Advice Fit for an Emperor

Emperor Hongwu

Your average Chinese person is a self-effacing soul. By genetically encoded tradition, a braggart is either mentally challenged or possesses an extraordinary degree of martial arts prowess. So when the opportunity comes to give advice, be careful: that whole “If I were you…” approach smacks of the over-developed ego, which Chinese find endearing in celebrities but distasteful in real life.

The time-honored way to give advice here is to spout off an idiomatic proverb, something marvelously pithy such as, “Chong ru bu jing,” whose shortest English translation is “Remain indifferent whether granted favors or subjected to humiliation.”

This approach can prove rather trite, however. To really show your wisdom, and concern, hold up a revered historical figure in whom your friend and his situation can be reflected. In China, you don’t get much more revered than an emperor (philosophers, Supergirls, and agrarian reformers aside), and China had almost four hundred of them.

Brush up on the lives of the following emperors and you’ll not only have a chance to give advice that will be heeded, you’ll also show you’ve taken the trouble to learn a bit about China’s history and culture, worth almost as many brownie points as being able to sing Mando-pop tunes at Karaoke.

Emperor Wu of Han, AKA Liu Che

Emperor Wu worshipping the Buddha

Alexander the Who? During his fifty-four year reign (21 years longer than Goldilocks the Great lived), Emperor Wu expanded Han territory from Kyrgyzstan to Korea to Vietnam. He accomplished much of this diplomatically, but was not shy about whipping hides when necessary, especially against those ever-troublesome Xiongnu nomads of the north.

Yeah, but territorial expansion is so pre-WTO. Emperor Wu pulls weight as a role model in that he hated yes-men. You do too? Nice, but when nobody agrees with you in the first place, it’s easier to say that. Temporal power inflates the ego to dirigible proportions, inevitably attracting a clutch of sycophants. Wu actually had his court in fear of appearing to fawning, and stuck to his policy even when being rebuked in front of his courtiers by the trenchant minister Ji An.

Wu was also among the first emperor, by no means followed successively, to embrace meritocracy as a means of promotion, rather than the nepotism that continues to be more expedient. He was the first to conduct an imperial examination of over 100 young scholars who had been recommended by officials. One brilliant young man, Dong Zhongshu, wrote the winning essay, recommending the establishment of Confucianism as the imperial doctrine.

Of course a guy with unlimited power has his kinks. Wu’s was nothing less than immortality. He gradually alienated his ministers and generals with an ever-changing retinue of magicians, whom he elevated to positions of power, straining the treasury with quests for elixirs and magical adventures. A few of his governors killed themselves for loss of face when Wu dropped by with an entourage too large to be adequately supplied. The witchcraft at last became a witch hunt, after Wu awoke paranoid from a nightmare involving stick-wielding puppets. Several high officials and their families were put to the sword, staining a legacy otherwise sparkling with level-headedness.

The Hongwu Emperor, AKA Zhu Yuanzhang

Just in case you thought royal succession in China was all perfumed politicking and bribing eunuchs, we give you the Hongwu Emperor: beggar, monk, poet warrior and rebel hero. As all Chinese know, times of crisis are times of opportunity, and in Zhu Yuanzhang’s salad days, there were crises a’poppin’.

The Han lived under the domination of the dreaded Mongols, had been for nigh on fifty years when Zhu was born. As a child, he knew little more than starvation, seeing several of his siblings given away. A worse than usual flooding of the Yellow River wiped out what was left of his family, and he joined a Buddhist monastery for the guaranteed bowl of gruel each day. Alas, the monastery soon ran out of money and he was out in the hutong again.

As a traveling mendicant, Zhu saw the gritty side of life in the Middle Kingdom, developing a common touch that would serve his subjects well when he eventually assumed power. In his early twenties, Zhu re-visited monastic life, learning to read and write before a band of marauding Mongols razed his temple. Like a wronged hero in a kung fu movie, Zhu swore vengeance. Rather than learn Drunken Monkey style, however, he joined one of the many rebel bands of Han agitating against the Yuan Dynasty, which they saw as entirely illegitimate, Mongols that the Yuan were.

Zhu displayed a great mind for leadership and combat tactics, and soon rose to leadership of his gang, the Red Turbans. They claimed Nanjing as their turf after successfully rumbling the Mongols for it. This is mankind at its most predictable; what distinguishes Zhu is that he ruled the city so justly that vast numbers of refugees from more chaotic regions fled to his new realm, swelling the population tenfold in ten years.

Don’t worry about how Zhu finally defeated the Mongols and became Emperor Hongwu. Or, watch Chinese television during prime time; you’re bound to see something of the sort. Hongwu is worth bringing up as a role model for your impressionable Chinese peers not only for his rags-to-riches journey, but for not letting power and wealth change him.

To prevent the gentry from their usual magistrate-bribing at the expense of the farmer, he instituted the “Yellow Records” and the “Fish Scale Records”, systems that ensured tax money was turned to civic uses, and that peasants could not be legally swindled out of their property. He also set free everyone who had become a slave during the reign of the Mongols. Later, he would institute a legal code that raised slave status above that of domestic animal, a laudable step given the times.

Turning to agriculture reform, he set aside swaths of land in Hunan and Anhui to be distributed to landless young farmers who had attained the age of majority. He also declared that those who cultivated fallow land could keep it, free of tax. The proportion of cultivated land in China mushroomed, so that the people knew plenty for the first time in more than a century.

A powerful man who gives so much to the humble makes many powerful enemies, and after a time the Hongwu Emperor found himself beset on all side by plotters. At least, he thought he did. King Hongwu grew into a classic paranoiac, smelling conspiracy everywhere and ordering executions on the slightest suspicion of treachery. But a few lives taken without due process, versus so many bellies full at last? The Chinese judges have spoken – the Hongwu emperor goes in the books as an all-time great.

Emperor Huizong, AKA Zhao Ji

The story of Emperor Huizong demonstrates that if you’re going to have an autocratic ruler, he had best be adept with the sword as well as the scepter. Actually, this emperor was most adept with a calligraphy brush, inventing the “Slender Gold” style. When he wasn’t writing, he was painting, or playing the guqeng, or reviewing new garden designs, or tasting tea.

In short, he was an effete polymath, a cultivated man of leisure, no shame in the gloriously cultivated Song Dynasty, but a danger on the throne. He was too busy antiquing to take briefs on foreign policy. He’d shoo away ministers with urgent news until he had finished the latest chapter in his Treatise on Tea.

The army moldered in neglect, while the rough and ready Jurchen of Manchuria set up their own Jin Dynasty, then test-attacked the Liao Kingdom, fellow barbarians to the north of the Song Empire. The Song court decided to ally with the Jin, essentially helping a big new bully beat an old familiar bully. Bullies can smell weakness better than dogs, but all they had to do was get a gander of Huizong’s exquisite painting Five-Colored Parakeet on Blossoming Apricot Tree to realize they were dealing with a big sissy.

After dismantling the Liao kingdom, the Jin crossed the Yellow river and were soon in sight of Kaifeng, the Song capital. Huizong took one look out of his tower window at the advancing horde, shrieked, and abdicated, leaving his son Qinzong as the new emperor. Qinzong didn’t even have time to assemble a harem before they were all captured by the Jurchens, demoted to commoners, and sent to Northern Manchuria for re-education.