by Peter Watson
These various aspects of Chinese language and script have had a major influence on Chinese thought. There is not only the pictorial quality of the characters themselves, but the various tones in which words are pronounced, which in particular, for example, give Chinese poetry added elements or dimensions that are quite lacking in Western languages. ‘Movement’, for example, is rendered in Chinese as ‘advance-retreat’, and ‘politics’ as ‘rule-chaos’. The experience of Chinese is, in some circumstances, quite different from other languages, often reflecting the Confucian idea of antonyms, ying/yang. To give another example, ‘Mountain big’ is a complete sentence in Chinese. It is not necessary to use the verb ‘to be’. ‘Without the subject-predicate pattern of sentence structure,’ says Zhou Youguang, ‘the Chinese did not develop the idea of the law of identity in logic or the concept of substance in philosophy. And without these concepts, there could be no idea of causality or science. Instead, the Chinese develop[ed] correlational logic, analogical thought, and relational thinking, which, though inappropriate to science, are highly useful in socio-political theory. That is why the bulk of Chinese philosophy is philosophy of life.’19
Figure 11: The development of Chinese characters
[Source: John Meskill et al. (editors), An Introduction to Chinese Civilisation, 1973 © Columbia University Press. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher]
Always, however, in considering China, one comes back to the practical. Whatever the relationship between paper, printing, the Chinese script and Chinese thinking, paper and print had other, more down-to-earth uses. The banknote, for example, which was another invention of the Song. This, in effect, represented two new ideas: printed paper, and a written promise, an advance beyond coins which embodied, in their very selves, the value they represented in one metal or another. Banknotes are first recorded in the early eleventh century and seem to have been a response to several simultaneous crises. In the first place, in the tenth century in China, just before the Song, the country had been divided into ten or more independent states, each of which minted its own coins, using copper in the north, iron or lead in the south. When the Song achieved a kind of political unity at the end of the century, they imposed a single currency–of copper coin. However, this coincided with an increase in warfare, which in turn required enormous expenditure. In response, the state boosted the production of copper coins far more than hitherto but this was still not enough. And so, beginning with the merchants who supplied the military, the government started to issue certificates of deposit. These were called fei qian, or ‘flying money’.20 They were the precursors of true banknotes, which appeared in 1024 and spread rapidly, at least for a time, remaining important until the end of the Mongol period (mid-fourteenth century), when they fell into disrepute. Known as jiao zi, qian yin, or guan zi, paper money also stimulated other forms of negotiable instruments–promissory notes, bills of exchange, and so on, all of which first appeared in the eleventh century. To begin with, the government’s newly-founded Bureau of Exchange Medium proposed that paper money be traded in every three years but, gradually, this rule was relaxed.21
In addition to its innovations in paper and printing technology, Chinese advances in iron and steel manufacture were several hundred years ahead of Europe. Coal was being mined from the eighth century on, and used in furnaces that produced high-quality iron and even steel. Some idea of Chinese success in this field is given by one calculation, that, in the eleventh century, China was already producing 70 per cent of the iron that would be manufactured in Great Britain at the beginning of the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century.22 During the Mongol invasions and occupation (mid-thirteenth to mid-fourteenth centuries), the production of iron and steel dropped precipitously, never to recover.23
Some of the inventions we attribute to the Chinese–in particular the saddle and the stirrup (fifth century)–were probably conceived by the steppe nomads on her borders, and then taken up by the Chinese. But a whole raft of new technology was invented inside China24 and two inventions in particular caught the imagination of the rest of the world, gunpowder and porcelain.25 The discovery of the incendiary/explosive capacities of coal, saltpetre and sulphur originated in alchemical circles in the Tang age but was not used in anger until 904–906.26 To begin with it was used as a flying, flaming projectile, called ‘flying fires’ (fei huo). But the technology soon proliferated, to produce both smoking and incendiary grenades, and finally explosive grenades. These were certainly used in 1161 at the battle of Anhui, where they helped the Song secure victory over the Nuzhen, ancestors of the Manchu, known also as the Jin, who occupied territory to the north-west of the Song lands. In other words, although gunpowder began as an incendiary device, its most useful property, in terms of warfare, was its explosiveness.27
The third and most deadly development was the explosion of gunpowder in a tube, use of which dates from 1132. The first tubes, which formed a sort of mortar or rocket, in effect the first gun, were made of wood or bamboo, and gunpowder was used twice over, once as a propellant for the arrows, and secondly for adding fire to the tip. The first use of a metal tube in this context was made around 1280 in the wars between the Song and the Mongols, where a new term, chong, was invented to describe the new horror. By the time gunpowder reached the West, therefore, it was not just an explosive, but the basics of the gun had already been developed. Like paper, it reached the West via the Muslims, in this case the writings of the Andalusian botanist Ibn al-Baytar, who died in Damascus in 1248. The Arabic term for saltpetre is ‘Chinese snow’ while the Persian usage is ‘Chinese salt’.28 In the West the historic importance of gunpowder has been well documented and it is generally credited with helping to close the Middle Ages, by contributing to the downfall of the knightly class, ending the dominance of the sword and the horse.
Simultaneously with the rise of gunpowder, the production of porcelain also reached great heights under the Song dynasty, in terms of both quantity and quality.29 The most important areas of porcelain production in the eleventh century were the imperial kilns at Kaifeng, on the Yellow river, and other towns in Henan and Hebei. Later, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, they were replaced by workshops further east, near the coast at Hangchow, and at Fujian and Jiangxi (north-east of Hong Kong, opposite Taiwan). This was one reason why, from the outside, China was looked upon as the ‘land of luxury’, producing coveted goods. Besides porcelain, the spread of hemp, the mulberry tree–for breeding silkworms–and cotton, began to take off in the thirteenth century, and the tea bush also began to spread in the uplands of Szechwan. Lacquer-producing trees likewise became more common in Hebei, Hunan and Chekiang.30
The last of the great inventions of the Chinese Middle Ages concern the development of the country’s extraordinary seafaring activities, from the eleventh century on, which culminated in the great maritime expeditions of the Ming period in the years 1405–1433, which ventured as far as the Red Sea and the east coast of Africa. The early development of sailing in China owes a great deal to the pattern of winds in that part of the world.31 The monsoons are regular winds where unexpected changes of direction, or flat calm, are much less common than in, say, the Atlantic or Mediterranean. As a result, there was much less need for rows of slaves, manning banks of oars: instead, different types of sail were perfected much in advance of the rest of the world. The regularity of the monsoon winds, and their seasonal change of direction–north-east in winter, south-west in summer–meant that an annual rhythm of long journeys was possible without ports of call, followed by a long stop-over until return was practicable. This made for substantial foreign colonies on the coasts of south-east Asia and India, affecting the traffic in ideas.32 All this seems to have played a role in the appearance of the big Chinese high-seas junk in the tenth and eleventh centuries.33
Since antiquity, Chinese boats had their hulls divided up into separate watertight compartments, an arrangement not adopted by Western ships until the beginning of the
nineteenth century, but this was by no means the only advanced feature of Chinese naval technology. The most important, before the magnetic compass, was the stern-post rudder, which dates from the fourth century AD. This was made possible by the rectangular hulls of Chinese junks, which enabled a rudder to be fitted down the back of the ship. Until about 1180, when the stern-post rudder appeared in the West, European ships were steered by a rear oar. This offered much less control, and almost none at all in storms on the high seas. And it limited the size of ships that could risk ocean travel. By Song times, on the other hand, Chinese junks were huge (up to 400 feet long; Columbus’ ships were barely eighty). They were the product of a long series of inventions and innovations, and were capable of carrying a thousand men on four decks, with four masts rigging twelve sails. Such ships would be provisioned for up to two years at sea. Among the other maritime inventions credited to the Chinese are the anchor, the drop-keel, the capstan, canvas sails and pivoting sails, and of course the magnetic compass. This was first referred to in a Chinese work, the Pingzhou ketan, by Zhu Yu, dated to 1119, which says it was used on Cantonese ships at the end of the previous century. The compass was not used on European ships before 1280, two hundred years later.34
Each of these inventions confirms the fact that the Chinese were not only an immensely creative people at this time, but also fiercely practical. All the innovations we have considered added to Chinese prosperity, and to their enjoyment of the world around them. But there was, at the same time, another side to medieval Chinese life, a more abstract, philosophical and metaphysical cast of mind which also produced many innovations of a very different kind. Underlying these was the Chinese idea of the scholar-bureaucrat, a concept which would find echoes in Europe, but reached much further, much earlier, in China.
During the classical age, arising from the struggle for power between warring states, a new social level had emerged in China. This, as introduced in Chapter 5, was the shih.35 During the times of turmoil, the rights of birth had begun to count for less, and those of talent for more. A growing number of younger sons of noble families, who were educated but lacked rank, therefore took it upon themselves to exploit their education and offer themselves as scribes or secretariat for the central administration of whatever states had need of them. For some, whose advice was successful, political advancement followed: the shih began to form an influential social class. By Song times, this class had been through several changes, with access to it becoming more sophisticated and elaborate in the process. Its most important introduction was the written examination by means of which the scholar-elite was now chosen, to create what was in effect a civil service, and which administered the country. Before the examination was introduced, the shih had for many years been identified and selected by individuals who possessed some sort of credibility, though this at times had led to serious and/or absurd mistakes.36 Because of this, it then became the practice for the shih to serve as apprentices in regional government offices but, naturally, such a system was also open to abuse as particular classes of people sought to perpetuate themselves. The result was that during the Sui and Tang dynasties (581–906) dissatisfaction grew. The first attempts at revision tried to make the nominators of scholars legally responsible for the performance of their candidates. But that didn’t work either and, beginning in the late sixth century, attempts were made to introduce a system of oral and written examinations to supplement the recommendation system.37
Gradually, throughout Tang times, the examination system won out over the apprentice/nomination alternative, and was formally institutionalised by the Song emperors. By then, the system consisted of three phases. Examinations, called Keju, were in general held every three years, and the first round was taken at the zhou or prefectural level, and were open to students of almost any background.38 Typically, examinees prepared for the examination by enrolling in local academies, private establishments not dissimilar from modern ‘crammers’.39 Modern researchers have calculated that between 20,000 and 80,000 students sat the examinations and that pass rates were seldom above 10 per cent and often as low as 1 per cent: the examinations were hard.40 Candidates who passed the qualifying examination were accepted for enrolment in the county or prefectural Confucian schools, which ensured that the candidates were prepared for the next level. The second-level examinations took place in the imperial capital (which had moved from Chang’an under the Tang to Kaifeng under the Song) and were organised by the Ministry of Rites. Successful candidates remained in the capital to sit for the highest-level examinations, sometimes regarded by Western historians as the equivalent of the PhD degree. Again, not more than one in ten passed the third round, and no stigma attached to failure. It was quite normal for students to begin sitting the examination at eighteen and not to pass until they were in their thirties–some did not pass until they were in their fifties. In fact, simply having been deemed suitable to sit the Ministry examinations, these candidates were called juren, ‘elevated men’, which set them apart. Originally, this third round was the end of the system but in 975 the first Song emperor saw the name of someone he felt lacked ability on the list of those who had passed and he ordered all the juren to be reexamined under his personal supervision. This practice stuck, in the process giving the system even greater prestige because of the emperor’s personal involvement. From then on, only candidates who had passed at the zhou level and all three phases in the capital were considered to have graduated with the full degree.41
The examinations were divided into four sections, each section lasting for a whole day. Candidates could choose their subjects, between classics, history, ritual, law and mathematics. The four days were spread out over a couple of weeks, and the examinations were conducted in large public halls, later in rows of tiny cells to prevent cheating. Extraordinary attempts were made to be fair. Candidates’ names were removed or pasted over and replaced by numbers, so that examiners could not identify who was who. In 1015 a bureau of copyists was established to make uniform copies of the answers so that candidates could not be identified by their handwriting. Each paper was read by two examiners and if they disagreed widely in their assessment, they had to reconcile their views before reporting to the chief examiner.42 The main criticism of the examinations was that they were too academic, as we would say, too much concerned with book-learning. In general, candidates were tested on their ability to memorise the classics in their chosen field and in their ability to compose poetry in various genres, though there was also a requirement to compose essays on political and social issues of the day. Even here, however, candidates were expected to know history, to compose in ancient historical prose styles, and to use the past to predict what might happen in the future. Critics felt that not enough credit was given to practical solutions to current problems.43
And in fact the way the examinations affected Song society is one of the most contentious issues in Chinese scholarship even today, in particular the extent to which the examinations were truly open and encouraged social mobility. Whether or not the system did stimulate social mobility (modern studies have produced results which both support and refute such a claim), it was designed to do so, and, as we have seen, elaborate rules were constructed in order to attain that ideal. ‘The law of the land proclaimed that the recruitment system was open to virtually every male subject in the realm, holding up the ideal of success through individual achievement as an incentive to the entire society.’ In this, China was far ahead of the rest of the world.44 The examinations were not abolished until 1905.
Whether or not the examination system encouraged social mobility, it certainly played a part in helping to ensure that China continued as a relatively highly literate and well-educated civilisation in comparison with its rivals and neighbours. Education and learning were held as the keys to advancement in China from the earliest times, and by the Song age the process was institutionalised. In the realm of more abstract ideas, this produced some remarkable changes and advances.
/> The most general of these changes was that from Buddhism to Neo-Confucianism, known in Chinese as Lixue. The expansion of Buddhism in Asia was virtually contemporary with the spread of Christianity in Europe, but in fact Buddhism spread much further than the western faith, taking in a greater geographical range and a greater diversity of people: in terms of sheer numbers, it influenced more lives.45 There were essentially three phases. From the birth of the first century AD until the fifth century there was a slow growth, as Buddhism gradually changed its nature, to accommodate the Chinese cast of mind and Chinese traditions; the fifth to the ninth centuries was the highpoint of Chinese Buddhism, a religious fervour reflected not only in the practice of the faith but in a great efflorescence of Buddhist art, architecture and thinking; and the period from the early ninth century, when Buddhism was proscribed, and the Chinese world reverted to Confucianism, albeit adapted to the needs of contemporary society.
Buddhism first conquered the Chinese world by following the trade routes and winning over the merchants but also because it became less an abstract search for nirvana, which is how it had begun, and more like a religion as we would recognise the term today. This form of Buddhism, as was mentioned in an earlier chapter, was known as Mahayana, the Greater Vehicle. Mahayana Buddhism proposed that salvation was open to all, whereas Hinayana–the Lesser Vehicle–proposed that only those who devoted their lives exclusively to Buddhism, such as monks, could be saved. Mahayana Buddhism was a Buddhism which stressed the Buddha himself (rather than the Way) and concerned itself with other Buddha-like figures, in particular the figure of the Maitreya, the saviour to come. This involved a cult of relics, of the great Buddha himself, and of immortalised Buddhist saints, the arhats. It was probably on the great trade routes out of India into China, across ‘the roof of the world’ in and around Pakistan, that the Buddha was first represented as a human figure, at which time Hellenistic influences in, perhaps, Gandhara, showed themselves in the folds of the drapery of the seated figure. The new religion caught on first in the countries at the edge of China–the first translators of Buddhist texts into Chinese were not Indians but Parthians, Sogdians and Indo-Scythians (the area around modern Uzbekistan). The first allusion to a Buddhist community dates from AD 65, at Beng Zheng, a commercial centre in Jiangsu, and its early appeal seemed to lie partly in its emphasis on new techniques of concentration (yoga, for instance) and partly because some of its traditions seemed to overlap with Taoism, therefore making it seem less new. Three doctrines in particular seemed reminiscent of Taoism. These were the Buddhist doctrine of karma (the idea that our performance in this life determines the form of our existence in the next life), which was reminiscent of the Chinese concept of the individual lot, or fen, and destiny, or ming. Second was the Mahayana idea of the fundamental emptiness of the world, which linked to the School of Mysteries and its concern with being and non-being. (The School of Mysteries is considered in the next paragraph.) And thirdly, the practice of yoga, leading to trance, was not dissimilar from Taoist techniques of inducing trances and ecstasies.46