Great Wall in 50 Objects Page 9

  ORIGIN: Printed in the Republic of China, circa 1920

  LOCATION: Wang Zhaojun Tomb and Museum, near Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region

  Our image of Lady Wang could have been chosen from thousands. It’s a print, barely a century old. It shows a rather odd party of elegant young ladies, accompanied by some rough-looking old men, making their way through dark hills. It looks like a kidnapping. Lady Wang is in red, while the Xiongnu chieftain Huhanye (their ‘Shanyu’, literally ‘Son of the Endless Skies’, who reigned from 58 to 31 BC) is the warrior-ruler wrapped in a snow leopard’s pelt. It’s one example from a plethora of works – by poets, playwrights, painters and filmmakers – generated by an extraordinary industry that has been running for 2000 years, producing a distinctive genre of its own, dubbed Zhaojun chusai, or ‘Zhaojun Travels Beyond the Wall’ works. The image shows a single frame of an actual historical event of 33 BC, which has been the focus of a never-ending post-mortem conducted by historiographers, essayists, artists and political spin doctors.

  Lady Wang’s wasn’t the first marriage of convenience of its kind, nor would it be the last. But it was different, and the most famous. For one thing, it was two marriages: in accordance with the Xiongnu’s custom of inheritance, she fulfilled hymeneal roles to successive shanyus. She also produced children, achieved a tentative peace for Han China and stirred intense national debate.

  At its core, the rationale of Heqin was the belief (or hope) that a blood relationship between the two states would create peace. Liu Jing, principal adviser to the Gaodi Emperor who reigned between 206 and 195 BC (actually Liu Bang, who founded the Han), stated that the betrothal of a princess to Modun Shanyu should be seen as a long-term investment. It would, he argued, potentially generate a grandson for the Han emperor, a boy who would surely honour and obey his grandfather, show dual allegiance to his father’s and his mother’s states, eventually become ruler himself and unite the Xiongnu and their land with the Han and theirs. In reality, problems arose for several reasons: because a genuine princess was not offered, and because the Xiongnu had no regard for the Confucian virtues of filial piety. A major schism proved to be the Xiongnu’s levirate custom, whereby a widow was obliged to marry her husband’s brother – or, in Lady Wang’s case, her husband’s successor.

  Wang Zhaojun’s story was the fifteenth and final Heqin marriage of the Western Han, and was first recorded in the official history of that period, the Hou Han Shu. As a girl, Wang had been selected as a county belle to join the Yuandi Emperor’s ‘side court’, or harem. Her beauty and musical skills may have got her into the Weiyang Palace, but getting into bed with the Emperor was another matter. He had so many concubines (estimated to be around 3000) that he couldn’t remember them by name or even face. To assist his nightly selection, a court artist prepared what was tantamount to a concubine catalogue.

  Artist Mao Yanshou found a way to make some extra money from the women he painted. Knowing that they all wanted an early night, he knew they’d be willing to pay for it by having their beauty enhanced in the catalogue. Wang Zhaojun, however, had nothing to offer, so she was portrayed with a blemished face.

  The Shanyu and his entourage arrived in Chang’an with a list of their demands. In return for various goods – food, wine and textiles – as well as due regard for themselves as an equal state, they would observe the Wall as the border. This deal was sealed with a royal woman. She was of great importance, and not only for the Shanyu’s pleasure and pride. His ownership of a royal Han woman was a gift that no others around him could obtain, a possession that reinforced his position as ruler.

  The Yuandi Emperor relied wholly on his catalogue to select one of his less attractive women. Only when Wang Zhaojun was presented to the Shanyu did he discover her true beauty and his big mistake, but by then it was too late for him to correct it. Off she went on her journey of no return, north of the Wall, to a felt-walled ger on the windswept steppe. By Chinese standards, it was an unliveable place.

  Having been neglected by the Emperor and victimised by court corruption, Lady Wang was betrothed to a barbarian on the edge of the known world. Yet she was credited as selflessly executing her role as ‘Hu-pacifying Chief Consort’, keeping the Shanyu content and conforming with the custom of marrying the next Shanyu when her husband died.

  Wang Zhaojun died, but she wasn’t allowed to rest in peace. Her Heqin marriage began to preoccupy Chinese historiographers, essayists and thinkers. A policy that had seen the Son of Heaven rely on a concubine for imperial security brought national humiliation, while Wang herself – long-suffering in her loyalty to her husbands and in her duty to China – was seen as exemplary, ironic, tragic, patriotic and, ultimately, legendary. She became a symbol of the Heqin policy.

  Her lot struck a poignant chord with poets, such as Bai Juyi (AD 772–846):

  Full in her face, barbarian sands, wind full in her hair; gone from her eyebrows are the last traces of kohl, gone is the rouge from her cheeks, hardship and grieving have wasted them away, indeed now she has the face of the painting! As the Han envoy departs, she gives him these words: ‘When will they send some yellow gold as ransom? Should His Majesty ask how I look, don’t say I’m any different from those palace days!

  Twelve centuries later, twentieth-century politics put a new spin on Wang Zhaojun’s achievements. She was praised as a civiliser, the one who cemented Han–Xiongnu kinship, a champion of peace and harmony among the minorities in a multi-ethnic People’s Republic. In 1960, Premier Zhou Enlai suggested that her story be used by writers to encourage more Han women to marry men from ethnic minorities (see Object 47).

  Despite this propagandistic adoption of Wang Zhaojun’s story, we might ask: what did Heqin achieve, and for whom? What did it mean for the Wall?

  Each side, of course, had different aims. The aim of the Han was to maintain power and avoid their land being occupied, and their people enslaved, by barbarians. To keep the Shanyu at bay, they offered three commodities annually: grain, wine and textiles. They viewed the tribute as bait, a means of corrupting the Xiongnu.

  Food, even in its largest recorded annual quantity, amounted to a trifle that could not be distributed far. It was enough for the Shanyu, his family and guard. Wine went further: tribal chieftains, on whose support the Shanyu relied, had a great love of alcohol. The Shanyu used the 10 000 shih, or 20 000 litres, as currency to keep them happy. Textiles, too, were highly valued. Conclusion: the Shanyu, his family and top brass had a good deal, while the ordinary nomads received nothing.

  Sounds a familiar story, doesn’t it? Yet rather than vent their discontentment on the Shanyu, the empty-handed continued to raid the border area, stealing their own share of Chinese products. These actions benefited the Shanyu, which is why he turned a blind eye to them, defaulting on his side of the Heqin treaty: to observe the Wall as a border that was not to be violated. Raids were a useful, menacing reminder of Xiongnu violence against the Han, and topped up the Shanyu’s bargaining power when the time came for deals to be renegotiated. Raids threatened to become more frequent and larger if the quantities of tribute were not increased.

  From this perspective, we can see that the Xiongnu, as a state, was not predatory as such – that is, it was not aiming to wipe out its productive Han neighbours. It aimed merely to live off them and ensure a sustainable relationship. It was very much in the Shanyu’s personal interest that Han China remained functional, maintaining its ability to provide the good life to his few, who nominally controlled the rest. A parasite needs a good host.

  And as for the Wall? Emperor Han Wudi’s great military offensives and his investments in lengthy defensive additions worked well but almost bankrupted the state. His reign was virtually free from Xiongnu border aggression, but the afterglow was short-lived. His successors tilted towards Heqin in order to save money: Walls and wars were too costly.

  17.

  Mechanical Advantage

  Trigger mechanism of a crossbow

&
nbsp; Every morning, the National Museum of China in Beijing plays classroom to hundreds of school students, who rush through 5000 years of their culture’s art history, capturing their favourite antiquities with a click of a smartphone as they go.

  One day, acting the foreigner with no knowledge of Chinese history, I pointed to an unimpressive-looking relic in the ‘Ancient China’ exhibition and turned to a group of students. ‘Do you know what that is?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not too sure,’ murmured one.

  ‘It’s some kind of on/off switch,’ added another.

  ‘We should read the explanation,’ said another. ‘It’s a crossbow!’

  ‘A crossbow? I can’t see a crossbow . . .’ A debate ensued.

  The cryptic object they were struggling to place in context was the bronze trigger mechanism of a crossbow. Although highly complex to produce, crossbows were in fact manufactured, being made in mass quantities by the use of machinery, beginning several centuries BC.

  Based on finds of bolts and triggers, the crossbow probably debuted on the Chinese battleground of the Chu Kingdom, in around the seventh century BC, and soon became the most favoured weapon at the Wall, above sword, spear and bow. It was prized for firing from elevated positions, through openings in battlements, for its sheer power (range) and for its general ‘user-friendliness’. It was already a prominent weapon by the Qin Dynasty, and formed the bulk of the Han’s firepower against the Xiongnu. Thereafter, in diverse sizes and elaborated forms, it consolidated itself as the stalwart, and was used against the Mongols. By the time of the Manchu conquest, in the mid-seventeenth century, it had accrued a long service record approaching 2500 years.

  The crossbow was the world’s first mechanical weapon, and it gave the Chinese a huge military advantage. Moreover, it was so difficult to manufacture that even when China’s nomadic enemies captured it, they could not replicate it. The design was protected by its complexity.

  State foundries produced trigger mechanisms by the hundreds of thousand during the reign of Han Wendi (180–157 BC), when the weapon’s crucial mechanical heart was a banned export. Nonetheless, examples were smuggled to Korea and Sogdiana (in Central Asia), where they were copied. By the twelfth century, the use of crossbows in southern Europe produced such carnage that the Catholic Church’s Lateran Council, which convened in Rome in 1139, banned the killing machine on humanitarian grounds. It was deemed so lethal that it should not be used by Christian against Christian.

  Steppe nomads were makers and masters of the composite bow (see Object 8), and few Han Chinese archers could match their enemies’ skills. Technology came to their rescue with a simple device that was strong enough to hold an adapted bow.

  The trigger is a multi-part assembly that easily fits into the palm of one’s hand, and its advantages were demonstrated to me in the village of Yaoyuancun, one hour’s drive east of Beijing. There, I entered a workshop and was transported back in time, to an earlier era of weapons history. Sitting amidst piles of tools and the raw materials for making bows and crossbows was Yang Fuxi.

  DESCRIPTION: Bronze trigger mechanism

  SIGNIFICANCE: The mechanics at the heart of the crossbow, the first killing machine

  ORIGIN: Three Kingdoms Period, circa AD 280

  LOCATION: National Museum of China, Beijing

  ‘The Han crossbow evolved by mounting an extremely heavy draw-weight composite bow onto a stock,’ he says, ‘but the special component is here, the trigger. It is this invention that made the crossbow easy to use, even for someone with inferior strength and skill.’

  The trigger I’d seen in the museum was replicated by Yang Fuxi and neatly embedded into the stock of a crossbow. Beneath the stock, under the mechanism, was the so-called hanging knife, or trigger. The advantage of the trigger lies in its ability to store power, and release it on demand.

  In ancient times, the manufacture of two moving pieces on two shafts demanded quality casting and precise machining. The meticulous production process was carried out in some quantity, at least low-volume industrial scale. Armies of several thousand crossbowmen, half of them firing while the others reloaded, could unleash heavy outbursts of bolts.

  Several variants to the basic crossbow design evolved, including a large-scale version for launching several large bolts, and a ‘machine-gun’ crossbow, which could fire ten bolts within fifteen seconds. The advantage of these weapons is like that of hot weapons against cold, tanks against cavalry, or nuclear weapons against conventional bombs.

  I compared the bow and the crossbow. Drawing a bow, even to half of its 27-kilogram weight, put my arms, shoulders, chest and abdomen under great muscular strain, with the brunt of the stress borne by the three fingers I used to pull back the bowstring. Trembling from the strain, I could hold the full draw position only momentarily. To use this weapon effectively, it was clear I needed brute strength, much practice and plenty of accumulated skill.

  Loading the crossbow was so much easier. I used my feet to hold its ‘wings’ against the ground, and pulled the bowstring back with two hands, securing it behind the trigger’s notch. It took strength, but it was a strength I had – in my arms, legs and lower back. With the crossbow loaded, I lifted it, placed its end against my shoulder, took aim and waited for the right moment to fire. I was relaxed. It was as easy as one, two, three. Use of the crossbow demanded technique, not strength. Its manufacture relies on technique, tradition and time.

  In 1720 the Yang family migrated from Manchuria to Beijing on imperial orders to establish an archery workshop within the precincts of the Imperial City. By 1823, however, the bow’s use was on the wane, as guns increased in prominence and popularity. The Yangs moved to Dongsi, joining other bowyers at Gongjian Dayuan, or ‘the Archery Workyard’, where they made weapons for public sale.

  Nine generations later, into the 1950s, Yang Wentong was still making weapons in the time-honoured way – on one occasion he presented a prized specimen to Chairman Mao himself. For Yang, however, political regression, not technological advancement, would put an end to his craft: imperial connections became taboo under the political extremism of Maoist China of the late 1950s. Family history was no longer a source of pride but something to be hidden. During the Cultural Revolution’s movement to smash the ‘Four Olds’ – the traditional customs, culture, habits and ideas of China – Yang Wentong hid his last remaining bow in a pile of firewood. His son, Yang Fuxi, became a factory worker, then a driver.

  More than thirty years later, in 1993, Yang Wentong started to rejuvenate his family’s craft by teaching Yang Fuxi the complex, time-consuming techniques. With local government support, growing interest among weapons enthusiasts and collectors (who pay up to US$8 000 for his masterpieces) and recognition of his skill as an intangible national heritage, Yang Fuxi, with his son Yang Yi, have continued to revive this aspect of ancient China’s military history, rescuing it from extinction.

  On a bare winter field, I draw my bow, savouring the twang and swish as my arrow flies into the distant haze, straight and true. I raise my crossbow and squeeze its trigger, savouring its sweet mechanical click. These sounds have been much more than a year in the making. They are echoes of history, embodied in an art that has taken the Yang family 300 years to perfect, and preserve.

  Part Three

  Intrusions

  Objects from AD 221 to 1368

  Cyclical conflicts destroyed, recreated and destroyed the geopolitical entity of China, ruled by one. The land was divided among a few and then among many, until the late fourth century, when a nomadic group exploited the division and came south to rule a large portion. Reunification was achieved between the late sixth and tenth centuries by the Sui, the glorious Tang and then, the hapless Song. From the millennium onwards the country faced the Liao, then the Jin, which forced a retreat south, and then the Mongols, who, in conquering the Southern Song, ruled all of China.

  These eleven centuries feature three phases of border history. In the period of divis
ion, before AD 589, several ‘Lesser Great Walls’, considerably shorter than their predecessors, were built by some minor dynasties. During reunification – actually an interbellum from the late sixth to tenth centuries – only one of the three dynasties, the Sui, constructed a Great Wall.

  Surprisingly, the Liao, the Western Xia and the Jin each constructed ‘Conquest Dynasty Great Walls’ as they edged south, keeping watch behind them. But neither these nor an empire full of fortified towns and cities were enough to stop the Mongols.

  18.

  Becoming Chinese

  Figurine of an armoured horse and rider

  I recently saw one of the largest ancient helmets I’ve ever seen. It was extremely long, more than half a metre, and comparatively narrow, with two large round holes for vision pierced in its heavily rusted iron segments, topped by a high, crest-like brim. This macabre hulk, known as a chanfron, was not made to protect a man’s head but the head of a horse.

  It had been a long search for this crowning piece of barder, or horse armour, which I came across at the National Museum of Korea, in Seoul. I’d been on the lookout for a glimpse of the real thing ever since I first saw a striking depiction of iron-clad cavalry in a most unexpected place. It featured as a Northern Wei ceiling mural of Cave No. 285 at Mogao, near Dunhuang, in north-west China’s Gansu Province, one of the largest ‘monastery style’ caverns at the ‘Caves of Ten Thousand Buddhas’.

  The cavalry in the mural were Tuoba Xianbei horsemen. They interested me because they wrote the opening chapter of what transpired to be a remarkable and recurring episode of the Great Wall’s story: that for approximately 800 years out of 2200 years of Chinese dynastic history, Hans were ruled by non-Hans who originated from the north, outside the Wall, founding ‘conquest’ dynasties within it. Their success stories constantly reminded Han regimes of the need for an astute border defence policy.