the Hebei men valued most. Or, even rather renowned scholars, who were certainly the minority in Hebei, such as Liu Kai 柳開, were best known for their northerner's blunt temperament and martial spirit, very different from refined, delicate southern scholars.42 In northern Hebei, people often dressed in a nomadic “zuoren 左衽” fashion – that is, with the front piece of their garment folded toward the left side of the body – even if they happened to be ethnically Han. Some shaved their hair in various nomadic styles. Practicing martial arts and learning horse riding and archery were a significant part of Hebei culture, which remained vibrant even throughout the eleventh century.43
The blurred ethnic and cultural identities of the Hebei people as well as their socio-economic and political pragmatism not only helped them survive the political turbulence, but also strengthened their military autonomy and sense of difference.44 All this fueled north China's political chaos from the late ninth century through the tenth century. As the Tang Dynasty was replaced by several short-lived regimes, rapid rebellions, and numerous secessions in central China, Hebei warlords actively engaged in the contestation for power and contributed to the frequent dynastic successions.45 Some of them established dynasties themselves; some served the regimes as leading generals to sustain their solid control over the Hebei military. In an era when “Those who possess mighty soldiers and strong horses will become the Son of Heaven!”46 as the domineering, Late-Tang general An Zhongrong 安重榮 (?–942) claimed, the person who “owned” Hebei seemed to be in a good position to vie for the throne. That An was able to make such remark and contemplate the idea of arrogation was due to his status as a major commander of Hebei's military forces. His declaration echoed perfectly with Du Mu's assessment of Hebei's strategic significance in the ninth century.
Entering the tenth century, Hebei's military prominence skyrocketed especially because of its geopolitical position between the Han Chinese regimes and the Khitan's Liao Dynasty. The Khitan originated in southeastern Inner Mongolia and expanded rapidly in the late ninth century. In the early tenth century, this equestrian people had esta
blished a nomadic empire, not only dominating a great part of the Mongolian Steppe and northeastern Asia, but also pressing upon land that had traditionally belonged to China. For years, the Khitan raided the land north of the Juma River; in 937 and 947, their troops marched all the way through Hebei, crossed the Yellow River to enter Henan, and even captured several imperial capitals of different Chinese regimes. The Khitan's overwhelming military strength defeated several Chinese rulers, who were forced to give up land north to the Juma River, where sixteen military prefectures (including modern Beijing) were located, to the Khitan and fulfill its demands for wealth.
The Khitan's military superiority and, for a period, political oversight of a Chinese regime endowed the land of Hebei with a tremendous strategic significance.47 On the one hand, Hebei suffered as the battlefield for multiple regimes, and its society, population, and economy were ruined by the prolonged period of war. On the other hand, this land became an indispensable military base and buffer zone for any Chinese regime, which had no choice but to support Hebei and reinforce its military in order for the region to serve its role against the Khitan. Hence, ironically, the socio-economic decline of Hebei went along with its strong hold on political and military power. Its regional military leaders used the Khitan as leverage to contest the central authorities in the south and negotiate to their advantage. When they felt pressure from the south or resisted being centralized by a Chinese regime, they turned to the Khitan in the north for protection. The regional forces in Hebei swung back and forth between the regimes on either side and switched their loyalties as would benefit them. To the Khitan, it made sense to help maintain a relatively strong and autonomous Hebei. Although it was capable of launching an attack on central China, the Khitan's several attempts had proven that it could not occupy Chinese land for long, since the culture, economy, and society were too different from its own, and the resistance against foreign rule was too strong. The Khitan needed Han-Chinese agents to preserve and maximize its interests, for instance, protecting the frontier trade and the importation of Chinese goods. A semi-autonomous Hebei, not fully yielding to the Chinese regimes, served the Khitan well.