The River, the Plain, and the State

by Ling Zhang

  The Chinese regimes rooted in Henan, south of the Yellow River, had mixed feelings about Hebei's military power, autonomous inclination, and ambiguous relationship with the Khitan. They relied on support from the Hebei warlords, and they needed Hebei to be strong and intact to fend off Khitan invasions. It was not in these regimes’ interests to see the dissolution of Hebei's military strength. Yet, when Hebei acted as a decentralizing force, it might challenge the Chinese states’ rule or even assist the Khitan in a conquest of north China. These regimes could only fill up Hebei's military positions with relatives and trustworthy men, in order to ensure Hebei's loyalty and to curb its separatist tendencies. Yet, during the chaotic, opportunist Five Dynasties 五代 (907–959) period, nobody, even a brother, was trustworthy and consistently loyal. The aforementioned An Zhongrong was not the only one who expressed the desire to become an emperor. In this sense, Hebei continued to produce potential rivals to the existing regimes. This ambivalent relationship between the Chinese regimes and Hebei helped sustain Hebei's semi-autonomous status throughout the tenth century. When the Northern Song Dynasty came to power in 960, it inherited this complicated relationship with Hebei.

  Before we move on to introduce the arrival of the Northern Song state, let us briefly return to the Yellow River. What was the river's position in the long history of Hebei? In a less visible, marginal way, the river contributed to the formation and sustainment of Hebei's geographical, political, and cultural singularity. It formed Hebei's southern border, provided it a geographical division, and served it as a defensive barrier. It contributed to reinforce Hebei's cultural, socio-economic, and political separation from the rest of China. Hence, it may seem shocking to modern readers that, after a thousand years of relative benignity and a marginal relationship with Hebei, the river chose this plain as its flooding victim and the geographical base of its new delta. Instead of continuing to guard Hebei and reinforce the long history of Hebei, the river crashed into the plain, transformed its environment, and contributed to the ending of Hebei's self-sufficient, autonomous tradition. Before the eleventh century, the Hebei people had carried out a vibrant social, economic, political, and cultural life, with little influence from the environmental entity of the Yellow River. They had been oblivious to the river's bad temper and violent tendencies; history had not prepared them – either materially or mentally – for a deadly attack by the river. So what brought the river's catastrophic impact upon these men and women?

  This book suggests that the shift of the river's course into Hebei in 1048 was a matter of probability. The probability is not evident in the present chapter, as the river and the plain had sustained a marginal relationship for a long time. But the next three chapters will show that, as time moved on to the late tenth century when the Northern Song state started to play a prominent historical role, the probability began to rise. I shall anatomize the history of the early Northern Song to demonstrate how the land of Hebei evolved from a region of political, socio-economic, and environmental autonomy to a region highly dependent on the state, which had less and less control over its own fate. I will point out that this fall in Hebei's status made the region susceptible to environmental attacks, in particular when the state sought to channel the Yellow River's disasters to plague Hebei. In order to unravel this trialectic relationship among the river, the plain, and the state, let us first look at the rise of the imperial state of the Northern Song, as another prominent actor in the making of history. The state's need to manage Hebei and the Yellow River simultaneously, a story that will unfold over the next three chapters, eventually broke down the marginal relationship between the plain and the river and drew the two into an environmental co-inhabitance.

  1 Huanghe shuili weiyuanhui (1995: 58).

  2 Huanghe shuili weiyuanhui (1982).

  3 Huanghe shuili weiyuanhui (1996: 18).

  4 Han Zhaoqing (1999: 208).

  5 A considerable number of publications on the Yellow River, both on its technological aspects and historical aspects, has been published by the Yellow River Conservancy and its associated Yellow River Hydraulics Press, and by the Water Resources Press associated with China's Ministry of Water Resources. Among Chinese historical geographers who have published extensively on historical transformations of the Yellow River, a great number are associated with two leading scholars, Shi Nianhai at Shaanxi Normal University and Tan Qixiang at Fudan University. Most of their works have been published through the university presses of these two institutes. In English, there are a few studies dedicated to the Yellow River. For example, Wang Ling and Lu Gwei-djen's volume in Neeham's Science and Civilization in China contains sections on hydraulic technology. Randall A. Dodgen (2001) studies the political and technological responses to river disasters in the 19th century. Jane Kate Leonard (1996) studies political reasoning and technological solutions about managing the Grand Canal and the canal's relations with the Yellow River. David Pietz (2015) provides an excellent study about the history of flood control, dam construction, and their environmental implications in twentieth-century China. Micah S. Muscolino (2015) offers a nuanced examination of the river's bank rupture in 1938 and its ecological, political, and socio-economic complications before the mid-twentieth century.

  6 There are enormous studies on Chinese loess from earth science and soil studies, for example, Liu (1964) and (1985). For the Yellow River's silt specifically, see Zhao (1996).

  7 Huanghe shuili weiyuanhui (1995: 42–43).

  8 Gupta (2007: 31), “Table 3.1, The Basic Characteristics of the World's Largest Rivers.” The U.S. Geological Survey (online source), “Table 1. Discharge of suspended sediment to the coastal zone by 10 major river of the United States, about 1980.” See Topping et al. (2000: 515–542); Morris (2012: 2, 225).

  9 There is a large body of scholarship in Chinese on historical environmental changes on the Loess Plateau. For example, Tan (1986), Shi (1981, 1985, 1988a, 1991, 2002), and Hou and Deng (2006).

  10 Shi (2002: 433–448); Shi et al. (1985: 1–74); Ho (1969); Elvin (1993: 30–33); and various sections in Elvin (2006). For a comprehensive survey of regional environmental changes, see Marks (2012).

  11 Shiji, 6: 252.

  12 Han shu, 6: 178.

  13 For environmental implications of the northward expansion of Han Chinese in the Qin-Han period, see Wang (2007: 310–332; 485–498).

  14 For studies about Helian Bobo's city construction and its environmental impact, see various articles in Hou and Deng (2006), and He and Wang (2010: 186–191).

  15 See various articles in Tan (1986), multi-volume Heshan ji by Shi (1981, 1985, 1988a, 1991, 2002).

  16 See Wang Yuanlin (2005).

  17 Chinese historical geographers have debated for decades if there was a tranquil period in the Yellow River history and why. See Tan (1986), Yao (1987), and Shi (2002).

  18 Yang (2008: 218–237). For more historical climatic data, see Zhang (2004).

  19 Zhang (1984: 825–836) and Song and Zhang (2006).

  20 Zhang (1982) and Zhang and Sun (2001: 1–7).

  21 Gupta (2007: 31).

  22 Shi ji, 29: 1412–1413.

  23 Kidder et al. (2012: 30–47).

  24 For the debate on Wang Jing's hydraulic work and the possibility of a thousand-year tranquility of the Yellow River's situation, see various articles in Tan (1986) and Yao (2003: 155–175).

  25 Liang (1980: 134).

  26 XCB, 83: 1839.

  27 This book does not extend the range of the Hebei Plain toward the land in the north not only because the Juma River sufficiently served as Hebei's geographical, political, socio-economic, and cultural boundary, but also because historical sources associated with the Liao-controlled northern land are scant and do not support an in-depth study of its environmental history.

  28 Liang (1980: 164).

  29 Zou (1987: 25–39).

  30 Lillian M. Li (2007).

  31 Literature of early China, such as Zuozhuan 左傳, Zhanguo ce 戰國�
�, and Shi ji 史記, offer many stories and anecdotes about warriors, assassins, and remarkable figures of the sort from the Hebei area. They give us a general impression of the martial characteristic of early Hebei people.

  32 This phrase sometimes referred to “east of the Yao Mountain,” meaning the eastern part of the North China Plain, a realm larger than Hebei.

  33 Chen (1997).

  34 McDermott and Shiba offer a survey on the transformation of economy during the Tang period, in Chaffee and Twitchett (2015: 321–325).

  35 Pulleyblank (1955: 33). See figures of annual tributes that provincial circuits presented to the Tang court, in Du You, Tong dian, 6: 34–38.

  36 Zizhi tongjian, 217: 6957.

  37 See Shi's (1991: 53–59 and 168–191)'s study on Hebei's economy in the Sui and Tang dynasties.

  38 Based on Liang (1980: 86, 114).

  39 Shi (1991: 191) and Pulleyblank (1955).

  40 Twitchett (1965: 211–232; 1976) and Tackett (2014: 149–154).

  41 “Zuiyan [On My Crime],” Fanchuan wenji, 5:87.

  42 Wu (2006: 295–344). For Hebei's distinct, isolated culture, see Tackett (2013: 251–281).

  43 Standen (2007) studies the great diversity of ethnicities and identities across the Song–Liao border in the Hebei area. However, in his study of a man traveling across China in the tenth century, Dudbridge (2013) reminds us that we should not overestimate the cultural hybridity of people in northeastern regions like Hebei; Han Chinese's cultural and ethnic identity still remained strong. We should certainly note that, while literati (scholarly officials) maintained their strong Han identity particularly in times of political, social, and cultural crises, ordinary people like peasants and soldiers might have been more practical and drawn toward social and cultural practices that could better preserve their lives in extreme hardship, such as practicing martial arts and adopting non-Han lifestyles.

  44 Mao (1990: 99–112). Such sense of difference did not only come from Hebei people's self-image, but also from the perceptions of non-Hebei people. See Tackett (2013: 255–260).

  45 For the political and military turbulence during the tenth century, see Naomi Standen and Hugh Clark in Twitchett and Smith (2009) and Lorge (2011: 38–205).

  46 Jiu wudaishi, 98: 3005.

  47 For the Khitan's military and political interactions with the Late Tang Dynasty and the Late Jin Dynasty, see Naomi Standen in Twitchett and Smith (2009: 38–132) and Lorge (2011).

  2

  The State's Hebei Project

  Compared to the Yellow River and Hebei, the Northern Song (960–1127) state came upon the scene relatively late. Yet, even as a newcomer, the state forcefully took steps to transform Hebei into a subordinate periphery and turn the Yellow River from an environmental outlaw into the state's manageable geopolitical property. The present and following two chapters explore these state desires and efforts. They question how the state's interventions in the life of a region as well as the life of a major river provided possibilities for these two entities to encounter each other and for the environmental drama to take place in 1048. The state's active interventions derived from its strong sense of anxiety about its survival in the midst of political, military, and environmental challenges. In this chapter, we shall first take a brief look at how the state's perception of the world – a geopolitical chaos it was born into – shaped the state's survivor mentality. We will then elaborate how the young state sought to secure its survival by grabbing the control of power from the hands of decentralized regional forces like Hebei, and how it strengthened its core political area on the southern side of the Yellow River by downgrading powerful regions like Hebei to a servile and dependent periphery. This chapter analyzes a multi-dimensional project the state launched to transform Hebei into a political, military, socio-economic, and even environmental periphery.

  When the Northern Song state ascended the stage of history in 960, it succeeded the short-lived Five Dynasties, which altogether lasted a mere fifty-three years. The Song could not anticipate how long its rule would last, whether or not its military leaders would usurp the throne to form a new dynasty, just as its own founding emperor did to his predecessor, or whether or not it would follow the pattern of frequent dynastic secessions and become a sixth truncated dynasty. The recent history haunted the young, insecure state, imbuing it with a strong distrust of others, including the individuals who served it. Such feelings defined the state's everyday political practices: its state-building was not directed toward unrealistic dreams or fantasies of imperial glory, but rather was designed to guard its existence, to survive crisis after crisis, and to extend its rule a little longer than its predecessors.1

  We, as modern readers who have the advantage of hindsight, know that this imperial state prospered until 1127. Thanks to Song scholarship, we praise the Song for having the most affluent economy in its contemporary world, for its relatively benevolent Confucius rule, for its sophisticated literature and arts, as well as for the high literacy level among its populace. Given its unprecedented growth in terms of its economy and technology, we feel we might legitimately entertain the idea that Song China, as early as the eleventh century, was taking a leap toward an early modern era. Yet this revolutionary transition in history seems to have sputtered out in the thirteenth century. Even given the springboard of the Song's high-level development, China failed to ascend to the next level of progress. Was this a waste, and a shame to the Song glory?2 Such views are retrospective impositions of our modern desire, anxiety, and grievance. They are expressions of our longing to find China a noteworthy spot in a Eurocentric world history and to place it in the tide of a single lineal mode of historical progression. These concerns were certainly not what the Song state worried about in its early years. As a young, vulnerable state, it saw the world around it treacherous; each step forward was full of danger. Any success in consolidating and extending its rule would only arrive due to careful calculation; meanwhile, every decision carried potential risk. It was such perception of itself and its position in the world that gave the state the “tentative nature of early Sung political life.”3

  Illustration 6. Early Song's Geopolitical Situation

  The Song began with the control of a small territory centered in Henan on the southern side of the Yellow River. During the next twenty years, this land was besieged by multiple states. To emerge triumphant in this multi-state rivalry required that the Song engage strategically in diplomacy and warfare with each of its neighbors. By 980, the Song defeated most of its enemies and had successfully reunited most of the traditionally Han Chinese land under its rule.4 Despite such territorial expansion, by the turn of the millennium, the state had still failed to regain the land of northwest China. Once under the control of the Tang Dynasty, that part of China now remained distant from the Song's central authority and was occupied by some Tangut tribes. These semi-nomadic tribes established a Xixia 西夏 empire three decades later and had since become the Song's archenemy.

  Forty years after its establishment, the state still experienced constant threat from its northern neighbor. Almost every year, Khitan horses carried warriors, arrows, and bows southward, overwhelming the Song's frontier troops, plundering the land of Hebei, and setting fire to human settlements. In the 980s and 990s, the Song's second emperor, Taizong 太宗 (939–997), attempted two expeditions, each crossing Hebei to approach the far northeast. He hoped to give the Khitan a decisive defeat and to regain the swath of land on the northern side of the Juma River that was considered a traditional land of the Han Chinese. That area, where modern Beijing is located, once belonged to the Tang Dynasty but was annexed by the Khitan in the early tenth century, much to the humiliation of the Han Chinese. Both military actions failed horribly, nearly costing the emperor's life and toppling his regime. The Song's military weakness in the face of the Khitan led to a large-scale invasion by the Khitan in 1004. The Khitan army swept through Hebei, flaunted its military forces in southern Hebei against the north
ern bank of the Yellow River, and threatened the Song with further invasion. In early 1005, the two states eventually reached a peace agreement that recognized the two states as equal sovereignties. War was subsequently replaced by state-level diplomacy and gift exchanges to the material benefit of the Khitan, who received an indemnity of 200,000 lengths of silk and 100,000 ounces of silver every year.5

  The peace treaty did not bring a sense of eternal security. For the next 120 years, the Song state continued to see the Khitan as a greedy bully and potential terror. To make the situation worse, the rise of the Tangut as an imperial power in northwest China since the mid-1030s dragged the Song into warfare that lingered over decades. The Song's fear of these foreign enemies strengthened the state's survivor mentality. It made the state see every problem it encountered as a kind of existential crisis. Hence, throughout its rule, particularly during its early years, the state cautiously assessed the costs and benefits of anything it engaged in, avoided risks and upheavals, eliminated any chance of potential problems, and balanced out the struggles among uneven powers.6