92 China in World History
people carry the Buddha-nature within themselves. Wang declared that
to fi nd moral truth one needed above all to look deeply into one’s own
heart. The followers of Zhu Xi, in Wang’s view, made Confucianism an
abstract philosophy dependent on detailed study of ancient texts. He
argued that knowing and doing are one and the same thing: “I have
said that knowing is the intent of acting and that acting is the work of
knowing and that knowing is the beginning of acting and acting is the
completion of knowing.”^4
The implications of Wang’s new views were profound. If all people
have the seeds of goodness within themselves, they can cultivate good-
ness, even greatness, without necessarily being brilliant scholars. Some of
Wang’s followers emphasized that this principle applied to women as well
as men, challenging the traditional Confucian assumption of male superi-
ority. Some of his followers preached his vision to commoners and refused
to dress in the silk robes and caps of scholar-offi cials. Wang Yangming’s
philosophy seemed made for the times; more and more people were becom-
ing literate, and the wealth and prosperity of society provided new outlets
for creativity besides examination success and government service.
The publishing industry fl ourished in the Ming as never before,
producing guidebooks to cities, examination preparation books, moral-
ity books for men and women, almanacs, popular stories in vernacu-
lar Chinese (rather than the more diffi cult classical language), popular
songs, poetry, and dramas for reading as well as performing. Four great
novels, or long pieces of narrative fi ction, were published in the six-
teenth century, including The Romance of the Three Kingdoms;Water
Margin, a Robin Hood–like story about a band of righteous outlaws
from Song times; Journey to the West; and Plum in the Golden Vase
(Jin Ping Mei), a social satire and highly erotic tale of a rich, hedonistic
urban merchant and his wife and fi ve concubines.
Status competition in the late Ming embraced various forms of con-
noisseurship, including collections of art, calligraphy, ancient bronzes,
odd-shaped stones, old books, and expensive new editions. Urban mer-
chants and scholar-offi cials hired landscape artists and architects to
build elegant gardens with ponds, rocks, trees, bamboo groves, pavil-
ions, bridges, and meandering pathways to simulate in a small space the
beauty and grandeur of mountains and natural forests. These gardens
were scenes of endless poetry readings, calligraphy parties, dramatic pro-
ductions, and philosophical discussions. Connoisseurs even competed to
see who could assemble the most highly cultured circle of friends.
Some of the most creative landscape painters in Chinese history
worked during the Ming period. As in earlier dynasties, the court