244 Part IV: East Asian Civilization
Chinese themselves, the people who had texts and thus civilization, who could
record their history and communicate with their ancestors in writing. On their
periphery to the north, south, east, and west were peoples lacking civilization.
Their “wild” cultural state was evident in the physical markers describing
them: their hair was unbound, they tattooed their foreheads or their whole
bodies, they ate raw food, they did not eat grain, they wore skins of animals
and lived in caves. One group even had their feet turned in upon each other
(Legge 1885). Part of the great enterprise of Chinese civilization was the proj-
ect of civilizing these barbarians, which gradually they accomplished, turning
them into Han (Harrell 1995).
The philosophy that eventually provided the civil religion of Chinese civili-
zation, the role that Socrates played in our hypothetical example of a “Greek”
Europe, is the teachings of a fifth-century B.C.E. Chinese sage named Confucius
(Kongfuzi, Kongzi). The writing and texts that were held to be so morally
improving that civilization itself was identified with them—wen—were in large
measure the writings and compilations of Confucius and his followers through-
out the centuries.
We n, however, implied more than an advanced culture; wen also implied
social institutions for preserving harmony and ensuring a well-ordered polity.
The state was the instrument for advancing and protecting Chinese civiliza-
tion. States did sometimes shatter, as in the poignant opening words of this
chapter by Du Fu (Tu Fu), writing from such a period of luan, or social chaos.
But such periods filled Chinese with dread, and Chinese history is a chronicle
of triumphs over disorder and turmoil by strong and virtuous dynastic founders
who restore order and receive the Mandate of Heaven for their dynasties. Such
exemplary periods never last for more than a few centuries before incompe-
tence, corruption, disloyalty, or conquest cause their decay, hence their loss of
Heaven’s mandate to rule. Each dynasty may be seen as a new experiment in
ordering Chinese society, in seeking improved institutions that will better meet
the needs of the state, hence the people. Always, however, there was the
assumption that there could be only one “Son of Heaven,” one emperor, to
whom all the people looked for moral guidance and benevolent rule. Regional
movements and competitive secessionist states were relatively rare, partly
because emperors experimented with ways to prevent regional contenders for
power from emerging. As Fairbank writes:
The central myth of the Confucian state was that the ruler’s exemplary and
benevolent conduct manifesting his personal virtue (de) drew the people to
him and gave him the Mandate. This could be said as long as rebels could
be suppressed, preferably by decapitation. (Fairbank and Golden 2006:111)
Suppression of rebels by decapitation suggests the nonideological side of the
strong Chinese state. Although such ideological systems of thought as the Man-
date of Heaven, the de (te) or mystical store of power of a ruler, and Confucian
social ethics provide the moral underpinnings of the Chinese state, there was