Peter Harris writes ‘Seven rulers and how they shaped Chinese history’ in the Dominion Post.
Seven Rulers and How They Shaped Chinese History
by Peter Harris
(Dominion Post, 28 May 2014)
As the recent royal visit starts to fade, the current exhibition at Te Papa provides a chance to consider regal authority from a rather different vantage point.
The exhibition is called ‘Throne of Emperors’, though its Chinese-language subtitle – ‘Seven Chinese Sons of Heaven and their Times’ – is more revealing. It encompasses two millennia of Chinese history and focuses on the lives and times of seven of China’s greatest emperors. In much the same way a display called ‘Throne of Monarchs’ might seek to portray the lives and times of seven English rulers from William the Conqueror to Queen Victoria, or an exhibition entitled ‘From Caesar to the Kaiser’ might give us a comparably panoramic view of the history of Europe. The difference, of course, is that while the Roman empire lasted only a few centuries, China was a mighty empire for several thousand years.
Or was it? Despite the sweeping statements to that effect that people sometimes make, it would be more accurate to say that China was a mighty empire on and off for several thousand years. By most reckonings it certainly long outlasted most other great empires, including those of the Romans, the Ottomans, the Moguls and the British. But its mightier moments were not continuous in time, or indeed in geographical reach.
There are a couple of points worth making on this score. The first is that over the centuries China as a place on the map of the world behaved a bit like a squeezebox or concertina. At times it expanded to take in swathes of territory reaching far beyond the confines of inner China, the term sometimes used in English to describe the inner provinces of China around the Yellow and Yangzi rivers and the gradually-settled lands of the south. At other times, though, the country contracted to the point where China and inner China were more or less coterminous.
The second point is that the imperial unity of China was often interrupted. The greatest period of continuity in time – and by any measure it was indeed great, compared to the changeable empires of pre-modern Europe – was from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, when two dynasties, the Ming dynasty and the Manchu Qing dynasty, held sway in succession over inner China and (in the case of the Manchus) central Asia, Tibet, Mongolia and Manchuria. Earlier, though, China was often fractured or divided, and during one period – the time of Genghis Khan and his offspring, notably Khubilai Khan – it was even absorbed into another, even larger empire, the pan-Asian empire of the Mongols.
It’s helpful to enjoy the fascinating, colourful and informatively presented displays at Te Papa with this background information in mind. It shouldn’t in the least detract from their pleasures, or from our appreciation of the extraordinary characters of the seven emperors the exhibition is organized around. These rulers ranged from the fiercely autocratic to the artistic and unworldly, and from those who sought to expand the Chinese squeezebox to its greatest extent to those who had to make do with a much smaller, more homogeneous polity.
The first of the seven, the first emperor of the Qin dynasty, is remembered above all for uniting the northern parts of inner China in the third century BC after centuries of bloody civil war. Much admired by Mao Zedong, the founder of modern China, the first Qin emperor combined harshly punitive rule with a desperate quest for immortality and the commissioning of massive building projects. These included his still unexcavated tomb, guarded by the now world-famous phalanx of terracotta warriors.
Of the remaining six emperors the best-loved in China may be Taizong (‘Great Ancestor’), co-founder of the glorious Tang dynasty in the seventh century AD. The Great Ancestor of the Tang, whose times are well represented in the Te Papa display, was a well-organized, rational, energetic man who expanded China’s geographical reach and helped set the Tang dynasty on the path of being open to the world and its many influences. Many Chinese think of Taizong fondly as the quintessential Chinese emperor. ‘Taizong is my favourite’, remarked a Chinese colleague to me not long ago, as if she was referring to someone who had only recently moved on.
The most familiar name among the emperors has to be Genghis Khan, who presided over a huge multinational empire of which northern China was just one part. It was left to his grandson Khubilai to conquer the rest of China and so integrate the country into the Mongol world, assisted by a polyglot court that included an admiring Italian called Marco Polo.
For many Chinese the most powerful of all the emperors was Qianlong, who reigned over an expansive, multicultural empire for over sixty years, almost as long as Queen Victoria. Qianlong took an astonishingly broad and controlling interest in many aspects of literature and the arts, not to mention dissent.
Today China, like Europe, has to make do with less all-embracing overlords. At any rate, this seems to have been the case with China’s recent leaders, though perhaps its new president, Xi Jinping, may turn out to be cut from different cloth. In his case his stature as ruler of the world’s second-strongest power is accompanied by a relaxed style that seems to belong to a confident man more sure of his role, one that contrasts notably with the stiff demeanour of his immediate predecessor. It’s still too early to judge whether Xi can muster the authority and insight needed to steer China through the next phase of its complex reform process. There are hints, though, that for all his troubling allegiance to old Communist Party orthodoxies he is capable of taking a broader, more encompassing view of China’s development and of its changing role in the world.
This much was evident in the long speech Xi gave recently to UNESCO during a visit to its headquarters in Paris. Civilizations, he told his attentive listeners, are diverse and equal and should be peaceful and inclusive so as to avoid a clash of civilizations. He had seen Samarkand in central Asia and Mayan ruins, and was convinced of the need to appreciate such places with a sense of equality and modesty.
Citing authorities as diverse as Victor Hugo and Napoleon Bonaparte, not to mention numerous figures from the Chinese past including Marco Polo, he advocated ‘harmony without uniformity’, and foresaw a time when ‘the China dream’ would be realised through the wealth and happiness of the Chinese people. These words, China centred but outward looking, reflective but assured, struck a welcome new note in official Chinese speech-making, and perhaps even echoed some of the earlier views of the world reflected in the Te Papa exhibition.