Since we're still in the realm of legend more than pure-factual
history, I'm going to skip over several people who get mentioned as rulers in
various accounts. The people we're concerned with tonight are three men who
were forever after looked up to as models of how an emperor ought to be. Being
idealized to that extent tends to indicate that the person talked about probably
has more than his fair share of legend to him, but that's okay. This is more
or less the point at which history begins, and that's a little fuzzy for any
culture. The period is considered something of a Golden Age, and all I'm going
to say about that is that the Greeks couldn't even be bothered to come
up with stories about specific places or people during their legendary
Golden Age, as far as I recall. They just said 'ooh, it happened, and then people
got bad, and then it was the Silver Age, and then people got worse, and
then, and then...' Bah.
Here, however, we have names, and the first of them is Yao. Yao is considered
to be the dawn of authentic history, and his reign is believed to have fallen
sometime around 2400 or so BCE. He's considered one of the 'Wu Di', or Five
Kings. You may recall the Romans had a group of Five Good Emperors; this is
like that. Only simultaneously less impressive, because the Middle Kingdom wasn't
a proper empire yet so Yao was more of a High King than an Emperor, and more
impressive, because Confucian scholars considered him one of the greatest models
of how to behave and how to run things that any leader could have. (As opposed
to the Roman Five Good Emperors, who were considered not so much models as very
good rulers who weren't slightly further around the bend than Giggling
Lord Smince.) His first official act was to issue an improved calendar, simultaneously
endearing him to farmers and priestly types alike. You've got to keep good track
of the seasons to know when to plant, after all, and a ritual conducted at the
wrong time of year is a sure recipe for disaster. He was said to be a humble
and wise man, very compassionate towards his people. Several of the major Chinese
legends take place during his reign, my favourite being the one about the ten
suns and Yi the Archer. There's too many versions of that to go into here. Suffice
it to say that every story I've ever seen or heard about Yao has indicated that
his greatest concern was for the welfare of the people under his rule, and that
he lived very simply, a sharp contrast to later rulers. Apparently it worked
pretty well, because he reigned for a long time, and it was generally
prosperous, right up until about the sixty-first year of his rule.
Yeah, sixty-one years. I did tell you there was some legendary contamination
involved here.
The sixty-first year was the point at which the flood began. Nearly every culture
has a flood legend somewhere in its histories, and China is no exception. This
one was bad, lasting thirteen years or more, if the stories are to be
believed. Now, in most cultures I know of, the flood myth ends with some lucky
bunch of people hiding out somewhere until the water goes away, usually on a
boat. Yao wasn't having any of that, thanks. He looked around his court and
tapped one of his ministers on the shoulder and said 'you - fix this'. The guy
tried, to be sure, but the stories say the job got away from him and extended
clear into the reign of the next emperor. It took his son to end the whole sorry
mess. Not by putting people into boats, mind you - but by engineering. Strip
out the stuff about magic soil and being the son of a man who could change into
the shape of a bear, and what you basically have is someone who looked at the
Great Flood and started building dams and digging ditches. Running away? Please.
Not gonna happen. He plugged enough holes and drained enough flood plains that
the land won out over the waters. Took eight years, but eventually his engineering
saved the country, and this service was well remembered - but we'll hear more
about him later.
Sorry. I went to an engineering college. You have to love someone who became
a heroic forefather to his country by massive acts of civil engineering.
Anyway, life went on as usual, even though Yao hadn't been able to bring the
Yellow River and the floods in line without a whole lot of help. Eventually
he looked around and did something that later scholars considered one more hallmark
of the Truly Cool Ruler: decided that there was no way he was gonna hand
the job off to his son. Nope. The kid was bright, but he had problems, and his
only real passion was Weiqi (you probably know it as Go). Yao therefore figured
it was time to pick the best man for the job, instead. The advisors suggested
pulling someone from among the people, so Yao gave it some thought. The fellow
who seemed best came from a family chock full of Very Bad People - Dad was a
criminal, Mom was dishonest, his younger brother was a horribly insolent brat.
But the guy himself was honest, loyal, humble, hard-working, and so on, even
though he'd been forced to work as a swineherd. Given the circumstances you
can't really blame Yao for putting the guy through a test first, but after Yu
Shun married two of Yao's daughters and handled the governance of several parts
of the country very well, Yao was happy. He abdicated the throne in favour of
someone he figured was obviously acceptable to Heaven, and Shun became Emperor.
Shun wasn't exactly born to the position of emperor and he knew it, so he made
extra sure to pick wise and helpful advisors. This combination of modesty and
diligence made him extremely popular. He's credited with codifying morality,
which is another thing you don't see in Roman emperors. The fact that
he got hold of the flood manager's son and put him to work didn't hurt either.
When the nine rivers were led out to sea and the land returned, Shun knew he
had a winner on his hands. Good thing, too- Shun had a lot of accomplishments
including the establishment of an educational system, and a number of sons,
but none of the sons were righteous.
The tamer of floods, on the other hand, had it all going for him. His
name was Yu, and his dedication to duty was legendary. The story is that he
only stayed with his wife a few days after their wedding before heading out
into the field to battle the flooding Yellow River, and that he passed his house
three times during the struggle with the waters but didn't so much as pay his
family a visit on the grounds that 'I don't have a family until the flood is
under control". Given a field test as the ruler of a portion of the kingdom
by Shun, Yu was eventually acclaimed as beyond a doubt the best man for the
job. It's said he tried several times to refuse his position on the grounds
of insufficient virtue. Nobody believed him. Eventually, he became Emperor,
and Shun died on a tour of the south some 18 years after he ascended the throne.
Yu was known for maintaining an open-door policy thousands of years before any
books on managerial secrets ever advocated such a thing. You wanted to talk
to the ruler about proper virtue, or misconduct, or impotant news, or personal
grievances, or even an appeal from the decisions of one of the judges, you could
get in to see him and talk about it. Becoming an Emperor by essentially wresting
your country back from the hands of a raging angry river is the kind of thing
that gives a man a good clear impression of what day to day life is like, I
imagine. His dedication to the welfare of his kingdom and his people earned
him a place in the hearts of his country... well, pretty much forever. The site
said to be his mausoleum
is one of China's current major cultural sites. His only real flaw, so far as
I can tell, is that he was a little more tetchy about punctuality than is strictly
healthy. Something about executing people who were late to his committee meetings.
All things considered, that's a pretty darn minor failing in an emperor. In
his old age he chose a fellow named Bo Yi to succeed him. Didn't work. At least
one of his few times in his own household, he'd managed to father a son,
and that son apparently wanted to follow in his father's footsteps. Bo Yi either
died or was murdered or was set aside, depending on which story you read, and
Qi took over. This was the beginning of the first real dynasty in China, called
the Xia - or Hsia, if you're reading Larry Gonick. There's only a handful of
archaeological traces of them, but those traces are just about enough to show
that they existed beyond myth after all...
That'll be it for now, I think. I'm sorry it's all so fuzzy this time. Next
time around . . . well, we'll see what gets covered next time, but I'm starting
to get frustrated with rendering the language in English. The history lesson
will be accompanied by a brief overview of romanization of Chinese words, including
an explanation of why my
RPG character the Akashic mage has a different spelling to his family name
than all the other characters in
his family. See you then.