11. Mosquitoes Gorged Freely on His Blood
Wu Meng of the Jin dynasty was eight years old and served his parents with extreme filiality. The family was poor, and their bed had no mosquito net. Every night in summer many mosquitoes bit him, gorging on his blood. But despite their numbers he did not drive them away, fearing that they would go and bite his parents. This is the extreme of love for parents.
12. Lying on Ice Seeking for Carp
Wang Xiang of the Jin dynasty was young when his mother died. His stepmother, named Zhu, was unloving toward him and constantly slandered him to his father. Because of this he lost the love of his father. His stepmother liked to eat fresh fish. Once it was so cold the river froze. Xiang took off his clothes and lay on the ice to try to get some fish. Suddenly the ice opened and a pair of carp leaped out. He took them home and gave them to his stepmother.
13. Burying His Son on Behalf of His Mother
The family of Guo Ju in the Han dynasty was poor. He had a three-year-old son. His mother reduced what she ate to give more food to him. Ju said to his wife, “Because we are very poor, we cannot provide for Mother. Moreover, our son is sharing Mother’s food. We ought to bury this son.” When he had dug the hole three feet deep he found a great pot of gold. On it were the words “Officials may not take it, commoners may not seize it.”
16. After He Had Tasted Dung, His Heart Was Anxious
Yu Qianlou of the Southern Qi dynasty was appointed magistrate of Zhanling. He had been in the district less than ten days when suddenly he became so alarmed that he began to sweat. He immediately retired and returned home. At that time his father had been sick for two days. The doctor said, “To know whether this illness is serious or not, you only need taste the patient’s dung. If it is bitter, it is auspicious.” Qianlou tasted it, and it was sweet. He was deeply worried. When night came, he kowtowed to the Pole Star [the Star of Longevity], begging to die in his father’s place.
17. Playing in Colored Clothes to Amuse His Parents
Old Master Lai of the Zhou dynasty was extremely filial. He respectfully cared for his two parents, preparing delicious food for them. He was over seventy, but he never mentioned the word “old.” He wore five-colored motley and played children’s games at his parents’ side. Often he carried water into the room and pretended to slip and fall; then he would cry like a baby to amuse his parents.
22. Carving Statues to Serve As Parents
When Ding Lan of the Han dynasty was young his parents passed away. He was unable to care for them, and yet was aware of how they had toiled to bring him up. So he carved wooden statues of them and served them as if they were alive. After a long time his wife ceased to revere them, and in jest she pricked one of their fingers with a needle. It bled, and when the statues saw Lan, they wept. Lan discovered the reason and brought forth his wife and divorced her.
23. Weeping on Bamboo Made Them Sprout
Meng Zong of the Three Kingdoms period had the honorific Gongwu. When he was young his father died, and his mother was old and very sick. In the winter she wanted to eat soup made of bamboo shoots. Zong, not knowing how to get them, went into a bamboo grove, leaned against a big bamboo, and wept. His filial piety moved Heaven-and-earth. Instantly the ground broke open and several bamboo shoots appeared. He picked them and took them home to make soup for his mother. When she had eaten it she was cured.
[Wang Miansan, ed., Huitu Ershisi xiao—DJ]17
1. Huc, The Chinese Empire, pp. 263–264.
2. There was a third type of ritual, which combined features of both communal and household ritual. This was lineage ritual. Since it was important only in regions where lineage organization was strong, we will not consider it here.
3. A traditional story in which a man, accompanied by his young son, drags his aged father out into the fields in a basket and abandons him. The man’s son brings the basket along with him when they return home. When his father asks him why, he replies that he is saving it to use when the time comes to abandon him. The man then goes and brings the aged father back home.
4. For more information on the domestic cult of the Stove God, see pp. 126–27.
5. Zhang Dai, Taoan mengyi 6: 47–48.
6. This figure had an independent existence in the folk culture of southeastern China and Taiwan and was frequently seen in temple processions.
7. The name of a famous sword.
8. Hutong is the term used in north China for small lanes and alleys.
9. The uncle refers to himself throughout as “the old one,” which emphasizes his social superiority to Guo Ju.
10. Literally, “little enemy,” presumably a local idiom. The literal meaning of this term of endearment is shocking in this context, and an example of the skill of the author or authors. Unfortunately, there is no natural-sounding English equivalent, so I have here used the bland “little baby.”
11. Liu Bei, eldest of the three sworn brothers in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and ruler of the kingdom of Shu Han in the Three Kingdoms period.
12. Zhang Fei was the youngest of the three sworn brothers of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and was a butcher before he met the other heroes.
13. Translations of the Ding County yangge made by various collaborators were published by Sidney Gamble in his Chinese Village Plays (Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1970). The translation given here is a new one but remains indebted to Gamble’s pioneering work.
14. Wm. H. Nienhauser, ed., The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 6.747B.
15. Beata Grant, “The Spiritual Saga of Woman Huang,” pp. 252–53.
16. Susan Naquin, “The Transmission of White Lotus Sectarianism in Late Imperial China,” in David Johnson et al., ed., Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 260, 263.
17. I have benefited from the translation by David K. Jordan in his “Folk Filial Piety in Taiwan.”
Chapter 27
CHINESE RESPONSES TO EARLY CHRISTIAN CONTACTS
Contacts between China and Europe (known in premodern China as the “Far West” or the “Western Ocean”) date from the time of the Silk Route link between Han China and the Roman Empire two thousand years ago. The two major forces that fostered Sino-Western contacts were trade and religion, and frequently the two would operate in tandem as the trade route would provide entry for Christian missionaries into China.
There is a tradition in the Christian church that Thomas, one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, had first carried the faith to the East. However, the first documented presence of Christianity in China is traced to missionaries of the Assyrian church. These Nestorian Christians flourished briefly during the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Tang dynasty (618–906) and then faded. During the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), Franciscan monks traveled across Asia and were mentioned in the account of Marco Polo. China demonstrated its ability to mount voyages to the West in the early Ming dynasty when the expeditions under the eunuch admiral Zheng He (1371–1433) reached as far as the Arabian peninsula and east Africa, but this was a short-lived interlude in Sino-Western relations and thereafter China initiated no further expeditions to the Far West.
The first substantive contact between Europe and China began in the late sixteenth century when Portuguese ships arrived in the South China Sea and their passengers established a settlement called Macao on a tiny peninsula on the southeastern coast of China. For the most part, these Portuguese sailors were acquisitive explorers whose crude and aggressive behavior alienated the Chinese officials. However, the Christian piety of the Portuguese led them to provide passage to missionaries on each of their vessels. The Catholic Reformation had produced a new order of missionaries who were as learned as they were committed to their faith. These members of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, initiated one of the most notable cultural exchanges in history.
Because the history of Sino-Western relations in the nineteenth and early t
wentieth centuries was dominated by Western imperialism with its feelings of economic, cultural, and racial superiority, the significance of the earlier sixteenth-to-eighteenth-century period of Sino-Western exchange has long been obscured. With the receding of Western colonialism, however, it has become increasingly clear that the imperialist phase was an aberration from a more typical situation of greater equality between China and the West. In spite of feelings of cultural chauvinism on both sides, there was a surprising degree of openness and receptivity, which produced attempts by Chinese to blend Christianity with Confucianism as well as attempts by Europeans to emulate Confucian principles.
As an outgrowth of their exploratory voyages, Europeans in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries developed a tremendous interest in foreign and exotic lands, which generated a new genre of literature focused on travel. China was an object of particular fascination for Europeans, and no group was more knowledgeable about China than the Jesuit missionaries. The Jesuits became the leading disseminators of information about China to Europeans as part of an attempt to attract support for their missionary effort. Unlike other Christian missionary orders, who had contact with the merchant and lower classes of China, the highly educated Jesuits cultivated their closest intellectual and social counterparts in China—the Confucian literati.
The Jesuits were deeply impressed by what they saw in China and communicated to Europeans a highly favorable picture of the country, including its vast size, great wealth, advanced literacy, and sophisticated governmental organization. The famous European philosopher G. W. Leibniz (1646–1716), who was in direct contact with several Jesuit missionaries in China, proposed that Europe borrow practical philosophy from the Chinese. Leibniz’s understanding of China and Confucianism was remarkably deep—certainly deeper than that of his eighteenth-century successors. The cultural agenda of philosophers such as Christian Wolff (1679–1750) and Voltaire (1694–1778) exalted China as a political and ethical model of enlightened government run by literati akin to philosopher-kings.
The philosophers’ appreciation of China was grounded more on enthusiasm for promoting certain ideas than on knowledge of a more dispassionate and objective sort. Their Sinophilia (love of China and things Chinese) led to European imitation of Chinese art, including ceramics, textiles, painting, architecture, and landscape gardens. European artists blended Chinese subject motifs with the rococo style to produce a new decorative style, “chinoiserie.” However, eighteenth-century European Sinophilia was built on shallow foundations, which were vulnerable to the shifting tides of cultural fashion. Eventually it gave way to a reaction in the form of nineteenth-century Sinophobia (hatred and disdain of China and things Chinese) in a cyclical pattern that was to repeat itself in later Sino-Western relations. While the Jesuits supplied most of the information on China that was transformed by Europeans into Sinophobia, the Jesuits themselves did not participate in most Enlightenment currents, which were anti-religious and, in particular, anti-Christian.
One of the first Jesuit missionaries to set foot in China was the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (Li Madou, 1552–1610), who formulated the model—often called “accommodation”—for the approach of Jesuits in blending Christianity with Chinese culture. Ricci was one of the most remarkable men in history—impressive in physical appearance with his blue eyes and voice like a bell, charming in manner with his facility in foreign languages and photographic memory, incisive in thinking with his ability to grasp the essentials of Chinese culture and to discern a means of entry into a sophisticated culture like that of China. Ricci, virtually on his own, developed the first romanization system for rendering the Chinese language into European script and translated the Four Books into Latin. For these and other extraordinary accomplishments, a leading European sinologue of the twentieth century has called Ricci “the most outstanding cultural mediator between China and the West of all times.”1 The times were favorable to this effort because the cultural atmosphere of the late Ming dynasty was syncretic in spirit and relatively receptive to exotic teachings. Consequently, the Jesuits achieved rapid success in baptizing a number of prominent Chinese scholar-officials, including the so-called Three Pillars of the Early Christian Church—Yang Tingyun (1557–1627), Li Zhizao (d. 1630) and Xu Guangqi (1562–1633). These three became great defenders of the Christian church in China, and it is a mark of their success that Xu’s defense of this foreign teaching did not prevent him from eventually occupying one of the highest offices in the land—that of Grand Secretary.
LI ZHIZAO: PREFACE TO THE TRUE MEANING OF THE LORD OF HEAVEN
Li Zhizao (d. 1630), together with Xu Guangqi, was a leading Christian convert of Matteo Ricci. A scholar-official of the late Ming dynasty and holder of the highest regular literary degree (jinshi), Li took an early interest in Western geography and astronomy and assisted Ricci in disseminating this knowledge in China. His conversion to Christianity came later, after he had already written the following introductory note (in 1607) to Ricci’s basic work, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, on the fundamentals of Christianity for the Chinese.
Note especially the attempt to identify God with the Confucian concept of Heaven as presiding over the moral order and to establish the worship of God as the culmination of the natural loyalties so much stressed in Confucian ethics. Li (and Ricci) emphasize the convergence of the Confucian moral ideal with the Christian doctrines of divine justice and self-perfection. Christ and the Cross are not in the forefront of discussion; nor, on the other hand, are the speculations of the Neo-Confucians, which Ricci found less compatible.
In ancient times when our Master [Confucius] spoke of self-cultivation, he said that one should try first to serve his parents diligently and through this come to know Heaven. Then came Mencius, who rendered the doctrine of self-cultivation and service to Heaven complete. Now to know is to serve. Serving Heaven and serving parents are one and the same thing. But Heaven is the ultimate basis of all service. In explaining Heaven, no book excels the Classic of Changes, the source of our written [Chinese] characters. It says that the primal power2 that governs Heaven is the king and father of all. Furthermore, it says the Lord (Di) appears in thunder and lightning, and the master of Ziyang [Zhu Xi] identified Di as the ruler of Heaven. Thus the idea of the Lord of Heaven [God] did not begin with Mr. Li [Ricci].
The popular notion of Heaven is so unenlightened that it is not even worth discussing. The Buddhists, for their part, go too far in abandoning their homes and leaving their parents unattended; furthermore, they disregard Heaven and treat the Lord (Di) with contempt, holding only their own selves as worthy of respect. Would-be Confucians, on the other hand, are wont to discuss the Mandate of Heaven, the Principle of Heaven, the Way of Heaven, and the virtue of Heaven; but, while they are wholly immersed in these [Neo-Confucian] conceptions, the ordinary man neither knows Heaven nor holds it in awe—and it is no wonder!
The teaching of Mr. Li, which is based on serving and glorifying Heaven, explains Heaven quite clearly. Seeing that the world desecrates Heaven and venerates the Buddha, he has spoken out in repudiation of these errors. Basing his arguments on the teachings of the Master [Confucius], he has written a book in ten chapters called The True Meaning of God [lit. the Lord of Heaven], wherewith to instruct men in the good and ward off evil.
In this book he says that men know to serve their parents but do not know that the Lord of Heaven is the parent of all. Men know that a nation must have a rightful ruler but do not know that the Lord (Di), who alone “governs Heaven,” is the rightful ruler of all. A man who does not serve his parents cannot be a [true] son; a man who does not know the rightful ruler cannot be a [true] minister; a man who does not serve the Lord of Heaven cannot be a [true] man. This book gives particular attention to the question of good and evil, and of retribution in the form of blessings and calamities. Now goodness that is not yet complete cannot be called perfectly good;3 and even of the slight imperfections in human nature we speak of “rectifying
evils.” To do good is like ascending, that is, ascending into Heaven; to do evil is like falling, that is, falling into hell. The general purpose of the book is to make men repent their transgressions and pursue righteousness, curb their passions and be benevolent toward all. It reminds men of their origin from above so as to make them fear lest they fall down into the place of punishment; it makes them consider the awful consequences and hasten to cleanse themselves of all sin. Thus they might not be guilty of any offense against the Great Heavenly Lord Above.
He [Ricci] crossed mountains and seas to bring precious gifts from a land that since ancient times has had no contact with China. At first he knew nothing of the teachings of [the ancient sages] Fu’xi, King Wen, the Duke of Zhou, or Confucius, and what he said was not based on the commentaries of [the Neo-Confucian philosophers] Zhou Dunyi, the Cheng brothers, Zhang Zai, and Zhu Xi. However, particularly in respect to his emphasis on the great importance of knowing and serving Heaven, what he says tallies with the classics and commentaries. As regards Heaven and hell, obstinate men still refuse to believe in them. Yet Confucians have always held that the rewarding of the good and the visiting of misfortune upon the wicked was a principle evident from the examination of Heaven-and-earth. To depart from good and pursue evil is like leaving the high road and plunging into steep mountains or heavy seas. Why is it that some people will not believe anything unless perhaps it concerns their most urgent duties to their rulers or parents, or unless it involves danger in the form of tigers, wolves, dragons, or crocodiles? They insist on having personal experience of everything themselves. Is this not being too stupid and unreasonable? They do not appreciate the deep sincerity that moved him to come among us. To preach the truth, of course, one need not raise the question of reward and punishment, but if it serves to frighten fools and alarm the lazy, then it is right and proper that the good should be praised and rewarded, while the wicked are berated and punished. Thus his deep and sole concern has been to instruct the people and preach sound doctrine.
Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume 2 Page 22