by Ling Zhang
This political and cultural shift had a profound influence on Hebei's political life and society. Each of Hebei's jurisdictions was now governed by a civil bureaucratic team and a parallel military organization. Even in the most militarized districts in northern Hebei, civil officials were in place to assist or oversee military commanders. In the 1040s when military tensions soared between the Song and the Liao, the state went a step further to replace Hebei's top-level military commanders with civil officials, who were viewed by the contemporary as “Confucian marshals (rushuai 儒帥).”21 In theory, the military and civil leaderships had separate duties that did not overlap on a daily basis. Military commanders had no right to inquire about civilian affairs or revenue collection; equally, civil officials could not access military forces residing within their own districts. This division of responsibilities prevented the concentration of power in individual hands and the emergence of political allies at a local and regional level.
Since Hebei produced only a small number of scholars in the early years of the Song, a large portion of its civil officials came from elsewhere. After peace returned to Hebei in 1005, its people began to settle down and engage in various economic activities to rebuild some kind of civilian livelihood. The preference in the tenth century to train oneself as an independent-minded, self-profiting warrior to join an army gave way to a preference for educating oneself to become a thoughtful person who embraced Confucian values and served his government with political sophistication and morality. Mastery of horseback riding and archery became a less attractive approach than the demonstration of profound civil knowledge to climb the social ladder. More and more young men devoted themselves to reading and writing and considered participation in the civil service examination a more viable career path. Across the empire, an increasing number of southern scholars moved northward; they acquired official positions and served in northern regions like Hebei. As a result, there emerged a new civil, educated population, which began to fill official positions inside Hebei, as across the empire. This new population challenged Hebei's old military establishment: it not only changed the existing power dynamics and political landscape inside Hebei, but also inspired a fashion of civil culture that gradually dissolved Hebei's martial tradition.
The increasing number of scholars entering the government quickly expanded and diversified Hebei's civil bureaucratic system. In response, official positions mushroomed. Each official claimed authority over a small section of governance and asserted checks-and-balances over each other. By the late 1030s, officials and clerks in the Song government had developed into a rather redundant population, who functioned inefficiently and exhausted government resources. Yet, in the early years of the state's rule, the swelling bureaucracy was “intentionally made redundant and inefficient.”22 The fragmentation of duties and the intricate network of political strengths prevented any accumulation of power outside of the central government. In Hebei in particular, the excessive civil bureaucracy counterbalanced the continuously expanding military and competed with the latter for control over the population and resources.
As the consequence of the state's military and political appropriation, Hebei underwent two seemingly opposite trends: the expansion of a gigantic, multilayered, hierarchical military entity; and the demilitarization of Hebei's civil society and governing body. These seemingly contradictory trends worked in concert with each other to help transform the region and its people from a warlike, autonomy-seeking political force into a periphery that was subordinate to and served the imperial state.
2.2 Building Tunnels and Digging Ponds in the Northern Land23
The state's efforts to turn Hebei into a centrally controlled military entity also involved an environmental aspect, through modifying the physical characteristics of the land. During the Northern Song period, individuals, farming communities, local officials, and military organizations actively changed the conditions of the land throughout China by clearing woods, cultivating arable fields, building irrigation facilities, constructing dams, and setting up military colonies and garrisons. Yet, very few projects were like the one carried out inside Hebei, which came from the direct interventions of the state, well-defined strategic purposes, and multi-dimensional approaches.24 In Hebei, the state deliberately changed the form and composition of the land and water in order to create a landscape that better suited its military and strategic needs.
One such project, carried out in relative secrecy, was the construction of a series of underground tunnels in northern Hebei. Discovered by archaeologists in present-day Yongqing 永清, Ba 霸, and Xiong 雄 counties, the tunnels spread through the strategic zone along the Song–Liao border, adjacent to or directly under Song garrisons.25 None of the existing historical records mention them, but uncovered artifacts indicate that they were built during the Northern Song period, most likely in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries when the Song and the Liao were still at war. Since the archaeological digs were conducted sporadically, the overall size of the tunnels remains unknown. Judging from what has been discovered, I suspect that the tunnels stretched widely across the frontier area. In Yongqing County alone, the tunnels were found to cover an area of more than 300 square kilometers.
Many of these tunnels are of identical shape and size. They were built with the same techniques and used the same construction materials – a kind of dark earthen bricks. Furthermore, they were built to such good quality that it seems the construction was carefully designed and carried out over a relatively long time, and that the same design was simultaneously used in different places. This suggests that at least the majority of the tunnels were built via collective efforts, which were organized and funded by people who could employ sophisticated engineers and could maneuver large numbers of workers to undertake construction in various places simultaneously. Given that northern Hebei was a war zone in the early Song period, where the population was sparse, poor, and unstable, we can speculate with a large degree of certainty that these tunnels were government projects and that they were built for military purposes. The lack of both private and governmental records indicates the covert nature of the project. Unlike aboveground strategic infrastructure, the tunnels could remain secret in order to avoid attention and attack from the Khitan. As such, they were the perfect defense system for the Song state.
While the tunnels remained invisible, another state project was carried out in a more forceful, visible way and brought about drastic changes to Hebei's physical landscape. As we discussed earlier, the revival of the Yuhe Canal and its connections with Hebei's local streams created a vast network of water transportation. These efforts resulted in a massive body of standing water, which by itself could serve as a barrier to halt the advancement of the Khitan armies. To a flat lowland like the Hebei Plain that lacked natural barriers of strategic values, the emergence of this watery landscape attracted the attention of military commanders in Hebei's frontier, who decided to appropriate these waters for strategic uses. As a result, a series of ponds and ditches over a length of several hundred kilometers came into being to cover two-thirds of Hebei's border.
Late tenth-century Hebei saw an unusual amount of rain, and the local rivers overflowed from time to time, waterlogging the land. In the meantime, the local rivers were occasionally used strategically by military leaders. In 923 and 1001, some troops broke through the banks of the Hutuo 滹沱 and Bao 鮑 rivers to induce floods to halt the advancement of their enemies.26 These actions changed the rivers’ natural waterways and led to flooding disasters. The unbridled waters flowed freely across the land, sometimes infiltrating local lakes and swamps and causing them to expand. At the turn of the eleventh century, a substantial part of northern Hebei was immersed in stagnant water. Near Xiongzhou 雄州, a major frontier garrison, the waterlogged territory stretched “endlessly.”27 Assuming that the swampy landscape would be difficult for Khitan armies and their horses to cross and that nomadic Khitans were unfamiliar with sailing, Hebei's commanders d
ecided to create a defensive system out of the waters. Their idea was to stabilize the naturally produced swampy landscape and prevent it from disappearing, and meanwhile to enlarge its area and reshape its form in order to meet strategic needs.
He Chengju 何承矩 was the forerunner in the experiments with pond construction. When He first arrived in northern Cangzhou 滄州 as a Military Colony Commissioner in 993, he noted that “the rivers have risen and overflowed due to rain and waterlogging in Hebei in recent years. They have destroyed cities, settlements, and buildings. [Water] has accumulated here and there, generating ponds and obstructing agricultural production.”28 He tried to channel the excessive water to expand existing swamps. In his original idea, the ponds so produced would provide stable irrigation and allow his troops to carry out paddy rice cultivation around the ponds. Although their economic outcome remained questionable, the paddy fields themselves might serve as strategic obstacles to “restrain the [Khitan] cavalry.”29
Over the next two decades, officials and military officers in northern Hebei followed He's practices and continued to develop ponds and ditches. They took various steps to search for water resources: from the east they diverted seawater to infuse the ponds; from the west, they routed water from the rivers and springs that originated in the mountains in western Hebei.30 With water arriving from all directions, the commanders had laborers dig ponds to contain it. To protect these manmade ponds, they ordered dykes to be erected around the ponds, upon which plants like willows, Chinese mulberry, and hemp were planted to anchor the soil and to consolidate the dykes’ foundations.31
As the ponds spread and water resources appeared abundant, Hebei's military commanders encouraged their soldiers to carry out agricultural activities suitable for this special watery landscape. Soldiers at the Jingrong 靜戎, Shun'an 順安, and Weilu 威虜 commanderies built “square fields” (fangtian 方田) around the ponds. Approximately 1.56 meters wide and long, and 2.18 meters deep, these small plots produced a small amount of grain and vegetables.32 In Xiongzhou, soldiers turned a considerable amount of land into vegetable gardens. They dug wells and ditches, shaped deep plots and ridges, set up fences, and planted hedgerows of shrubs and bushes around the gardens.33 The ponds provided these fields with a convenient source of irrigation.
Observing all the initial efforts made at the local level, the imperial state soon recognized the strategic significance of the ponds and stepped in to patronize the pond construction and maintenance. In 1014, it authorized Hebei's Pacification Commission to establish regulations for dredging the ponds and mapping the dykes. Regulations like the “Code on illegally breaching dykes” made it illegal for people to damage any infrastructure associated with the ponds.34 Hebei's Commission of Military Colonies, which used to manage agricultural production only, assumed responsibility for overseeing the execution of the regulations. In addition, techniques were invented to monitor physical changes in the ponds. For instance, water loss was a common occurrence, especially in dry years when the Hebei Plain suffered from rapid evaporation. The “water ruler” (shuize 水則), a wooden pole with measurement marks, was installed in a pond to indicate any increase or decrease in its water level. Reports of the ponds’ conditions were officially filed and presented to the central government periodically. Clearly, the state had fully claimed the frontier ponds as its property and established a system of management for them.
By the 1030s, Hebei's northern frontier saw the formation of an interconnected system of ponds and ditches (Illustration 8). According to the Standard History of the Song, its entire length was 527 li (roughly 260 km), stretching from the coastal area in the east to western areas like Baozhou 保州. Its surface width from north to south ranged between 4 and 70 km, with a mean width of 53 km. Some ponds were deeper than others, but in general they stood at a mean depth of about 2 meters. In order to administrate and maintain these ponds efficiently, the government divided the entire system into nine sections, each designated a “water body” (shui 水). Each “water body” was managed by the nearest military administration (see Table 1).
Illustration 8. Hebei's Frontier Ponds
Table 1. The Size of Hebei's Frontier Ponds in the 1030sa
From East to WestLength (li) 1 li ≈ 530 mWidth (li)Depth (chi) 1 chi ≈ 31.2 cm
First water body 120 90–130 5
Second water body 120 30–50 6–10
Third water body 70 50–60 6–7
Fourth water body 27 8 6
Fifth water body 60 15–25 8–9
Sixth water body 70 30–40 6–10
Seventh water body 30 150 10–13
Eighth water body 20 10 3–5
Ninth water body 10 10 3–5
a XCB, 112: 2607–2609
With the underground tunnels and aboveground ponds and many other works, the state modified the land of Hebei to produce some unusual environmental traits that they hoped in wartime might confuse, hinder, or halt the enemy. Functioning in concert with Hebei's transportation system, military personnel, and strategic administrative system, these environmental traits created a multi-dimensional, fluid military landscape within Hebei for the state's military to advance, retreat, or conceal themselves; they provided means for various military components to navigate toward and communicate with each other.
Clearly, before the Yellow River shifted its course in 1048 to drastically change Hebei's physical landscape, the Song state had already acted as a significant environmental force to reshape the land of Hebei. With its interventions in the regional environment, the imperial state transformed the land from an enclosed, singular geographical entity into a military-oriented, state-serving strategic infrastructure. The state established its firm presence inside Hebei. Hebei was no longer its own separate geographical entity, because much of its physical environment had been co-opted into the state's gigantic military apparatus and become the state's strategic property.
2.3 Restoring an Agricultural Economy
The state's emphasis on Hebei's strategic significance also motivated it to pacify the war-ravaged, easily agitated Hebei people, in order to prevent this frontier population from developing any kind of anti-state sentiment or activities. To bring stability back to the people and the society, the state did more than just advocate for the civil culture that I introduced earlier in this chapter. It endeavored to return the people to a land-bound, sedentary livelihood. Helping Hebei restore a basic agricultural economy and granting its people a basic level of economic self-sufficiency was another major agenda in the state's Hebei project.
In the previous two centuries, Hebei had been deeply harmed by civil war; its economy was exhausted by regional warlords and their relentless military actions. The first four or five decades of the Song period were equally chaotic. Military control and battles seesawed between the Song and the Khitan, severely damaging the land and its people. Food shortage was common, and the prices for grain were sometimes so high that commoners were driven to eat wild plants.35 The only good harvest at the turn of the century was the autumn crop (mainly millet and soybean) in 1003 in southern Hebei.36 This single harvest, however, could not relieve the shortage of food. So when the Khitan provoked war and marched into Hebei in 1004, the Song state confronted not only a fierce enemy but also the hunger of its own weak army. During those decades Hebei's mortality rate remained high.37 A great number of the male population died on the battlefield. Many others fled their homes to migrate to southern parts of China or wandered across Hebei's devastated earth to eke out a minimal livelihood. Many turned into outlaws, engaging in banditry and plundering already impoverished villages and towns. Hebei, like other regions in north China during the tenth century, saw numerous houses and villages burned to ashes, countless corpses rotting in the open air, and field after field of arable land teeming with wild grasses.
By the time the Song state set its feet on this land, Hebei was no longer an affluent region with a dense civilian population, as it was in the mid-Tang period. A demogr
aphically and economically impoverished Hebei certainly impeded the state's efforts to establish and sustain a powerful military entity there. Without the society to supply enough manpower to the armies, and without the land to produce adequate food and other materials for the soldiers, the carefully designed military system discussed earlier could not have been rooted firmly in Hebei, but would have had to rely excessively on the importation of resources from elsewhere. Such reliance would have made Hebei vulnerable to any change to external conditions and have exhausted the state as its supplier.
To rebuild Hebei, the state put forth a package of economic incentives to help resettle the vagrant population as soon as peace returned in 1005. It released a considerable number of Hebei soldiers from their duties and sent them back home to become farmers.38 The government distributed famine relief to help them cope with the post-war damage.39 For those who took up plows to turn wild land into fields, the government granted them exemptions of tax and corvée services for three years, so they could focus exclusively on tending the fields.40 Realizing that Hebei was full of fallow land, the government encouraged landless people in other provinces to move to Hebei.41 The policies were so favorable that some famine refugees in the Liao Dynasty secretly crossed the border and settled down in Hebei. The government opened the door to various kinds of people and helped them acquire land.42
A large number of the settlers – retired soldiers or sometimes ethnic Khitan – knew little about agricultural production. The government sought advice from experienced farmers and collected and printed agricultural treatises for distribution around Hebei. Hebei's regional officials were charged with the duty to educate those in their jurisdictions about farming practices. The new settlers arrived in Hebei without the basic resources and capital to start a new livelihood, and local governments had very little to offer to them. The state took various measures to supply the settlers with whatever an agrarian subsistence lifestyle required. For instance, the government permitted people to travel out of Hebei to purchase crop seeds without any transit tax.43 Since much of Hebei's livestock had been killed in the war and farmers faced a severe shortage of draft animals, the government encouraged the importation of cattle from Henan and other provinces. In the past, cattle from the south were banned from crossing the Yellow River to enter Hebei, because their tendons and hides were the best materials for making weapons. In 1004, 1005, 1009, and 1014, the government not only lifted the ban, but also exempted commercial taxes on cattle sales in order to boost the trade of livestock into Hebei. Government funds were even issued for purchasing cattle for Hebei farmers.44