Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats: The Development of Medieval Chinese Cityscapes 0824819829, 9780824819828

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I P S iP p N ? m

a m m m m ':'W 0 '

Im LEX HT 169

I.C6 H46 1999

Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats The Development of Medieval Chinese Cityscapes

HENG CHYE KIANG School of Architecture Faculty of Architecture, Building and Real Estate National University of Singapore

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I PRESS HONOLULU

© 1999 SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY PRESS A ll Rights Reserved Published in North America by University of Hawai’i Press 2840 Kolowalu Street Honolulu, Hawai’i 96822 First Published in Singapore by Singapore University Press Yusof Ishak House National University o f Singapore 31 Lower Kent Ridge Road Singapore 119078

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Heng, Chye Kiang, 1958Cities of aristocrats and bureaucrats: The development o f medieval Chinese city scapes/ Heng Chye Kiang. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8248-1982-9 (alk, paper) 1. City planning - China - History. 3. Urbanization - China - History.

2. Cities and towns, Medieval - China - History. 4. China - History - T’ang dynasty, 618-907.

5. China - History - Sung dynasty, 960-1279. HT169, C6H46 1999 307.76’0951’0902 - dc21

I. Title. 99-20299 CIP

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOR ILLUSTRATIONS: Sources o f photographs and images illustrated, in addition to those mentioned in the captions, are listed below. Those figures not mentioned here were produced exclusively for this publication. M ost line drawings were redrawn to improve their quality during reproduction. Ancient Chinese Architecture 2 ,1 2 , 78 — Balazs 66 — Beijing Palace Museum 26 ,2 7 , 29, 30, 32, 54, 56, 5 7 ,5 8 ,5 9 ,6 0 ,7 6 — Freer Gallery, Washington 63, 80, 81 — Fu Xinian 3 1 ,3 3 ,3 4 ,3 5 ,3 7 ,44a — Hiraoka Takeo 17 — Jingding jiankang zhi 42 — Kaogu, no. 6 (1978) 19 — Liaoning Museum 47 — Ma Chongxin 68 — Palace Museum, Taiwan 62 — Qianlong jingcheng tu 73, 7 4 ,7 5 — Sanlitu 3 — Shanghai Museum 6 4,79 — Shilin guangji 48 — Soper 61 — Wallacker 6 9 ,7 0 ,7 1 — Shou cheng lu zhushi 4 3 ,4 4 — Suzhou, Wenmiao 1 ,2 0 ,5 0 ,5 3 ,5 5 ,7 7 — Wu Liangyong 7 ,2 2 — Xiao Mo 13,21,41 — Zhongguo kaogu lunchong 24 — Zou Zongxu 8 — Xianchun Lin’an zhi and Qiandao Lin’an zhi 3 8 ,4 0 — Zhongguo gudai ditu j i 16 Cover illustration: Detail from the Song period handscroll qingming shanghe tu, Palace Museum, Beijing.

Printed in Singapore

To my Parents

Contents

Acknowledgements List of Selected Dynasties and Rulers Dynasty Periods of Ancient China Introduction 1.

The Tang City

2.

The Transition

3.

Attempted Return To Urban Control

4.

The Song City scape

5.

The Open City

6.

A New Urban Paradigm

Selected Bibliography Western Languages Chinese and Japanese Languages Index

Acknowledgements

Writing this book has been a long protracted affair. In the process, I owe much to many people. First o f all, I am indebted to the late Professor Spiro Kostof for stimulating my interest in the history of cities and for his suggestion of Chinese medieval cities as a subject for my research at the University of California at Berkeley. I also owe much to Professor Dell Upton, who supervised my work, for his continued guidance and critical comments not only during my stay at Berkeley but also throughout my academic career in Singapore. I am grateful also to Professors James Cahill, Stephen West and David Johnson for their assistance and encouragement and for the long hours of discussion. I would also like to express my gratitude to Professor Wu Liangyong who gave me invaluable advice and support during my sojourn at the School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Beijing, and whose assistance eased my research in China greatly. I would also like to thank the late Ge Yuanqia, Guo Daiheng, Mao Qizhi, Sun Fengqi, Xu B o’an, Zhao Bingshi, Zuo Chuan, and the librarians who assisted me during my stay at Tsinghua. I must also thank the many individuals who during my fieldtrips to the various towns and cities offered help when it was most needed: Fu Xinian, and Shan Guoqiang (Beijing); Gui Zhiyuan, Huang Yuangang, and Zhao Liying (Xi’an); Li Guo’en, Xiao Chuntao, Zhong Jian (Luoyang); Chang Jiang, Wu Kongfan, Xu Boyong, and Zhou Baozhu (Kaifeng); Sun Dongjia (Hangzhou); Li Boxian (Yangzhou); Liao Zhihao, Xu Minsu, and Yu Shengfang (Suzhou); Liang Baiquan (Nanjing); and Wang Qingzheng (Shanghai). I am also grateful to Ooi Bee Leng who read the initial drafts, provided valuable comments, listened to my grouses and encouraged me. Thanks must also go to the following for their assistance: Chan Shur Haur for reproducing the line drawings, Wee Hiang Koon and Eunice Seng for preparing the index, Teo Nam Siang for laying out the pages, Aw Meng How for designing the cover and setting up the charts, Vivienne Chan for ensuring consistency of style in the footnotes and bibliography and Gan Ser Min for proof reading and overall coordination o f the manuscript. Any shortcomings and failings in this book, however, remain that of the author. Finally, the conduct of this study was made possible thanks to a generous scholarship from the National University of Singapore and a grant from the Pacific Cultural Foundation. viii

LIST OF SELECTED DYNASTIES AND RULERS Dynasty Name

Tang Period J* (618 A.D. - 907 A.D.)

Northern Song Period dbfc (960 A.D. - 1127 A.D.)

Southern Song Period (1127 A.D. - 1279 A.D.)

Emperor J .'f ' Imperial Title Name Gaozu rSjj-BLi Yuan Li Shimin Taizong Gaozong % % Li Zhi Zhongzong 17 % Li Zhe # # Li Dan # 2Ruizong t-?rWuhou "Kfe Wu Zhao ^5, I! Xuanzong Li Longji Suzong * % Li Heng ^ 7 Daizong IK* Li Yu Dezong -tt % Li Kuo Shunzong M Li Song Xianzong % irLi Chun Muzong # % Li Heng ^'ISJingzong fk.% Li Zhan Wenzong Li Ang # ^ Wuzong 5^ % Li Yan Xuanzong 4 % Li Chen Yizong Is % Li Cui ^ 'S. Xizong i$- % Li Xuan Zhaozong 03 % Li Ye

Reign Period 618-627 627 - 649 649 - 684 684 - 685 685 - 690 690 - 712 712-755 756-762 763 - 779 779-804 805 - 805 806 - 820 821 - 824 825 - 826 827 - 840 841 - 847 847 - 860 860-874 874-888 889 - 906

Taizu iliS. Taizong iv % Zhenzong %% Renzong 'f—% Yingzong % Shenzong # W Zhezong WHuizong Hi % Qinzong ik.%

Zhao Kuangyin MHJlL Zhao Guangyi Zhao Heng & ‘l2Zhao Zhen Zhao Shu Zhao Xu Zhao Xu feSfc Zhao Ji fe'f# Zhao Huan

960-975 976-997 998 -1023 1023 -1064 1064-1068 1068 -1086 1086-1101 1101-1126 1126-1127

Gaozong Si % Xiaozong # ^ Guangzong Ningzong 'f& Lizong 3§-WDuzong JjL % Gongdi -S-'fr Ruizong % Dibing 'frM

Zhao Gou M. $3 Zhao Shen Zhao Dun Zhao Kuo Zhao Yun Zhao Qi Zhao Xian M. fi Zhao Shi & R Zhao Bing & H

1127-1163 1163-1190 1190-1195 1195-1225 1225 -1265 1265 -1274 1275 - 1276 1276-1278 1278 - 1279

§

I

iH I £ a

B 11 < HH H

u H

fc W i—(

u £ ta

O

oo

Lft t Jit f t o i ? f'J [The Han li system and the Tang fang system], Toyoshi Kenkyu [The Journal of Oriental Researches] 21, no. 3, p. 271-94. 234 Miyazaki Ichisada, “Les villes en Chine a l’epoque des Han,” T’oung Pao 48, no. 4-5 (1960): p. 376-92. 65

Cities o f Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

235 Eberhard, A History of China, p. 116. 236 The feng # sacrifices at Taishan was another symbolic act that Sui Wendi conducted to reinforce the legitimacy of his regime. 237 Book of Sui, c. 56, p. 1386. Notice the similarities of these actions and the beliefs of the Legalists listeds in footnote 205. 238 Professions listed in footnote 205; see Waley, Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China, p. 170-176 for the reasons why these were seen as undesirable. 239 Paul Wheatley, Pivot of the Four Quarters (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971), p. 318-319.

66

2 The Transition

(/Three and a half centuries separated Tang Chang’an at the height o f its glory in the mid-eighth century and Song Kaifeng (then known as Bianjing ) on the eve of the Jurchen invasion in A.D. 1126.1 The Tang and the Song capitals represent two stages in the development o f the Chinese medieval city. Chang’an, as we have seen, was a city built from scratch, tailored to the needs o f a new dynasty. On the other hand, Kaifeng, already a prosperous city when Sui Wendi visited it in 595 on his way back from Taishan, grew into an important entrepot and was the capital o f a series of short-lived dynasties before it became the foremost city of the Northern Song. These two capital cities, each with its own urban structure and cityscape, reflected the respective periods that produced them, one rooted in a strong aristocratic power with a highly hierarchical social structure, the other, a pluralistic, mercantile society managed by pragmatic professional bureaucrats. The emergence o f this new urban paradigm is one o f the most dramatic and important changes in Chinese urban history. Any inhabitant of early Tang Chang’an or Luoyang transposed to the Song capital would have found an urban environment vastly different from his own. Instead of the semi-autonomous walled “urban villages” separated by wide expanses of transitory space, he would have seen a dense city criss-crossed by ad hoc commercial streets S filled with a variety of urban activities a little like the West Market of Chang’an. We are fortunate to have a description o f the city life and festivities during the last days of the Northern Song capital, Kaifeng, just before its fall to the Jin Jurchens on 9 January 1127.2 The author, Meng Yuanlao , had come to the capital with his father in the year 1103. He was then about fifteen years old. They were probably members of an influential clan, headed by Meng Changling Ji t§ ^ , a high official in the Board o f Public Works in Kaifeng. While the author was growing up as a young adult in the capital, he acquainted himself quickly with the city. Although we do not know what he did for a living, his station and money allowed him to frequent the urban commercial and entertainment facilities and to know them intim ately After the fall of Kaifeng in 1127, he migrated south to Hangzhou, the “temporary” capital of Southern Song, where he finally wrote his memoir, Dongjing menghua lu, for the sake o f posterity.3 In one o f his recollections, M eng wrote about a busy entertainment and 67

Cities o f Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

commercial district immediately southeast o f the Palace City where the major eastwest thoroughfare took its name, Panlou jie /IMiMif (Pan’s Tower Street), from a prominent wineshop located along it: Departing eastward from the Gate o f Displayed Virtue (Xuandemen s . #■ H ), one comes to the East Corner Tower — that is the southeastern corner o f the Imperial Wall. Departing southward from Crossroads Street (Shizi jie ) is the location o f the ginger guild. North into Highhead Street (Gaotou jie ft ), from the gauze silk guild ( t y' f f ) to the Eastern Splendor Gate Street (Donghuamen jie & H $ r ), to the Gate o f Morning Radiance (Chenhui men J W 1 ), Temple of Precious Scriptures (Baolugong S H '#’ ) and straight up to the Old Suanzao Gate (Jiusuanzao men ) is where the open displays and stalls are most rollicking and bustling. During the Xuanhe J l fa reign period, the double wall and its sandwiched path was widened. Going eastward, one comes to P an’s Tower Street, the southern portion of the street being called A ccip iter Inn M J% ; here they allow only travelling merchants who trade in hawks and falcons. All the other shops and stores are fo r true gems, bolts o f silk, and fragrant herbs. To the south runs an alley, called Jieshen ^ k , which is also the trading location o f gold, silver and colored silk. The houses are imposing and stately, and the gatefronts wide and broad, awesome to look at. Every transaction involves thousands and tens o f thousands [o f cash 74 and it truly startles one to see or hear it. To the east and on the northern side o f the street is the wine shop o f Pan Tower, and below it a market gathers every day from the fifth watch (3-5 a.m.), where they buy and sell clothes, calligraphy and paintings, precious baubles, rhinoceros horn and jade. When it comes level light o f dawn, then such items as sheep’s head, tripe and lung, red and white kidneys, udders, tripe, quails, rabbits, doves, wild game, crabs, and clams have disappeared. Then come to market the various handy men to buy and sell miscellaneous small items that are used in provisions. After mealtime, then drink and food, like honey-crisp, jujube cakes, sticky rice balls deng paste filling, fragrant-sugared fruit, and honey-simmered sculpted figurines come on the market. Toward evening, they sell helou H and face masks, caps and combs, collars and stomachers, precious trifles, household implements, and the like.5 The Xu family’s Calabash Mutton Stew Shop, another popular eating place in the capital was located farther east. South of the street was a large entertainment district formed by several wazi ox “pleasure precincts” having among them more than fifty theaters, large and small. The bigger ones could accommodate several thousand spectators.6 Commercial activities flourished in these precincts too. Fortune tellers and hawkers of herbs, food and drink, old clothes, and paper cuts displayed their wares there. 68

The Transition

Kaifeng, however, had not always been the busy city that it was between the tenth and twelfth centuries, filled with shoplined streets, and active with c o m m p.rr.ial activities throughout the day and night. During the Tang period (618-906), the city was more stringently regulated and was divided into walled wards that were opened only during specific hours of the day. Trading activities were restricted, in both time and space, to the East and West markets. The urban system and structure of Tang Kaifeng resembled more closely those of the contemporary capitals, Chang’an and Luoyang, than those o f the city that it had become during the Song period. During the long period that separated mid-Tang Chang’an and late Northern Song Kaifeng, a number o f significant changes — the appearance of commercial activities ^ outside the markets, the disregard o f curfew, and the tearing down of ward walls — took place. All these helped to erode the Tang urban structure and to give birth to a new one in which the open commercial street played an important role .7 However the transition from the one to the other was a long and often non linear process influenced by many factors.

LATE TANG PERIOD Late Tang Chang’an Order in Chang’an was disrupted when the An Lushan-Shi Siming rebellion (755 to 763) severely shook the stability of the Tang dynasty. China was then at its peak of cultural brilliance and enjoying a period of affluence under Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712-56). The last dozen years o f his reign were, however, marred by increasing troubles at home and abroad. During the first thirty years of his rule (712-41), Tang China was at its zenith .8 Its influence stretched from the Pacific coast in the east to the Amu-Darya basin in the far west. Political reforms and an able administration brought stability, prosperity, and population growth. One reform that had important consequences was the creation o f senior frontier commands for the defense o f the northern and eastern borders of the empire. With the decline of the militia (jubing ) system, more commands were created. Each was led by a military governor (jiedu shi T- fLML). Although initially his responsibilities were mainly military, he was later given full control of one or several prefectures and became de facto “governor with military responsibilities” .9 One such military governor, An Lushan, controlled three out of the ten military commands, and was a protege of Xuanzong’s favorite concubine. He quickly grew in pow er and am bition w h ile X uanzong withdrew more and more from administration and left the court to his officials. In 755, An Lushan rose in rebellion with an army o f 150,000 men, seized the capital of Luoyang in 756, and declared himself Emperor.10 When he marched north towards Chang’an the same year, the capital was abandoned to the rebel forces and only recaptured a year later with the help of General Guo Ziyi. The capital once again suffered destruction when the Tibetan Tufans stormed and torched the city in 763. In Chang’an, as in other cities, the An Lushan rebellion and the subsequent unrest left behind an impotent central 69

-

Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

government besieged by problems more pressing than that of urban control. Although the rebellion was quelled, the once all-powerful central government had to tolerate the nearly independent status of many provinces under the control o f powerful military governors. They had large private armies and almost full authority over the prefectures in their province. Taxes collected from the prefectures intended for the central government were kept instead for their own use. Administratively, as Ikeda On remarked, “the mid-Tang is a most important watershed in the Chinese administrative history, as the end o f an attempt, universal down to this time, to impose uniform administrative practices throughout the empire.” 11 The equal land distribution system (juntian) was given up together with the tax system based on it. A new system, the liangshuifa , or the two-tax system was implemented in its place in 780. Tax was paid in either of two collections per year, hence its name. Its principal feature, however, was the replacement o f the old system based on the male adult population by one based on a more equitable assessment on property and cultivated land. These paved the way for the concentration of large land holdings in the hands of the rich and powerful in the subsequent period.12 After 755, able rulers such as Xianzong % (r. 806-820) tried to rebuild the empire and re-establish central control but such efforts ceased when he was murdered.13 What followed was a period of decline in which the court was tom apart by striving factions of eunuchs and officials (courtiers). Military commands temporarily brought under control by Xianzong declared independence once again. The final death knell was sounded by the peasant uprisings of 874-884 led by Huang Chao "k H .14 Unrest first started in Henan H r£j . Before the rebels captured Luoyang in 880 they had already seized most o f South China. Chang’an fell to Huang Chao the same year and was only recaptured by imperial forces in 883. Although the rebellion ended with the defeat and the suicide of Huang Chao in 884, it had thrown the empire into disarray and weakened the central authority irremediably. After the rebellion, the Tang dynasty, embroiled in wars among contending commands, survived only in name. The gradual breakdown of the stringent urban system in Chang’an was obvious immediately after the turmoil of the mid eighth century. Tang Huiyao, a collection of important documents of the Tang period compiled during the Northern Song, has a series of entries after the disruption that show the cracks in the early Tang urban order. Edicts were issued during the reign periods o f Zhide S .% (756-758) and Changqing (821 to 824) to prohibit people from opening doors directly to the avenues. Only officials above the third grade, and sanjue houses, were excepted.15 A sim ilar order was given in 831 after the Left and Right Patrol Inspectors memorialized to the emperor about the erosion of the ward system. We can deduce that there were numerous instances of commoners piercing private gates in ward walls for direct access to the avenues, at least numerous enough to warrant the decrees. The fact that one o f these edicts was issued shortly after the recapture of Chang’an only supports the speculation that urban order, already unstable, was upset during the time when the capital was abandoned to the rebels. The root of the problem was already apparent in 740 when the President of the tribunal of censors,

70

The Transition

Zhang Yi , requested restoring order to those streets that had been encroached upon by walls and structures.16 During the periods of turbulence when official enforcement was absent, and the pillage and torching of properties were common, the situation could only have gotten worse. The Zhide (756-758) period edict, issued shortly after Chang’an was recaptured, was most likely ineffective as another decree was promulgated in 767. Meanwhile, urban order further deteriorated. The new imperial order once again forbade in all wards and markets the encroachment on public ways, the dismantling of walls, and the extension of primary structures [into the public ways]; and threatened offenders with severe punishment and the demolition o f their extensions.17 A further decree issued six years later, in 773, hinted at the sorry state of the ward and market gates, calling for their repair.18 The integrity of the ward system must have been further compromised when Emperor Dezong i t was forced to flee the capital temporarily during an uprising in 783 returning only in mid-784. The rebellion was finally defeated in 786.19 Another edict was issued two years later, in 788, ordering the use of tax money to repair damaged walls .20 However, all these measures were o f no avail, or if they were effective, the results did not last long. The Changqing period (821-824) edict was shortly followed by two memorials and a decree in 831 that show how critical the situation had become. The first memorial, mentioned earlier, complained that commoners opened gates in the walls, defied curfew hours and made it difficult for the guards to apprehend criminals.21 The second memorial by the Left Patrol Inspector further complained that besides official guard posts, structures belonging to commoners and officials were erected in the middle of the avenues. These, they claimed, complicated the maintenance o f public order. An edict calling for their removal within three months was issued. When the Japanese monk Ennin (793-864) and the Arab traveler Ebn Wahab visited Tang Chang’an during the mid-ninth century, the capital was undergoing the initial signs of an important urban transformation. The rigidly zoned city made up of strictly regulated walled wards was loosening up. Businesses prospered in the wards close to markets, palaces or major routes. Restaurants and taverns opened late into the night. Chongren fang , located at the junction of two major arteries, became the busiest ward in the city where bustling commercial activities were carried out day and night and lamps burned without pause .22 Its strategic location adjacent to the Imperial City and northwest of the East Market also made it the favorite ward of residence for those provincials called to court. Elsewhere in the city, small scale commerce appeared in many wards. Businesses, such as pastry shops, carpet ateliers, and musical instrument ateliers were mentioned in at least seven wards in Chang’an in a later study of the two capitals.23 For instance, in Chongren fang was a shop specializing in the making of musical instruments. West o f the East Market in Pingkang fang was a shop selling jiangguo , probably fruits covered with ginger glaze. In Xuanyang fang s . Pa % , there was a boutique that sold printed silk. Changxing fang had a shop selling pasta with 71

Cities o f Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

meat fillings, while south of the market in Xuanping fang J l was a shop selling oil. Shengping fang also had a pastry shop selling central asian cakes and biscuits. East of the West Market in Yanshou fang was a jewelry shop; the northern side of this ward which fronted the main avenue leading to Jinguangmen jie , was also one o f the busiest section in the city. Hotels and inns also appeared in many wards adjacent to the major thoroughfares.24 The majority were found close to the East Market. Pingkang fang, adjacent to the East Market was well known for having three alleys in which women of pleasure congregated. Luoyang also experienced the same fate; businesses appeared within the residential wards beyond the perimeters of the walled markets. Within and without the markets, businesses were conducted late into the night, defying all sanctions. Wards located close to markets and palaces were especially successful in attracting businesses. Night life in these wards thrived. Night markets appeared in Xuanping fang, Shengping fang and Chongren fang. This attracted the attention of the central authorities and an imperial decree in 840 meekly advise a stop to night markets within the capital.25 The order was probably ineffective. When the vice prefect, Wang Shi i K came upon an all-night musical performance at a local shrine in the middle of the street in the wee hours one morning, not only did he fail to act against it, he was actually offered the cup by the shaman (wu 3L) officiating at the celebration.26 Other signs of the erosion o f the severe ward system were also apparent. These were generally known as qinjie or literally “encroaching the street”. Qinjie consisted of piercing private doors in the ward walls, tearing down sections of it, and at times building structures beyond the street limits obstructing public roadways. Some people were even brazen enough to build structures on public avenues beyond the confines of the wards. In 849, for instance, the Right Patrol Inspector complained in a memorial to the emperor that the military commander Wei Rang i t openly defied orders and erected a structure of nine bays west o f the southwestern guard post of Huaizhen fang ,27 This was, however, the last record o f official complaint against a long series of “street encroachments” during the Tang dynasty. The Tang authorities had either given up trying to stop a widespread phenomenon or were too preoccupied by more pressing issues to deal with the problem of urban order. Popular uprisings had already started in the southern regions of Zhedong M & and Guilin #- after 859 and the devastating Huang Chao rebellion, as we have seen, followed shortly after. Judging by the frequency of urban intervention from the imperial authorities, the greatest efforts were made to regain control of an urban system in the midst of change between the period immediately after the An Lushan rebellion and the early ninth century. This corresponds to the “period of apparent recovery” from 755-820 when the imperial court was trying to regain central authority.28 Enforcement of official mandates, however, was problematic; the success of such restrictive measures was at best short-lived. After the mid ninth century, the central authority was too weak and preoccupied with more pressing problems than urban matters. This was

72

The Transition

especially so after popular unrest began in 860 and culminated in the disastrous Huang Chao rebellion that crippled the regime. The empire was divided into powerful fanzhen (commanderies) that fought for the control of the throne. The Tang dynasty officially ended when the last boy emperor was deposed by Zhu Wen , who pronounced himself emperor of the Later Liang Js dynasty in 907. All this chaos before the final collapse of the empire left the cities even more disordered. The Huang Chao rebellion and subsequent turmoil destroyed many important cities. Chang’an, Luoyang, and Yangzhou, were torched and were only a shadow of their past during the Five Dynasty period. Wei Zhuang 4 & wrote a poignant and vivid description o f Chang’an after the anti-aristocratic Huang Chao and his rebels slaughtered the gentry and torched the capital: Chang’an lies in mournful stillness: what does it now contain? — Ruined markets and desolate streets, in which ears o f wheat are sprouting. Fuel-gatherers have hacked down every flowering plant in the Apricot Gardens, Builders o f barricades have destroyed the willows along the Imperial Canal. All the gaily-coloured chariots with their ornamented wheels are scattered and gone, O f the stately mansions with their vermilion gates less than half remain. The Hanyuan Hall is the haunt o f foxes and hares, The approach to the Flower-calyx Belvedere is a mass o f brambles and thorns. All the pomp and magnificence o f the olden days are buried and passed away; Only a dreary waste meets the eye; the old fam iliar objects are no more. The Inner Treasury is burnt down, its tapestries and embroideries a heap o f ashes; All along the Street o f Heaven one treads on the bones o f State officials.29

Late Tang Yangzhou While the capital was being transformed, similar developments were taking place during the second half of the Tang period in many cities. This was especially obvious in cities o f the increasingly prosperous lower Yangzi region. Distant from the weakened central authority, Kaifeng, Suzhou, and particularly Yangzhou — the most prosperous port city then — had begun to defy the stringent constraints of enclosed wards by the first quarter of the ninth century, if not earlier. Yangzhou, the largest city after Chang’an and Luoyang, was particularly important in this aspect and critical in the emergence o f a new urban paradigm during the Tang-Song transition.30 Located along the northern bank o f the Yangzi River, the fate of Yangzhou was closely linked to the Grand Canal and the waterways. The city first came into prominence during the Sui period, under Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty.31 Earlier in 587, his father, in a campaign to defeat the Chen empire, had revived Hangou fl5 , a canal that linked the region of Shanyang iliPs (modern Huai’an ?#-3r in Jiangsu frjfr Province) to the Yangzi River. This canal was first dug around 486 B.C. by King Fucha of Wu A S . A M (496-73 B.C.) for a military expedition. At that time,

73

Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

the Yangzi was much wider than it was during the Sui and subsequent periods. Its northern bank reached almost to the foot of Shugang Jjj R] where the king built his bastion. Over the course of the following centuries, silt was deposited along the north bank, causing the River to retreat south creating a plain at the foot of the hillock. After the Han period, there was no incentive to maintain the canal which linked the relatively peaceful south to the warring states in the north and the canal slowly fell into disrepair. In 605, Yangdi renewed his father’s efforts, dredging and widening the canal to forty paces, adding imperial avenues along its banks, and lining them with willows. Then came the project that revolutionized China’s transportation network. Between 605 and 610, the emperor, through massive corvee labor, caused the opening of the Grand Canal. This was made up of three sections, the first — known as Tongji Canal i t /°T linked the Luo River to the Yellow River, then to the Huai River (this stretch was also known as the Bian River >t H ) and farther to Hangou which led to the Yangzi River. The second section, known as the Yongji Canal ;5T , went north to Zhoujun (modern day Beijing); the third, also known as the Jiangnan (South of the River) Canal & H linked the Yangzi to Qiantang River 4% % >3- at Hangzhou. Together, these canals formed an extensive network of waterways that connected the Yangzi, the Huai, and the Yellow river systems to one another. Goods could now be transported from Hangzhou in the south to the Gulf of Bo Hai in the north through canals. The Grand Canal became the major transportation artery of China linking the economic centers of the south to the political centers of the north.32 The strategic position of Yangzhou at the junction of the Yangzi River and the Grand Canal contributed much to the prosperity of the city during the succeeding Tang period (Fig. 23). Sui and early Tang Yangzhou was still confined to the fortification crouched atop Shugang, the ridge north of the modern-day city. At twenty to thirty meters high, it overlooked the plain to its south. This site was repeatedly used by previous regimes and the Sui and Tang rulers were content to adopt the extant fortified city.33 The fiveto-ten-meter high ramparts were strengthened and faced with bricks .34 The city was further protected by a moat. Though irregular in shape, the city was served by two intersecting main arteries that led to four cardinal gates (Fig. 24). As usual, the south gate — the only gate with three passages — was the most spectacular. Although these main streets were about ten meters wide, the junction was around twenty-two meters wide .35 Located in the center of the city, it probably also served as a public square. Northeast o f the intersection was the administrative center which housed the prefectural offices of the Governor General of Yangzhou, and later, the bureau for the Regional Commander of Huainan i$], and at the same time, the prefectural yamen 11 . Archaeologists believe that the southwestern comer of the city was the location of a palace built by Emperor Sui Yangdi when Yangzhou was his favorite resort.36 Towers were erected at the northwestern and northeastern corners for further protection.

74

The Transition

Fig. 23. Site of Tang Yangzhou.

Because Yangzhou was the foremost port in a vast hinterland rich in agricultural produce and minerals, it quickly grew in importance .37 After the Han period, the economic center o f China had shifted gradually from the north to the south, especially to the Lower Yangzi region. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the long period o f wars among the feuding kingdoms had not only devastated the Northern Central Plains but had also led to massive migrations to the relatively stable south. Thanks to the fertile and well irrigated land, Jiangnan (South of the Yangzi River) became the rice bowl of China. The canal dug to tap the economic resources of the south was a boost to the city, making it the premier trading center in the country. All goods from the south and from overseas intended for Chang’an had to pass through Yangzhou.38 The city became the nation’s premier emporium, famous

75

Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

Fig. 24. Schematic reconstruction of Tang Yangzhou.

for the trading of salt, tea, gems, wood, brocade, herbs, and industrial products such as copper wares (especially mirrors), silk products, and ship building. Being an important entrepot, its financial and shipping services were also highly developed. Yangzhou also had a substantial population of foreign traders.39 76

The Transition

As Yangzhou’s economy expanded, so did its population. Sui Yangzhou had an estimate o f around 10,000 households. By 627, the number of households had risen to around 23,199 with about 94,347 inhabitants. This increased dramatically during the next 100 years to 77,150 households or 467,857 inhabitants in 743 .40 As the population grew, the city extended beyond the walls o f the fortified zicheng or yacheng % 3$, (administrative city) to the plain south o f the hill. This area is well served by Guanhe f t (Official Canal), a section of the Grand Canal that branches north from the Yangzi River. Unlike the northern region which was ravaged by the An Lushan rebellion, the southern cities and Yangzhou escaped the upheaval almost unscathed. If anything, members of the great families and rich merchants who migrated south to escape the catastrophe of the capital regions added to the prosperity of the Yangzi and Huai river region. After the rebellion, the court at Chang’an and Luoyang became even more dependent on south China for its resources. The emperor could only depend on four regions for the survival of the empire since the rest of the military governors were out of his control. The lower Yangzi valley and Huai valley region became the main source o f revenue. Yangzhou, located along the lifeline and the biggest city after the capitals, profited from the situation. In 763, Liu Yan $ , the Transportation Commissioner reformed grain transportation and made Yangzhou a major center of redistribution.41 In order to shorten waiting time for the optimal water level in the canal, rice from the south was routed to Yangzhou to be consolidated, and then shipped north. After the An Lushan upheaval, the quantity of grains shipped through Yangzhou was around four hundred thousand shi.41 Taxes from two provinces, Guangzhou t and Guizhou ti^'l , were also sent to Yangzhou.43 With the expanding economy and population, a wall was finally built around the settlements south o f zicheng. The exact date of its construction is uncertain, although mention was made o f its construction (or repair) in 783 in preparation for a military campaign.44 This new circuit of walls was further protected by a moat. The new annex, known as luocheng W , was the residential and business sector of the city. Roughly rectangular in shape, it was provided with four gates on each of the east, west, and south walls. The north wall had two gates, one o f which was the south gate of the zicheng. The annex, measuring 4200 by 3120 meters, was almost five times larger than the administrative city.45 Within the luocheng $ 4$,, or dacheng A ik (big city) as it was sometimes called, four main lateral E-W avenues spaced about 1000 m apart linked the east and west gates. The northernmost of these avenue was the most important and busiest. It was straddled by the only pair o f gates with three passages. It ran parallel to the canal Hangou and probably extended, like the canal, beyond the eastern wall. Measuring ten meters across, it was also tw ice as w ide as the southernmost avenue .46 Longitudinally, there were at least three main N-S avenues; the middle one ran obliquely along the canal, Guanhe.47 The avenue to its east led northwards along another secondary canal, Baozhanghe ffi-f^-ft , to meet the major N-S avenue o f the zicheng. Unlike Guanhe, this canal, spanned by nine bridges, was not navigable.

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Once again, as in Chang’an and Luoyang, these avenues sectioned up the city into blocks of about 600 by 1000 meters, although the existence of the oblique avenues and major waterways complicated the neat division. Administratively, Guanhe became the line of division for the two counties in charge of the city. Wards west and north of the canal came under the jurisdiction of Jiangdu county while those east and south of the waterway were administered by Jiangyang county.48 Although, a priori, the plan of the city looks regular, the situation within the city and beyond its walls was not as clear cut as it seemed to be. Around this time, during the Zhenyuan reign $ tL (785-805), street encroachment was also taking place in the city .49 Officials, artisans, and merchants were building structures that encroached on the public roadway. Unlike the capitals, however, the city was not neatly confined to the area within the walls. Faubourg-like settlements and temples gathered outside the gates, especially to the east. Inscriptions on tombstones unearthed in recent years show several fang (wards) outside the major east gate. Archaeological evidence and contemporary writings also confirmed the existence of prominent temples beyond the city walls. Outside the main west gate is Darning Temple k aJ$ ^ with its pagoda o f nine tiers.50 Across the city, the prominent Chanzhi Temple rF was located about three li east of city, on a high ground known for good burial sites .51 To its south was the Bright Moon Bridge , otherwise also known as Chanzhi Bridge # Hf #f- .52 Between the major east gate of luocheng and the bridge were the wards, Daohua fang and Xiange fang . Still further east, before arriving at Shanguang Temple was another ward, Linwan fang i®'/(' ,53 The faubourg outside the east gate must have been very busy if we are to judge by literary evidence. In 838, before Ennin entered the city through “the water gate o f the eastern outer wall”, he waited at the Chanzhi Bridge where he witnessed the hustle and bustle of the canal, noting in his diary that “the river was full of large boats, boats laden with reeds, and small boats, too numerous to be counted.”54 The party he was traveling with had some forty boats, itself joined together and pulled along by buffaloes or sometimes by trackers along the shore .55 The canal was not only busy during the day but also equally active at night. Earlier, on his way from Rugaozhen to Yangzhou, Ennin noted that as they started out again in the middle of the night, “boats of the salt bureau laden with salt, with three or four, or again, four or five boats bound side by side and in line, followed one after the other without a break for several tens of li.”56 The poem “Zongyou Huainan" (Touring South of Huai [River]) probably written around the same period by Zhang Hu (792-852), describes a busy street market that led all the way to the Bright Moon Bridge. The ten-li long street links markets to market, On Bright Moon Bridge, I look at “spirits and sylphs ” A man ought to die in Yangzhou, where The graveyards are fine at the side o f “Zen Wisdom” hill.51

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In this descriptive poem, Zhang Hu, enticed by the beauty and splendor of Yangzhou, wrote about his surroundings — the Bright Moon Bridge, the Chanzhi Hill, the ten-Zi long market street, and Yangzhou whose beauty and splendour maHp. it a place befitting to die in .58 The only road that ran along the canal flowing under the Bright Moon Bridge, as we have seen earlier, was the ten-meter wide primary EW avenue. And while ten-/i during the Tang period is equivalent to about 4.43 km, the width of intramural Yangzhou was only 3.12 km .59 Therefore part of the busy market street must have extended beyond the city gates. As we know from Ennin, the Bright Moon Bridge was approximately three li, i.e., about 1.33 km from the city, or around about 4.45 km from the western wall. If the market street started within the confines of the western wall, it would have stretched all the way to the site o f the bridge. If we were to use the longer measure for the Tang li, the market street would be even longer, going way beyond the west gate or way past the Bright Moon Bridge.60 The fact that there were faubourgs outside the city gates of Yangzhou during the late Tang is significant since it clearly shows that not only did residential quarters proliferated beyond the city limits, but so did commercial activities. As we have seen earlier in the case o f the Tang capitals, urban residential quarters were closely supervised wards confined within city walls. Although not all cities and towns during the Tang period kept their populations within their ramparts, market activities in general were more controlled. Urban commercial activities were strictly regulated within stipulated limits under the jurisdiction o f the city authorities. If there were any markets beyond the walls they were usually in the form of xushi or periodic rural markets held at a considerable distance from the urban centers. Yangzhou’s suburban expansion was probably one of the first few instances during the Tang period o f a phenomenon that became widespread during the Song administration. However the primary East-West artery was not the only busy street in the city. The oblique North-South avenue along Guanhe was probably just as active. Along a section of about three kilometers, there were at least nine bridges spaced an average of 350 m apart spanning the canal. Considering the width of the canal — at least thirty meters — and the necessity to ensure that even big boats shipping grain could use this canal, the construction o f these bridges must have been a significant burden.61 One can only speculate then that the street along its east bank must have been commercially very active to warrant the effort and expense of such important civil works. This speculation is corroborated by archaeological findings of massive remains of building materials along the banks o f the canal and especially along the avenue on the east bank. Here, remnants of Tang brick wells, house foundations, and building material abound.62 Indeed, this canal, which was initially used to ship grain, was later used exclusively as a market canal since accumulated silt rendered the canal less navigable to the large barges. In a memorial to the court in 826, the Commissioner of Iron and Salt, Wang Bo i # (759-830) complained that this intramural section of the canal being too shallow, hampered traffic, and delayed shipments.63 He was allowed to dig

79

Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

a new section that ran outside the city along the south and east walls .64 This new section, 19 li long, diverted grain shipping boats before the south gate and led them to rejoin the canal outside the east water gate. In so doing, it freed the intramural Guanhe of heavy traffic and rendered it exclusively into a market canal. The market canal and the street along it probably functioned very much as some canals still do in present day Suzhou (Fig. 25). Boats, large and small, laden with produce, pulled up along the banks and especially near bridges selling their goods. Stores and stands lined the sidewalks and the banks. Others congregated around bridgeheads, peddling their goods, while street-front shops, restaurants, and taverns catered to the whims and fancies of passersby. Although painted much later toward the end of the Northern Song, Going up the River during Qingming Festival probably portrayed a scene of a busy canal not very different from that of Guanhe in late Tang Yangzhou (Fig. 26). Commercial activities were no longer confined to well demarcated markets occupying spatially an entire allocated area as was the case in early Tang Yangzhou. Instead they were conducted along canals and streets, stretched linearly, and fluctuated in intensity depending on their proximity to bridges and junctions. Location, although already important in the earlier form of markets, became even more so. Walled boundaries, critical to the ward system, lost their significance since the bustling market street became a connector. Shops and houses, instead of walls, were strung together along the street or canal front. In fact, by late Tang, the walls of wards

Fig. 25. Market activities along a canal in modem Suzhou.

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The Transition

Fig. 26. A section of a canal lined with shops (detail of Qingming shanghe tu)

along both the market streets by the canals were gone. In his poem “Song shuke you weiyang ,” i'A Sj % (Accompanying Guest from Shu [Sichuan] on the tour of Weiyang [Yangzhou]), Du Xunhe J i (846-904) sang of bridges, and canals lined by willows and flanked by decorated buildings (and not ward walls ).65 Along the canal the cityscape must have looked like what Ennin saw in at a place called Rugaozhen , east of Yangzhou, where “along the north shore of the dug canal stretched stores and houses,” and further along, “the waterway was lined on both sides with rich and noble houses quite without a break.”66 Street encroachment, which was the constant subject of repression, at the capital, had triumphed in Yangzhou. It is doubtful that the luocheng which was probably built only in 783 for the purpose of defense, ever had a well-managed ward system as in Chang’an and Luoyang. More likely, the city was already in the middle of important urban changes when the walls were built. Not only did businesses flourish outside the once-designated market wards, they were also conducted beyond the curfew hours into the night. The poet Du Mu (803-852) gave an evocative description o f Yangzhou at sunset in one o f his writings:67 Yangzhou is a place o f beauty. W henever the double city approaches dusk, above entertainm ent halls are usually crim son gauze lamps, in tens o f thousands, brightly arranged in the sky. The nine-li and 30 bu (paces) street, in which thronged pearls and jade, looked like a fa iry land in the distance. ”68 Here, in contrast to early Tang Chang’an, where nightfall meant empty streets patrolled by police, night life was active. Night markets thrived. The four-kilometerlong market street was lined with elegant multistoried buildings, brightly lit and

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Cities o f Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

crowded with city folks .69 Many poems written during this period portrayed the new developments in Yangzhou’s city life. Two lines from Wang Jian’s (ca. 768-830) poem “Yekan Yangzhou shi” (Watching the Market o f Yangzhou at Night) depicts a scene akin to the evocative description above: From night markets, lamps by thousands lit the azure clouds, Upon lofty towers, red sleeved [ladies] and guests throng.10 Yet another poem by Li Shen (772-846), who was once the Regional Commander of Huainan, entitled “5m Yangzhou” (Lodging Overnight at Yangzhou) had a couplet that hinted at the active night markets around the bridges and the busy canals: A t night, bridge lights merge with the Milky Way, In the Water city, boat masts draw near the Big D ipper and the Altair. Yangzhou was not unique; similar developments were happening in other cities too. During the Tang dynasty, Kaifeng, located along the Grand Canal which brought supplies from the south to the capitals of Chang’an and Luoyang, was quickly becoming one o f the most important commercial nodes. Spurred by the dramatic increase in trade, the old strict urban structure was also breaking down. Wang Jian wrote that this busy city had markets around water gates and bridges patronized by drinkers throughout the night .71 Farther south, Suzhou, too, was a busy city with bustling night markets that attracted the attention of Bai Juyi who described it as “more populous than Yangzhou” with “wards more active than half of Chang’an”, and of Du Xunhe who left us descriptive lines such as “Night market sells lotus roots, spring boats ship damask robes .”72 In another couplet from the poem “Sending off friends on a tour of Wuyue”, he wrote of the sights in the region of Suzhou and Hangzhou: By the bridges, lights from night markets gleam, Outside the temples, boats rest in the spring wind.13 Here, once again, he showed us that the region of Suzhou and Hangzhou already had the familiar sights of night markets along water ways and at bridges. Hangzhou too w as a busy city w h ere in the words o f yet another contem porary “lines of ship masts stretched 20 li long and had thirty thousand shops” .74 The seed for the flowering of a new urban form was already planted in the capital cities and especially in the urban centers o f the prosperous Lower Yangzi region during the second half of the Tang period. The An Lushan rebellion that weakened the control o f the central government irremediably, together with the growth of trade, led to the appearance of commercial activities to appear, at first discreetly, and later on a larger scale within the wards in the capitals. Private efforts by commoners and 82

The Transition

officials alike compromised, little by little, the integrity of the wards walls. Farther from the capital, growing trade, an expanding economy, and the lack of official intervention allowed even more radical urban changes to take place, laying the foundation for a new kind o f urban form.

THE FIVE DYNASTIES PERIOD The interregnum of half a century that separated the fall of the Tang dynasty and the foundation of the Northern Song dynasty was a crucial transition period for the development of the Chinese city. Although important urban changes were already taking place during the later half of the Tang period and were eventually tolerated, officially, qinjie — the occupation of and encroaching on government roadways — was still illegal. The urban transformations during the Five Dynasties period, especially in the cities in the north, must be seen against the historical backdrop o f the Huang Chao rebellion and the resulting unrest which devastated the cities and decimated much o f the gentry. Between the fall o f Tang in 907 and the subsequent founding of the Song in 961, a series of five dynasties — Later Liang Js ^ , Later Tang , Later Jin % , Later Han 'T , but only after the Yuan Period. 2 The date on the Western calendar was computed by James Hargett in “A Chronology of the Reigns and Reign-Periods of the Song Dynasty (960-1279),” Bulletin ofSung-Yuan Studies, no. 19 (1987): p. 26-34. 3 For information regarding Meng Yuanlao, see Stephen West, “The Interpretation of a Dream,” T’oung Pao 71 (1985): p. 63-108; See also Kong Xianyi , “Meng Yuanlao qi ren” [Regarding the Person of Meng Yuanlao], in Lishi yanjiu 90

The Transition

4

5

6

7

8

9 10

11 12 13 14

15

16

, no. 4 (1980): p. 143-8. The monetary unit was omitted in the text but is assumed to be the wen ( X .) or a copper coin often translated as cash. The other monetary unit commonly used for large transactions was the guan ( IT ) or a string of theoretically one thousand coins. Meng Yuanlao, Dongjing menghua lu if.7^*4'^ r 7k [Record of a Dream of Splendor in the Eastern Capital], preface dated 1147, p. 15. (Beijing: Commercial Press, 1982). (Henceforth abbreviated as DJMHL). In this edition, DJMHL is bound with four other works (Henceforth abbreviated as W4). This translation is based largely on that of the passage found in Wilt Idema and Stephen West, Chinese Theater 1100-1450: A Source Book (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, 1982), p. 14-15. The Daoist templeTemple of Precious Scriptures-was built in 1115 by Emperor Huizong who was a devout Daoist. Uncertain about the meaning of helou # . Deng Zhicheng ^ iA , Dongjing menghualu zhu & ^ ^ ^ >£ [Record of a Dream of Splendor in the Eastern Capital: Annotated] (Beijing: Commercial Press, 1959), p. 67. (Henceforth abbreviated as MHLZ). For the gradual erosion of the Tang ward system, see Kato Shigeshi, “Sodai ni okeru toshi no hattatsu ni tsuite” [The Development of Cities during the Sung Period], in Shina kei zaishi kosho [Studies in Chinese Economic History] (Tokyo, 1952-1953), p. 93-140; Kita Tomou , “Sodai no toshi kenkyu o megura sho mondai” f ) and Yichenglou fiAfcHc, hotels, numerous drugstores, and peddlers of all sorts, also lined the avenue. Along it was also found the urn market where public executions were conducted, and large popular entertainment precincts or wazi & ^ . So were the houses o f the common folks and the vast mansions o f the rich and powerful. The prime minister Cai Jing, for example, had a residence just outside Liang Gate. Its eastern counterpart, the second commercial artery, parted in the opposite direction, heading east from Xuandemen square to the Old Cao Gate (Jiucaomen ® f I'] ) and then to the N ew Cao Gate (Xincaomen M t H ) and beyond. Another important commercial street led northwards, skirting the east wall of the Imperial City, passed the Old Suanzao Gate (Jiusuanzaomen '0 §£#11 ) and later on through the New Suanzao Gate (Xinsuanzaomen ) into the suburbs. These two commercial streets also cut through the liveliest sections o f the city and were the scenes o f diverse bustling activities that changed with time and place (Fig. 52). 152

The Song Cityscape

o

1000

2000

a

♦

Religious institution Government o r official facility

•

Commercial activities

o □

Brothel Entertainment precint

Fig. 52. Schematic reconstruction of Kaifeng and its activities.

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Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

More important militarily and, perhaps, economically for Kaifeng were the four imperial avenues, the first of which ■ — the N-S Imperial Avenue — we have already seen. South beyond the Nanxun Gate, this avenue connected the capital to the various regions o f Xiangyang It Pa , Jiangling , Jingzhou #J 4'H , Huzhou 'M , and Guangnan t i$j. Together, the four imperial avenues linked the capital to the larger regional and national network of land routes. The eastern one that started from Zhou Bridge went through the New Song Gate (Xinsongmen £ H ) and connected the capital first to the Southern Capital, Yingtianfu, and then to Xuzhou , Chuzhou *£ ^1 , and subsequently to the lower Yangzi region. Its western counterpart led from Zhou Bridge to New Zheng Gate (Xinzhengmen H ) and continued to Luoyang, Chang’an and to the western regions of the Xia kingdom. The northern one, on the other hand, left from Tushizi , east o f Pan’s Tower Wineshop, through Fengqiu Gate (Fengqiumen M I'l ) and continued north to the Northern Capital Damingfu, Baozhou # ^'1 , and eventually to the Liao territories. Within the capital, these major thoroughfares by which land-bound travelers arrived at the capital were also important commercial conduits. The northern one was particularly busy. Along its path were, first, the entertainment precincts, followed by the active horse market, a busy district o f prominent restaurateurs and wineshops, and an area of drugstores. Leaving the inner city, it plunged into another crowded district of shops and houses as well as army barracks farther north before leading off into the northern suburbs. Just as important was the eastern branch along which were located among others, many restaurants and brothels, a fish market, and several temples. One of these was the prominent Xiangguo Monastery which doubled as an important periodic market where “the myriad surnames gathered to trade” five times a month. In spite o f all that was said of the prosperity of the city and its street-centered activities, the roadways in Kaifeng were well known for their bad conditions which were “dusty in good weather and a sea of mud when it rained” as is shown in the poem “Working for the Government” written by Wang Anshi i-Sr-S (1021-1086): Spring Snow in Daliang — a city o f mud: Head the horse into the setting sun, ride home again I know what my life has been, and I can laugh — A long thirty-nine years o f nothing." Not all city streets were as bad as those in Kaifeng. Hangzhou, for instance, had streets paved with stone, and so had Suzhou judging by the engraved map o f 1229 (Figs. 53 and 55). Consequently, as we have seen, the different contents and nature of the streets in Kaifeng made them play roles very different from those in Chang’an. That Kaifeng could be described in terms of a network o f seven major streets, lined with m u lt if a r io u s a c t i v i t i e s , th a t t r a v e r s e d th e c a p ita l is in i t s e l f s ig n ific a n t. The a c tiv itie s o f th e c ity are n ow seen as o r g a n iz e d 154

The Song Cityscape

along streets. And so was the mental map of the city similarly structured. Literary descriptions of the city cited, for instance, Mahangjie and Panloujie and used them as the linear structure for their narrative. The same cannot be said of Chang’an, the structure of which is predominantly ward-based. The main streets or avenues were wide expanses of no man’s land devoid of the hustle and bustle of daily activities. If they were used as references in literary works, they were mainly used to simply established the framework for the identification of wards within which daily activities were enacted. The significance o f this difference is also poignantly rendered in graphic form in the stone engravings of Pingjiangfu and Jingjiangfu. Like the literary descriptions, both city maps emphasize the network of streets linking occasional symbolic representations o f buildings and landmarks. Chang’an’s map, on the other hand, was portrayed rather differently. Like the framework o f avenues established in literary descriptions of the Tang capital, the arteries depicted in the engraved stone map of Chang’an constitute a grid within which the walled wards were rendered in

Fig. 53. Pingjiang tu. 155

Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

prominence. Physically, the main streets of the capital that we have described were probably not very wide. The widest streets in Later Zhou Chai Rong’s Kaifeng were only fifty paces across with five paces on each side designated for trees, wells, and sheds; narrower ones were between 25 and 30 paces across with three paces set aside on each street edge. If there were no encroaching structures, this would give a free roadway of about 62 m and between 29 m and 37 m wide respectively.100 However, as we have seen, shops and stalls often encroached on the roadway during the Song period, making the streets even narrower. The neighborhood streets and alleys were even more constricted. The painting Going up the River during Qingming Festival shows a range of different roads. The main artery — the commercial street that led to the city gate on the east wall — was narrow and crowded. Elsewhere streets and alleys zigzagged. Along the canal and beyond the ramparts, curvilinear and oblique streets were common. Most of the streets were lined with trees and the drains were covered although occasionally a drain with timber-reinforced banks runs along the street to empty itself into the canal (Fig. 54). In some cities,fangbiao or portals with plaques announcing the name of the neighborhood straddled the streets (Fig. 55). These were, according to some, the remnants of the old ward gates when the wards walls disintegrated.101 The breakdown of the residential wards and their walls and the proliferation of multi-functional streets throughout the city were probably the most obvious manifestations of the popularization of the city. The strict functional zoning of the previous era yielded to a city where mixed use o f neighborhoods and streets alike reigned. Residential quarters, shops, brothels, temples, and universities were found in the same proximity. Not only were the streets made available to the unban dwellers at all times of the day and night, businesses were conducted in them round the clock. Spatially, too, the restrictions were lifted. Temples, government offices, and houses of the common folks alike opened directly on to the same streets. Stalls and stands, sheds and awnings, ornamental cailou and horse-barricades crowded the street edge. Table and benches, signs and advertising boards, parasols and makeshift canopies encroached on public space. Artisans short of space in their workshops worked in the streets (Fig. 56). Even the bridges were not spared (Fig. 57).

Markets, Shops, and Entertainment Precincts Although commercial streets criss-crossed Song cities and the strictly confined markets of the earlier era were no longer intact, specialized markets were still set up by merchants at various locations in the city. In Kaifeng, for example, even though large sections of the inner city could be considered commercial, there were many product-specific markets scattered at particular locations throughout the city.102 These markets became places where shops of the same trade grouped together. During the Song period, shops of the same trade were no longer required to be located at the same locality and, indeed, shops of all kinds were found in the streets of the Going

156

The Song Cityscape

Fig. 54. Drain reinforced with wooden banks (detail of Qingming shanghe tu). up the River during Qingming Festival. For convenience, however, many merchants chose to remain together.103 One of the two markets specializing in fruits, as we have seen earlier, was located along the bank of the Huiming Canal just outside the Gate of the Vermilion Sparrow. The meat market was located east of Zhou Bridge along the Bian River. The horse market was located beneath the well known tavern Helelou 'fa along the Horse Guild Street.104 Other markets such those specializing in rice, meat, fish, bamboo, ginger, onion, cloth, urns, gold and jewelry, etc., all had specific locations in the city. The situation was similar in other cities. At Hangzhou, the rice market was located at the northern end of the city, vegetable market at the eastern gate and the market for firewood at the southern one. Suzhou had many bridges named after markets such as Fish Guild Bridge (Yuhangqiao ), Fruit Bridge

157

Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

(Guoziqiao Slipper Bridge (Saxieqiao and the like.105 Although most of these m arkets were located at convenient locations near bridges, along waterways, around city gates, at prominent intersections, on major thoroughfares, and near warehouses, their locations were probably also influenced by the origin of the goods sold. The fish markets in Kaifeng were located around the western gates through which the produce were routed. The fruit markets were also conveniently located along the banks of the main waterways. This relaxation in the location of shops within the city also translated into the increased influence and improved social status of the merchant class — another facet of political loosening. Merchants of the same trade formed proto-guilds headed by a guild headm an who acted as the conduit betw een the m erchants and the state. Merchant guilds were now allowed the responsibility of fixing their own prices and regulate the affairs of their members.106 During Wang Anshi’s premiership, they were even allowed to substitute their hang obligations by paying the government an agreed sum of money (mian hangyi qian ). Also prominently featured in Going up the River during Qingming Festival which depicted commercial units of all kinds are the numerous wineshops. There were 72 zhengdian 3-J& or first-class wineshops (or wine-lofts) in the capital authorized to

158

The Song Cityscape

Fig. 56. Artisans working in a street (detail of Qingming shanghe tu).

Fig. 57. Shops and stalls on bridge (detail of Qingming shanghe tu).

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distill their own liquor. The other thousands of taverns and wineshops had to buy wine daily from these zhengdian, one o f which is shown in the painting with a mountain of wine urns in the backyard (Fig. 58). An example of a more m odest tavern, a jiaodian J% , with an intricate entrance structure is depicted in the middle section in front of the arched bridge as well (Fig. 32). Meng Yuanlao also devoted large sections o f his m em oir to describing the many w ineshops, taverns, and restaurants that lent a constant air of festivity to the city. At Jiuqiao Gate where there were many restaurants and taverns, for instance, “richly decorated cailou faced one another across the street, and embroidered banners and streamers fluttered in the air screening the daylight.” 107 Leading the hierarchy of food and drink establishment were the zhengdian that served the best wines and dishes. Slightly less exalted were the jiaodian which catered more ordinary fares although many were excellent restaurants frequented by powerful officials and wealthy folks. N ext came the restaurants serving a wide variety of food and tea, the noodle shops, and the stew kitchens. While the zhengdian attended to the lavish tastes of the urban rich, the thousands of restaurants and noodle shops catered to the needs of the masses. The humblest of these were little more than sheds covered with thatched roofs as depicted in the suburban areas in Going up the River during Qingming Festival (Fig. 59). Among all the zhengdian in Kaifeng, Baifanlou & was probably the biggest; it alone was responsible for the daily wine supply o f three thousand smaller taverns. It was also the most prominent in the capital usually having more than a thousand patrons at any one time. Towards the end of the Northern Song the wineshop was expanded to comprise five three-story buildings most likely arranged in the shape of a cross. Flying bridges and balconies connected them while pearl curtains and embroidered tablets graced their many room s.108 There were many others which competed in rank and style with Baifanlou. All the wineshops in the capital had elaborately festooned cailou before their entrances, at times, complemented by railed-balustrades and silk gauze gardenia lanterns. M ost were substantial buildings with tiled roofs and had doors and windows painted red and green. Some were converted from form er villas o f officials com plete with gardens and courtyards.109 Others had halls and courtyards with galleries and little rooms along them decorated with draperies and curtains while screens of hanging flow ers and bam boos further added to their beauty and privacy.110 One such restaurant, Rendian & had a long gallery leading from the main entrance for more than 150 m. Little rooms along the galleries by the north and south courtyards glittered like jew els at night. With a few hundred sing-song girls under the eaves of the main gallery ever ready to serve, the scene was “fairylike” in beauty.111 Others such as Renhedian or Huixianlou had over a hundred dining rooms for the pleasure of their patrons who could easily spend a hundred taels of silver on a feast for two, all served on exquisite silver wares. Entertainment and restaurants went hand in hand. Besides the singing girls hired by the wineshops to serve patrons, there were also lower-class entertainers who

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Fig. 58. Example of a zhengdian and a mountain of urns in the backyard (detail of Qingming shanghe tu).

Fig. 59. Humble eateries in suburban areas (detail of Qingming shanghe tu).

approached and sang for the patrons without being asked, leaving only when given some token or cash. Many wineshops also provided prostitutes on the second level in chambers concealed by screens. It was said that the presence of prostitutes was indicated by the red silk gardenia lanterns hung before these establishment. Besides their association with the restaurant business, brothels were also commonly found close to other commercial and entertainment concerns. A brothel district was located just in front o f Xiangguo Monastery where important fairs were held periodically. Others were situated close to entertainment precincts and the

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university. Popular entertainment was an important feature in the Song capitals. Kaifeng had eight washe J L ( o r wazi J L ^ ) or “pleasure precincts” while Southern Song Hangzhou had at least 17.112 These were the places where all sorts of performances including story telling, recounting history, singing lyrics (ci ) and popular songs, dances, comedy, and marionette shows were staged.113 W hile these places of entertainment were the haunts of young dandies who spent their days among the prostitutes and actresses, the scale and size of these pleasure precincts suggests that they were frequented by large sections of the population. The entertainment district east of Pan’s Tower, for example, had more than fifty theaters, large and small, the larger ones were capable of holding several thousand people.6 Their popularity was further underlined by the fact that all kinds of commercial activities were conducted within these precincts ranging from purveyors of food and drink and hawkers o f old clothes to peddlers o f paper cut-outs and sellers of hexagram fortunes. With the proliferation of entertainment facilities in the Kaifeng, the city became a veritable place of entertainment. As we have seen earlier, the increased population and competitiveness o f the city also forced many to be highly specialized, training all kinds of creatures to perform various kinds of tricks. Entertainment was no longer performed only for the pleasure of upper classes. Its popularity pervaded all walks of life and was probably affordable to most people.

Religious Institutions In the upper register of the middle section of the painting Going up the River during Qingming Festival is depicted a rather impressive entrance to a Buddhist monastery located in the midst o f shops and houses. The entrance faced the canal and it had a little square to its fore where a herd of pigs loitered nearby (Fig. 60). This gateway had a higher central section o f three bays with a nail-studded gate in the middle flanked by statues. At each end are secondary entrance gates, also three bays across although narrower in width. Buddhist monasteries and Daoist observatories o f this scale must certainly have been commonplace in Kaifeng. In 1021, there were more than 40,000 monasteries and observatories throughout the empire and some 913 were found in the capital region alone.115 Xiangguo Monastery, together with Kaibao M onastery Taiping Xingguo M onastery ic.-f-tn 11 ^ , and Tianqing Monastery , were the four major Buddhist institutions in the capital. Kaibao Monastery located northeast of the palace just outside of Old Fengqiu Gate was a prominent landmark in the city. It had 24 courtyard precincts and was especially remarkable for having the tallest pagoda in Kaifeng. Octagonal in shape and built entirely of wood, the 13-tiered pagoda reputedly reached the enormous height of 360 chi (111.3 meters). Unfortunately it was destroyed in a fire after being struck by lightning in 1044. Its replacement, a brick structure, was an equally remarkable building. It came to be commonly known as Tieta or Iron Pagoda because of the rusty color of its glazed bricks.116 Taiping Xingguo Monastery, located 162

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north of a bridge by the same name in the inner city, was another prominent landmark o f Kaifeng.117 Its pavilion built to house a gigantic statue of Buddha was as tall as its pagoda and were visible from miles around. Equally conspicuous was the 240 chi (74.18 m) pagoda of Tianqing Monastery otherwise commonly known as Potaisi % a after the high ground on which it stood southeast of the inner city. The most noteworthy religious complex in Kaifeng, however, was Xiangguo Monastery. First founded in 555 under the Northern Qi and later abandoned, Xiangguo Monastery was reconsecrated in 712 during the Tang period but once again destroyed in a fire between 890 and 892. After its restoration by Emperor Taizu and especially by the private efforts of his officials, it grew to become the foremost monastery in the capital. Architecturally, Xiangguo Monastery was an imposing and extensive building complex befitting its status as an imperial monument.118 Fronting the street was an awe-inspiring four-storied gateway tower at least five bays wide with three openings, earning it the name, Triple Gate ( -=-f] ) (Fig. 61). Once within the threshold, two bottle-shaped glazed pagodas stood at either side o f the gate. An inner courtyard separated this main southern doorway from an inner triple gate framed by a colonnaded corridor. This second gate was most likely two stories high, built after the fire o f the early 890s. Beyond both the east and west limits of this cloistered courtyard probably stood pagoda precincts, lending further symmetry to the composition. Behind the inner gate was the main courtyard of enormous proportions commanded on the north by the Maitreya Hall, one o f the two principal halls o f worship. Corridors extended from the sides of the hall to join on the east and west the enclosing cloister colonnade.119Along the central axis behind the main prayer hall stood Zisheng Pavilion lit Jr 1^ , the second principal hall in the complex, flanked symmetrically by smaller side halls. This imposing pavilion, probably five stories high, had five roofs and stood as one of the major landmarks in the city. From above one could “look out all over the whole metropolis, [lying] as it were in the palm of one’s hand, unimaginably broad and great.”120 A minor gateway provided access to the compound from the north. Outside this group organized along the central axis were other precincts and priests’ dormitories, the organization of which we are uncertain. Although Xiangguo Monastery with its reliquaries was an important Buddhist sanctuary in the city, it was equally significant to the city economically and otherwise as periodic fairs were held on its grounds five times a month. Once again Meng Yuanlao left us with a vivid description o f the activities that went on within the monastery on a typical fair day: On [ the platform of] the Great Triple Gate there were such things as flying birds and coursing hounds, with no lack o f rare fo w l and strange beasts. The second Triple Gate was wholly devoted to sundries fo r [everyday] use. Inside the courtyard were set out parti-colored canopies [over the] booths and public shops; here were sold mats made o f fine bamboo and rush, screen curtains, 163

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Fig. 60. Example o f a temple (detail of Qingming shanghe tu).

laundry items, saddles and bits, bows and swords, fruits in season, dried meats, and the like. Near the Buddha Hall, alongside the main east walk, [were the booths where] Wang Daoren had honey preserves, where Zhao Wenxiu had brushes, and where Pan Gu had inks. The two cloister corridors [sheltered] the temple nuns, selling embroidered collars and girdles, flowers, pearl and jade, head ornaments, washed gold artificial flowers in life-like colors, kerchief caps, (women’s ) hats to hold up the hair, ribbons, and the like. Back o f the hall and in front o f the Zisheng Pavilion was where all books, curios, and pictures were sold, and where the various ex-provincial officials had such things as regional specialties, incense, and medicine fo r sale. The rear corridor was all fortune tellers, conjurors, portrait artists, and the like.121 In short, the monastery courtyard became a vast market where goods of all sorts 164

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Fig. 61. Triple Gate of Nanzenji, Kyoto: seventeenth century copy of Song design.

from around the country w ere sold. Entertainm ent was found here too. In his recollections, Wu Zeng ^ W (?-after 1170) wrote an anecdote in which public song and dance perform ances were given in the courtyard where spectators watched, leaning against the columns of the prayer hall.122 Similarly Meng Yuanlao wrote that “it was in the hall courtyard that they had performances by the Music Office, cavalry drills, and so on.” 123 And as we have seen earlier, a music loft on which various troops perform ed was erected in front o f the great hall during the New Year. Xiangguo Monastery was not unique. In other great monasteries such as Kaibao and Jingde ■§:% , music lofts were also erected and music perform ed.124 ‘Temple m arkets’ (miaoshi ) were also com m only held in m arket towns together with theatrical perform ances.125 Buddhist gatherings (fohui # # ) , Taoist gatherings (daohui i t # ), and gatherings at the altars of local spirits (shehui ) were typically held in conjunction with some periodic religious celebrations complete with fairs and popular entertainm ent.126 The pervasiveness of such events gave rise to an entry in the Song Huiyao in 1214: From the capital to the Jiangzhe region there are many despicable aspects o f present-day popular behavior which demand watchful attention. Regular sacrifices are owing to the altars o f land and grain, but these days stupid people bestow obsequious flattery upon the spirits and under the title o f a gathering at the local altar often collected large crowds o f idle rascals.'21 ‘Temple markets’ were usually crowded with people and during major celebrations

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“they greeted the deity with hundreds of plays.” At the same time as at Xiangguo Monastery, trade was most probably conducted as is suggested by this entry in the Sanshan Gazetteer. However, the landless folk o f the rural communities everywhere still have their own celebrations similar to this one, and these too are thronged with people. Advantage is taken o f these occasions to make profits (i.e. to trade). They do not take place at any particular time o f year, but usually last fo r two to three days. Sometimes they are held in peoples ’ homes, and sometimes in the temples to the local gods. The old men and women from the villages who turn up to take their ease, to eat and to gossip also number several hundreds. This custom is o f recent date. ”128 While there were certainly temple celebrations and fairs in the previous eras, it was probably after the increased commercialization of farm goods and the rapid expansion of population and urban centers that such temple fairs took on the new dimension of important markets where trade and popular entertainment involving the masses took place. The common notion that there were no public squares in Chinese cities is only half true at best. In front o f temples, as we have seen in the example depicted by the Going up the River during Qingming Festival, was an open area for public activities. Although belonging to the religious establishments, temple courtyards were also often used for festivities and fairs. During temple festivals, stages, if not already present, were set up for popular performances and opened to the general public. The p o litic a l lo o s e n in g that w as s lo w ly ren d erin g the c ity m ore open not o n ly to o k p la ce at the p la c es u su a lly a sso c ia te d w ith the p o p u la c e but w as a lso h a p p en in g at in s ta lla tio n s ty p ic a lly out o f bounds to the common people. Imperial gardens aside, even the Golden Bright Pond 'k a/l where the imperial troops practiced naval battles was opened to the citizens for all kinds of activities for forty days a year (see Fig. 47). On the day of Lichun . i # which marked the beginning of spring on the tenth day of the first month, commercial activities went on even in the open space in front of the two metropolitan county bureaus.129 A spring ox made o f clay was displayed before the county office where it was beaten by bureau attendants as a ritual for welcoming spring. In front o f the office, common folk sold spring calves that were kept within railed enclosures decorated with images o f popular theatrical characters, little spring flags, and fontanesia branches, all of which were popular gift items during this festival. At another level, there was the emergence of a recognizable urban population conscious o f its flowering urban culture. This did not happen only at the level of the official-gentry or the monied class who had the means to command services and entertainment at the capital. Rather there was an emerging general urban consciousness during the late Northern Song that permeated across boundaries to other classes and to the provinces. Symptomatic o f this development was the 166

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pervasive commercialization and consumption that accompanied urban living. Although written in the thirteenth century during the Southern Song, Wang Mai’s comment i i S (1184-1248) would probably have been equally valid a century earlier: These days the fam ilies o f artisans and merchants trail white silks and brocades, adorn themselves with jades and pearls. In nine cases out o f ten, if one looks a person over from head to foot, one will find that he is breaking the law.... The customs o f the empire have now become extravagant. Limitless sums are squandered on the construction o f lofty and elegant mansions, something which used to be forbidden. These days such is the practice o f spendthrift emulation that roof beams confront each other in unbroken succession. There is no end to the waste o f money on gilding and kingfisher feathers, something on which restrictions used to be imposed. There are at present rows o f shops which do gold-plating, competing with each other fo r profit. One drinking-bout among the gentry may squander property worth ten pieces o f gold. It is not only officials o f long standing who do this; the pernicious practice is imitated by those who have ju st entered the government service. Trifles like wom en’s ornaments and clasps may cost up to a hundred thousand cash. Nor does this happen only in the great households; those of moderate means also strive to do the same. Adornments which make their appearance in the Rear Palace in the morning will have become the fashion among the commoners by evening. What is manufactured yesterday f o r those in high places w ill spread commonly throughout the capital tomorrow.130 Although the situation may have been less rampant during the Northern Song, the commercialization o f goods and services was already very important. While the urban folk of means dictated the trends, the rest either imitated or were there to furnish the goods and services demanded supporting an urban culture of lavish consumption and entertainment. Also indicative of the rise of an urban consciousness was the appearance of a new genre of painting. The Song period saw the advent of paintings of urban landscape and c ity l if e w h ic h w e r e , u n til th en , h ard ly su b je c ts o f in te r e st. Although we have only a couple o f extant paintings showing cityscape from the period — Going up the River during Qingming Festival and The Return o f Wenji to China ( X.M. f t i x B ) . — other paintings such as Moxibustion (zh i’ai tu & x @ ) by Li Tang (1049-after 1130), The Peddler (Huolang tu JT S ) and Playful Infants (Xiying tu -§?■0 ) by Su Hanchen & & S. all depict scenes of urban life (Figs. 62 to 63). Li Song (1160-1243) in a later painting of Hangzhou’s Westlake (Xihu tu © S ) took pains to show a comer of the city in the lower left hand comer of the handscroll (Figs. 64 and 79). Despite the fact that they were mainly painted by court artists, the depiction of these urban scenes alone is indicative that urban life and culture had become an important component of the general consciousness. 167

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Fig. 62. The Peddler (Houlang tu), Su Hanchen, Song dynasty.

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Fig. 63. Knick-knack peddler by Li Song, Song dynasty.

Fig. 64. Xihu tu, Li Song (1160-1243), Song dynasty, Shanghai Museum.

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Another indication o f the urban consciousness was the increasing popularity during the Song period o f the cults of city-gods or chenghuang shen ( $ , j L # ). Although the worship of city-gods most likely started around the middle of the sixth century, reference to the cults only became more common after the seventh century and they probably did not gain importance until the eighth century.131 Prior to this, she or the ancient god of the soil, which could be seen as the forerunner, was worshipped by both country folk and city dwellers. However as the distinction between the city and the countryside grew, the she was slowly supplanted by “more functionally specific deities.” By Song times, the she was largely replaced in the city by city gods and in the country by tudi (god of the land). The cults o f city-gods were so prevalent during the Song period that contemporary records said that “Since Tang times the prefecture and counties have all sacrificed to the chenghuang. In recent times people have become especially reverent toward the chenghuang.... The cult is honored above all others. While the altars of the soil and grain are respected, and their service is specially mandated by the statutes and ordinances, there is nothing remotely like the chenghuang when it comes to rituals o f exorcism or ceremonies of thanksgiving,” and that the city god “has come to be worshipped everywhere under H eaven.”132 David Johnson has argued that it was with the emergence of a “genuine urban culture” which included, as we have seen earlier, the appearance of a “wide variety of professional entertainers” that the idea of the city as opposed to the country took shape, and that the worship o f city-gods followed quite naturally.133 The list could go on, ranging from the development of urban literature and popular entertainment to the popularity o f the ci form of poetry and the reformation of the urban management system which shifted the importance of the fang to the xiang.134 All these point to the flourishing o f an urban culture and the emergence of an urban consciousness toward the end of the Northern Song period. In short, after a long development beginning from the late Tang, the city was rendered politically more popular. The status-sensitive wards o f the highly hierarchicized societies o f pre- and early Tang had broken down, replaced by pluralistic street-centered neighborhoods. Although certain locations within the city were more desirable residentially and had a higher concentration of the monied classes, one’s option of location was less determined by one’s position in the social hierarchy or profession than by one’s financial strength. Most spatial and temporal constraints were lifted. Public spaces such as streets and squares were opened to business and entertainment round the clock. Commercialization was so important that even temple courtyards were opened to the public for trade. Hand in hand with the political loosening and increased commercialization was the emergence of an urban culture. As the city became more open, urbanization spreaded across the empire more rapidly, and the urban culture became more discernible, the city also became a part o f the general consciousness.

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NOTES 1 The Meng clan was prominent in the Board of Public Works when Cai Jing was the prime minister. For the sake of the hypothetical day, a member of the clan was assumed to have lived in the residential area southwest of the inner city. Although a distance of more than two kilometers separated his home from his place of work, this was not uncommon among the officials, especially senior ones who had horses at their disposal. For example, the Administrator of the Court of Military Affairs, whose office was a stone’s throw from the Department of State Affairs, lived only a couple of blocks north from Meng. Wucheng fang was named after a temple in the neighborhood, Wucheng wang miao -J& (Prince Wucheng Temple). See Kong Xianyi, “Study of the Northern Song Eastern Capital and its Neighborhoods,” p. 364. 2 Little is known of the artist Zhang Zeduan except that he had come to the capital from the province of Dongwu and was later a painter of the Hanlin Academy. 3 Jiehua -If-& as a term might have been an abbreviation of jiechi hua which simply means painting done with the ruler. Sometimes, it has also been translated as boundary painting, although I believe that ruled-line painting is a more accurate translation. As a category, its repertory included the depiction of any subject that required r e la tiv e ly lon g straight lin e s such as carriages, carts, boats, and other mechanical objects, although architecture remained by far the most frequently depicted subject. 4 There were other paintings of urban scenes recorded but they did not survive. In Laurence Sickman and Alexander Soper, The Art and Architecture of China (Penguin Books, 1971), Sickman wrote that the theme of popular manners and customs had a long tradition in China: “At the end of the sixth century there were in existence old paintings with such titles as A Village Gathering, Farm Houses, Carts Overturned at the P ’ing Gate...,’’ p. 230-231.' 5 We are uncertain if the handscroll is complete in its composition or if it is part of a larger composition extending farther into the city. Later versions of the painting often include more urban scenes. For a more detailed discussion, see Roderick Whitfield, “Chang Tsetuan’s Ch’ing-ming shang-ho t ’u” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1965). 6 James Cahill, “Some Aspects of Tenth Century Painting as seen in Three Recently Published Works,” paper for the International Conference on Sinology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, August 1980, p. 9. These words were written in reference to the painting, The Water Wheel, painted during the Five Dynasties period. Another masterpiece of the jiehua genre, it showed the socioeconomic activities that went on around a water mill and shared many things in common with the later painting, Going up the River during Qingming Festival. 1 James Cahill, “Tenth Century Painting,” p. 8. These words were once again written to describe The Water Wheel. 8 MHLZ, p. 121. 9 Li Jie # 1$,, who became the Director of the Board of Public Works around 1105, was promoted to the rank of yuchaoyi dafu “with the right to wear the garb of the third grade” in 1106. See Sung Biographies, ed. Herbert Franke, vol. 2 (Wiesbaden, 1976): p. 527. 10 Sumptuary law stipulated that officials above the third grade must wear purple; above the sixth-vermilion; above the seventh-green; above the ninth-turquoise. Ordinary 171

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11 12 13

14 15 16

17

18

19

20

individuals could only wear black and white. “However these regulations soon fell into disuse, because the court granted the right to wear purple indiscriminately to officials of all grades.” See Jacques Gemet, Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion: 1250-1276 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), p. 128. MHLZ, p. 60 and 71. MHLZ, p. 133. However on MHLZ, p. 71, the Zheng family operation which I assume to be the same one mentioned on p. 133, was said to operate more than 20 stoves instead. For a study of fish consumption in Kaifeng, see Stephen West, “Cilia, Scale, and Bristle: The Consumption of Fish and Shellfish in the Eastern Capital of the Northern Song,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47, no. 2 (1987): p. 231-70. MHLZ, p. 133. MHLZ, p. 132. The pigs were probably brought to Slaughter Pig Alley (Shazhuxiang south of New Bridge. As the name connotes, pigs were probably slaughtered here, although this may not be the only location where abattoirs were located. It was also noted that there were brothels in this alley as well. See MHLZ, p. 60-1. When exiled to Huangzhou Hi W , Su Shi was paid 4500 cash a month which he divided into 30 equal parts and hung from a rafter, taking one part down each morning. See Ting/Djang, Anecdotes of Sung Personalities, p. 487. Using rice as a standard, a dou 4" of rice generally cost less than 100 cash (wen) during the period 1068-1100. For instance, a dou of rice cost about 85 cash in Kaifeng in 1072, 70-77 cash in the lower Yangtze and Huainan region between 1091-92, but shot up to 250-300 cash in Huainan region during the years 1122-23. By the end of the Northern Song in 1126, when the city was under siege, rice cost up to 3000 cash per dou. And since it is estimated that an adult requires an average of a quarter dou of rice a day, it was little wonder that corpses of the poor lined the streets of Kaifeng during the siege. See Quan Hansheng, “Price Fluctuations in Northern Song,” p. 30-86; see chart and graph on p. 74-75. Wang Fuzhi (1619-1692), the noted Qing historian, in his Song lun [Discourse on the Song] (15 c., 1840-42), singled out “two developments that stood out during the reign of Jen-tsung, one beneficial and the other harmful to posterity. The beneficial one was the purchase of ten thousand stones of early rice seeds from Cambodia which were distributed to farmers, thus revolutionizing rice culture in China and greatly increasing its production. The harmful one was the issuance of jiaozi or “exchange notes” on the recommendation of a certain Hsueh Tien © , at one time the commissioner of transport of Szechwan. Jiaozi later degenerated into huizi or “paper notes” and finally into chaozi #' or “currency notes.” ” He saw them as useless paper, a device used by the government “to defraud the merchants, and for the merchants, in turn, to defraud the common people.” See Ting/Djang, Anecdotes of Sung Personalities, p 34. This stretch was between Longjin Bridge and Nanxun Gate, see MHLZ, p. 60. No details were given for the width of this section of the imperial avenue. Although Meng did say that the imperial avenue was more than 200 paces or more than 295 meters wide just south of the Palace City, I believe that it was true for only a section of the avenue. The fact that this section immediately south of the Imperial City also functioned as a public square probably accounted, in part, for its extraordinary width. Ceremonial and military needs were other factors. 172

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21

22

23

24 25 26

There were at least five such relief clinics in the capital. This system was first initiated in the provinces and implemented in Kaifeng by decree in 1105 (other forms of relief were available earlier). However this system was quickly abused by officials who practiced favoritism for their own relatives or embezzled articles intended for patients. For a more detailed account of the various relief agencies, see Hsu I-tang, “Social Relief During the Sung Dynasty,” in Chinese Social History: Translations of Selected Studies ed. E-tu Zen Sun and John De Francis (Washington: American Council of Learned Societies, 1956), p. 207-15. The University was first established in Kaifeng between 960-63. Because the library 4$ $- was in need of space, it was extended 10 paces into the compound of its neighbour, the residence of the Prince Qian Chu of Wuyue during the reign of Emperor Zhenzong %% (998-1022). Twenty classes were set up. In 1071, there was an educational reform and the university was organized into three tiers, with a quota of 700 freshmens, 300 juniors, and 100 seniors. When the number of classes was increased to 80 in 1080, the student population was also increased accordingly to 2,400 (30 students per class). Each class had a size of five bays. In 1102, Li Jie was ordered to built a new campus south of the Palace City. The building was circular on the outside and square on the inside, making a specific reference to the form of the imperial college in antiquity. Furthermore, it was given the name Biyong ^ ^ in direct reference to the archaic institution. This was part of a series of efforts made to formalize the capital during the reign of Huizong. With the new campus, the total student population was increased to 3,800. The new campus was meant for the freshmen. For Kaifeng’s university, see Zhou Cheng, A Study of the Eastern Capital of the Song Dynasty, p. 15662. See also Edward A. Kracke, “The Expansion of Educational Opportunity in the Reign of Hui-tsung of the Sung and its Implications,” Sung Studies Newsletter, no. 13 (1977): p. 6-30. For the symbolic connotations of the Biyong, see William Edward Soothill, The Hall of Light: A Study of Early Chinese Kingship (New York, 1952). The “University for the Sons of State” was meant for the sons and grandsons of the nobility and high and middle level officials. The number of students was restricted to 200. See SS, c. 157, p. 3657. This was most probably a flat bridge since it was on the imperial avenue. Most other bridges in the city were arched to allow the passage of bigger boats under them. SHY, section on fangyu, c. 13, p. 21. This is the southernmost o f the four canals that traversed the city. It was dug in 960 to connect Min River 1*1>"Tto the southwest and Cai River to the southeast. Through Cai River, Min River, renamed Huimin River in 973, was connected to Huai River, linking the capital to an important waterway. The upper reaches of the canal were hence called Huimin River while the lower reaches were called Cai River. Within the capital, however, this canal was known by both names. In 987, 400,000 shi of millet, 200,000 shi of beans were transported. The tax grain quota for this canal was later set at 600,000 shi, 350,000 of which came from the region west of Kaifeng, while the rest was from the Huainan area. The volume of tax grains transported was however unstable and varied from 50,000 to 70,000 shi during the Renzong’s reign to 267,000 shi in 1065. After the reform of the Xining years (1068-77) and the repair of the sluice gates, the volume of grains transported recovered somewhat. For water transportation during the Song period, see also Aoyama Sadao, “Le developpement des transports fluviaux sous les Sung,” Etudes Song 1, no. 3 (1976): p. 281-96. 173

_ _ _ _ ______________________ Cities o f Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

27

The height of the ramparts was derived from a rough estimation of the city wall portrayed in Qingming shanghe tu. From the painting the walls seemed to be constructed of earth. Shrubs and plants even grew on it. The protruding gate structure, on the other hand, was faced with bricks. It is still uncertain whether the inner city had a surrounding moat. Kaifeng Museum reconstructed a schematic map of the Song capital indicating that there was a moat around the inner city. Although Meng Yuanlao did not say specifically if the circuit wall of the inner city was surrounded by a moat, his description of avenues going in and out of the inner city often mentioned bridges just beyond the gates which suggests that there was indeed a waterway just beyond certain sections of the inner circuit wall. The map of Kaifeng from Shilin guangji iZ. (published in the 1330s, i.e., more than 200 years after the fall of Kaifeng and after the flood had washed away most traces of the old city) did not show a moat around the inner wall but drew a waterway that wrapped around the northern and part of the eastern side of the inner city. This was supposed to be the Jinshui Canal but its position was most probably wrong. The map-maker probably assumed that Jinshui Canal must have been there because there was a bridge outside Jiucao Gate. 28 This cart was called taiping che. Meng Yuanlao gave a detailed description of the different kinds of goods carts and passenger chariots. There were a variety of carts: the pingtou che -f(Level-head vehicle), similar to the taiping che, but smaller, and pulled by a single ox and used by most wineshops to transport wine barrels; the zhaijuanzuo che which was similar to the pingtou che except for the fact that it had a canopy and latticed doors both at front and back and was a passenger vehicle; the dulun che (single-wheel vehicle) which was pulled by a mule and managed by four persons, one in front, one behind, and two others at the sides and was commonly used for moving bamboo, wood, tiles, and stones, and also by people selling cakes and pastries; the langzi che >^^4- which was basically a large wheel barrow. There was also a kind of coach that could be rented, driven by a single ox and capable of seating up to about six people. MHLZ, p. 123. 29 MHLZ, p. 129. 30 This description is derived partly from the street scene in Going Up the River during Qingming Festival. 31 From the painting Going Up the River during Qingming Festival, it appears that shops of other nature had cailou marking their shopfronts too. 32 In the villages, the wine flag may be replaced by a straw broom ( ), or even a bowl or a spatula. 33 MHLZ, p. 66. 34 Zhou Bridge was short for Bianzhou Bridge. It was also known as Bian Bridge during the Five Dynasties period. See Xu Boyong &% , “Kaifeng, Bianhe yu Zhouqiao” tfM JN# [Kaifeng, Bian River, and Zhou Bridge], in vol. 2 of Zhongguo gudu yanjiu + f i [Research on China’s Ancient Capitals], p. 134-43. 35 Archaeological excavations conducted in 1984 by the Kaifeng Song city archaeological team revealed a bridge, 17 m long and 30 m wide, probably supported by three stone arches. The bridge deck was also made of stone panels and was divided into three lanes, each about 10 m wide. However, although its location coincides with that of the Song Zhou Bridge, most of the bridge dates back to the Ming period. The length and width of the Ming bridge can perhaps provide an indication of the size of the Song Zhou Bridge. Song documents stated that the narrower sections of the middle 174

The Song Cityscape

course of the river was 5 zhang £ or 50 chi K. wide, which corresponds to the modem measure of 50 X 31.12 cm or about 15.56 m wide. See “Kaifeng gu zhouqiao kantan shijue jianbao” ifii ^1 fa] ik [Report of the Trial Excavation of Kaifeng’s Historical Zhou Bridge], Kaifeng wenbo tM-f 1, no. 2 (1990): p. 10-16. For Song measures, see Wenren Jun and James M. Hargett, “The Measures Li and Mou,” Bulletin of Sung Yuan Studies, no. 21 (1989): p. 8-30. For width of river, see SS, c. 93, p. 2321. 36 At other bridges, the banks of the river were reinforced by wooden boards and logs, see the painting Going Up the River during Qingming Festival. 37 MHLZ, p. 27. 38 Lights had to be extinguished before midnight. Hence, commoners and scholars who had wedding or offerings had to inform the borough official (xiangshi iS f t ) in order to bum paper money after midnight. Official establishments were also subject to strict control. See SHY section on xingfa & , c. 2, p. 12. See Wei Tai (ca 1050-1110) in his Dongxuan bilu [Jottings from the Eastern Pavilion] (Congshu jicheng ed. Commercial Book Press, 1939), c. 10, p. 77. 39 MHLZ, p. 120. Prefectural seats also had their own fire fighting arrangements. The fire fighting team was stationed at the yamen (administrative office) and a 3-bay adobe hut with tile roof was used to store fire-fighting equipment. In the prefectural and county seats, common folks were also organized into teams to fight fire. Every ten families constitute a jia T and one family was selected to head the team. See Zhou Baozhu, “Preliminary Study of the Management System of Song Cities,” p. 163. 40 Dredging the canal was vital to its navigability. The Bureau of Rivers and Canals was set up in 1051 to take special charge of the maintenance of the waterways. An imperial order was given the same year to dredge the canal annually. See CB, c. 171, p. 7a. Stone slabs and statues were sunk to mark the original level of the river bed and to served as standards for future dredging. But these efforts were not kept up for long. By the time Shen Kuo (1031-1095) wrote his Mengxi bitan ^ >li € [Dream Brook Essays] (Shanghai: Shanghai chuban gongsi, 1956), c. 25, p. 795-96, between 1086 and 1093, he was complaining that the canal was neglected and had not been dredged in twenty years. Besides, although it was forbidden, drains and ditches in the capital emptied their contents into the canal. East of Kaifeng, from the East Water Gate to Yongqiu $1.6. and Xiangyi JI eL (i.e., modem Qixian fc and Suixian Bfc4 in Henan about 50 km and 80 km southeast of the capital respectively), the river bed within the levee was actually more than 4 meters higher than the surrounding land. However, the stretch within the capital was probably better taken care of. 41 It was first dug by Sui Yangdi as part of the Grand Canal that brought supplies from the southeast to the capitals of Chang’an and Luoyang. It had since become the lifeline of China, critical to the survival of the Tang dynasty and was one of the major reasons for the choice of Kaifeng as capital by the Later Liang, Later Jin, Later Han, Later Zhou, and the Northern Song dynasties. However the transportation of grains during the last years of the Northern Song period was not as effective as it had been during the previous eras. This was because the effective system of shipping using relay stations developed during the Tang period was abandoned in 1101 to save on expenses and manpower. See Quan Hansheng, The Tang and Song Empires and the Grand Canal, p. 114. 42 SS, c. 331, p. 10642; This was probably necessary to make up for the drastic drop of grain income from, as well as to supply the western parts of the nation engaged in war with the Xi Xia empire. 175

Cities o f Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

43

44

45 46

47 48 49 50 51

52

53 54

55

56

CB, c. 64, p. 13b-14a. This volume, first delivered in 993 became a fixed quota in 1006. See also Zhou Baozhu, Research on Song Eastern Capital, p. 199. In comparison, Tang Chang’an received about 2 million shi a year. Lou Yue, Beixing rilu i'tH 0 S. [Daily Record of Northern Travels] (Itinerary of Lou Yue’s Journey from Chuzhou , Zhejiang, to Yenjing [modem Beijing]), shang juan, collated in his Gongkui ji (Congshu jicheng ed., Shanghai: Commercial Book Press, 1935), c. I ll, p. 1579. There were many granary districts along the Bian River all the way from the Rainbow Bridge to within the outer city such as Yuanfeng granary , Shuncheng granary >'$, ifo. , Guangji granary F , etc. During the Song period, two hu made one shi. San-tendai-godaisan-ki # ^ a £- o •IciE., in Dainihon bukkyo sensho fc. 0 -=f? , vol. 115, c. 4, p. 63. SS, c. 93, p. 2317. In 962, Emperor Taizu ordered the officials of all provinces and counties along the Bian canal to make use of corvee labor to plant willow trees along the banks of the river to reinforce its banks. See Quan Hansheng, The Tang and Song Empires and the Grand Canal, p. 114-22. The Genyue Garden had a circumference of more than 10 li, see Fengchuang xiaodu M I H '® (Congshu jicheng ed., 1939), p. 6. Wang Mingqing i m (1127-ca.l215), Huizhulu [Record of Conversations], (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1964), p. 300-301. MHLZ, p. 52. Once again no measurements were given for the width of this stretch of the avenue. See footnote 20. SHY section on fangyu, c. 10, p. 15. The area in which it was located was also known as Guanghua fang f , probably an usage of a past era but with no real connotations of a walled fang. See also Zhou Baozhu, “Beisong shiqi zhongguo ge zu zai dongjing de jingji wenhua jiaoliu” 11 $. ^ 5c iil [Economic and Cultural Exchanges of the Various Peoples in Song Eastern Capital], Henan shida xuebao /°T A #48. [Henan Normal University Journal], no. 4 (1982): p. 17-26. The portraits of Shengzu in Tianxingdian , of Zhenzong in Wanshoudian 7i built in 1023, of Renzong /f- £ in Xiaoyandian built around 1064-65, and of Yingzong in Yingdedian . See SDJK, p. 218-23. MHLZ, p. 121. I believe that instead of a 300-meter-wide imperial avenue that stretched all the way from the Southern Gate to the Zhou Bridge as MHLZ suggests, it was more likely to be a public square, 300 m wide in front of the palace. The length of the square is unknown although from MHLZ, p. 173, the “mountain awning” (shanpeng J-t$i ) which probably marked one end of the square was about 300 over meters from Xuandemen. Xu Bo’an # ',f£l-3r in an unpublished paper, “Beisong dongjing xuande louqian” Jk £ & ^ i t [In Front of Xuande Tower in the Eastern Capital of Northern Song], delivered at Society for the Study of Ancient Chinese Capitals, October 1988, also thinks likewise. See MHLZ, p. 52. MHLZ, p. 30. In all likelihood, the Song Imperial City and its gates bore little resemblance to their Later Zhou predecessors. An edict issued in 1012 by Zhenzong ordered that the Imperial City walls be faced with bricks. Prior to that, the walls were made of earth. Only the portions surrounding the gates were brick-faced; see CB, c. 77, p. 5b. The other two walls were of tamped earth. These details can be seen in a painting entitled Auspicious Cranes 3&j S currently kept in the Liaoning Museum. It was painted by Emperor Huizong in 1112 and depicts 176

The Song Cityscape

57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65

66 67

68 69 70

71 72

the roofs of the gate towers before the reconstruction. Another piece of evidence comes from a Song period bronze bell, also kept in the same museum, with a relief of Xuandemen with its five doorways. Triple-stepped watchtowers were used exclusively in imperial palaces. See Fu Xinian , “Shanxisheng fanshixian yanshansi nandian jindai bihuazhong suo hui jianzhu de chubu fenxi” ^ ® + [Preliminary Analysis of the Architecture depicted in the Jin Period Wall Paintings in the South Hall of Yanshan Monastery in Fanshi county in Shanxi province], in Jianzhu lishi yanjiu % [Research of Architectural History], vol. 1 (Beijing, 1982), p. 119-51. These were also known as chazi -fc , juma ££-3; , xingma , or lujiao JL fa . See SHY, ,c . 1, p. 3a. By comparison, Taihedian, the main hall in the Forbidden City in Beijing, has eleven bays set apart by lower blank walls on both sides. Xu Bo’an, “In Front of Xuande Tower,” p. 4. For a detailed description of this new administrative complex see (Song) Pang Yuanying ( £ ) til i t £ , Wenchang zalu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1958). This street derived its name from the horse market located below the wineshop Helelou fa one and a half blocks north of the junction. MHLZ, p. 71; MHLZ, p. 84 has a line which reads “Night market north of Zhou Bridge was even a hundred times more active” which in the context of the paragraph regarding the shops at the Horse Guild Street seemed out of place. The character north (bei i t ) is a misprint and should read as bi, i.e., ‘in comparison’ ( Jfc) as was the case in c. 3, p. la of the Yuan dynasty edition of MHL reproduced of a copy in Seikado Hikyu If i i f - , Japan. When read in context it would then mean that “In comparison, the night market at the Horse Guild Street was a hundred times busier than that at the Zhou Bridge.” MHLZ, p. 71. This would normally fall around the fourth week of August. MHLZ, p. 222. Winter Solstice falls on December 22, New Year’s Day about a month later, followed by Li Chun A # or the holiday marking the beginning of Spring. This is the tenth day of the first month and normally falls on Feb 4th or 5th. The Lantern Festival t l % was celebrated on the 14th, 15th, and 16th of the first month. Cold Feast Festival W-'k Tnormally took place 105 days after the winter solstice. Qingming Festival (Spring Festival) takes place on the third day. MHLZ, p. 171. The same happened during the three-day holiday period preceding the Cold Feast Festival and Winter Solstice, MHLZ, p. 162. See MHLZ, p. 172-3. The following description of the celebrations of the fifteenth day of the first month is aided in large part by Stephen West’s translation of the relevant passages in Chinese Theater, p. 33-4. At times, an elephant kept by at the Yujin Garden was brought in front of the gate and made to kneel facing north in the direction of the emperor. Translation rendered by Stephen West in Chinese Theater, p. 33-4. Although having a smaller territory, the Later Zhou emperors were equally contented to use the capital of the preceding dynasties, Later Jin fe -f- and Later Han Jo . It was only under the second Zhou emperor, Shizong, that the city was extended-a modest effort compared to the Sui schemes of Chang’an and Luoyang. Robert Hartwell, “A Cycle of Economic Change,” p. 128-29. Yingtianfu is closer, at about 130 km from Kaifeng. 177

Cities o f Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

73 74

See SS, c. 85, p. 2102. Tang Luoyang’s outer wall measured 52 li (28.93 km). Kaifeng’s outer wall was reinforced more than a dozen times during the Song period. The most extensive reinforcement was conducted from 1075 to 1078 during the reign of Shenzong (10681085) when the walls were extended to 50 li 165 paces. Between 1082 and 1084, a moat was dug around the wall and “urn walls” (wengcheng ), defensive towers (dilou -ft 4#), and nuqiang were added. See SDJK, p. 2-3. For details of Kaifeng’s three walls, see article written by a member of the Kaifeng archaeological team, Qiu Gang &, “Beisong dongjing sancheng de yingjian he fazhan” i t %% If, 3-3$,¥] %• [The Construction and Development of the Three Walls of Eastern Capital of the Northern Song], Zhongyuan wenwu ^ [Relics from Central Plain], no. 4 (1990): p. 35-40. 75 These comparisons are done using the dimensions of Kaifeng’s outer wall provided by the archaeological team in Qiu Gang, “The Construction and Development of the Three Walls,” p. 38. The east wall measured 7.66 km; the west: 7.59 km; the north: 6.94 km; and the south: 6.99 km. 76 The above areas were computed using the dimensions given in Su Bai, “Sui Tang Chang’an and Luoyang,” p. 411-4; 420. The area for Kaifeng’s Imperial City was calculated on the assumption that the perimeter was 5 li long. 77 SS, c. 85, p. 2097. 78 Tian Kai ® , “Beisong Kaifeng huangcheng kaobian” [Investigation of Northern Song Kaifeng’s Imperial City], Zhongyuan wenwu t & X.4% [Relics from Central Plain], no. 4 (1990): p. 41-3, argued that the Palace City was distinct from the Imperial City and that the five li long perimeter wall was that of the Palace City alone. The Imperial City was to the south and east of the Palace City. Until archaeological work reveals the detailed layout of the Imperial city, the controversy will remain. 79 See also SS, c. 85, p. 2097-102. The circumference and location of the Imperial City cannot be determined with exactitude since the city was flooded by the Yellow River during one of its changes in course. It now lies several feet under the current level. 80 An excellent study and schematic reconstruction of Kaifeng’s Imperial City was conducted by Fu Xinian in “Yanshan Monastery in Fanshi county,” p. 119-51. 81 See Lin Zhengqiu , “Nansong dingdu Lin’an yuanyin chutan” if] £ -Sri?IM&M [Preliminary Investigation of the Reasons for Southern Song’s Choice of Lin’an as Capital], Hangzhou shiyuan xuebao [Hangzhou Normal University Journal], no. 1 (1982): p. 29-34. 82 Qiandao lin’an zhi [Record of Lin’an during the Qiandao (1165-1173) Reign Period], in Collection of Song and Yuan Period Gazetteers, vol. 4, c. 2, p. 7b. 83 In 639, it had some 35,071 households. See Wu Zimu A 1 , Mengliang In f | t [ A Record of the Millet Dream], preface dated 1334, c. 18, p. 149 (Henceforth MLL), in W4\ Zhou Feng, Sui-Tang Hangzhou, p. 33. These figures include extramural population in areas under the jurisdiction of the Hangzhou administrative seat. The rapid population increase was also obvious in other cities in the lower Yangzi region when the south was growing very rapidly as a whole. See Hartwell, “Demographic, Political, and Social Transformations of China, 750-1550” for a general picture of the population growth. 84 See Yoshinobu Shiba, “Urbanization and Development of Markets in the Lower Yangtze Valley,” in Crisis and Prosperity in Sung China, ed. John Haeger, p. 13-48; p. 19. 178

The Song Cityscape

85 86

87

88 89

90

91

92

93 94 95

96 97

98 99

Shiba, “Urbanization and Development of Markets,” p. 22. See History and Development of Ancient Chinese Architecture, p. 424. For details of walls, see Zhou Feng W\ ^ , ed., Wuyue shoufu Hangzhou [The Capital of Wuyue-Hangzhou] (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1988), p. 26-30. See Zhou Feng M% , The capital of Wuyue-Hangzhou, p. 86-98. The book is also useful for the different aspects of Hangzhou when it was a capital of Wuyue; see also Xu Gui and Lin Zhengqiu , “Wudai shiguo shiqi de Hangzhou” [Hangzhou during the Five Dynasties], Hangzhou shiyuan xuebao 4/U'l'l flf ]%#& [Hangzhou Normal University Journal], no. 1 (1979): p. 84-8. SHY section on sihuo ■fc'W, c. 16, p. 7a. Its presence, although a boost to the local economy, was most probably a nuisance to the local inhabitants, many of whom had to relocate to make way for governmental edifices in the beginning. MLL, c. 8, p. 56; SS, c. 85. p. 2105. See Wang Shilun l i f e , “Huangcheng jiuli” JL A, JL [Nine li of Imperial City], in Nansong jingcheng Hangzhou [Southern Song Capital Hangzhou], ed. Zhou Feng (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1988), p. 14-29. Wang is of the opinion that in the later years, the Song court did add many more buildings to the palace. The rare instance when the Emperor officially faced north was when he offered sacrifices to Heaven at the Winter Solstice. See Jeffrey Meyer, Peking as a Sacred City, Taipei, 1976, p. 53-4. See Anthony Vidler, “The Scenes of the Street: Transformations in Ideal and Reality, 1750-1871,” in On Streets, ed. Stanford Anderson (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1986), p. 29-112. See Lin Zhengcai , Shou cheng lu zhuyi lit ft [Record of Defending a City Annotated] (Bejing: Jiefangjung chubanshe, 1990), p. 69-70, for an example. See Qiu Gang, “The Construction and Development of the Three Walls,” p. 38-9. Lou Yue, Daily Record of Northern Travels, in Gongkui ji, c. I ll, p. 1579. For a brief account of Lou Yue, see Herbert Franke, ed., Sung Biographies, vol. 2, p. 668-72. There are discrepancies regarding Xinsong Gate. According to Meng Yuanlao, the gate was only double layered while Lou Yue’s description clearly shows a three-layer gate building. MHLZ, p. 1. Located within Huining fang of the West Borough in the outer city, it was originally known as shangyuan xiyi Ji ® # . Its name was later changed in 1008. It dealt mainly with envoys from the West (Hexi region); Xi Xia envoys, for example, stayed here. The Buddhist monasteries were Taiping xingguo si ± ^ 7 ^ S # and Dafo si . Jianlongguan £fefI:5.E was the Daoist temple. Kojiro Yoshikawa, An Introduction to Sung Poetry, p. 18. Daliang was the name used for Kaifeng during the period of the Warring States. Also among the paraphernalia that goes with a title bestowed on a person by the emperor was “a water container with which a retainer was supposed to sprinkle water in front of him in his travels.” See Li Jian (1049-1109), Shiyou tanji ' ) % i [Record of Conversations with Teachers and Friends] 1 ch. (ca. 1093), quoted in Ting/Djang, Anecdotes of Sung Personalities, p. A ll. 179

Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

100 The resulting distance of 40 paces or 62 meters is still about 10 meters narrower than the Champs-Elysees in Paris. 101 Kato Shigeshi, “Songdai dushi de fazhan” Ml [The Development of Song Cities], Research on Chinese Economic History, trans. Wu Jie, p. 239-77. 102 These markets were known as hang H , tuan SI , zuo , or shi . The hang and tuan were usually places of wholesale trade, while the shi was where retailers gathered. The zuo was mainly a place where craft related manufactures such as jade zuo, stone zuo, bamboo zuo, etc., sold the products they made. 103 Although the term hang was still being used, its meaning had changed. During the Tang period, it was normally used to describe a geographically specific location, usually a street within the market, where merchants of the same trade gathered. However, it had developed during the late Tang and Song periods into a proto-guild or an association of merchants specializing in a certain trade, whereby members of the same hang were no longer necessarily found conducting business on the same street. Kato Shigeshi saw this development of the hang into a proto-guild as an attempt to maintain their monopoly. Their development was also encouraged by the government who exacted hangyi t f •?£ [hang obligations] or compensations in return “for the government’s recognition of the right of the a hang continuing its monopoly.” In Kaifeng alone, there were at least 160 hang since this was the number of associations that chose to pay their obligations in kind instead of money when given the choice at the end of the eleventh century. Hangzhou had 414 hang. See Xihu laoren [pseud.], Xihu laoren fansheng lu © M A [The Old Man of West Lake’s Record of the Multidinous Splendors] (written ca. 1250), p. 18, in W4. 104 MHLZ, p. 71. 105 Fan Chengda (1126-1193), Wujun zhi Mi&P& [Record of Wu Prefecture] (Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1986), p. 234-47. 106 See Kato Shigeshi, “On the Hang or the Associations of Merchants in China,” p. 62-71. 107 MHLZ, p. 72. 108 MHLZ, p. 12. 109 MHLZ, p. 73 mentioned “Zhang Ba family garden residence z h e n g d ia n see Guanpu naideweng [pseud.], Ducheng jisheng [Recording the Splendor of the Capital City], preface dated 1247, p. 4, (section on jiusi /'S# [wineshops]) on the nature of this kind of zhengdian, in W4.. 110 MHLZ, p. 75. 111 MHLZ, p. 72. 112 MLL, c. 19, p. 166 gave the etymology of the term washe: “Washe means that when [the patron and performer] arrive it is like piling tiles (i.e., wa) together; when they depart it means “tiles falling apart”: so it is easy to gather and disperse, no one knows when [the custom] arose, but it was formerly the place in the capital where men of worth and commoners were free and unrestrained and completely out of moral control. It was the gate through which young wastrels went to fritter away their time and pass to their ruin,” quoted and translated in West, Chinese Theater, p. 15. 113 For more details see West, Chinese Theater, p. 17-20. 114 MHLZ, p. 67. These so-called theaters were probably simple stages set in large open spaces bounded by railings and screened from view. See Liao Ben , “Songyuan xitai yiji” [Remains of Song-Yuan stages], Wenwu, no. 7 (1989): p. 82-95. 180

The Song Cityscape

115 This figure does not include smaller temples that had less than thirty bays of construction. There were also more than 400,000 Buddhist monks and nuns, and Daoist priests and priestesses with some 24,000 of them found in the capital. See Zhou Baozhu, Research on Song Eastern Capital, p. 559. 116 Li Lian, Record of the Historical Remains of Bianjing, c. 10, p. 6a-8a. The Tieta is still extant and reaches the height of 55.084 m. 117 Li Lian, Record of the Historical Remains of Bianjing, c. 10, p. lOa-b. 118 Although there are no remains to inform us of its appearance, through surviving texts Soper has reconstructed, to a certain extent, its architectural form. See article by Alexander Soper, “Hsiang-kuo-ssu, an Imperial Temple of Northern Sung,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 68 (January-March 1948): p. 19-45, from which the following description of the monastery is derived. For greater detail, see also Xiong Bolu M ‘OsM ., Xiangguosi kao & S ^ % [A Study of the Xiangguo Monastery] (Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 1985); Xu Pingfang, “Beisong Kaifeng daxiangguo si pingmian fuyuan tushuo” Jb A.^3 S -f- ® S. JS- S iJL [The Reconstruction of the Plan of Northern Song Kaifeng’s Great Xiangguo Monastery], in Wenwu yu kaogu lunji i [Treatises on Archaeology and Cultural Relics] (Beijng: Wenwu chubanshe, 1987), p. 357-69. 119 According to Jojin, the courtyard had “four-sided corridors each about 200 bays (long)”. Soper, however, doubts the accuracy of this statement as such a courtyard would be “fantastically large” He thinks that the 200 bays was more likely the length of the circumference or was a figure wrongly transcribed in later copies of the manuscript. All the same, this courtyard must have been extraordinarily large as a contemporary mentioned that the courtyard could hold ten thousand people, see MHLZ, p. 95; Xiong Bolu, A Study of the Xiangguo Monastery, p. 89. 120 Jojin A 4 - , “San-tendai-godaisan-ki,” c. 4, p. 74; translated and quoted in Soper, “Hsiang-kuo-ssu,” p.26. 121 See MHLZ, p. 90-1, translation rendered by Soper in “Hsiang-kuo-ssu,” p. 26, with slight modifications here. 122 See Xiong Bolu, A Study of the Xiangguo Monastery, p. 96-7 where he quoted from Wu Zeng, Nengai zhai manlu i [Recollections of the Master of Nenggai Studio] (1157; reprint, Shanghai, 1979), c. 18, p. 514. 123 MHLZ, p. 91, translation by Soper, “Hsiang-kuo-ssu,” p. 26. 124 MHLZ, p. 181. 125 See Quan Hansheng, “Zhongguo miaoshi zhishi de kaocha [Study of the History of Temple Markets], Sihuo 1, no. 2 (1934): p. 28-33. Shiba, “Song Foreign Trade: Its Scope and Organization,” China Among Equals, ed. M. Rossabi, 1983, p. 89-115. 126 Shiba/Elvin, Commerce and Society, p. 156-63. 127 Quoted in Shiba/Elvin, Commerce and Society, p. 157. 128 Quoted in Shiba/Elvin, Commerce and Society in Sung China, p. 158. 129 Falls usually on February 4 or 5. See MHLZ, p. 171. 130 Quoted and translated in Shiba, “Song Foreign Trade: Its Scope and Organization,” p. 96. 131 David Johnson, “The City-God Cults of T’ang and Sung China,” in Harvard Journal of Asian Studies 45 (December 1985): p. 363-457; p. 391. 132 The first quotation was written by the Song poet Lu Yu in 1158 in Weinan wenji m i£j 181

Cities o f Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

(Si bu congkan ed.), c. 17, p. 3a. while the second is from Qiujian xiansheng daquan wenji (Si bu congkan ed.), c. 40, p.l4a.; both quoted and translated by David Johnson, in “City-God Cults,” p. 398-9. 133 David Johnson, “City-God Cults,” p. 418; see especially p. 415-6. 134 For the development of urban literature, see Jaroslav Prusek, “The Beginnings of Popular Chinese Literature; Urban Centers-The Cradle of Popular Fiction,” Archiv Orientalm 36, no. 1 (1968): p. 67-121. The ci form of poetry although written by the literati was commonly sung in pleasure precincts and its popularity during the Song period was probably due to the pervasiveness of urban entertainment. See MHLZ, p. 137-140; see also West, Chinese Theater, p. 17; Jaroslav Prusek, Origins and Authors ofHua Pen, Prague, 1967.

182

5 The Open City

C^Vo

/ ot all Song towns and cities were as urbanized as the capitals. Kaifeng and Hangzhou were the major nodes within the national network toward which the most important roads and canals converged. Being capital cities, they were also the exception, and the intense urban activities of these cities must not be seen as typical. If the amount of commercial tax that a city yielded is any indication of the degree of commercialization and urbanization, Kaifeng in 1077, for instance, furnished a commercial tax o f 402,379 strings o f cash, or 5.5 percent of the national total. Hangzhou with the second highest quota of 82,173 strings, contributed about a fifth as much.1Although 63 of the 1,431 towns (zhen 41) and cities that had tax stations contributed more than 20,000 strings each, the median for the rest was closer to three or four thousand strings.2 Hundreds o f new and smaller urban centers mushroomed across the empire.

LOWER-LEVEL URBAN CENTERS The rapid urbanization between 8th and 13 th century Since the collapse o f the strong central authority in the mid-eighth century, China saw important social and economic changes in which the transformation o f urban institutions and rapid urbanization were integral. As was mentioned earlier, commercial activities were restricted to the officially sanctioned and supervised markets within the Tang cities. This was later challenged, and together with other factors discussed earlier, led to the emergence of a new kind o f urban structure. In the countryside unofficial rural markets, usually periodic in nature and commonly known as caoshi , cunshi ^ or xushi iM. ^ , were also set up to cater to the needs o f the peasantry distant from the urban markets. The increases in agricultural productivity, the rapid population growth, the development of an extensive communication network, and the efficient transportation of goods brought about a deep transformation, eventually integrating the rural economy into a developing national market. Surplus land was used for crops to serve the needs of new industries or the tables of the rich. Fruits, vegetables, mulberry trees, and sugar cane, etc., were cultivated. Even fish farms developed. Surplus labor

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specialized in crafts and industries producing goods for a rapidly growing urban consumer population. The ease of transportation assured a national market for grains and a constantly expanding market for the goods produced. Regional centers began to specialized in products that they had an advantage in. Suzhou, for instance, was well known, among other things, for its brocade and embroidery and iron cookware. A county in Hunan was “so wholly devoted to tea cultivation that even the countryfolk bought their vegetables in the markets”.3 Trade, once mainly confined to luxuries goods, extended to daily necessities as specialization continued and communities became more interdependent. While there was a “fairly dense pattern o f village settlement but at the same time comparatively few small towns ranking below the administrative county towns in size and status,” during the early Tang period, large numbers o f small and intermediate size towns emerged during the late Tang and early Song periods.4 Rural population gravitated towards urban centers while villages and rural markets grew into “half towns”, small or medium sized towns or even cities.5 Significant during this period was the development of towns from rural markets which functioned as intermediate trading centers providing a new economic linkage between cities and villages.6 The conduct of trade was so pervasive that Changshu County in the Suzhou Prefecture, for example, had one market town for every 8.65 villages during the period 1241-1252.7 One such market place was the town of Dingqiao of which this was written: These days, wherever there is a settlement o f ten households, there is always a market fo r rice and salt. The use o f the term ‘m arket’ indicates that there is business going on there. A t the appropriate season people exchange what they have fo r what they have not, raising or lowering their prices in accordance with their estimation o f the eagerness or lack o f enthusiasm shown by others, so as to obtain the last small measure o f profit. This is o f course the usual way o f the world. Although Dingqiao is no great city yet its river will take boats and its land-routes will take carts. Thus it too serves as a town fo r peasants who trade and artisans who engage in commerce.8 Coastal cities also grew rapidly. The loss o f the northwestern territories had cut off Song’s access to the overland Silk Road. Instead maritime trade developed at an unprecedented scale, thanks to the progress in shipbuilding technology and the invention of the compass during the twelfth century. Persian, Arab, Southeast Asian, Korean and Japanese ships called at the flourishing ports along the coast. Foreign trade was also encouraged as the court recognized it as an important source of income. In 1128, for instance, maritime trade alone accounted for “twenty percent of the empire’s total cash revenue o f ten million strings”.9 Nine port cities — Jiangyin , Huating ¥ -f*, Ganpu , Xiuzhou % ^'1 , Hangzhou , Mingzhou ^1 , Wenzhou , Quanzhou , and Guangzhou f~ — were designated for foreign trade (Fig. 65). 184

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Fig. 65. Port cities.

The growth o f trade and the proliferation o f urban centers created a situation in which the importance o f an “artificial” administrative center did not necessary correspond with its importance as an economic center. During the early Tang, these administrative centers, though mainly political or military, normally served the secondary function of market centers as well. They were the centers through which taxes, collected mainly in kind, were funneled through to the central government and redistributed through official expenditure.10 The Song inherited the Tang local administration system with minor changes. The empire was divided into 23 regions (lu $$-), some 300 prefectures and about 1500 counties.11 Although administratively, prefectural capitals preceded county capitals, economically many county seats superseded their prefectural counterparts in importance after the rapid growth of trade during the Song dynasty. A network was developed in which these economic centers may be ranked hierarchically as regional cities, followed by local cities, central market towns, intermediate market towns, and finally rural marketplaces known as “standard markets”.12 Growth was especially rapid in the lower Yangzi Valley.13 Social disorder in North China since the mid-Tang had accelerated the southward migration. Coupled with the natural growth o f the indigenous population, the south saw an unprecedented expansion. While only 23 percent o f the population lived in the south in 606, the 185

Cities o f Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

situation was reversed by 1078 when southern population accounted for 65 percent of the total.14 Urban population constituted an important component. In the early 13th century, about 14 percent o f the population o f Yin County in which the city of Mingzhou (modern Ningbo T ;&) was situated was urban. In She County (where Huizhou was located), urban population constituted about 26 percent; in Dantu County (where the prefectural seat Zhenjiang was located) it was 28 percent in 12081224 but rose to 33 percent in 1265-74; Hanyangjun’s urban population amounted to about 13 percent.15 In the prefecture of Dingzhou in Fujian, Elvin noted that the urban population rose quickly from six percent of the total population in the later twelfth century to 28 percent by the middle of the thirteenth century.16 Across the empire the number o f big cities were also increasing. During the Song period there were more than forty cities with population exceeding a hundred thousand, a considerable increase from the dozen or so during the Tang era.17 According to statistics available in 1077, there were 2,041 large and small centers in the empire that furnished substantial commercial taxes to the state.18 And this number did not include the economically negligible but nonetheless politically or militarily significant prefectural and county seats as well as some 1,300 towns.19 Altogether more than 3,200 zhen (towns) and cities were listed. If we were to include small towns in Southern China similar to the zhen but which were known as xu , chang , p u M , du '& , dian J% , zhai $■, the number would even be higher.20 The increase in urban centers did not, however, result in an increase in the number of prefectural or county capitals. If anything, there was a slight decrease in the number o f administrative seats.21 It was the proliferation of rural markets and lower-level economic centers such as intermediate market towns that changed the landscape and the rural-urban relationship. An urban system of higher order cities, county seats, and towns serving as intermediate market towns and local markets, stretched across the empire like nodes linked by an extensive communication network (Fig. 66).

Prefectural Capitals, County Seats, and Towns At the lowest level, a town might consist of a hundred households to several thousand households. As Shiba has noted, besides salt depots, wine-shops and tax-offices, such a town would have its own boundaries and occasionally even a wall. Either a Town Supervising Official (jianzhen guan J ), or a Police Inspector (xunjian ), or sometimes a County Captain (xianwei ) would be placed in charge, and “there would be the administrative subdivisions called ‘quarters’ (fang £? ) and officially sanctioned guilds”.22 Perhaps due to the rapid expansion and also in part to the nature of the terrain, many cities during the Song period no longer had rectilinear envelopes. Unlike the wide expanse of flat plateau o f northern China, the southern lands were waterlogged, dotted with lakes, scissored by streams, rivers, and canals, and sprinkled here and there with hills. The larger cities that emerged here often grew quickly adapting to the form of the terrain. Quanzhou, an important port in the south, is a good 186

The Open City

Fig. 66. Commercial centers of Song China.

example.23 The city was first founded during the reign o f Emperor Sui Wendi in 589. During the Tang period it gradually became an important coastal port between the two other major ports, Canton to its south and Yangzhou to its north. A modest inner city (zicheng ) wall of 3 li and 160 paces was said to have been erected in 906. This was almost square in shape and was served by two intersecting roads that left the city through four gates, one on each side — a layout typical o f the earlier urban structure. Its shape too conformed to those used largely in the north. During the Five Dynasty period however when Southern Tang Dynasty (Nantang &Jlt , 937-958) was in control of the territory, a rectangular enceinte for the administrative city (yacheng ) was built off-axis north of the inner city. An outer wall, about 20 li long, of irregular shape was also added, supposedly during this period (Fig. 67). The proverbial prosperity and rapid growth of the port city together with the peculiarities of the site were responsible for breaking the once rigid geometry of the city. Quanzhou was not unique in being irregular in shape. In fact many towns and cities in the south were not rectilinear in form. Wuxi , Jingzhou #] , Ganzhou if" ^'1 , and Hangzhou are just a few examples.24 Farther west, the military stronghold o f Jingjiang prefectural capital I f '/i-Jtfidi (modern Guilin) was similar in some respects. However, being a military stronghold which had expanded over time, its 187

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188

The Open City

plan and organization was far more complicated than most cities. A map engraved in 1272 on the southern cliff face o f Parrot Mountain (Yingwushan ih ) provides us with detailed information of its layout (Fig. 68).25 Located at the southeastern section of the city, the small zicheng, built during the Tang period, was, as expected, rectangular in shape. This was where the provincial administrative center was located. However its subsequent expansion and reinforcements during the Song period once again upset the rigid geometry. Between 1258 and 1272 the city was reinforced four times in preparation for the approaching assault by the Mongol army. The city was sectioned into six parts, including an inner city, a “sandwiched-city”, two outer cities — one to the west and the other to the south, a new city, and an administrative city. The new walls were no longer strictly rectilinear as was the case o f the Tang administrative precinct. Rather the new contours adapted to the surrounding features. A lower secondary brick circuit wall (known as Yangma wall Pa 4 $ , ) hugging the contours of the city walls was built as an additional obstacle. While the eastern and southern moats were sections of rivers, the moat on the western side o f the city was dug in response to the existing conditions and subsequently yielded the curvilinear forms. Also noteworthy was the road network within the city. It was no longer the rectilinear gird o f the earlier periods. Instead some roads were oblique and most roads terminated at T-junctions. This was a common military strategy developed to confuse and delay a sieging army from capturing the city’s nerve center once it had breached the walls. This T-junction feature was also found in the prosperous city of Suzhou (see Fig. 53). Whatever the scale of the towns however, the urban experience toward the end of the Northern Song period was very different from that of the early Tang period. Even if it was not always as intense as in Kaifeng or in Hangzhou, it was certainly urban. The concentration o f population, the presence of suburbs, the relaxation of control and the resulting proliferation of trade and entertainment increasingly distanced urban living from village life.

THE OPEN CITY Besides the emergence of a new streetscape fronted by shops and stalls and crowded with rich merchants, peddlers, performers, animal trains, and ordinary citizens, many other aspects of the open city were different from those of its predecessor. Not only did the aspect of the streets change, so did their overall organization. A new urban fabric and skyline also appeared. Less dramatic perhaps was the appearance of a more colorful, decorative, and elegant architecture replacing the stern and monumental style of the past.

The change in city grid While we frequently think o f the Chinese city as a perfect diagram whether in the form o f the checkerboard plans o f Sui-Tang Chang’an or Luoyang, or the triple

189

Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

Fig. 68. Map of Jingjiang fu.

concentric walls of Yuan Dadu and Ming-Qing Beijing after the paradigm of Zhou Wangcheng , the reality was quite different for the city during the phase of rapid urbanization in China. The square and rectangular city contours were true primarily for North and Northwestern China where the earlier Chinese dynasties were based.26 The square city walls of Datong k . Is] , Taiyuan icif- , Darning k Z , etc., and their simple gridiron urban structures come to mind (Figs. 69 to 71).27 However, when

190

The Open City

e co n o m ic prim acy shifted south to the L ow er Yangzi region after m id-Tang, and d evelop m en t took place farther south in G uangdong and Fujian during the Song, highly irregular city form s em erged w ith equally irregular street networks in these regions. On the other hand, even the rigid urban structure o f the northern cities, when given the opportunity and necessary conditions, broke dow n. Strict grids eroded and crooked and obliqu e streets appeared (F ig. 72). A lthough not a northern city, the subtle road and canal network o f Song period Suzhou is a fine exam ple o f the erosion o f a on ce stricter grid o f fa n g (see F igs. 1 and 53). A lso w hen a new w all w as built to protect any suburbs that had developed, these new intramural sections were far less ordered. K a ife n g ’s outer city , fo r in sta n c e , had sev era l o b liq u e streets. T his develop m en t is equally v isib le in cities o f later periods w hen new w alls w ere added to e n clo sed hea v ily populated suburbs. M ing period B eijin g is a case in point. Its south eastern and south w estern se c tio n s, e n c lo sed in 1553 under the reign o f Emperor Jia Jing after the addition o f a new outer wall, contain numerous curved and crook ed streets co m p letely out o f character w ith the rigid ly planned grid o f the im perial capital (Fig. 73).

The change in urban tissue A s the ward w alls fell, and stalls, shops, taverns, restaurants, brothels, and the like left the con fin es o f en clo sed m arket to line m ain streets and side alleys, the urban fabric also changed. The proliferation o f these pluralistic streets throughout the city not on ly had a great im pact on the structure o f the city but also altered the urban tissue. The distinction and location o f the different urban tissues typical o f residential, com m ercial, and adm inistrative functions so d efinite in the Tang city w as no longer as clear during the Song period. W hile a relatively dense fabric o f narrow lots filled the markets o f C han g’an and L u oyang the rest o f the city w as m ade up m ainly o f larger plots for courtyard houses interspersed w ith even larger ones for the extensive properties o f officials and m agnates, state bureaus and official facilities, and religious institutions. The Son g city w as m ore com p lex and its urban tissue is less easy to characterize. K aifeng, for instance, had land lots and properties o f different shapes and sizes lining its streets. A lthough a distilled v iew o f the city, Going up the River during Qingming Festival illustrates this point w ell. A series o f adjoining shops along a street m ay be interrupted here and there by large m ultistory taverns, restaurants, residences or even govern m en t b u ild in g s (se e F ig. 7 2 ). G enerally, sm aller lots com p risin g m ainly com m ercia l properties lin ed the m ain streets and a lley s in the busier location s. B ehind these shops and at less central locations, larger lots o f courtyard houses were found. E ven larger ones for m ilitary cam ps w ere located along the outer w all. An eighteenth-century map o f B eijin g, com plete w ith representations o f urban features, typical hou ses, and shops, sh o w s a city made up o f the different kinds o f urban tissue. A long the main streets w ere rows o f single-story buildings with narrow bay w idths (F igs. 74 and 75 ). B ehind w ere large courtyards, m ainly rectangular in

191

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shape, surrounded by buildings on one or more sides. Occasionally free standing structures were located within the courtyards. Gates and compound walls often lined the narrower alleys, distant from the thoroughfares. Although of a much later period, the urban fabric depicted was most probably very similar to that of Kaifeng during the Northern Song — the period that gave rise to this new urban structure.

The change in urban skyline While the changes in urban tissue constituted change at the level o f the city plan, the city also saw changes in its vertical profile. In general, the Chinese city was flat, com prising m ainly one and two-story buildings. The Song period saw an unprecedented vertical growth in its capital cities. Competing with the many

Fig. 69. Map of Datong. 192

The Open City

Fig. 70. Map of Taiyuan.

Fig. 71. Map of Darning. 193

Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

Fig. 72. Reconstruction of a schematic plan of a section of Qingming shanghe tu.

Fig. 73. Detail of an eighteenth century map of Beijing showing irregular urban grid southeast of Chongwen gate in the outer city.

conspicuous gate towers, corner turrets, and fire observation towers, were the tall structures of commercial, religious, and residential properties alike. The limited size of Kaifeng and especially Hangzhou and the galloping growth o f population were partly responsible for this phenomena. As was noted in the previous chapter, a fourto five-fold increase in population in certain parts of the country was not uncommon. With the growth of trade, the itinerant population in cities also increased. At the capital, this was further compounded by the arrival of about 10,000 hopeful scholars every third year for the civil service examinations. In Southern Song Hangzhou, “there were ten times more scholars than usual from the different regions” during the period of examinations.28 Two-story buildings were common as the number of 194

The Open City

references to lou # , sometimes translated as loft buildings, imply (see Figs. 58 and 76). At times these included buildings with three or more levels such as Baifanlou , one of the largest wineshops in Kaifeng, described earlier. Less spectacular, perhaps, were buildings that straddled roadways known as kuajielou 2^%$! . One such building was recorded in the engraved map of Suzhou along the major artery in the city (Fig. 77). These buildings were probably not uncommon as Lou Yue noted the presence of another such wineshop-restaurant in Suzhou while he was traveling north.29 Perhaps, the quest for verticality was more than just a matter o f necessity. As Soper has noted “the Song age seems to have carried to a climax a passion for verticality long growing in the Chinese aesthetic sense”.30 The four-story gateway to the imperial monastery of Xiangguo in Kaifeng is a testament to such efforts. Even more impressive were the numerous pagodas that dotted its skyline. Although these were equally prominent within the Tang city, they reached new heights in congested city of Kaifeng. The first pagoda of Kaibaosi , we have seen, shot more than a hundred meters into the air. Even its smaller replacement built in 1049, now stands I

Fig. 74. Detail of an eighteenth century map of Beijing showing a major business district around 1750 in the Outer City. 195

Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

a tow ering 55.1 m eter tall in the modern city o f K aifeng (Fig. 7 8 ).31 G enerally, the shapes o f these pagodas also differed from their Tang counterparts in shifting from a square section to a octagon al one. In 1069, Lou Yue, upon entering the city gate X insongm en, cou ld see this pagoda located about three kilom eters to the north and the im pressive Potaisi Pagoda o' about tw o kilom eters farther south.32 A long the im perial avenue, he noted several others that graced the silhouette o f the city. W riting later, Zhou M i (1 2 3 2 -a fte r l3 0 8 ) remarked that the tow ers and pavilions o f K aifeng were “extrem ely lofty.”33 Public establishm ents w ere not the only ones to dom inate the skyline. W ealthy city dw ellers w ere also building tow ers and pavilions to add charm and elegance to their properties. Within the com pound o f H uizong’s prime m inister Cai Jing outside Liang Gate w as the S ix Crane H all w hich w as four zhang nine chi or about 15 meters high. The o fficia l Li Zunhui (-a fte r l0 2 0 ) earned his residence the nam e o f “T he W atch-T ow er-L i F a m ily ” w hen he b u ilt a “tall-m u ltistoried loft building along the street.34 H angzhou w as ev en m ore crow ded if w e w ere to ju d g e by the contem porary accounts and those o f later western observers during the Yuan dynasty. An inhabitant

Fig. 75. Detail of an eighteenth century map of Beijing showing an upper-class district around 1750 near the east wall of the Inner City.

196

The Open City

wrote that the alleyw ays w ere con g ested and the streets narrow and “the houses o f com m on ers are high and built c lo s e to each other. Their beam s touch and their porches are continuous. There is not an inch o f unoccupied ground anyw here.”35 Visual accounts provided by paintings confirm the vertical tendencies o f the Southern S on g capital. In a contem porary h andscroll o f the W est Lake by L i Song (11601243), a busy lak e-sid e street ou tsid e the southw estern w a lls is lined by tw o and three-storied b u ild ings (se e F igs. 65 and 7 9 ). If this w as true o f a relatively low d en sity southern d istrict by the lak e, the situation cou ld o n ly h ave been m ore dramatic in the congested sections o f the city where the poorer com m on folks lived. A n anonym ous painting o f the panoram ic view o f the W est Lake, probably from the 14th century, show ed a scene equally filled with multistoried buildings along the lake

Fig. 76. Example of a two-story wine loft (detail of Qingming shanghe tu).

197

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Fig. 77. Detail of Pingjiang tu showing Kuajielou, a restaurant that straddled a street.

front (F ig. 80). T he street painted by Li S on g in the earlier handscroll w as also depicted in the M ing period panorama, albeit from a different view point, show ing the endless row s o f tw o and three-storied shops and houses (Fig. 81).

The change in the city edge The changes w ere not o n ly ob viou s in the p h ysiogn om y o f the city, but also at the periphery o f the city. T his d ifferen ce is heightened w hen w e com pare preplanned C h an g ’an or L u oyan g w ith sp ontaneou s K aifen g or H angzhou. W h ile the Tang capitals had substantial cultivated field s w ithin their w alls, the Song capitals had exten sive suburbs beyond their ramparts. Son g K aifeng, as w e have seen, established nine suburban boroughs w ith a total o f 14 fa n g to h an dle the problem o f suburban grow th. G oin g by contem porary accounts, H angzhou’s suburbs w ere no less remarkable. N ai D ew en g wrote in 1235 that the area w as still densely populated scores o f li beyond the south, w est, and north o f the city and that one cou ld w alked for days w ithout exhausting the markets and streets.36 Suburban d evelop m en t w as not confined to the capital cities alone, in fact m any cities w ere surrounded by exten sive faubourgs. D uring the first quarter o f the

198

Fig. 78. Kaibaosi pagoda.

Fig. 79. Detail of West Lake by Li Song, Song dynasty, Shanghai Museum, showing a street at the lower left hand corner.

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Fig. 80. Detail of Panorama o f Westlake, Anonymous, Ming Dynasty, Freer Gallery.

Fig. 81. Detail of Panorama o f Westlake, Anonymous, Ming Dynasty, Freer Gallery.

eleventh century, Taiyuan, for instance, had a suburban population o f more than 2000 households. B etw een 1038-40, there were also more than ten thousand m ilitary and civilian fam ilies residing around the suburban markets o f Q inzhou # ^'1 . During the secon d h a lf o f Northern S o n g , suburban developm ent w as even m ore widespread. O utside the w a lls o f M in gzh ou ^'1 and Jiangningfu f r f / f t w ere markets that gathered every m orning. X infan County capital (in Chengdu Prefecture ) and the military stronghold o f Pingding 3(~'aL% too had important extramural

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developm ent.37 W hen Lou Yue passed through H ongxian it - lr a century later, he also rem arked that m ost o f the m arkets w ere located outside the city w a lls.38 Su S h i’s earlier rem ark “H ow can each [o f the cities] be exten d ed w ith an outer w a ll? ” underlines the pervasiveness o f suburban growth. H ow ever, the difference is far le ss dram atic w hen w e con sid er the lo w er-lev el Tang cities. U n like the capital cities o f C hang’an and Luoyang, m any Tang cities did not have w ell delim ited city-ed ges defined by their w alls. For a number o f cities the situ a tio n during the later p eriod o f the Tang w as rather sim ilar to their S on g counterparts. M any centers first estab lish ed for m ilitary and political reasons had sm all en cein tes for their adm inistrative centers. Rapid population grow th quickly spilled inhabitants beyond the w alls. Y angzhou, Suzhou, K aifeng, and Hangzhou are typical exam ples. A s the extramural population o f these cities grew during the late Tang, new circuit w alls were built to contain the expanding suburbs. O nly this growth did not stop for the next several hundred years until the invasion o f the M ongols. M ean w hile, m ore and more v illa g es, tow ns, and cities expanded beyond their w alls and sin c e w a lls w ere not or c o u ld not a lw a y s be built to h old the exp an d in g population, the city ed ge b ecam e less and less distinct. A s Spiro K o sto f had pointed out, “P ow er d esign s cities, and the raw est form o f pow er is control o f urban land.”39 The strong, autocratic grip that the Sui emperors had over their capitals, cou pled w ith rigid social order, produced an equally strict urban order o f w a lled m on ofu n ction al wards separated by w id e, p o liced streets, co n fin in g c itiz e n s to e a sily co n tro lla b le quarters. The go v ern m en t’s disdain for com m ercia l a ctiv ities and m erchants alik e relegated them to c lo se ly supervised en clo sed markets; trade, if needed, w as primarily for the consum ption o f the court. A lthough, the system w as adopted during the early Tang period, the second h alf o f the Tang period saw a gradual erosion o f the urban structure thanks to a w eakened central governm ent, an exp and ing econ om y, and the em ergence o f a prosperous urban c la ss. T he h alf-cen tu ry lon g interregnum , w h ich d ecim ated m uch o f the aristocracy and the gentry, brought an end to the “apogee o f the pow er o f the great aristocratic cla n s” and paved the w ay for a n ew so cial order.40 U nder the m ore pluralistic Son g society, com m ercial activities, once considered a necessary ev il and kept to a m inim u m , b lo sso m ed . T he im perial coffers that dep en d ed m ain ly on agricultural taxes now derived a large in com e from com m ercial taxes. Even officials and gentry, attracted by profit, participated in com m ercial ventures on ce regarded w ith contem pt. In fact, m any o f the rental properties that encroached on the public roadw ays w ere built and ow n ed by high o fficia ls th em selves, m aking it ever more difficu lt for the central authority to rid the streets o f these structures. The n ew city w as m uch le ss controlled and m ore open than its predecessors to popular involvem ent. Governm ent ed ifices, im perial shrines, and army encam pm ents aside, the rigid zoning and segregation o f activities in the city gave w ay to pluralistic neighborhoods w here market forces determ ined to a large extent the allocation o f activities. Public and private spaces b ecam e accessible to large cross-sections o f the

201

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populace. Intense urban activities, ranging from recreation to trade filled the city at all times leading to the blossoming of a genuine urban culture and the emergence of a popular urban consciousness. Physically, the open city was significantly different from its predecessors. Driven by increasing congestion and economic considerations, there was a tendency, slight though it may be, to vertical expansion. Wineshops and restaurants in busy locations built additional levels to cater a larger clientele while multistory residential buildings appear in congested cities like Hangzhou. Rapid urban population growth also led to the emergence of suburbs at strategic locations around the city. Within the walls the gridiron plan eroded to a more subtle network filled with T-junctions, cranked intersections, and oblique streets over a complex urban fabric. Toward the end o f the Northern Song, a new kind of city was bom. This new paradigm would remain the dominant form until contact with the West and the advent o f modern industries and government once again changed the urban landscape.

NOTES 1 2 3 4 5

6

7 8

9

10 11

12 13

Ma, Commercial Development and Urban Change, p. 64-70. See Ma, Commercial Development and Urban Change, p. 67, table 3. Mark Elvin, The Pattern of Chinese Past, p. 168. Twitchett, “The Tang Market System,” p. 203. Shiba/Elvin, Commerce and Society, p. 128. See also Fu Zongwen, “Song Period Rural Market Towns and the Development of Suburbs”; Fu Zongwen, “Songdai de caoshizhen” £ 'ft Tf # [Song Period Rural Market Towns], Kexue zhanxian, no. 1 (1982): p. 116-25. Shiba, “Urbanization and Development of Markets,” p. 43. Shiba/Elvin, Commerce and Society, p. 129-30. Passage from Zhenjiang zhi 4ft [Zhenjiang Gazetteer] for the Zhishun JU® reign period (1330-1332) quoted from Shiba/Elvin, Commerce and Society, p. 129. Ma, Commercial Development and Urban Changes, p. 38; he also noted that this became an imperial policy when Gaozong issued an edict in 1137 saying: “The profits from maritime commerce are very great. If properly managed, they can bring in a million [strings of cash]. Is this not better than taxing the people? We pay attention to this matter because we wish to lighten the burden of the people.” See SHY, c. 44 (Zhiguan zhi), p. 20a-b quoted in p. 34. Shiba, “Urbanization and Development of Markets,” p. 41. The number of prefectures and counties varied during the duration of the dynasty. At its peak in the early 1100s, there were about 1500 counties and 300 prefectures. During the Yuanfeng period (1078-1085) there were only 224 prefectures and 1093 counties. See Ting/Djang, Anecdotes of Sung Personalities, p. 48-9. During the Southern Song there were only 16 regions left. See William Skinner, “Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China,” The Journal of Asian Studies 24, no. 1,2,3 (1964, 1965) for typology and terminology. Six of the nine ports were clustered around the deltas of the Yangzi and the Qiantang rivers. 202

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14 15 16 17

18 19

20

21

22 23

24

25

26 27

28 29

30

See Shiba, “Urbanization and Development of Markets,” p. 16. See also Hartwell, “Demographic, Political, and Social Transformations of China, 750-1550.” All these figures are estimates since the urban population cannot be determined with certainty. Shiba/Elvin, Commerce and Society, p. 137-9. Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past, p. 175. Liu Zhiping -*'] Sk.-f- , Zhongguo juzhu jianzhu jianshi [A Brief History of Chinese Residential Architecture] (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye chubanshe, 1990), p. 41. Ma, Commercial Development and Urban Changes, p. 66 Of the 1,135 county capitals in 1077, only 743 or 65 percent had stations for collecting commercial taxes while only one quarter of the 1,815 zhen H (towns) had stations; see Shiba, “Urbanization and Development of Markets,” p. 26; also Ma, Commercial Development and Urban Changes, p. 63. Xu and chang were towns that grew out of rural markets while pu and dian were towns that developed from commercial establishments and inns. Du were towns located at ferry points and zhai were towns which were military camps initially. There were only 220 odd prefectures during the Yuanfeng period (1078-1085) as compared to about 331 prefectural seats between 742 and 756 during the Tang dynasty. See footnote 11 and Chapter 1, footnote 187. Shiba, Commerce and Society, p. 131. See Dong Jianhong i # , Zhongguo chengshi jianshe shi + [History of Chinese City Development] (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye chubanshe, 1987), p. 53-7. See Wu Qingzhou ^ , “Shilun woguo gucheng kanghong fanglao de jingyan” iK [Experience of Chinese Old Cities in Preventing Flood and Waterlogging], Jianzhushi lunwenji [Collected Papers on History of Architecture], vol. 8, p. 1-20. The research was furthered in his Research on Flood Prevention in Ancient Chinese Cities. See History and Development of Ancient Chinese Architecture, p. 435-7; and Ma Chongxin -3/ # # , “Shi lun Guilin Songdai moya shike ‘Jingjiang fuchengchi tu’ zai ditushi shang de yiyi” ;&S)) -jii&S ^5L [The Significance of the Song Jingjiangfu Map in the History of Maps], Lishi dili fit it [Historical Geography] 6 (1988): p. 251-7. See Sen-dou Chang, “The Morphology of Walled Cities,” The City in Late Imperial China, ed. Skinner, p. 75-100. For an unanalytical and non-chronological collection of Chinese city maps, see Benjamin E. Wallacker et al., ed., Chinese Walled Cities: A collection of Maps from Shina Jokaku no Gaiyo (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1979). A quick glance is sufficient to convince one of the difference in morphology of cities north and south of the Yellow River. Xihu laoren [pseud.], The Old Man of West Lake’s Record of the Multidinous Splendors, p. 9, in W4. Luo Yue, Beixing rilu, p. 1577. For a study of the Potaisi Pagoda, see Kong Xianyi, “Pota guanjian” JSL, Songshi yanjiu lunwenji [Collected Papers on Song History] 1987 Annual Meeting edition, 1989, p. 322-33. Alexander Soper, “Hsiang-kuo-ssu,” p. 28.

203

Cities o f Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40

Zhou Baozhu, Research on Song Eastern Capital, p. 569-70. Lou Yue, Daily Record of Northern Travels, in Gongkui ji, c. I ll, p. 1579. Zhou Mi $ , Kuixin zashi [Miscellaneous Notes from the Kuixin quarter] (ca. 1298) quoted in Soper, “Hsiang-kuo-ssu,” p. 27. Wang Mingqing 3L&M (1127-after 1214), Huizhu qianlu ®T:S. [Talks Conducted While Waving a Chowry] (Congshu jicheng ed., Shanghai: Commercial Book Press, 1936), c. 2, p. 84. MLL, c. 10, p. 81, in W4. Guanpu naideweng /ft 81 [pseud.], Recording the Splendor of the Capital City, p. 15 (fangyuan ^ K .), in W4. See Fu Zongwen, “Song Period Rural Markets and the Development of Suburbs, p. 162. Lou Yue, Daily Record of Northern Travels, in Gongkui ji, c. I ll, p. 1576. Spiro Kostof, The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), p. 52. D. Twitchett, “The Composition of the T’ang Ruling Class,” p. 52.

204

6 A New Urban Paradigm

(/?he Tang-Song transition period, important in many aspects of Chinese social, cultural, and economic history, is equally critical in the history of Chinese cities. While the Sui and the early Tang city was controlled and highly disciplined with restricted commercial activity that recalls the capital cities o f the Six Dynasties period, the late Northern Song city established a new paradigm, that of the open city filled with multifunctional streets active round the clock. These cities reflected the respective societies that gave rise to them, one rooted in a strong aristocratic power with a highly hierarchical social structure, and the other shaped by a diverse, mercantile society managed by pragmatic professional bureaucrats. The emergence of the new urban paradigm towards the end of the eleventh century is one of the most dramatic and important changes in Chinese urban history. The Sui-early Tang and late Northern Song city as epitomized in this study by their respective capitals and major urban centers were very different from one another. Sui-Tang Chang’an was extremely controlled and was divided into large enclosed wards by extraordinarily wide streets. These closely patrolled streets became vast expanses o f “no-man’s land” at night. The people of Chang’an who lived in the wards were subject to stringent supervision and forbidden to leave the wards during curfew hours. Access to the streets after dark was strictly regulated. Guards stationed in police posts located at junctions of the avenues at the comers o f the fang enforced compliance. The main streets were also devoid o f commercial activities, which were restricted to the fortress-like East and West Markets in the city. There, trading was permitted only during certain hours of the day. In fact Chang’an was very much like a collection of semi-autonomous walled cities or urban “villages” separated by wide avenues within a fortified precinct. Mitigated by the low density, wide streets, and earthem walls, the visual cues were probably not very different from those o f the country even within the fortified enclosure. The emergence towards the end of the eleventh century of the open city announced the advent o f a very different form o f city. The new urban center was crisscrossed by streets lined with establishments of all kind including shops, taverns, restaurants, ateliers, entertainment facilities, religious institutions, government edifices, and residences. Extensive suburbs often mushroomed outside the city walls. Within, overpopulation and high density forced buildings to be built closely together. 205

Cities o f Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

Multistory buildings became common. Free to move, shops and entertainment facilities congregated at bridges and important intersections o f major land and water routes both inside and outside the city walls, creating busy commercial districts. Business was conducted at all hours of the day. The process of transformation from one form to the other, as we have seen, was long and tortuous. The reasons for such a development were equally complex and multifaceted. During the long period of relative peace during the Song period, the population in China as well as in the urban centers grew rapidly, a result, in part, of agricultural advancements. The adoption of new strains o f early ripening Champa rice allow ed for m ultiple harvests per year; im provem ents in agricultural technologies brought about spectacular increases in production. At the same time, surplus labor began to specialize, resulting in ample consumer goods for the growing urban population. The Song saw a period of unprecedented economic growth. Rural markets grew into towns, and towns into cities. Spurred by natural population growth and rural influx, these urban centers quickly became crowded. Suburbs flourished. Houses and sheds invaded public roadways. Simultaneously, commercial activities blossom ed. Ward w alls, if still extant, fell. Shops expanded beyond the last semblance of wards; they first lined and later encroached upon the streets and avenues. Although the economic expansion of the Song period contributed much to the birth o f the new urban paradigm, the social transformation during the important Tang-Song transition period was also significant in the emergence of the new urban structure. Efforts were made by the Tang emperors to weaken the strength o f the ruling aristocrats through diverse means, including the issue of official genealogies and the selection o f government officials through civil examinations. The An Lushan rebellion in 755 had put an end to the centralizing authority of the Tang court. Later the Huang Chao rebellion and the ensuing half-century-long social turmoil ended the power o f the aristocracy and helped pave the way for the rise of a new scholarofficial gentry and a new social order. The aristocratic and centralizing nature o f the Sui and early Tang administration was eventually replaced by a Song government managed by pragmatic career Confucianist bureaucrats. The strict social hierarchy of the previous eras gave way to a more socially mobile social structure. Under the more pluralistic Song society, commercial activities, no longer regarded with the same contempt, blossomed under less governmental supervision. The social position of merchants improved; some even became officials. Lured by great returns, officials and gentry, likewise, invested in commercial activities and real estate. Self interest and greed led many to crowd roadways with commercial properties, making it ever more difficult for the authority to clear the streets o f encraoching structures. Urban land, accumulated by the officials, the gentry, and the monied merchant class, was used to produce a city for their own consumption. However, just as important to the appearance o f the open city was the political relaxation in urban control whatever the reasons might have been. The aftermath of the An Lushan rebellion was once again critical in this respect. The erosion of the 206

A New Urban Paradigm

ward system during the second half of the Tang period was, I believe, less directly due to an increase in trade and commercial activities that had for precondition an increasing population but more directly influenced by the weakening o f the central authority in the wake of the rebellion. Immediately after the An Lushan uprising the population of the country declined dramatically. Even if the conditions then did not allow for an accurate census to be taken, it was undeniable that there was a sharp decline in population both in the cities and in the country at large. The Tang dynasty during the second half of its reign was constantly besieged by problems both domestic and foreign. Efforts to control urban disorder were completely given up after the mid-ninth century when imperial attention was channeled to suppressing internal popular uprisings. The further loosening of urban controls during the halfcentury-long interregnum between the Tang and the Song periods when war-torn states succeeded one another laid the foundation for the blossoming o f a new urban form. When state control was strong as in the beginning o f the Sui period, urban order was enforced in Kaifeng after the visit o f Emperor Wendi even though prosperity and flourishing trade had worn away the rigid urban structure in that city. Once a strong central authority was established and the security of the state assured, urban restoration measures followed. The same attempt was made by the Song emperors after the consolidation o f their empire in 979 to reimpose the Tang urban order on the capital Kaifeng. However, in the face of the booming economy and social transformation, coupled with the pragmatism o f the Confucian bureaucrats, the efforts of the Song emperors were destined to fail in the long run. The strong, autocratic grip that the Sui emperors had over their capitals was replaced by that of a bureaucratic government of practical scholar-officials. Trade once strictly regulated in enclosed markets and conducted primarily for the court’s consumption was widespread and permeated all levels of the society. Under the Song administration, commercial and urban taxes became major sources o f income for the court. The slackening of commercial controls went hand in hand with the relaxation of urban regulations. Street-encroaching structures were taxed but accepted. The rationalism of the Song reign turned an urban problem into a money-making opportunity and accepted the birth of a new urban structure. Just as important as the emergence o f the open city was the beginning of an urban culture. Prompted by the political loosening, the economic prosperity, and the rapid urbanization, Song China saw the rise o f an urban conscience and the formation of a veritable urban culture. Religious ideas, literary forms and contents, entertainment varieties, and ways o f life all testified to the importance o f the city in the general worldview o f the Song citizen. How much this urban consciousness in turn spurred the development of the new urban form is unclear and difficult to assess. Not all cities, however, underwent the same transformation. Cities that flourished during the Tang period in the Lower Yangzi Region and Southern China were certainly less rigidly controlled to begin with. Their relatively late origin, their long distance from the central authority and their rapid population increase and active trading activities probably made them more open in the first place. Similarly, 207

Cities o f Aristocrats and Bureaucrats

relaxation o f urban controls did not take place in all Song cities at the same rate. Northern frontier cities, under the constant threat of invasion, were more strictly controlled and managed. The general trend however was clear, although to pinpoint a city or a date as the place or time the transformation first took place, is counter­ productive and futile. In the five centuries that separated the Sui dynasty from the end of the Northern Song, many dynastic houses came and went. The appearance of the open city towards the end o f the eleventh century was in itself a long process that stretched over a period o f more than 300 years. The development was by no means linear or the outcome certain. It is not my intention to suggest that the birth of the open city during the eleventh century was inevitable. In fact, while late Northern Song Kaifeng was already an active open city, Liao Yanjing i l , also known as Nanjing 4] % , was still divided into 26 wards with ward walls, gates, and ward names still intact when the Jin Jurchen forces captured it in 1122.1 It was only under the new Jin 'k regime that the city, renamed as Zhongdu i f and modeled after the fallen Kaifeng, became less disciplined. Instead of the former 26, there were now more than 62 wards. Some o f the former wards were each divided into two new ones suggesting that ward walls were probably no longer standing in their entirety. W hile I have written at length about the Tang and Song cities, the period identifications — Tang and Song — as I have explained in an earlier chapter, are simply convenient dynastic indicators. They do not imply that the development of cities, although influenced to some extent by political events, corresponded neatly with the clear divisions of dynastic history. Those drastic political upheavals which toppled governments did not always bring about new urban structures and forms, even though new cities were sometimes built and old ones were often remodeled when a new dynasty was founded. Instead the evolution o f city forms was affected, as we have seen, not only by political events, but also by the wider social, economic, and cultural contexts. However, whatever the factors involved, the urban structural changes needed to be “validated by some instrument o f authority if they were to achieve institutionalized permanence.”2 Whatever decision is made on the city, as Joseph Rykwert wrote in another context, it is “ultimately political” even if it may be called economic.3 Even as I am writing, China is once again undergoing a dramatic urban change, perhaps as important as the one during the Tang-Song transition. The important political transition that placed Deng Xiaoping at the helm o f the Chinese Communist Party and the Four Modernisations (in Agriculture, Industry, Science and Technology, and Defense) that he initiated in 1978 has launched China’s economy on a new path. His policy o f opening the economy to foreign capital and technology led to an economic boom of unparalleled dimensions in recent Chinese history. Just as the political relaxation and the economic expansion during the Song had led to the birth of a new urban structure, the endorsement of new economic policies for the nation by the supreme political authority coupled with a galloping economy has initiated once again a significant urban transformation. The cities, stamped with a socialist 208

A N ew Urban Paradigm

imprint o f the past decades, especially those along the coast, are now rapidly transforming under the forces o f a more open economy. The outcome of this urban transformation is still uncertain. However, we can be certain that economic forces alone are insufficient in modelling the new urban form. Political decisions had to made first. And just as the Later Tang, Later Zhou, and Song emperors had issued edicts to regulate the growth of their respective capitals, lest economic forces alone lead urban development astray, wise political directives and good administrative guidelines are critical to a favorable outcome of the current urban construction fever.

NOTES 1 2 3

See Yu Jie and Yu Guangdu "f-JtJx., Jin Zhongdu ^ ^ [The Central Capital of the Jin Dynasty] (Beijing, 1989), p. 11. Paul Wheatley, Pivot of the Four Quarters, p. 318-9. Joseph Rykwert, “The Street: The Use of its History,” in On Streets, ed. Stanford Anderson, p. 15-27.

209

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Western Languages Al-Sirafi, Abu Zayd Hasan bin Yazid. Ancient Accounts of India and China by Two Mohammedan Travellers Who Went to those Parts in the 9th Century. Translated from the Arabic by Eusebius RenaudoL London: S. Harding, 1733 Ancient Chinese Architecture. Beijing: China Building Industry Press, 1982. Aoyama, Sadao. ‘The Newly Risen Bureaucrats in Fukien at the Five Dynasty-Sung Period, with Special Reference to their Genealogies.” Memoirs of the Research Department of Toyo Bunko 21 (1962): 1-48. ------. “Le developpement des transports fluviaux sous les Sung.” Etudes Song (Paris) 1, no. 1 (1976): 281-296. Waley, Arthur. Chinese Poems. London: Unwin Books, 1961. Bai, Shouyi, ed. An Outline History of China. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1982. Balazs, Etienne. “Une Carte des Centres Commerciaux de la Chine a la Fin du Xle Siecle” (A Map of Commercial Centers of China at the End of the Eleventh Century). Annales: Economies, Societes, Civilisations 12 (October-December 1957): 587-593. ------. Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1964. ^Benjamin E. Wallacker et al., ed. Chinese Walled Cities: A Collection of Maps from Shina Jokaku no Gaiyo. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1979. Bielenstein, Hans. “The Census of China during the Period 2-747 A.D.” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (Stockholm) 19 (1947): 125-163. ------. “Lo-yang in Later Han Times.” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 48 (1976): 1-142. Bishop, John. Studies of Governmental Institutions in Chinese History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965. Borgen, Robert. “San Tendai Godai san ki as a Source for the Study of Sung History.” Bulletin of Sung-Yuan Studies, no. 19 (1987): 1-16. Boyd, Andrew. Chinese Architecture and Town Planning. London: Tiranti Press, 1962. Bussagli, Mario. Oriental Architecture. Vol. 2. Translated by John Shepley. New York: Rizzoli, 1981. Cahill, James. “Some Aspects of Tenth Century Painting as seen in Three Recently Published Works.” Paper presented at the International Conference on Sinology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, August 1980. Ch’ii, T’ung-Tsu. “Chinese Class Structure and its Ideology.” In Chinese Thoughts and Institutions, edited by John K. Fairbank, 235-250. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, . 1957. ------. Law and Society in Traditional China. Paris: Mouton & Co, 1965. Chaffee, John. Through Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Chang, Sen-dou. “Some Aspects of the Urban Geography of the Chinese Hsien Capitals.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 51 (March 1961): 23-45. ------•. “The Historical Trend of Chinese Urbanization.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 53 (June 1963): 109-143. ------. “Some Observations on the Morphology of Chinese Walled Cities.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 60 (March 1970): 63-91. 210

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Chang, Kwang-chih, ed. Food in Chinese Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977. Davis, Richard. Court and Family in Sung China, 960-1279: Bureaucratic Success and Kinship Fortunes for the Shih of Ming-Chou. Durham: Duke University Press, 1986. Dawson, Raymond. The Legacy of China. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964. Denis Grafflin. “Social Order in the Early Southern Dynasties.” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1980. Dien, Albert, ed. State and Society in Early Medieval China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. Eberhard, Wolfram. Conquerors and Rulers: Social Forces in Medieval China. 2d rev. ed. Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1970. ------. A History of China. 4th ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. Ebrey, Patricia. The Aristocratic Families of Early Imperial China. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Elvin, Mark. The Pattern of the Chinese Past—A Social and Economic Interpretation. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973. ------. “Chinese Cities Since the Sung Dynasty.” In Towns in Societies, edited by Philip Abrams and E.A. Wrigley, 79-89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Elvin, Mark, and William Skinner, eds. The Chinese City Between Two Worlds. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974. Fairbank, J. K., ed. Chinese Thought and Institutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957. ------. China: A New History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992. Fitzgerald, C. P. China: A Short Cultural History. 3rd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961. ------. The Empress Wu. London: The Cresset Press, 1968. Gemet, Jacques. Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-1276. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962. ------. “Note sur les villes chinoises au moment de l’apogee islamique.” In The Islamic City, edited by A.M. Hourani and S. M. Stem, 77-85. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970. ------. A History of Chinese Civilization. Translated by J.R. Foster. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Golas, Peter. “Rural China in the Sung.” Journal of Asian Studies 39 (February 1980): 291325. Graham, A. G. Poems of the Late T’ang. London: Penguin Books, 1965. Gutkind, E.A. Revolution of Environment. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd., 1946. Haeger, John. Crisis and Prosperity in Sung China. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1975. Handlin, Oscar. The Historian and the City. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963. Hargett, James. “A Chronology of the Reigns and Reign-Periods of the Song Dynasty, 9601279.” Bulletin of Sung-Yuan Studies, no. 19 (1987): 26-34. Hartwell, Robert. “A Revolution in the Chinese Iron and Coal Industries.” The Journal of Asian Studies 21 (February 1962): 153-162. ------. “A Cycle of Economic Change in Imperial China: Coal and Iron in Northeast China, 750-1350.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 10 (July 1967): 102159. 211

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