Family and Property in Sung China: Yuan Ts'ai's Precepts for Social Life

by Patricia Buckley Ebrey (Translator)

Overview

Providing the best surviving evidence of the everyday thinking of the Sung upper class, Yuan Ts'ai's twelfth-century manual is the advice of a typical educated man on the concerns of managing a family, from rearing children and arranging their marriages, to avoiding social conflict, training servants, and managing property and preserving it for the next generation.

Originally published in 1984.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691612393
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2014
Series:	Princeton Library of Asian Translations , #1133
Pages:	380
Sales rank:	730,885
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)

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Family and Property in Sung China

Yüan Ts'ai's Precepts for Social Life

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By Patricia Buckley Ebrey

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1984 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-05426-1

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In late imperial China (Sung through Ch'ing dynasties, A.D. 960–1911), the major social distinction routinely evoked was between shih-ta-fu (literati and officials) and everyone else. In social life, all the gradations of rank, wealth, and refinement that distinguished shih-ta-fu as individuals tended to be blurred. High officials could have brothers who were scholars, artists, estate managers, or lazy dilettantes. Men from these families, whatever their own choice of occupation, freely interacted, visiting each other and marrying each other's sisters.

The empirical evidence that officials, intellectuals, and other men of significance came from a single stratum has been provided by modern scholarly studies of their social backgrounds. But people of the time were also well aware of the existence of the shih-ta-fu as a class of people. In occasional writing this term was used often and casually, as though its meaning were obvious. In Sung dynasty (960–1279) works, "shih-ta-fu" was used to refer to the category of people who owned, borrowed, read, or wrote books, who performed classical rituals, who aspired to office, and who paid visits to high officials and other powerful people. In these historical sources, no rigid line separated shih-ta-fu from others. The qualifications for shih-ta-fu status were fuzzy. The most important was identification with the Confucian tradition of scholarship and public service; this identification in turn presupposed education, leisure, and freedom from the need to perform manual labor. Since no legal benefits accompanied the status, no one tried to set up unambiguous markers, or prevent the sons of peasants or merchants from learning to act like and associate with shih-ta-fu. Yet this fluidity did not undermine the significance of being a shih-ta-fu; even in relating humorous anecdotes Sung writers regularly indicated whether the person in question belonged to the shih-ta-fu.

If labels are needed, the shih-ta-fu can be thought of as a social class in Joseph Schumpeter's sense. Schumpeter distinguishes classes that are the analytic constructs of the observer, sets of people arbitrarily selected according to some attribute (as in landlord class, educated class, mercantile class) and the classes that exist in society. These social classes are visible to observers because "class members behave toward one another in a fashion characteristically different from their conduct toward members of other classes." This occurs in part because "social intercourse within class barriers is promoted by the similarity of manners and habits of life, of things that are evaluated in a positive and negative sense, that arouse interest. In intercourse across class borders, differences on all these points repel and inhibit sympathy." Social classes of this sort are not economic classes, nor are they necessarily rigid or closed.

Modern scholars' conceptions of the shih-ta-fu of late imperial China often seem a collection of contradictory images. Poets and painters are easily idealized. Chinese, Japanese, and Westerners alike are attracted to the human personality that shines through the writing of great poets, especially the T'ang (618–906) and Sung masters. Likewise, through their creative works, the literati painters of the Sung through Ch'ing (1644–1911) dynasties are seen as sensitive to beauty and truth and as essentially good, caring people. By contrast, the political and economic activities of the shih-ta-fu have not been made to seem uniformly appealing. One image is of the corrupt official, merely venal or utterly vicious. Another is of the greedy, aggressive landowner who was always on the lookout for ways to squeeze more from his tenants or take over the lands of peasants with small holdings. Chinese social and political critics have decried these members of their society for centuries, but the potency of these images owes much to the writings of modern social critics, like Ch'ü T'ung-tsu, who have used them to unveil the exploitation inherent in the traditional class system. Still, there has been a countervailing force tempering these images in the work of institutional historians. Scholars like E. A. Kracke, James Liu, and Ray Huang, even if aware of the inadequacies of the bureaucratic system, have generally been impressed with the commitment of a core of important officials to fairness in recruitment, in the imposition of taxes, and in the administration of justice.

Confucianism as an ideology for the ruling class has also evoked divergent reactions. Not surprisingly, intellectual historians like T'ang Chün-i and Wm. T. de Bary have seen it as an ennobling philosophy; to them study of the Classics and concern with current scholarly issues fostered a great sense of seriousness about personal moral improvement and social responsibility. But others have seen Confucianism as a cover for preserving the current distribution of power. Etienne Balazs argued that the traditionalist character of Confucianism served those at the top of a hierarchical state: "strict adherence to orthodox doctrines was the surest defense against the pressures of other social groups."

The contradictions in these diverse images of the shih-ta-fu have resulted in large part because scholars habitually treat the self-serving behavior of the shih-ta-fu as phenomena unrelated to their culture. They see admirable cultural values as motivating highly accomplished shih-ta-fu but no values at all behind the actions of the others, presumed to be acting on self-interest. In this book I try to overcome this polarized view by examining how shih-ta-fu thought about two subjects that are fundamental to self-interest: family and property. I use an anthropological concept of culture to show how decisions about the everyday activities essential to survival and social reproduction were based in a system of meaning intricately connected to high ideals. Indeed, I suspect that common understandings on these matters — ones so vital to preserving social status — allowed the "similarity in manners and habits of life" that gave shih-ta-fu of varying attainments a common identity.

The concept of culture has been so central to the discipline of anthropology that new directions of anthropological theory or research have led to continuing redefinitions of it. Here I use culture in its broadest sense, as the repertoire of ideation behind the social behavior of members of a group. The components of a culture include habits of thought and fundamental categories, as well as notions of what should be done, what is fun to do, and what is actually done. Some components of culture are fully articulated (self-consciously held) by virtually all members of the group, some are seldom thought about, and many are assumed to be fact and not ideas at all. Emotions are frequently involved. As A. L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn wrote, "the individual is seldom emotionally neutral to those sectors of his culture which touch him directly. Cultural patterns are felt, emotionally adhered to or rejected."

Because culture must be communicated to exist, people in a society vary in how fully they share in a common culture. Cultural principles are conveyed through written and spoken word, physical signs, clothing and building designs, gestures and manners, myths and folktales, stories and proverbs, to mention only some of the more important ways. Even those with identical access to these symbols and ideas do not act identically; besides simple idiosyncrasies, people's actions depend on the political, economic, and even demographic opportunities they face. What culture provides them is a stock of notions and meanings useful in defining their situations and the alternatives open to them.

There may appear to be a disciplinary contradiction in studying the "culture" of "classes." Culture as a concept has been refined by anthropologists who by and large have studied classless societies. Thus they have generally analyzed the culture of entire societies, not separate classes. Sociologists who have studied classes have been well aware of their cultural distinctiveness but until recently have usually concerned themselves only with the emblematic aspects of this distinctiveness or with the social and political ideology that a class uses to justify its position. Here I look at something smaller than a generalized "Chinese culture" but larger than those features of the upper class's culture that identified them or justified their status.

This understanding of "the culture of the shih-ta-fu" differs from that of many historians, who usually think of upper class culture in terms of how it differed from the culture of commoners. By contrast, I use the phrase "culture of the shih-ta-fu" to refer to the entire set of ideas and notions that motivated the behavior of shih-ta-fu. It is certainly true that identification with a set of classical ideals separated shih-ta-fu from commoners, and a variety of prejudices maintained this distance, "inhibiting sympathy" across class lines. But these ideals and attitudes by no means account for all of the behavior that sustained status as a shih-ta-fu. Notions underlying education of sons and preservation of family property may have been more important in this regard, and yet they need not have differed radically from the ideas of peasants. After all, much of the difference between the actions of shih-ta-fu and those of commoners was due to differences in economic or political opportunities, not differences in goals. If we are to comprehend the commonalities underlying the diverse activities of shih-ta-fu, we must look at the whole range of ideas and conceptions they acted on, not limiting ourselves to the ones they thought set them above commoners or ignoring others as merely "Chinese."

In recent years, as the basic anthropological concept of culture has come to be widely understood and appreciated, historians have explicitly set out to analyze culture. That is, rather than start out to study values or ideology, they have purposely gone in search of the culture of the group or society in question. The way to do this — the sources and methods to use — are still being worked out. For better-documented periods, such as the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, American and European historians have tried to use letters, diaries, newspapers, and other sources written by or for relatively undistinguished people. Such sources are less readily available for premodern China, but some do exist. Here I focus on a lengthy advice book, using it as the testimony of an informant. The book is the Precepts for Social Life (Shih fan) written by Yüan Ts'ai (fl. 1140–1195) in 1178, printed first in 1179, and reissued by the author in 1190. It is translated in full in Part Two.

Yüan Ts'ai makes a good informant because of who he was and what he wrote. Anthropologists choose informants for their intelligence, their willingness to talk, and their knowledge of their own culture. A key point in anthropological analysis is that one talks to an informant to learn about his own culture, and what he and those in his group do, not what he says members of other groups do. His conceptions of other groups are elements of his culture and inform his interactions with them, but they are not a substitute for such people's own statements about themselves. Yüan Ts'ai was certainly knowledgeable about family life and property management, and he was exceptionally skillful in explaining what he knew. The Precepts for Social Life consists of three chapters: Getting Along with Relatives, Improving Personal Conduct, and Managing Family Affairs. Each chapter has about seventy brief essays on topics such as rearing children, arranging marriages, writing wills, disciplining servants, investing money, avoiding arguments, and attaining tranquillity. In them Yüan Ts'ai reported what people generally do and what he thought they should do. He justified his opinions not by citing authority but by analyzing the situations, thus revealing how he thought about them, not just what he thought.

Yüan Ts'ai's thoughts on all these subjects gain added significance from his background; he comes as close to being a "typical" or "representative" shih-ta-fu as anyone leaving written record. This can be seen by looking at Yüan Ts'ai's society and his place in it.

YÜAN TS'AI'S BACKGROUND AND AUDIENCE

In his preface Yüan Ts'ai made it clear that he was not addressing classicists or philosophers. He said their points were abstruse, beyond the reach even of diligent students, and too concerned with metaphysics. Instead, he was addressing a general public and to that end writing in a way simple enough, he said, even for villagers and women. From the content of his essays, however, Yüan Ts'ai evidently was speaking mostly to his peers: educated property owners, often referred to explicitly as shih-ta-fu.

The Sung was one of the greatest ages of the shih-ta-fu. It is by now commonplace to call the Sung the beginning of China's modern period, drawing attention not only to the great expansion of commerce and urbanization but also to a shift in the style of the upper class. The civil service examinations produced several times as many chin-shih(highest degree holders) in the Sung as they had in the T'ang, and by the twelfth century they had gained full recognition as the primary and most honorable means to gain office. Almost every prefecture still had eminent families, and nationally famous men usually were scions of them, yet the Sung was not so aristocratic as the T'ang. In the T'ang dynasty rich families tried to marry their sons to daughters of "famous families," especially the Lis, Lus, Ts'uis, Chengs, and Wangs. In the Sung, the cliche was that they sought top-placed examination candidates as husbands for their daughters.

The Sung is also a period in which the effectiveness of civil officials in government was at its height. Competition between factions of officials was more crucial than either imperial whim or military force in determining policy. The examination system undoubtedly helped to inspire a deeper commitment to education and learning on the part of the shih-ta-fu in the Sung than had been typical in earlier dynasties. Probably even more important was a succession of great scholars who brought traditional learning — classical, historical, and philosophical — to new heights. Fan Chung-yen (989–1052), Ou-yang Hsiu (1007–1072), Ssu-ma Kuang (1019–1086), and Su Shih (1036–1101) provided inspiring models to their less talented contemporaries. Moreover, the great political controversies of the eleventh and twelfth centuries — Wang An-shih's New Policies and the reaction to them — forced even minor local officials and examination candidates to think about national policies. The loss of north China in 1126 kept this concern for politics very high among the educated. Because of all these factors, the Sung was the classical age of the shih-ta-fu, the period when their civility, learning, respect for merit, and conscientious political administration were at their height.

During the Sung there were, of course, differences in style and attitude among the shih-ta-fu from generation to generation and region to region. Therefore, to understand which group Yüan Ts'ai can be thought to have represented and to have addressed, we must look more closely at his time and place. The prefecture Yüan Ts'ai came from, Ch'ü-chou, was neither the most advanced nor the least developed in this age. But it was part of the southeast — today's Kiangsu, Chekiang, Anhwei, Fukien, and Kiangsi — the region that witnessed a dramatic rise in population and economic importance during the Sung. Even during the Northern Sung (960–1126), with its capital at K'ai-feng in Honan, scholars and officials were as likely as not to have come from this region and to have lived in a milieu of merchants, manufacturers, and estates planted in highly productive rice. After the loss of the north and the retreat of the court south of the Yangtze River in 1127, the cultural dominance of the south was to be expected, and the richness of its resources made possible a period of splendor. The fame of its capital, Hangchow, as a "Heavenly" city survives today.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Family and Property in Sung China by Patricia Buckley Ebrey. Copyright © 1984 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• CONTENTS, pg. v
• PREFACE, pg. vii
• ABBREVIATIONS, pg. ix
• PART ONE. Class, Culture, Family, and Property, pg. 1
• PART TWO. Precepts for Social Life, pg. 173
• APPENDIX A. Editions of the Precepts for Social Life and Their Transmission, pg. 322
• APPENDIX Β. Discrepancies Between the 1179 and 1190 Editions, pg. 331
• GLOSSARY, pg. 337
• SOURCES CITED, pg. 341
• INDEX, pg. 359