Prosser Gifford: Good afternoon.
I'm not Deanna Marcum if you expected her to introduce.
I'm Prosser Gifford and I'm delighted to have the opportunity
to welcome you to this afternoon's talk
by Dr. Yu Ying-shih who's been a scholar in the Kluge Center,
which I had the privilege of directing
for its four years of existence.
Dr. Yu's talk this afternoon is on "Despotism, Market, and Confucianism
in the Age of Wang Yang-Ming."
Wang Yang-Ming, is that right?   1472 to 1529.


Dr. Yu is a scholar shaped in the Chinese classical tradition.
His earliest childhood memory is of his family's flight
into the Chinese countryside to escape invading Japanese army.
He credits living in the countryside under the poorest conditions
with putting him in touch with one of the world's richest cultures
and opening the door to his future career.
For there, in the countryside, he lived with people who drew,
on a daily basis, from the roots
of classic Chinese tradition, culture and philosophy.
He learned to write and do math using Chinese brush techniques
and he listened to his rural relatives
and their neighbors recite hundreds of ancient Tang dynasty poems,


Later, at the New Asian College in Hong Kong,
Dr. Yu studied under Cheng Yu   [ spelled phonetically ]

, a great master of Chinese learning.
After coming to the U.S. he received his PhD in history
in 1962 from Harvard University.
He's gone on to a distinguished career as researcher,
historian, educator, teacher.
He spent an almost equal number of years teaching at the University's
of Michigan, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton and has worked
at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
At the time of his retirement in 2001,
Professor Yu was the Gordon Wu professor of Chinese studies
and professor of history at East Asian studies at Princeton.
Dr. Yu has researched and written extensively on every period
of Chinese history, from ancient to modern,
and is a recognized authority on the Tang Dynasty.
During much of this year, as I've already indicated, we were honored
to have Dr. Yu in residence as a senior distinguished scholar
in the John W. Kluge Center where he pursued his lifelong interest
in Chinese history, culture, and philosophy.

Dr. Yu.   [ applause ]

Dr. Yu: Thank you for your very kind introduction.
Do you hear me okay?
My topic is about despotism, market, and Confucianism
in sixteenth century China.   That is the age of Wang Yang-Ming.

I shall not discuss every one aspect of my three related topics,
but put them together to see how the interplay
of the three forces eventually led to important changes.
To begin with I must explain the concept of the Confucian project.
Because I'm going to take the Confucian project as it was revised
by Wang Yang-Ming as my focus linking all the three
forces together.   What do I mean by Confucian project?

Basically I refer to an attitude, a commitment, of the Confucians,
beginning with Confucius himself to the amelioration
of the human affairs, if I may borrow John Steward Mill's apt term.
To make the word better
in Confucius' own words the only responsibility,
or the major responsibility of a Confucian, like himself,
is to bring order, ideal order, Tao, Tao way to the world.
So Confucius said, unless the word under the Tao prevails in the world,
I will not stop my efforts to change it for the better.
So Confucius traveled, wandered from state to state in the hope
of finding some sympathetic king or lord
to give his ideas of a Tao a try.   He was followed by Mencius.

Mencius did the same thing.
Also wandering from one warring state to another.
As a matter of fact, the very idea of "di jeng shin
[ spelled phonetically ]
Tao," that is to obtain the support of the sovereign, or king,
or later emperor, in order to bring Tao to the world.
This whole concept comes from Mencius, from his texts.
Now, having explained that, I may explain what do I mean
by obtaining support of the emperor or the king in order
to bring Tao to the world.
By this I think Confucius, Mencius, and other Confucius all meant to say
that we must get the king interested
so that he would lend his enormous power, authority,
to make it possible to carry on some kind
of meaningful changes or reform.
That's why the Confucian project, in the sense of di jeng shin Tao,
usually in Chinese history, took the form of reformism.
So you see all kinds of reformism happened in Chinese history.
That was the kind of force
of Confucian project showed itself in history.
Now, I will come to Wang Yang-Ming.   Before I go to him directly,

I must ask the question why it was Wang Yang-Ming
who found it necessary to revise the Confucian project I just mentioned a
moment ago?
He revised it in a very fundamental way, as we shall see.
Instead of getting support from the king or the emperor,
now he thought it was otherwise.
He would appear to the people of all walks of life.
That will come later.
But right now I say why this change was necessary.
So in this connection I must bring despotism into my discussion.
You know, the political culture of Yang-Ming was vastly different
from that of the preceding dynasty, Sung Dynasty.
In the Sung Dynasty, the scholars as a class, or as educated elite,
was highly respected by the imperial government, by the emperor.
The emperor considered it necessary for he himself as the emperor
to cooperate with, jointly, with the Shu
[ spelled phonetically ]
class to govern the whole world, govern the whole empire.
So the responsibility of governing the empire was shared by the throne
as well as the educated elite.
So you have Wang Yang-Ming's anxious reform of the eleventh century.
That served as a model of di jeng shin Tao.
You get the emperor to support you, then you put your ideas
of reform into experimentation.
Now, this was impossible under the Ming Dynasty.

We must begin with the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty.
He came from a peasant family with little
or no education in the beginning.
And then he joined a rebel group of a mixed organization
of Buddhism with Manichaeism.   So he rose from rank in the files,

eventually to the top of the political world.

Before he founded his dynasty in 1368 he had very little contact
with the scholarly class.
Most of his comrades in arms were from peasant family,
from religious groups, many at the bottom of the society.
So, about four or five years before he was to ascend to the throne,
he felt it was necessary for him now to go after some
of the leading scholars of the empire
to seek their help and assistance.
Because he new very well, unlike the dynasty of a
[ unintelligible ]
, a Chinese Dynasty must rely on the expertise on the Shu class
to organize, govern the whole empire.
But his relationship with the scholarly class as a whole,
or individually, was never a easy one.
He felt uncomfortable in the company of scholars.
He would feel rather very at home, for instance, with Buddhist monks.
So it was out of necessity he sought the help
of scholars, but never trusted them.   Then he was a very paranoid person.

Because he came form the bottom of the society,
he always felt the Confucian scholars,
intellectuals who would hold him in contempt,
so he was suspicious of them.
After he ascended the throne, he was also suspicious of the Shu group,
especially the prime minister
who was a leading scholar official in the officialdom.
He always felt that the prime minister and his colleagues wanted
to usurp the power from him.
This suspicion, or paranoia, eventually led
to the bloodiest purges in Chinese history in 1380.
He had the prime minister and many of his colleagues,
thousands in number, arrested and finally executed.
Afterwards, he also abolished, for the first time,
the office of the prime minister itself.
The office of prime minister in Chinese history,
always symbolized the power of the educated elite.
That the emperor and the prime minister were a kind of couple.
Maybe an odd couple, sometimes, but a couple anyway.
Now, without a prime minister, he had all the powers in his own hands.
Now, he needed educated elite to run the empire at all levels for him,
but he needed him only as tools, as instruments.
They must run the empire as he willed it, not against his wishes.
So he was very uncomfortable
with certain critical functions of Confucianism.
For example, in Mencius we find many passages saying, for instance,
the people comes first in a state and the state itself next.
The least important of the three would be the monarch
or the king, the emperor.
The founding emperor hated this kind of saying.
So he ordered almost to the end of his life, an official to excise,
taking away all these passages from Mencius.
So in the end we have a selected text of Mencius, purged.
Completely purged.
One real book edition still exists in Beijing library.
Now, he also hated remonstrating officials criticizing his policies
in front of him.   I can give you only one example.

He met Lah Wing   [ spelled phonetically ]

, a leading Chu Hsi scholar, by the name of Lee Shu
[ spelled phonetically ]
, was introduced, was recommended to him.
He appeared to be very happy, saying to him,
"I have heard of your name long ago."
I only regret that we haven't met earlier.
Because he wanted the Confucianism, also the Cheng Ju
[ spelled phonetically ]
version, the Sung version of neo-Confucian orthodoxy
to legitimize his newly founded dynasty.
For this reason he did want Chu Hsi scholars
to serve in his imperial court.
But a few years later, this man remonstrated too many times to him,
protesting his excessive imperial patronage of Buddhism to no avail.
The man Lee was frustrated, even angry.
In one audience with him he threatened to resign right away.
The emperor was so outraged, he ordered him, he ordered the guards
in the palace to have this man beaten to death right away
on the steps of the palace.
This shows his real attitude toward the so-called Confucian scholar,
the Cheng Ju scholar.
Now, I can read to you one passage from a memorial presented
to the throne in 1376 by a schoolteacher from local government.
This man says, "In ancient times, the scholar,
considered government-appointment service an honor and dismissal
from office a humiliation.
But today," he says, "scholars take complete obscurity as a blessing
and failure to be recruited on account
of questionable reputation good luck.
For once in government service," he continued, "they would surely count
on hard labor as inevitable punishment, and flogging and beating
as all too common humiliations.
However, by the time when they were to be rushed to take the journey
to the capital to join the government, they were treated
in such a way as if they were most wanted criminals being arrested.
Finally, during their tenure in office, a slight mistake
on their part would lend them in,
if not executions, then surely hard labor."
So this was the general picture of the early Ming.
But the situation did not change much afterwards.
All his details can be confirmed.   All the details described

in the memorial can be confirmed in historical record.
Now, so many people refused to serve.
So this made the emperor very unhappy too.
But he had his way.   He created a new category of crime.

This new category of crime is called "Refusal to Serve the Emperor,"

punishable, not only by death of the person involved,
but the enslavement of the whole family.
Because several scholars even took very drastic measures
to avoid serving the government in the early Ming.
Some, one uncle and nephew, cut their fingers
to establish the ground of physical disabilities, so "I couldn't serve."
But this wouldn't satisfy the emperor.
He nevertheless used that category of crime,
punished the uncle and the nephew together.
Stories like this make it very clear that Ming,
despotism in Ming reached this height.
Also, with abolishment of the Prime Minister office,
then the despotic system was completed
on an institutional ground.
Now, let me turn to Wang Yang-Ming and his project.
Now, Wang Yang-Ming in his early years, showed every intention
to re-activate the old idea of Confucian project,
getting the support of the emperor to bring Tao
to the world, or to the empire.   From the year he passed his Chingch

[ spelled phonetically ]
examination, metropolitan examination,
in 1499 to the beginning year of a new emperor Wu Zong in 1506,
he worked very hard on that line.
In 1504 he was the chief examiner of Ing Shang Dun
[ spelled phonetically ]
. He was supposed to give questions to the students to write.
One of the questions reads, "The chief ministers in the court are

to serve the monarch with Tao.
Otherwise, he would have to stop serving."
In a model essay he provided for candidates, he further said,
"The ministers in the imperial court, their main function was
to guide the emperor gradually to Tao."
So he chose to memorialize the emperor on the first year,
the beginning year of the new emperor 1506.
Why the first year?
Because according to his interpretation
of Confucius Spring and Autumn   [ unintelligible ]

a kind of history, which supposedly written by Confucius.
According to his interpretation, the first year would mark the beginning
of the rectification of mind on the part of the new king.
So he wanted the new king to rectify his mind
and then lead the Tao to the world.   That's why he memorialized.

In his memorial, he attacked mainly the chief
[ unintelligible ]   whom the emperor trusted the most,

who ran the business in the court for him.
This imperial eunuch, the chief eunuch, named Lu Jeng
[ spelled phonetically ]
, a very famous man, who is even alive today
on the Peking Opera stage, when he was in power for four years
up to 1510, he had every important official in the imperial court
who happened to have incurred his displeasure, severely punished.
The Wang Yang-Ming memorial fell into his hands.
So you can guess what would happen.
He had Wang Yang-Ming first thrown into the imperial prison
for several months, and then made him suffer
from the most humiliating, cold beating, forty strokes all together,
until he, Wang Yang-Ming, became unconscious.
So anyway, finally, in 1508, Wang Yang-Ming was banished
to a very far away mountainous town, in the border province of
[ unintelligible ]
. He was stripped of all his official duties and became an exile
to live among criminals, migrs, refugees, native aboriginals.
That's where Wang Yang-Ming found himself in 1508.
But in that very year, only a few days after he was sent
to that small town, called Luong Cheng
[ spelled phonetically ]   , he had a sudden enlightenment.

This sudden enlightenment is one of the most important
and significant events in Chinese intellectual
and even culture history, one
of the most important enlightenments ever experienced by an individual.
So this enlightenment has been studied, interpreted, numerous times
by scholars past and present.   I will not go into the details.

But what I would do is that, I think this enlightenment was mainly,
not about self-cultivations, not about his philosophical differences
with the Chu Hsi, he struggled with the Chu Hsi all his life.
That was not it.
The main thing was that he decided what he would do the rest
of his life.
He made an essential decision to change his conception
of the Confucian project.
He knew that it was impossible with this new emperor Wu Zong
on the throne, so irresponsible and despot,
he could never get him started on the Confucian project
of bringing Tao to the world.   That was completely out.

Therefore, his enlightenment took place exactly
on this important question.   I have very interesting evidence.

Right after the enlightenment, he wrote an essay for himself,
no one else would read it.
In that small essay he questioned, "Now, I'm no longer in any position
to bring Tao to the world.
Then what would I do as a Confucian?"
Then, according to his biographers, when the enlightenment took place,
at that very moment he was thinking about one important question.
What a sage would do if he is in my position?
So put this together.
You know very well, he must have found a way out,
during that enlightenment which lead to a new life, new thought, as well.
What was this new thought?
This was his idea that as a Confucian,
I'm still committed to the project.
The main responsibility of a genuine Confucian is still
to bring order, peace, Tao to the world.
But, not looking up to an irresponsible despot.
Rather, look down to society of people from all walks of life.
This was what his enlightenment was all about.
Now, after this he make very clear, he still had to continue
to serve in the government.
His father was also in the government service.
According to the law of refusal of the scholar to serve,
would be severe punishment if he could not resign as he will.
He tried. So he remained in service
and even made very important contributions later.
I will not go into that here today.
But his attitude toward monarch, toward the imperial court
as a whole was more passive.   He split into two parts.

One part, he was very dutiful official, serving governor
of Kiangsi, and pacify the   [ unintelligible ]

and so forth.
On other hand, he developed his own school of thought.
He began to attract many, many students to his circles,
so also he developed his philosophical doctrines of one
or another, leading to the final form
of the innate knowledge of the good.
He believed that was what he also got during the enlightenment.
Now, how to become a sage?
According to Chu Hsi, you would have to be a scholar
to study the classics and so forth,
to understand what the earlier sages did and said.
You must have intellectual preparation for becoming a sage.
Now, Wang Yang-Ming said, "No,
every human nature is good, potentially good.
So there's the innate goodness in every individual.
It has nothing to do at all with knowledge,
expertise, special skills.
These are separate, different things."
This is the beginning of his liang zhi theory.
Now, according to this theory, then he is justified to believe
that even an illiterate peasant or merchant,
half-educated merchant, can become a sage too.
That means these people found in the society now he looked to them
as if they were potential allies for bringing Tao to the world.
That's why he needed as many students as he can.
He also wanted to spread his doctrine of the innate of knowledge
to as many people as he could.   He did this himself.

After the enlightenment he had conversations
with convicted criminals, refugees, migrs, aborigines around him.
These were illiterate people.
He explained to them his new doctrine.
At that time he called it Unity of Knowing and Acting.
Now, all these are very complicated, but he nevertheless tried to explain
to these illiterate people.
It seems he succeeded, much to his satisfaction and surprise.
These people turned out to be his most appreciative audience.
So from that time on he always tried to grab every opportunity
to talk to the illiterate.
There's one small piece of writing, very interesting,
in his collected work, that is his written answer and question
with a deaf mute, in Jiangxi when he was governor.
He had this chance to talk to a deaf mute about liang zhi conscious,
about heaven, and so forth.
So this showed his interests are in the people.
For this reason he was especially excited when Wan Kin
[ spelled phonetically ]   came to see him.

Wan Kin was one of his leading disciples.
But he was different from all of his other disciples in that he came
from a tradesmen, a salt farmer's family, with little education.
He was trained in business as a young man and accompanied his father
on numerous business trips on Shangdong
[ spelled phonetically ]
province. That's where he discovered the temple of Confucius.
He wanted to become a Confucian.
So he developed this theory all by himself, very uneducated,
with little literacy, but enough for him to go
on to develop a theory quite similar to Wang Yang-Ming's.
But they were thousands of miles apart.
But someone said to him, "Hey, your theories sounds exactly the same
as the great man Wang Yang-Ming."
He was so pleased he made a trip in 1520 to see Wang Yang-Ming.
So they had a three-day talk, debate.
Finally he yielded to Wang Yang-Ming.
At once he asked to become a disciple.
Wang Yang-Ming accepted.
The next day he said, "I regretted it.
I made too rushed a decision."
Wang Yang-Ming, "Okay, you sit in the seat of the guest.
No longer a student.   I will sit in my seat of host."

So they began to debate again.
After a long day Wan Kin decided Wang Yang-Ming was indeed superior
to him and better, so he finally became his student.
They switched the seats again from guest
and host to teacher and disciple.   So this was the

[ unintelligible ]
because he was from the common people.
Most of his followers, he himself founded a school, known as a title
[ spelled phonetically ]
school. Everybody knows it in the field.
The title school had many, many commoners as followers,
like a potter, a woodcutter, a peasant, a merchant and so forth.
So this became the most important ally for Wang Yang-Ming
to implement, experiment his new, revised project of taking the Tao
to the people, with the people.
So his influence penetrated to the lower part of the society.
No longer looking upward to the throne in Beijing for assistance.
This was how Wang Yang-Ming's project got revised.
Finally, I will mention, in such a case,
we must remember important changes must have happened
in Chinese society.
For brevity, in the interest of simplicity,
I only mention one thing.
That is the single most important social change since the middle
of the fifteenth century mainly through the sixteenth century,
was the emergence of the fast-growing market
in many parts of Ming China.
For the first time large business establishments appeared,
usually on a nationwide or empire-wide scale,
with networks nationwide.
These include, for instance, textiles, salt, grain, papermaking,
printing, even pawnshops.
So for the first time the business world opened up,
offered opportunities for the educated young man.
Better than the political world can offer through examinations.
As a matter of fact a sixteenth century estimate says the changes
for a scholar to be successful in examinations is probably one
out of 10, but the chances for a merchant
to be successful is nine to one.
So you have all the chances to become successful.
So as a result numerous, I would say numerous, and all over China,
people, educated first for examinations,
then abandoned examination system, studies for commercial pursuits.
This was known at the time as a movement called
[ unintelligible ]
. You abandoned Confucian studies, I mean, examination studies,
for commercial pursuits and other careers.
For simplicity I just call it Scholar Turned Merchant Movement.
This is why a wide movement reminded us of some 20 years ago,
maybe in the '90s, many so-called Chinese intellectuals suddenly
rushed into -- they called the ocean of business.
The Cha Ha Re   [ spelled phonetically ]

. This happened not long ago.
This was more wide spread in the Ming Dynasty.
So as a result many scholars turned to become merchants
and therefore also brought Confucian values, ideas,
and so forth into the business world as well.
So as a result there was an intermingling of scholars
with merchants as well as interpenetration
between elite culture and popular or business culture.
So this is a very important move, but I cannot go into details.
Now, I can give you some examples.   In Angwhei

[ spelled phonetically ]   , in my province, the Quei Do

[ spelled phonetically ]   are called Sheingai

[ spelled phonetically ]   in those days.

This was a big area, consisting of many countries.
The people at the time from the local area left many pieces
of writing for us.
It says young men in Quei Do no longer interested in examinations.
They turn to study for business.
So business, commercial pursuits, were considered
in Quei Do as primary importance.
Examination success was only secondary.
You know, Sheingai in the Ming was the one of the area
where numerous merchants were produced.
Another area where merchants concentrated were
from Shaanxi province.   The same thing happened in Shaanxi.

The young people of first-rate talent would go to business.
Only those with average intelligence would study for examinations.
For this you can see the differences.
So as a result, many merchants become scholars,
scholars become merchants, and so forth.
As a result, the line of social distinction between the merchant
and the scholar was extremely difficult to draw.
You don't know where to draw the line.
Now, I give you example of Wang Yang-Ming's epitaph for a merchant.
This man happened to be a scholar turned merchant.
He praised him sky-high for his integrity, for his honesty,
and also Wang Yang-Ming made a very important remark.
This remark, he said the four categories of people,
according to the tradition, four categories are scholars, peasants
or farmers, artisans, and merchants.
Merchants came at bottom of Confucians scale.
These four categories of people Wang Yang-Ming said, no, they are equals.
They pursue different occupations, but share the same mind,
same Tao, not just mind, same Tao.
So now for the first time, the merchants, as a group,
was recognized of his equal share in the sacred Tao.
You know, for some major Confucian scholar to write an epitaph
for a merchant, this was something that never happened before,
let alone to a philosopher of Wang Yang-Ming's eminence.
This was inconceivable.
But then it happened numerous times later.
So this one instance shows the merchants as a class rose up.
The Chinese society basically changed.
Also, the market created numerous resources,
especially commercial wells, which can be Lei Lei Pau
[ spelled phonetically ]
, to do many things, basically in accordance
with Wang Yang-Ming's conception of a Confucian project.
We use the money from the business world for doing all kinds of things
like relieve, for instance.   Wang Yang-Ming's disciple Wan Kin,

his hometown twice suffered great famines.
Twice he borrowed money from a salt merchant, a local rich man,
for relief and helped the people out.
So this was only one of the examples.
Now, let me briefly conclude by saying a word
about the merchants' attitude to the culture.
Usually we consider merchants as uncultured.
If they like the painting, calligraphy,
we call them Fui yung fun ya   [ spelled phonetically ]

in Chinese, which means, you know,
something like "imitating the culture elegance of the elite."
This was not true.   This was not fair to them.

They had their own pace, their own culture qualities.
They even pursued philosophical studies.
Now I must thank Library of Congress for giving me
[ unintelligible ]   information.

For so many years I tried
to find Wang Yang-Ming's relationship direct with merchants.
I couldn't find any of his students being
of commercial, of merchant background.
Now, the Library of Congress happened to have a copy
of the Ming edition, sixteenth century.
It's one of the genealogical work.   In that article I find one Mr. Wong

[ spelled phonetically ]   from Quei Do.

He was a business man.
He learned about Wang Yang-Ming's philosophy, teachings,
so he abandoned his business and went to go to Wang Yang-Ming
to become his student and later also become Wang Yang-Ming's students'
student, that is social.   Both were important thinkers.

This is the first instance of Wang Yang-Ming having a disciple
from a merchant background.
So I must thank Library of Congress for this important,
of vital importance, information for my research.

Also there were other cases.   The sixteenth century, late,

early seventeenth century merchant named Chia Ja
[ spelled phonetically ]
, he followed Wang Yang-Ming's teaching
in knowing and acting unified.   Not only followed the teaching,

but practiced in his business management with great success.
There was another philosophical school headed by Gyroshi Fom Kwan Do
[ spelled phonetically ]
. He was a few years older than Wang Yang-Ming, equally eminent.
He didn't have as many students as Wang Yang-Ming,
but enough to occupy an important chapter
in the history of Ming Confucianism.
He was the director of Imperial Academy in Nanjing.
Many social   [ unintelligible ]

tell us salt merchants, very rich merchants go to him
to study his particular philosophy, which is the realization
of heavenly principle, anywhere.
You can see from this slogan, you see,
the Confucian Tao is either shared by everybody,
or can be found everywhere.
This is the new kind of philosophy fitting for the new age,
the age of Wang Yang-Ming.
So from this instance you can see the sixteenth century China is a
vastly changed one.
It's not as people usually describe in textbooks
as China has been stagnant, static, all the way through.
This was not the case.
So because of time I can only summarize what I have found
in my past few months in the summer at home and then continued here
at the Congress of Library.
I thank the Kluge Center for providing me the opportunity
to do my work here, quietly, peacefully and fruitfully.
Thank you.
[ applause ]   [ end of transcript ]