D
uring the long three and a half centuries of disunion after the
fall of the Han dynasty, the weak southern regimes were domi-
nated by powerful aristocratic families who saw themselves as
the true guardians and protectors of Chinese civilization. They looked
down on the more powerful northern governments of the Wei and its
successors as only half-civilized barbarians, unlearned in the ways of
Confucianism and ignorant of proper etiquette, rituals, and social hier-
archies. It particularly disturbed the southerners that women were far
more outspoken and independent in the nomadic cultures of the north
than in the aristocratic Confucian families of the south. The northern
rulers, in turn, looked upon the southern political regimes as effete,
snobbish, and pretentious. These differences and prejudices meant that
any serious effort to reunify China into one integrated empire faced a
cultural challenge as great as the military challenge.
The man who succeeded in reunifying the north and south was Yang
Jian, born in 541 to a mixed nomadic-Chinese family with a Chinese
surname. A powerful military offi cial under the Northern Zhou, Yang
inherited his father’s title as the Duke of Sui in 568. He was a coura-
geous and competent military leader who saw no contradiction between
his devout faith in Buddhism and his military way of life. Yang Jian’s
wife was from a very prominent, partly Chinese and partly Xiongnu
family. She was eventually to function nearly as a co-emperor with her
husband. Upon their marriage, when he was sixteen and she was thir-
teen, Yang Jian promised never to take a concubine, and his wife soon
became his constant companion and closest advisor.
In his rise to power, Yang Jian was both capable and lucky. He was
capable enough to recruit the most able military generals and civilian
offi cials to his cause, and lucky enough to have as his fi rst enemies the
incompetent relatives and retainers of the corrupt court of the Northern
chapter 4