Diminished Empire and Nomadic Challengers 83
own family. Still refusing surrender, he fl ed to the southernmost prov-
ince of Guangdong, where an epidemic claimed the lives of many of his
troops as well as his mother and one of his sons. When fi nally captured
and taken in chains to Khubilai Khan he refused to accept him as his
sovereign and asked only to be executed, a wish granted in 1283.
Other Chinese literati resumed their normal lives but stayed away
from the political realm. When the civil service examinations were
resumed in 1315, they were based on Zhu Xi’s interpretations of the
Confucian classics. Cultural trends in painting, ceramics, even philoso-
phy and poetry continued on from the Song with little change or devia-
tion. One painter, Gong Kai, expressed his opposition to Yuan rule in a
subtle way that was to provide a model for later dissenters from imperial
orthodoxy. Gong Kai had served as a minor offi cial under the Song; he
refused to serve the Yuan, lived in extreme poverty, and supported his
family by selling his paintings and calligraphy or exchanging them for
food. Only two of his paintings have survived; one is a shocking painting
of a starving horse, symbolizing China’s fate under Mongol rule.
Another lasting contribution of the Yuan period to Chinese cul-
ture came in a form of four- or fi ve-act dramatic operas called zaju, a
term often translated as “Yuan drama.” Drawing on popular songs and
Central Asian art forms, with stylized costumes and elaborate facial
makeup, Yuan drama combines mime, singing, dancing, and carefully
choreographed acrobatics to present melodramatic stories of crime,
love, war, and politics that have been immensely popular with Chinese
audiences of all social classes ever since Yuan times.
Despite the continuities of Chinese cultural trends under Mongol
rule, the Chinese people never fully accepted their position as subjects of
non-Chinese emperors. They felt oppressed by infl ation, by high taxes,
and by the quota system that denied most Chinese any high position in
government. While epidemic diseases swept through China in the mid-
fourteenth century, massive fl ooding began along the Yellow River in
1344 and lasted for several years. The government forced 150,000 Chi-
nese commoners into labor brigades to repair the Yellow River dikes and
then paid the men with worthless paper money. By 1351, antigovern-
ment uprisings began under the banner of a popular Buddhist sect, the
White Lotus Society. This sect declared that the end of history was near
when the Buddha of the Future, Maitreya, would appear to punish the
wicked (Yuan rulers) and reward the good (Chinese people). In 1368,
one rebel band grew suffi ciently powerful to invade Beijing and declare a
new dynasty, the Ming. The last Mongol emperor and his entourage fl ed
beyond the Great Wall to their original homelands of Mongolia.