Reading History Excerpts: A “Superstitious” Account of Natural Disasters in Han Stories

   
His­tor­i­cal texts often con­tain accounts of celes­tial events and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. I used to skip over these pas­sages, dis­miss­ing them as side notes. But as I’ve got­ten old­er and reread them, I’ve dis­cov­ered they’re a cru­cial part of his­to­ry. In par­tic­u­lar, the ancients’ per­spec­tives on these events, which I once con­sid­ered pure, igno­rant super­sti­tion, now seem increas­ing­ly wor­thy of reflec­tion.
   
There is a pas­sage in the sto­ry of the Han Dynasty that par­tic­u­lar­ly moved me, so I spe­cial­ly copied it down. The fol­low­ing is an excerpt from “Zizhi Tongjian”. It tells a sto­ry from the time of Emper­or Yuan of Han, which hap­pened in 37 BC (the sec­ond year of Jianzhao).
 
   
Jing Fang of Dongjun stud­ied the Book of Changes with Jiao Yan­shou of Liang. Yan­shou often said, “The one who per­ish­es by learn­ing my teach­ings is Jing­sheng.” His the­o­ry spe­cial­ized in calami­ties and anom­alies, divid­ed into six­ty hexa­grams and applied them to dai­ly events. He used wind, rain, cold, and tem­per­a­ture as pre­dic­tors, each with its own div­ina­tion. Fang was par­tic­u­lar­ly adept at apply­ing his the­o­ry. He was appoint­ed a civ­il offi­cial and repeat­ed­ly sub­mit­ted memo­ri­als pre­dict­ing calami­ties and anom­alies, which proved to be accu­rate. The emper­or was impressed and sum­moned him sev­er­al times for ques­tion­ing. Fang replied, “In ancient times, emper­ors pro­mot­ed vir­tu­ous peo­ple based on their achieve­ments, which led to the suc­cess of all things and the emer­gence of aus­pi­cious signs. In mod­ern times, peo­ple are pro­mot­ed based on their rep­u­ta­tions, which has led to the decline of achieve­ments and the occur­rence of calami­ties and anom­alies. It is advis­able to test the per­for­mance of all offi­cials, and then calami­ties and anom­alies will cease.” The emper­or ordered Fang to car­ry out the task, and Fang sub­mit­ted a report on the exam­i­na­tion of offi­cial duties and the imple­men­ta­tion of the laws. The emper­or ordered the min­is­ters and court offi­cials to hold a meet­ing with Fang. They all found Fang’s ideas tedious and dis­as­trous, and the emper­or, at all lev­els, reject­ed their pro­pos­als. The emper­or was pleased. At the time, provin­cial gov­er­nors report­ed to the cap­i­tal, and the emper­or sum­moned them to explain the sit­u­a­tion to Fang. The gov­er­nors again dis­agreed. Only Zheng Hong, the Impe­r­i­al Cen­sor, and Zhou Kan, the Impe­r­i­al Rites, ini­tial­ly opposed the pro­pos­al. Lat­er do good.

   
At that time, the Min­is­ter of the Cen­tral Sec­re­tari­at, Shi Xian, was in pow­er, and Xian’s friend, Wu Lu Chong­zong, was the Min­is­ter of the Chan­cellery. The two of them were in pow­er. Fang once met the emper­or at a ban­quet and asked him, “Why were the rulers of You and Li in dan­ger? Who did they appoint?” The emper­or replied, “The rulers were not wise, and the peo­ple they appoint­ed were cun­ning and flat­ter­ing.” Fang said, “Know­ing that they were cun­ning and flat­ter­ing, and employ­ing them, would­n’t it be wise?” The emper­or replied, “He was vir­tu­ous.” Fang said, “Then how do you know he is not vir­tu­ous?” The emper­or replied, “Because the coun­try was in chaos, and the ruler was in dan­ger, you know.” Fang said, “If that’s the case, appoint­ing vir­tu­ous peo­ple will lead to order, and appoint­ing unwor­thy peo­ple will lead to chaos. This is the inevitable way. Why did­n’t You and Li wake up and seek out vir­tu­ous peo­ple? What for?” How could he appoint such incom­pe­tent peo­ple to such a state?” The emper­or said, “A ruler fac­ing chaos should appoint his min­is­ters vir­tu­ous. If they are all awak­ened, how can the world be saved from the ruler’s down­fall?” Fang said, “Duke Huan of Qi and Emper­or Qin II also heard of such rulers but did not laugh at them. How­ev­er, he appoint­ed Shu Diao and Zhao Gao, and the gov­ern­ment became increas­ing­ly chaot­ic, with thieves every­where. Why did­n’t he con­sult You and Li for div­ina­tion and wake him­self up?” The emper­or said, “Only those who under­stand the Tao can pre­dict the future from the past.” Fang took off his hat and knelt down, say­ing, “The Spring and Autumn Annals records 242 years of dis­as­ters and anom­alies as a warn­ing to rulers of all ages. Since Your Majesty ascend­ed the throne, the sun and moon have lost their sight, the stars have moved in reverse, moun­tains have col­lapsed, springs have gushed out, earth­quakes have occurred, rocks have fall­en, sum­mer frosts have occurred, win­ter thun­der has occurred, springs have with­ered, autumns have flour­ished, rocks have not been killed by frosts and mete­orites, floods have occurred, crops have grown, and the peo­ple have suf­fered from famine and epi­demics. Thieves are ram­pant, and the streets are full of pris­on­ers. All the dis­as­ters and anom­alies record­ed in the Spring and Autumn Annals have occurred. Your Majesty, do you think this is a case of order or chaos?” The emper­or said, “It is extreme­ly chaot­ic. What is the point of this?” Fang said, “Who are the peo­ple you are appoint­ing now?” The emper­or said, “Yes, I am glad that he is bet­ter than the oth­er one, but I also think that this per­son is not the one who is in pow­er.” “Yes.” Fang said, “The rulers of pre­vi­ous dynas­ties were all like this. I am afraid that those who come after us will look upon us in the same way that we look upon the past!” The emper­or paused for a long time before ask­ing, “Who is caus­ing the chaos now?” Fang said, “A wise ruler should know it him­self.” The emper­or said, “I don’t know. If I knew, why would I use him?” Fang said, “He is the one the emper­or trusts most, the one who is in the tent and who pro­motes and demotes the peo­ple of the world.” Fang point­ed to Shi Xian, and the emper­or also knew about it and said to Fang, “I have giv­en you instruc­tions.” Fang was dis­missed, and lat­er the emper­or was unable to dis­miss Xian either.

   
Min­is­ter Guang said: If the ruler’s virtue is not clear, then even if the min­is­ters want to be loy­al, how can they do so? Look­ing at how Jing Fang under­stood Xiao Yuan, it can be said that he under­stood it thor­ough­ly, but in the end he could not wake up. How sad! The Book of Songs says: “I did not tell him face to face, but raised his ear to my words. I did not hold him by the hand, but showed him things by my words.” And it also says: “I teach you earnest­ly, but you lis­ten to me with a smile.” This is what Xiao Yuan meant!
 
   
Sima Guang’s pri­ma­ry ref­er­ence for this sto­ry was like­ly the Biog­ra­phy of Jing Fang in the Book of Han. Accord­ing to the records, Jing Fang was a high­ly learned fore­cast­er who stud­ied the I Ching with his teacher Jiao Yan­shou and was adept at pre­dict­ing dis­as­ters by inter­pret­ing hexa­grams, with a high degree of accu­ra­cy. The account in the Book of Han is more spe­cif­ic:
 
   
Dur­ing the reigns of Emper­ors Yong­guang and Jianzhao, the West­ern Qiang rebelled, and a solar eclipse occurred. The sky was dark and fog­gy for a long time, and the sun was dim. Fang sub­mit­ted sev­er­al memo­ri­als, pre­dict­ing the impend­ing event, rang­ing from a few months to a year. His pre­dic­tions often came true, and the emper­or was pleased.
 
   
Although Emper­or Yuan of Han was a very weak and incom­pe­tent per­son in per­son­nel appoint­ments, he was high­ly edu­cat­ed, had a deep under­stand­ing of Con­fu­cian­ism, and was high­ly accom­plished in the arts, so it would not be dif­fi­cult to deceive him in the study of the Book of Changes. Jing Fang must have been a man of real tal­ent and learn­ing.
   
How­ev­er, what par­tic­u­lar­ly struck me about this anec­dote was Jing Fang’s polit­i­cal pro­pos­al for reform­ing the civ­il ser­vice sys­tem. He said, “In ancient times, emper­ors pro­mot­ed vir­tu­ous offi­cials based on their achieve­ments, and thus all things came to fruition and aus­pi­cious signs appeared. In mod­ern times, peo­ple are select­ed based on rep­u­ta­tion, and thus, achieve­ments are lost and dis­as­ters and anom­alies occur. It is advis­able to have all offi­cials eval­u­at­ed on their achieve­ments, and then dis­as­ters and anom­alies will cease.” In oth­er words, offi­cials should be select­ed based on their mer­its, not their rep­u­ta­tions. Fol­low­ing the for­mer approach will lead to suc­cess and aus­pi­cious signs appear; fol­low­ing the lat­ter will lead to polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and anom­alies. There­fore, he pro­posed a sys­tem for eval­u­at­ing offi­cials. Emper­or Yuan of Han ini­tial­ly sup­port­ed it, but the vast major­i­ty of his min­is­ters opposed it. Only a few rel­a­tive­ly hon­est and upright offi­cials, ini­tial­ly opposed but then sup­port­ed it. How­ev­er, it seems that this eval­u­a­tion sys­tem ulti­mate­ly failed to be imple­ment­ed because Shi Xian and oth­ers in pow­er at the time were fed up with Jing Fang and were con­stant­ly try­ing to find ways to dis­ci­pline him.
   
Jing Fang also used the Spring and Autumn Annals to per­suade Emper­or Yuan of Han, a very bril­liant pas­sage, which was espe­cial­ly touch­ing when the oth­er par­ty was a mas­ter of Con­fu­cian­ism. He said: “The Spring and Autumn Annals records 242 years of dis­as­ters and anom­alies as a warn­ing to the rulers of all ages. Since Your Majesty ascend­ed the throne, the sun and moon have gone blind, the stars have moved in reverse, moun­tains have col­lapsed, springs have gushed out, earth­quakes have occurred, rocks have fall­en, there have been sum­mer frosts, win­ter thun­der, springs have with­ered, autumns have flour­ished, mete­orites and frosts have not killed, there have been floods, droughts, bor­ers, the peo­ple have suf­fered from famine and epi­demics, thieves have been banned, and the streets are full of pris­on­ers. The Spring and Autumn Annals records all the dis­as­ters and anom­alies. Do you think that this is a good time to gov­ern or to cause chaos?”
   
From his per­spec­tive, the 242 years of dis­as­ters record­ed in Con­fu­cius’ “Spring and Autumn Annals” served as a warn­ing to future gen­er­a­tions: in times of peace, aus­pi­cious signs appear; in times of chaos, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and extra­or­di­nary events occur. Here, Jing Fang did some­thing incred­i­bly bold: he cat­a­logued the var­i­ous dis­as­ters that had occurred since Emper­or Yuan of Han ascend­ed the throne (rough­ly 12 years). Wow, it was a long list! Every dis­as­ter record­ed in the 242 years of the “Spring and Autumn Annals” actu­al­ly occurred with­in the first 12 years of Emper­or Yuan’s reign! Jing Fang then asked Emper­or Yuan: “Your Majesty, what do you think? Are we in a peace­ful or chaot­ic world now?”
   
What sur­prised me even more was that Emper­or Yuan of Han actu­al­ly said: “The sit­u­a­tion has reached its peak, is there any need to say more?” — But this old man then soft­ened his words: “This is not a ques­tion of my per­son­nel selec­tion. We are already doing very well in pol­i­tics.”
   
So Jing Fang dealt the final blow to Emper­or Yuan of Han: “The rulers of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions were all like this. I am afraid that those who come after us will look at the present as we look at the past!” — Those emper­ors in the past (refer­ring to those emper­ors in trou­bled times) also thought so!
   
Emper­or Yuan of Han knew very well that the peo­ple Jing Fang was refer­ring to who caused the chaos were Shi Xian and his gang, who abused their pow­er and monop­o­lized the gov­ern­ment at the time. How­ev­er, this rather cow­ard­ly emper­or seemed very attached to Shi Xian. He always felt that oth­ers could not tru­ly under­stand the loy­al­ty of this treach­er­ous min­is­ter. In the end, he was reluc­tant to remove or kill Shi Xian, but allowed Shi Xian and oth­ers to elim­i­nate dis­si­dents one by one.
   
Nat­u­ral­ly, not long after, Jing Fang was trans­ferred from the cap­i­tal. Just over a month after tak­ing office in his new place, he was arrest­ed and impris­oned. He was charged with “con­spir­a­cy to rebel” and “polit­i­cal slan­der” and was exe­cut­ed in pub­lic. His wife and chil­dren were exiled to the fron­tier.
   
Jing Fang was forty-one years old when he died.
   
That year, Emper­or Yuan of Han was 37 years old. He also died four years lat­er at the age of 41.
   
Emper­or Yuan of Han holds a sig­nif­i­cant place in the his­to­ry of the Han dynasty, pri­mar­i­ly because he marked the turn­ing point in the Han dynasty’s decline. This emper­or was a man of pro­found cul­ture and virtue, par­tic­u­lar­ly known for his fru­gal­i­ty and gen­eros­i­ty. In ordi­nary con­ver­sa­tion, he would have been a refined and mod­est gen­tle­man. How­ev­er, he man­aged the coun­try in a hor­rif­ic man­ner, and his reign was a tru­ly dev­as­tat­ing expe­ri­ence. It’s tru­ly unspeak­able.
   
We were taught that nat­ur­al dis­as­ters are the prod­uct of nature, unre­lat­ed to human activ­i­ty (espe­cial­ly pol­i­tics). But I’m increas­ing­ly skep­ti­cal of such asser­tions. While this view is inher­ent­ly mate­ri­al­is­tic, dialec­ti­cal­ly, all things are uni­ver­sal­ly con­nect­ed. Even the flap­ping of a but­ter­fly­’s wings on the oth­er side of the ocean can trig­ger a tsuna­mi here. Are nat­ur­al dis­as­ters tru­ly unre­lat­ed to human activ­i­ty? If so, how much of a con­nec­tion do they have?
   
Or, let’s tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend the debate about whether it does or does­n’t work, and just ask: If we believe that it does, is it pos­si­ble that the world will real­ly become a bet­ter place?
   
At least, in my opin­ion, when we open­ly believe that “there is no con­nec­tion at all”, it real­ly feels like things are going from bad to worse, and I don’t know how far we will go…
 
A ran­dom note on the night of April 17, 2010 in Argenti­na