The History of China - #57 - S&N 1: Bipolarity

Episode Date: March 16, 2015

What had been sixteen kingdoms in the North and an uneasy Dynasty in the South has calcified into a seemingly permanent polar split. After some shenanigans, both halves of China will - surprisingly - find themselves with capable leaders. The coming showdown will be one for the history... um... podcasts... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history. Look for The Civil War

and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. Today's show is brought to you in part by audible.com. By using the web address www.audibletrial.com slash THOC, you can receive a free audiobook download, along with a free 30-day trial of the service. With over 150,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle, or MP3 player, Audible is the nation's leading seller and producer of spoken audio content. Again, sign up for your free 30-day trial with free audiobook of your choice at audibletrial.com slash T-H-O-C. Hello, and welcome to the History of China.

Episode 57, Bipolarity Last time, we witnessed the overthrow, restoration, and then final destruction of the long-beleaguered Jin Dynasty in 420 CE at the hands of the brilliant military strategist Liu Yu. We left off with him declaring the establishment of Jin's successor state Song, or as we've come to know it historically, Liu Song, with Liu Yu taking the imperial throne as its first emperor, Wu. But what we didn't really get into last time, and what will be our focus this episode, are the ramifications that change would have for the political landscape of the 5th century China. Especially as it interacted with the ongoing unification of the North under the steady

hand of the Tuoba emperors of Northern Wei. In fact, these two events are considered a turning point in Chinese history. The end of the 16 kingdoms era, and the start of a new point in Chinese history, the end of the Sixteen Kingdoms era, and the start of a new phase in the Age of Disunity, the period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. As the name suggests, this phase of Chinese history will see the calcification of what had already been a de facto partition of China into mostly two, although sometimes mostly two powerful states.

Within each, independent dynasties would rise and fall, though with each claiming to be the rightful ruler of all of China in pretense. All in all, it will last almost another 170 years before China will once again know unity for the first time in almost six centuries. This isn't to say, though, that this is all a period of doom and gloom for the Middle Kingdom. To the contrary, this Southern and Northern Era saw many advances in art, culture, technology, and religion, even as the regions affected yet convulsed with warfare and division. We will discuss them further as they arise, but for now, let's plunge back into the opening phase of the Southern and Northern Dynasties.

So, to pick up where we left off, Liu Yu became Emperor Wu in 420, what would wind up being the high point of his life. For little more than two years later, in the summer of 422, Wu would take ill and die, leaving his newly created throne and dynasty to his eldest son and heir, Crown Prince Liu Yifu, who would become Liu Song's second emperor, Xiao. Upon taking the throne, his wife naturally became the empress. But the interesting bit about this is that the new emp Empress, tellingly named Sima Maoying, was in fact the daughter of the final, very brief Jin Emperor, Gong.

I bring up Empress Maoying primarily to display that something rather unusual had taken place. Usually, when one dynasty ousted another, the result for the imperial clan on the outs was pretty well predetermined. Death for all. Brutal, definitely, but how else could the new emperor, whoever he might be, ensure that his line wasn't counter-usurped by an enemy left alive? This isn't something unique to China, either. Emperors of both the Western and Eastern Roman Empire, and even much later the combined foes of Napoleon Bonaparte, would learn the hard

way that leaving a vanquished foe alive and in exile was a dangerous situation at best. And so it had been with the last two Jin emperors, as we discussed last episode. An strangled with clothing, and Gong suffocated by blanket after refusing to drink poison. So it's just a little bit ironic that the second empress of the Osong would in fact be the daughter of the dynasty it had just ousted. I wish I could say that this little historical loophole would prove to be an in for the Sima clan back into power. Unfortunately I cannot, for as it would turn out, this might have been, was not to be,

since Emperor Xiao's reign would be just as short as his father's, and completely childless to boot. This would be due to a combination of factors, not the least of which was a cabal of court officials ultimately dealing the coup de grace. But before we get into that whole series of events, it behooves us to leave the court at Nanjing behind for now and swing up north to the Imperial Court of Northern Wei at Shengle City in modern Inner Mongolia. As you will recall, the Emperor of Northern Wei was Mingyuan, who we discussed at length two episodes ago by his birth name Tuoba Si. Since his enthronement back in 409, Mingyuan had been working tirelessly and effectively

to bring the disparate barbarian tribes under his banner and once again reunify the north under a single monarch. 414 proved to be one of his largest successes in this regard, and a victory not won through battle, but through diplomacy. He had sent emissaries to establish relations with virtually all of his neighbor states, later Qin, northern Yan, Jin, and even the Rouran Khaganate, roving the wilds of the far north. Through the ambassadors, Northern Wei had been able to draw down conflict with the Jin to the south, as well as the Later Qin state to virtual peace.

The ambassador to Northern Yan, however, had made the irredeemable faux pas of refusing to bow before the Yan emperor, and as such the negotiations soured with little gain. Terms with the Rouran Khan, called Yujiulu Datan, had seemed to be going well, right up until his horse raiders launched a surprise assault on Northern Wei's territorial holdings and forced a military response. They would ultimately be chased all the way back into the hills and mountains of Mongolia before managing to lose their pursuers in the fearsome storms that frequently whipped across their desolate homeland, a trend that would continue almost exactly for the duration of the Rouran-Wei relation.

It was negotiate, attack, counterattack, flee, vanish. So not a perfect situation, but given the hostilities between all of the states during this period, a 2 out of 4 success rate was still pretty good diplomatically speaking. The peace with Jin would hold in fact up through 416, before being broken by the Oyu's northern expeditions once again, resulting ultimately in the destruction and annexation of later Qin by the Jin dynasty and a firmly hostile relationship between the two great coaxial powers. The year 422 had seen a major shift in the power dynamic of the Northern Wei imperial

court. Emperor Mingyuan, who had for some time been consulting alchemists and imbibing supposedly life-extending potions, had, surprise surprise, taken gravely ill as a result. Go figure. It was rather up in the air for a time whether the monarch would make a recovery or continue his descent into decrepitude. In the event of the latter, Mingyuan's advisors urged him to name his successor, and the ailing emperor agreed.

He officially declared his 14-year-old son, Tuoba Tao, the crowned prince of Wei. From then on, Prince Tao would be making the majority of state decisions, helpfully guided by his father's advisors, of course, while Mingyuan himself was given leave to rest and hopefully recover, only being disturbed with decisions of great weight. As it so happened, one such decision was on its way north from the southern capital, Nanjing, and would arrive in late 422 at Shengle. News of the Liaosong Emperor Wu's death more than a year

prior, and the ascension of his untested, ill-thought-of heir, Emperor Xiao. Such an opportunity was not one to pass up, and Mingyuan immediately broke off relations with Liaosong and convened his war council. He and his commanders drew up plans to use the weakness and confusion within Liaosong to strike and take three key cities for themselves south of the Yellow River, the metropolises of Luoyang, Hulao, and Huatai. The crown prince Tao would lead a force north to guard Wei's border against potential Rouran aggression, while the bulk of its army would move immediately to Huatai and lay it

to siege. The city resisted, at least until Mingyuan's personal force arrived to support the besiegers, and then fell before the might of Northern Wei. The strike force then pressed simultaneously towards Luoyang and Hulao, capturing the former quickly, but with the latter grinding down into a drawn-out affair that would only end when Liu Song's reinforcements were cut off by the Wei army seizing the city of Xuchang as well. By the summer of 423, Hulao's defenders had spent their last and the city finally capitulated to Wei, resulting in territorial gains over most of Henan and western Shandong.

Victory in hand, Emperor Mingyuan ordered his state to begin construction of an enormous defensive wall along Wei's northern border to more effectively defend against Rouran attacks in the future, which certainly does sound familiar. And indeed, the walls of northern Wei make up a significant central portion of the current Great Wall of China system. In fact, you can go see and hike along some of the sections initially built in this era at Simatai and Mutianyu, two of the larger tourist areas along the massive defensive fortification. That would be a wonder that Mingyuan would never live to see completed,

because having never really recovered from whatever pseudo-magical poison his alchemists had concocted, in the winter of that year he became terminally ill and died, with Prince Tao assuming the throne of Wei as Emperor Taiwu. We'll come back to Taiwu presently, but for now, let's move back south to Liu Song, where Emperor Xiao has stepped on pretty much all of the wrong toes. He had never been a favorite among the imperial court, and indeed, several of his father's top advisors had secretly urged the late Emperor Wu to dismiss his elder son from consideration entirely when he was choosing his heir. That initial dislike had been hugely exacerbated when the fledging emperor had ignored the customary three-year imperial grieving period,

and instead spent his time on idle pleasures and frivolities. Games, wine, women, the usual. Although, curiously, no mention of building palaces. But then again, maybe he just didn't have the time. And of course, having lost a huge section of the north to Northern Wei had done little to bolster Xiao's reputation either. In fact, it seems that the only thing that kept Xiao in power as long as he was, was the fact that the second in line for the throne, his slightly younger brother Prince Liu Yizhen, was deemed by the court conspirators to be an even more frivolous, less desirable candidate. So, obviously, before Xiao could be overthrown, they'd have to find some way of getting rid of young Prince Yizhen.

That would prove to be easy enough, since the two brothers already had a significant rivalry centered around the younger prince constantly demanding increased funding from the government to spend on, well, whatever he felt like spending on that day. The advisors simply applied further pressure to the fraternal relationship until it reached its breaking point, and then simply accused Prince Ijeon of crimes of some sort or another, and that was all it took. No trial, no proof required, simply an angry older brother with absolute power who probably would have taken the crime of jaywalking

as reason enough to act. The Oijun was stripped of his imperial titles and status and sent into exile at Xin'an Prefecture, which is roughly around modern Hangzhou. Now with crown prince undesirable out of the way, the palace coup was a go. The cabal invited the commanders of two of Liu Song's most powerful field armies to the capital and convinced them of their plan. The generals agreed and sent their troops into the imperial palace to arrest the emperor early the following morning. After convincing the palace guard to stand down without a fight, which is like, gee, real nice work there, fellas, Emperor Xiao awoke to find his bed surrounded by troops, placing him into custody.

The rest was pretty textbook. His faults were declared publicly, he was stripped of his position, demoted back to prince, and then sent into exile. Once at his new home and under secure guard, a month later, an assassin was sent to quietly finish the job. But to add another little wrinkle to the tale, the now-again prince, Yi Fu, who was at this point just 17 or 18 and in the prime of his life, wasn't ready to go quietly into that long good night.

He managed to turn the blade back on his would-be assassin, escape his locked-down house, and fight his way through the prefectural capital. It was all the makings of a roaring rampage of revenge, but alas, he was finally stunned when knocked in the head with, of all things, a doorknob, and subsequently slain in the streets of Xi'an. No revenge for you. The heir the court cabal had deemed worthy to succeed the short, worthless reign of Xiao was the third of his seven brothers, the sixteen- or seventeen-year-old Prince Liu Yilong. Now, when two of your brothers wind up dead at the hands of imperial advisors, who then turn up on your doorstep, asking if you'd care to go next, well, you'd probably give

some pause to their offer too. Certainly, Prince Yi Long had no desire to end up like his two elder brothers, and so initially hesitated to accept the offer of the imperial throne. Ultimately, however, his personal advisors convinced him that, since the offer of the imperial throne. Ultimately, however, his personal advisors convinced him that, since the leaders of the conspiracy against his brothers, they who were now jointly offering him the imperial seat, were in a delicate power-sharing arrangement between them all. It would be next to impossible for any one of them to act against him without the others tipping the would-be emperor off to the plot. Now, I'm not sure that I personally buy that line of reasoning. After all, they'd managed to hold it together for two

successful plots in a row just fine. But it was apparently good enough for Prince Yilong, who then assented and took them up on their offer, and was enthroned later that year as Emperor One. And for a 17-year-old, One proved himself pretty damned shrewd in the game of power politics. He had an innate understanding of whose hand buttered his rice, and more importantly, that those same hands had choked the life out of his two predecessors when they hadn't worked out. As such, One left most of the affairs of state in the hands of those advisors who had put him on the throne in the first place. But even as he placated and ingratiated his minders with one hand, he was at the same time subtly making motions toward ousting them from power over him

with the other. For instance, he quietly recalled his two aunts, the mothers of his two slain brothers, to the capital from their post-coup exiles, and honored them within the imperial palace. An understated but clear indication that he felt their exile, and therefore the punishments that had necessitated them, had been in the wrong. And though he left the actual running of Liu Song to his advisors for the time being, markedly unlike his elder brothers, he studied their positions, decisions, and actions, determined to acquire their skills for himself and thereby render them obsolete. And so it was, in late 425, having deemed their services no longer necessary, Emperor

Wen sprung into action, enacting his plan to undo the men who had murdered his siblings and sought to play him like a marionette. He marshaled his armies, using the pretext of an attack against Northern Wei as a convenient and feasible public cover, but was in fact planning to arrest the two chief advisors within his capital while also mobilizing the rest of his imperial army against their allied military commander who yet resided outside the capital and beyond his immediate grasp. But before he could spring the trap, word leaked. Because of course it did. It always does. And so, it would be a fight. The two conspirators within the capital were taken easily enough. They were merely summoned to the palace and then taken into custody. Their specific fates are somewhat hazy,

but the third commander, called General Xie, publicly mourning them and declaring them martyrs for the empire at large, conveys the basic point well enough. The rebel General Xie commanded a sizable force, but soon found his own plans in disarray when several governors he had counted among his allies refused to join his fight against the capital. After taking the initial advantage on the field, imperial reinforcements spelled Xie's doom, and he was captured along with his brother, brought to the capital, and then executed

along with the majority of his cousins and major accomplices. Liaosong, such as it were, was now one's, and one's alone. And as it turned out, that would actually be for the best. Emperor Wen proved himself to be just as intelligent, diligent, and nimble in ruling the empire as he had been in taking it in the first place. In fact, this particular era in the south is often referred to as the reign of Yuanjia, and is lorded over by the saintly one guiding his troubled state through the stormy waters of the period of disunity to a time of prosperity, justice, and relative safety, as much as could be expected at least, with hostile barbarians along one's

borders. It is typified by careful management of government positions, limited terms of office for government officials, and all that other stuff we today take for granted in any bureaucratic system, so I won't put you to sleep with it all. Suffice it to say, it worked. It worked well. And it really was a novelty in this period. Good governance.

A truly, unironically, new concept. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms, or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast.

The reign of Yuanjia is generally reserved for the southern half of the divided Chinese Empire. But in many respects, the same concept could be applied to the north as well. After all, Northern Wei's brand-spanking new emperor, Tai Wu, had at least as much, and quite possibly even more, success in governing what was undoubtedly a more divided, fractious population than the relatively homogeneous southern state state Han hypermajority. Oh, what's that, Liu Song? You had to deal with a couple rebellions? That's cute. My dad killed my mom when I was declared crown prince out of sheer custom.

In fact, as virtually his first act upon taking office, Emperor Taiwu was forced to command Northern Wei in a desperate bid for sheer survival. Because, that's right, the Northern Barbarians were on the attack again. But wait, weren't the Xianbei supposed to be the Northern Barbarians? Yes. And no. It's all based on one's own point of view, after all. Certainly, if one were to ask the Han Chinese of Liu Song, they'd call the northern dynasties a bunch of stinking, uncivilized barbarians.

But as we've discussed in previous episodes, moving south of the Ordos Loop for any sustained period of time tends to have a curious, but utterly predictable effect on people. From the time of the Xiongnu Empire all the way through the collapse of the Mongolian ascendancy of the 13th century, invaders of the north would ride screaming down from their desolate arid homelands into the fertile farmlands and bustling cities of the Yellow River Valley and decide very quickly that this lifestyle was much nicer than hunting game on the northern Asian steppes. In short, over the course of only a few, or sometimes even a single, generation, the invaders

would have taken up many of the customs, dress, lifestyles, governmental systems, and even language and religion of the people they had ostensibly conquered. The abundance and trappings of Chinese civilization was very effective at rapidly sinicizing outsiders. All of this to say that while the Tuoba Xianbei ruling northern Wei would have been viewed as uncultured brutes by the proper Chinese of the south, they were far more Chinese in appearance, temperament, and military strategy than the Rouran Khaganate that was once again bearing down on them from the Gobi Desert. The current Khan of the Rouran, with the personal name once again of Yujiu Liu Datan,

but with the far easier to remember title of Mohan Shenggai Khan, but for our purposes we will just refer to as the Khan, had received word that the old Emperor of Wei had died and been replaced by his young and untested son, Tai Wu. And the Khan aimed to give him his first and possibly last test right off the bat. Tai Wu led his army into battle against the Rouran horde, and much to his chagrin, found his army quickly outmaneuvered and surrounded by the horse archers. But Tai Wu managed to turn the situation into, if certainly no victory, then at least the least bad outcome possible. He did this by ordering his soldiers to punch through the enemy encirclement back towards their homeland and make a strategic withdrawal rather than succumbing to some panicked rout. And make

no mistake, that was not out of the question. Many a larger and more disciplined army had, and in the future will, succumb to just such a panic when facing off against the tactics of the steppe peoples, often leading to their total annihilation. Instead, Tai Wu managed to get the majority of his army back to safety, and from there on out, reserved a portion of his army to commit near-annual northward campaigns against the Roran. They would invariably meet with early success, until the barbarians retreated north and vanished into their wilds once more.

As we said earlier, negotiate, attack, counterattack, flee, vanish. So regular was this pattern that it's possible the Northern Way's campaigns against the Rouran weren't actually meant to achieve a permanent victory at all, but instead just to keep the barbarians on the defensive enough of the time that they'd have trouble mounting an offensive of their own. So, with the Rouran at least under control for now, Tai Wu was able to take the bulk of his army and concentrate on the other northern states that yet clung to some shred of power.

After some hemming and hawing over whether to concentrate on the Rouran exclusively, or maybe attack northern Yan, in 426, circumstance decided the issue for Tai Wu. When Emperor Helian Bobo of Xia died, greatly weakening the political underpinnings of the southeastern state. Xia, you may remember, had seized the heartland of China in a counterattack to Liu Yu's northern expeditions back in 1415-1416, and though Liu Song had managed to retake Luoyang, Xia yet held Chang'an, and that was a prize Emperor Taiwu would be foolish indeed to let slip away.

The northern Wei armies therefore mounted a series of rapid cavalry strikes. So fast, in fact, that before the Xia armies could even muster a response, they had invaded and looted Xia's capital city. Though they would ultimately be forced out, the Wei horsemen left loaded down with the greater bulk of the city's wealth and having struck a devastating blow to the state's morale. In short order, further lightning cavalry actions caused the defending generals of both Chang'an and the nearby Puban to abandon their posts and allow Wei's armies to take and hold the mighty cities. In late 427, the two opposing emperors would personally clash outside of the Xia capital, Tongwan.

With Xia once again facing defeat, and without a clear path of retreat back to his own capital city, Emperor Helian Cheng was forced to abandon it and flee for his life to Shanggui, to the south. Xia capital in hand, Emperor Taiwu took three of the sitting emperor's sisters as his concubine wives, and soon thereafter managed to capture the Xia emperor himself, who was kept as an honored but compulsory guest. But in 428, a miscalculation by one of Northern Wei's commanders led to an untimely defeat and allowed the Xia armies to retake Chang'an. As punishment for this failure and the loss of the ancient capital, Tai Wu ordered the offending commander beheaded.

The state of Xia was down, and Tai Wu was ready to deliver the coup de grace. But then, the Rouran once again started making rumblings in the north. And so, Emperor Taiwu was forced to settle for what he yet possessed and ended his campaign against the much-diminished Xia. For now. Following his campaign against Xia, the author of the Zhezhe Tongjian, Sima Guang, had this to say of Emperor Taiwu. Quote,

The Emperor of Wei was strong and brave, and calm and settled. Regardless of whether it came to defending a city or fighting on the battlefield, he was always at the front line. His guards might suffer casualties, but his expressions would be the same, and therefore his generals and soldiers were all fearful of and impressed by him,

and willing to fight hard even to their death. He was also frugal and satisfied with simple clothing and food as long as they were sufficient. When his officials disagreed over whether Wei should focus on constructing defensive structures or undertake construction projects to display imperial grandeur, Tai Wu responded, What Xiao He said was incorrect. Right now, the land is not in peace, and we need human power, and I loathe construction projects. What Xiao He said was incorrect. Continuing the quote, He also felt that money was the capital for affairs of the military and the state, and should not easily be wasted.

He issued monetary awards only for the families of those who had died for the state, or who had contributed greatly, never to his own relatives. When he sent generals out, he always personally advised them, and those who disobeyed his advice usually ended in failure. He was also a good judge of character and was able to select generals from among soldiers, and he only commissioned officials who were capable, not those who were well-connected. He was sharp in his observations and could see hidden things, and his subjects could not deceive him. He awarded those of humble ranks if they deserved them, and he punished those of high ranks if they deserved them. He also did not protect those whom he usually favored, and often said,

I, along with the people, obey the laws, and how do I dare view them lightly? End quote. So, here we are, with two dominant states, controlled by two intelligent, effective, strong, and thoroughly uncompromising emperors who have managed to secure their states and whip them into effective fighting machines. And as we arrive on the cusp of the year 430, these two southern and northern titans

will once again prepare to square off over control of the Yellow River and, ultimately, the whole of China. But that will be for next time. Because, as per several requests, I'd like to take some time now to break away from the grand sweep of kings, generals, and clashing armies to sketch out, as best I can, a far smaller, more personal view of ancient China, that of an average citizen. What was life like for the average Zhou, living, toiling, and dying under the rule of this or that empire? It's a tough question, and one I'm not sure can ever be fully answered.

And this is because, well, the sources we have are completely classist. The histories of ancient China were written by the elite of society, typically for the even more elite, and as such reflect that bias by pretty much completely ignoring the lower classes unless they happen to be engaged in mass rebellion. Still, we can, perhaps, construct a rough idea of what life might have been like in ancient China, keeping in mind that, while based in what we can discern, there's going to be quite a lot of speculation involved. We discussed quite a while ago that Chinese society was divided into four official classes. In descending order, there were the scholar-officials, or shi, the landowning farmers, the nong, the artisans and craftsmen, or gong, and lastly,

the merchants and traders, or shang. We're going with the common folk here, so that by definition knocks the scholar-official elites right out of contention. Now, before going forward, it should be noted that these so-called four occupations excluded quite a few other necessary components of society. Jobs like soldiers, guards, clergy, servants, low-class labor, and even prostitutes. This is mostly for political reasons that we won't really bother with, but for now, let's go with the top tier of the non-mobility, the farmers. As a landowner, the farming class would have been highly respected by virtually all,

as both a producer of foodstuff and as a taxpayer under the imperial land tax system. They were contributors in virtually every respect of society, including wartime conscription. In the northern regions, crops would have consisted primarily of wheat and millet, and since those are hardy, tolerant plants, the farmers could be relatively independent of one another. Conversely, south of the Yangtze, the primary crop was, and of course still is, rice. Rice is a finicky, difficult little plant and requires a specific, hugely labor-intensive process to cultivate in any kind of amount. Put briefly, rice needs water, and lots of it. It needs to be submerged, basically in a swamp, something like two to

three inches of standing water. This required massive landscaping to effectively feed the growing population in the south. Turning the rough, mountainous terrain into something that can support rice farming is no easy task, and the solution would ultimately be carving out thousands upon thousands of terraces into the hills and slopes of the countryside, and then flooding each level before planting, with the water typically a lengthy walk away at best. This is something that required massive amounts of cooperation from entire communities to create and then sustain, and as such, a far greater sense of interdependence and community would arise where rice was planted

than wheat-growing areas. Moreover, the South was a totally different area than China's birthplace in the Yellow River Valley. Historian Arthur F. Wright wrote in his book Buddhism in Chinese History, When we speak of the area of the Yangtze Valley and below in the periods of disunion, we must banish from our minds the picture of a densely populated, intensively cultivated South China of recent centuries. When the aristocrats of the remnants of the Jin ruling house fled to the Nanjing area early in the 4th century,

the South contained perhaps one-tenth of the population of China. There were centers of Chinese culture and administration, but around most of these lay vast, uncolonized areas into which Chinese settlers were slow to move. End quote. On a day-to-day basis, there would have been little variation in a farmer's life. Rise with the sun, take a meal, and work the day away doing whatever might be needed until sunset. Dinner, sleep, repeat.

Education would have been virtually non-existent, save for relevant skills learned on the job. Men, women, and children would have all taken part in the daily toil of eking out a living from the soil. Special occasions would of course have feasts, meat, special seasonal foods, and liquor, but typical fare likely would have been the very crop one was growing to harvest, along with perhaps preserved vegetables or meat or eggs. Drink would have likely been boiled water or tea in one form or another, which was safer than plain water, considered medicinal, and granted an energy boost to boot. When wars came, they were, of course, terrible.

Men of the family would have probably been conscripted into service and at best might have been away from their homes for years on campaign after campaign. And that, of course, potentially seeing your family and returning to your life of toil some years down the road, was about the most conscript could hope for. Other outcomes, as we've discussed time and again, were often far worse. There was no glory or riches to be had as a conscripted peasant soldier. But that often wouldn't have been the half of it, especially if it was a peasant uprising. The actual fighting only came on the back end of a period of devastation,

crop failures, flooding, or drought. In any case, abject starvation that was enough to drive men to rob, plunder, murder, and rise up against the emissary of heaven itself who had so clearly lost the divine's favor through his own greedy sins. It would have been a life thoroughly tied to a deep understanding that you and your family's entire fate was centered on the whims of forces vastly beyond your own comprehension, much less control.

City life would have, of course, been just about as varied and different from that of a rural farmer as one might expect. Cities ranged from tiny villages far from population centers, to border fortress cities with walls and garrisons yet still under constant threat of attacks by the wild peoples who lived just beyond your reach, all the way up to the absolutely massive capital cities that existed at the heart of the Yellow River Valley, as well as an ever-expanding network beyond. The artisans and traders of such metropolises

would have likely been about as urban and worldly as was possible in the ancient world. They would frequently, especially the more profitable enterprises, deal in actual currency rather than simple barter, and serve a wide range of clientele, from fellow business people to scholar officials and petty nobility, and potentially all the way up to the halls of high government, through third-party transactions of course. The top-tier administrations could not be seen as concerned with such pedestrian affairs,

and in fact up through the Ming dynasty it was legally forbidden from government officials to make money, trade, or do anything that might tarnish their standing as more than mere mortals. Not that that ever stopped them, they just had to get creative. Further, goods from every corner of the empire, and even exotic items from the mysterious kingdoms and empires beyond even that would have been available, albeit not anything approaching affordable for all but the wealthiest merchants and craftsmen. But as amazing and interesting as life in the big city must have been, it could be, and during our current age of disunity, frequently was, a place of misery, starvation, and among

the worst depravities imaginable, inflicted by men unto men. As with the farmers in their fields, conscription would have taxed normal lives and family greatly. But given the strategic importance of cities to the armies that now raged back and forth across China for 200 years at this point, cities such as Chang'an, Luoyang, and the like would have frequently been the targets of months-long sieges, where the populace would have, if they were lucky, been reduced to eating rotten vegetables, wood bark, leather, and if they were less lucky, some historical tales suggest, each other. And that was even if the thing turned out okay for the besieged city. Should the defenders or the walls fail, then the populace was likely in for an even worse

time. Burning, pillaging, rape, wholesale slaughter, all of these would have been all too common for urbanites in an era that had seen China's population drop by half over the course of two centuries. It must have simultaneously been absolutely exhausting, and terrifying, and horrifying, on a scale that quite frankly I don't think the modern mind can even fully appreciate. The level of disunity and the horrors of such a period of civil conflict would have wrought on a society are summed up in the haunting poem written in the 450s about a battle and subsequent slaughter in and around Guangling City. Looking toward Zhenkang City, the little river flows against the current.

In front, one sees sons killing fathers, and behind, one sees younger brothers killing older brothers. End quote. Of course, a lot of this is speculative, but one thing is certain. If I were to pick a time and a place to be sent back, as a common person, I think I'd pick just about anywhere and any time other than the one we are in the middle of in this series. There are a few things like studying history to make one appreciate how well we all have it today, how far we've all come, and conversely, how many things seem to remain constant across time. Next time, the northern and southern regimes, their own power bases secure for the time being, will square off against one another

and attempt to determine which of China's two halves will reign supreme. Thank you for listening. Have you ever gazed in wonder at the Great Pyramid? Have you marvelled at the golden face of Tutankhamun? Or admired the delicate features of Queen Nefertiti? If you have, you'll probably like the History of Egypt podcast. Every week, we explore tales of this ancient culture. The history of Egypt is available wherever you get your podcasting fix. Come, let me introduce you to the world of ancient Egypt.