26. This phrase—guang zhai zhong yuan 光宅中原 has become the title of a recent work by Ni Run’an, Guang zhai zhong yuan: Tuoba zhi Bei Wei de mu zang wen hua yu she hui yan jin.
27. WS 19B.464–65; ZZTJ 138.4330.
28. The name Zifang was a cognomen of Zhang Liang, who had supported the founder of the Han dynasty in his decision 600 years before to move his capital to Chang’an. See his biographies in SJ 55; HS 40.
29. ZZTJ 138.4331.
30. WS 7B.170, 171; ZZTJ 140.4387.
31. BS 15.554 (WS 14.358–59). Pi was left with a half-brother of Xiaowen, the Prince of Guangling: WS 21A.546. Though Xiaowen is said to have much loved his brothers, and had Guangling accompany him down to the Yanmen Pass, the prince was dissatisfied with the situation, and at one point asked to withdraw from the court.
32. WS 53.1183, 7B.172–73; ZZTJ 138.4329–31.
33. WS 53.1183–84; ZZTJ 138.4339–41. And see Pearce, “Form and Matter,” 164.
34. See WS 31.738; ZZTJ 138.4340. The original name of the Yu was transcribed as “Wanniuyu”: Yao, Bei chao Hu xing kao, 58–60.
35. WS 53.1184.
36. ZZTJ 140.4389–90.
37. There seem, however, to have been a few exceptions, including a man named Feng Hetu 封和突, a man of Dai relocated to Luoyang who when he died in 501 was granted special permission for burial in Pingcheng: see Datongshi bowuguan 大同市博物馆, “Datongshi Xiaozhancun Huage ta tai Bei Wei mu qing li jian bao” ·同市·站村花圪塔台北魏墓清理简报, WW (1983.8): 1–4; and discussion in Zhang, “Cultural Encounters,” Chapter 5.
38. BS 54.1965; ZZTJ 141.4410.
39. WS 19B.465. In the biography of Xiaowen’s half-brother, the Prince of Guangling, we are told that “many among the men and barbarians of the northern frontier could not understand” the justification for removal of the capital: WS 21A.546.
40. According to ZZTJ 139.4351 it took Xiaowen 29 days to go the approximately 450 miles from Luoyang to Pingcheng, which means his train was traveling at about 15 miles a day.
41. It should be noted that the emperor’s reference to Yuan Pi as “duke” was a statement of reduction of his peerage; for further discussion, see below.
42. WS 7B.171.
43. WS 14.359. Though this chapter was, as mentioned above, reconstructed during the early modern Song period on the basis of Bei shi and other sources, this anecdote, and the one regarding Yu Guo just below, are not found in Bei shi‘s much briefer account of these events (BS 15.554–55). Since some lines in the Yu Guo story are also garbled, it is fair to wonder if the Song scholars who reconstructed Wei shu’s Chapter 14 did not rely, in part at least, on a damaged version of the original. It should also be noted that the Zi zhi tong jian version of these events (139.4351–52) is quite different. A close study of this might be needed.
44. On efforts to establish new horse pastures nearer Luoyang, and the later decline of these pastures, see Shing Müller, “Horses of the Xianbei,” 184; ZZTJ 139.4369. See also suggestions on importation of horses into the plains region in Knapp, “Use and Understanding of Domestic Animals.”
45. The Zhonghua shu ju editors point out that this passage is garbled: see Wei shu, 368 note 13.
46. BS 15.555 (WS 14.360).
47. WS 110.2863. After the move, Xiaowen ordered the minting of wu zhu coins, which had first been made under the Former Han. These seem to have had limited circulation. See Wei, “Bei Wei shi qi de huo bi liu tong,” 281–84. Some foreign coinage—Iranian or old Han—circulated privately. Underlying this was the situation described by Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 118, who points out the early Wei treasurer of the Inner Court functioned only as a royal butler, storing and maintaining the treasury. More sophisticated fiscal authorities emerged only under Xiaowen.
48. See further discussion in Pearce, Spiro, and Ebrey, “Introduction,” in Culture and Power, 23. For the rebellion of a border district in reaction to attempts to shut trade down, see Liang shu 16.272; ZZTJ 147.4598–99.
49. See Wang Su’s Wei shu biography (63.1407–12); there is also a scattering of mentions in Jiankang histories. Wang Su was a descendant of Wang Dao, a powerful statesman of Eastern Jin. For a general study of the Wang of Langye, see Mao Hanguang 毛汉光, “Zhong gu da shi zu zhi ge an yan jiu—Langye Wang shi” 中古大士族之个案研究—琅琊王氏, in his Zhongguo zhong gu she hui shi lun (Taibei: Lian jing chu ban shi ye gong si, 1988), 365–404.
50. NQS 57.998.
51. WS 63.1407.
52. NQS 57.998.
53. WS 63.1411.
54. WS 63.1409, 1410. But note that for setbacks in the field, he was also chided by Xiaowen, and temporarily demoted (WS 63.1410), and later that the Prince of Rencheng, resenting the man’s power, also laid claim that Wang retained ties with Qi, though these were rejected by Xuanwu and Rencheng punished instead (WS 63.1410, 19B.470).
55. WS 63.1408. There was a Northern Wei “province” of Yangzhou, with its seat south of mod. Shangqiu, Henan: WS 106B.2581–83. It will be noted, however, that unlike real Wei administrative units, no population figures are given; this was a statement of intent. See also Mou et al., Zhongguo xing zheng qu hua tong shi: Shi liu guo Bei chao juan, 1: 733–34.
56. Chen shu 26.326.
57. NQS 57.998. These southern statements are emphasized in Wang Wanying’s generally useful economic history, Zhuan xing qi de Bei Wei cai zheng, 4–5, with little attention to the lack of any such mention in the Wei shu account.
58. Though the Nan Qi shu account (57.998) asserts Wang Su played a role in establishing the 9-rank system for Wei, there is no mention of Wang Su at all in the “Monograph on Offices and Clans” (WS 113), or regarding bureaucratic reorganization anywhere in Wei shu, while in WS 68.1521 we are told that Xiaowen “keenly wanted a southern campaign, and exclusively consulted Wang Su on [such] military matters.”
59. Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-century Bali (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 124. The author of this volume has recently discovered that a colleague, Andrew Chittick, has in his book The Jiankang Empire also drawn upon Geertz’s insights to discuss the object of his study in the “Sino-Southeast Asian Zone.” There certainly are more direct links between the Jiankang empire and the Southeast Asian state of Negara. But after mulling over abandonment of the term in this study, this author has come to the conclusion that, in some sense, all states are theatre states, basing effective rule—in part at least—on their capacity to induce most people most of the time to accept that rule. Here Geertz’s insights into a particular regime have been drawn into a broader discourse.
60. NQS 57.997. Perhaps these were early seeds of the broad national feeling that according to Nicolas Tackett emerged more fully among Chinese in early modern Song: see his The Origins of the Chinese Nation: Song China and the Forging of an East Asian World Order (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
61. WS 7B.171, 108A.2749; Kawamoto Yoshiaki 川本芳昭, “Goko Jūrokkoku Hokuchō ki ni okeru Shūrai no juyō o megutte” 五胡十六国·北朝期における周礼の受容をめぐって, Saga daigaku kyōyōbu kenkyū kiyō 23 (1991), 10. For change of weights and measures to accord with Zhou models, see WS 7B.178.
62. WS 107A.2661, 108A.2747; ZZTJ 137.4318. For a view of these issues from within the Chinese historiographical tradition, see Liu, “Becoming the Ruler of the Central Realm,” 89–93.
63. The first quote: WS 19B.465; the second is a paraphrase of the words of Clifford Geertz in his Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 5. Having put forth this quote of Geertz in his book Belonging, 4, Anthony Cohen goes on to say on p. 9 of his object of study, the fishermen of Whalsay, among the Shetland Islands: “Whalsaymen never think of themselves as merely ‘fishermen’: they are Whalsay fishermen.”
64. NQS 57.985, 991; Kang, Cong xi jiao dao nan jiao, 167–69.
65. WS 108A.2751; WS 7B.174. For the beginnings of use of the southern altar, see WS 7B.164. This is the central theme of Kang Le’s book, cited in the previous note.
66. For clothing: ZZTJ 139.4370; Dien, Six Dynasties Civilization, 317–19. For language: WS 21A.536; ZZTJ 140.4386–87.
67. SS 32.935. This interest in the book continued under Xiaowen’s son and heir, Xuanwu: WS 8.203.
68. WS 21A.550; ZZTJ 139.4359.
69. See WS 7A.155; ZZTJ 136.4266; and the discussion of substantial grants with peerage in Zhang Hequan 张鹤泉, “Bei Wei hou qi zhu wang jue wei feng shou zhi du shi tan” 北魏后期诸王爵位封授制度试探, Zhongguo shi yan jiu (2012.4), 73–96.
70. WS 7B.169.
71. BS 15.555 (WS 14.360). Another opponent of the move was Mu Tai, who had long before also opposed Wenming’s plan to remove Xiaowen: WS 27.663.
72. WS 113.3014–15; ZZTJ 140.4393–94; Albert Dien, “Elite Lineages and the T’o-pa Accommodation”; and Eisenberg, Kingship in Early Medieval China, 90. Regarding reorganization of kinship groups along lines established long before under Qin and Han, the comments of a northern visitor to Jiankang needs noted: “I am a Serbi and do not have a surname” 我是鲜卑， 无姓 (SoS 59.1600). For Inner Asian populations, forms of organization other than the family name had regularly been seen: Xiongnu are said to have only had personal names (HS 94A.3743; SJ 110.2879); while early on, Wuhuan and Xianbei took their “surname” from their leader (HHS 90.2975; SGZ 30.832). For Xiaowen and his evolving government, assignment of surnames of the Chinese style would certainly make such people easier to register on government forms, and would also undercut the persistence of old ties that had bound together groups such as the Helan after their forced incorporation into the Wei state.
73. ZZTJ 140.4393; WS 7B.179; WS 113.3006. It must here be restated that since “Serbi do not have surnames,” it seems likely that “Taghbach” had not previously been used as a surname in the Chinese manner.
74. WS 40.911.
75. ZZTJ 139.4353; 140.4387.
76. Dai Weihong 戴卫红, Bei Wei kao ke zhi du yan jiu 北魏考课制度研究 (Beijing: Zhongguo she hui ke xue chu ban she, 2010), 39–58; and for an overview of the issue during this age, Albert Dien, “Civil Service Examinations: Evidence from the Northwest,” in Culture and Power, 99–121.
77. ZZTJ 139.4358–59; 140.4386. Bloating of salary for redundant and unnecessary posts is a problem seen in many societies, including those of the Manchus and Tokugawa Japan (see, e.g., the depiction of this in Tetsuko Craig, tr., Musui’s Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai [Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988]).
78. WS 113.2976.
79. See this chapter’s note 24.
80. WS 113.2977–3003; WS 7B.172.
81. WS 7A.152; BS 19.713–14 (WS 22.587–89).
82. NQS 57.996.
83. BS 19.713–14 (WS 22.588); ZZTJ 140.4400–1, 141.4410.
84. BS 15.556 (WS 14.361).
85. WS 7B.178.
86. WS 7A.180; and see his biography, WS 27.663. Note that also involved in the plot was a kinsman of Lu Li, Lu Rui 陆叡, the governor of Dingzhou (seat at Zhongshan, down on the plains). See his biography in WS 40.911–13; and overview of these events in ZZTJ 140.4402–4.
87. WS 40.913.
88. One of these was the Prince of Leling (adopted son of an imperial clansman named “Son of a Hu,” Huer 胡儿), who “knew (about Mu Tai’s plans) but did not report”: WS 19C.516. For this he was reduced to commoner status, though this was reversed at the end of Xiaowen’s reign.
89. ZZTJ 140.4402. See Yangping’s biographies in BS 17.630 (WS 19A.442).
90. WS 19B.468; ZZTJ 140.4402–3.
91. ZZTJ 140.4402. Though again, the government was still made up largely of men of northern extraction; see Chapter 14 note 45.
92. A comment made in the biography of one of the few who resisted involvement in the rebellion: WS 31.738; ZZTJ 141.4410.
93. BS 15.555 (WS 14.360); ZZTJ 141.4408–9.
94. WS 27.663.
95. BS 15.556 (WS 14.361).
96. BS 15.556 (WS 14.361); WS 27.663; ZZTJ 141.4408–9.
97. WS 19B.469.
98. WS 55.1214; ZZTJ 136.4290.
99. It would be decades before diplomacy with Jiankang revived: see the tables in Cai Zongxian 蔡宗宪’s Zhong gu qian qi de jiao pin yu nan bei hu dong 中古前期的交聘与南北互动 (Taibei: Dao xiang chu ban she, 2008), 400–1.
100. Xiangyang as military center is the subject of Chittick’s Patronage and Community in Medieval China: The Xiangyang Garrison, 400–600 ce. For the rumors that Xiaowen heard that the new lord of Jiankang was a usurper, see NQS 57.993.
101. WS 19B.466.
102. NQS 57.994.
103. Peter Boodberg, “Selections from Hu T’ien Yan Yüeh Fang Chu,” 137, links a term used in this passage—he la zhen 曷剌真—to the Mongol *atla·in, “horseman”; while Bao Yuzhu, “Kalaqin yuan liu,” links this “Halaqin” (“Karqin”) guard to later Inner Asian groups. Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 174, suggests that for all the great changes made by Xiaowen, the military was changed the least.
104. WS 7B.184 speaks of this troop levy in 498, while Sima Guang has moved it back to 497, ZZTJ 141.4411.
105. Pearce, Spiro, and Ebrey, “Introduction,” in Culture and Power, 14.
106. NQS 57.992.
17
剧院国家的衰落
要描述一个国家——任何国家——可以基于支撑它的两条支柱。其一是物理暴力，或物理暴力的威胁；其最制度化的形态就是军队。另一条支柱是一系列被构建的符号与仪式，更重要的是这些符号与仪式被主动展示和展演，以被接受者所接受。当足够多人愿意接受时，国家机器就能近乎自动运转，君主只需将双手笼入袍袖之中。1从广义上说，克利福德·格尔茨(Clifford Geertz)在巴利岛描述的"剧场国家"（theatre state）概念远超出印度尼西亚的范畴。当然，当"有组织的景观"遭遇既不关心景观也不在意其组织原则的武装分子时，这种模式的缺陷就显现了。
作为理想主义者，崔浩曾希望用源自自身传统的符号与仪式来重构他所处的国家；作为现实主义者，他又希望在山丘上驻守一支强军，通过"以威服民"来维持这个国家。另一位理想主义者孝文帝显然忽视了这点。当他的大部分军队被强制迁往洛阳导致军力逐渐衰微时，各种景观展示却愈加宏大，帝国税收也持续增长。30年后当大规模内战爆发时，符号与仪式的剧场效应已不足以维系统治。正如现代学者康乐在其耶鲁论文标题中所言，这是"为城弃国"。2
* * *
理想主义者终会逝去，理想却可长存。我们在崔浩暴烈而突然的结局中已看到这点。孝文帝的生命终结于497-498年征途中开始恶化的疾病。499年听闻南齐发动报复性进攻的消息时，他强撑病体再次率军南征。击退南军后，他在返回洛阳途中去世，年仅31岁。499年战役是孝文帝最后的努力，也是北魏皇帝最后一次亲自统兵出征——当时朝堂上正进行着新型复杂辩论：有经学大师坚称"自魏、晋不亲戎事"3，孝文帝则指出曹操正是通过"修文德以辑中夏"而取胜。
孝文帝由其子元恪继位，即北魏第七位皇帝（499-515年在位）。他死后获谥"宣武帝"（意为"彰显武德的神圣帝王"），但这称号与其统治现实并不完全契合。元恪483年出生于孝文帝与来自今朝鲜地区的高氏女子，497年兄长元恂叛乱被杀后被立为太子，两年后16岁登基。这在拓跋君主中不算年幼——此前最年长的即位者是17岁的明元帝。但宣武帝并非称职的统治者。权力斗争贯穿其治世并延续至后世，而朝廷与其真正权力基础——通过组织化武力缔造国家的国人军队——日益疏离。4
此时国家几乎完全成为家族事务，宣武朝堂斗争很大程度上由后妃外戚主导，围绕皇帝展开权力角逐。文明太后对孝文帝的控制力体现在：她在世时孝文帝从未正式册立皇后，守丧期满后，孝文帝为表尊崇将其侄女立为皇后。5随后，新皇后同父异母妹冯润入宫取代了这位族人，后者被遣送尼寺。6 497年冯润成为孝文帝皇后。7虽然据说孝文帝最初深爱她，但这段关系终以不幸收场。不过皇帝不愿再废黜冯姓皇后。8他选择冷落冯后，并确保她无法接触新立太子——因高氏据传被冯润指使杀害，太子已无生母。高氏死后数十年，其子宣武帝下令在伊水龙门宾阳洞浮雕中刻画她携侍女礼佛场景，使之永存于这个时代最美的艺术品之一。9
高氏逝于497年，孝文帝两年后驾崩。关于如何处置冯润的犹豫在临终前终结：颁布赐死诏令。此诏是否真出自孝文帝存疑：据载其弟后来说："纵无此遗敕，臣等亦当别有奏陈。岂可令失德妇人（原文是否用此词值得存疑）宰制天下，杀我辈也？"10冯氏虽延续至唐仍参与政治，但再未能达到文明太后时期的权力高度。11
如第九章所述，北魏皇权建立在宗室共治基础上。这种制度在洛阳逐渐瓦解，或许正是后妃权力上升的部分原因。宣武帝初年，叔父们构成摄政集团核心。我们在此既看到制度原型也见证其失败：501年北海王元详联合禁军统领于烈，说服幼帝废除摄政集团，在元详辅佐下直接统治。孝文帝最亲近的弟弟彭城王元勰随即被排挤出政府。12于烈侄女被纳为嫔妃，后晋升宣武帝首任皇后。13504年北海王倒台，彭城王遭软禁处境恶化。权力斗争中胜出的是宣武帝遇害生母之弟高肇：其侄即位后，高肇娶孝文帝之妹，宣武帝则纳高肇（及已故高氏）侄女为妃。
此时婚姻政治主导朝堂，其复杂程度令今人困惑，对当时参与者恐同样如此。这已非皇室与外戚之争，而演变为外戚家族间角逐。497年冯润可能策划杀害宣武生母高氏，十年后高氏家族似乎又导致507年宣武首任皇后（于烈侄女）及其子（当时唯一潜在继承人）之死。14高肇侄女随即被立为皇后。反对此事的宣武叔父彭城王被控谋反，被迫饮下毒酒。15但高肇未能取得最终胜利：当高皇后诞女后，510年西北胡姓嫔妃生下皇子（宣武唯一继承人）。按旧制，众妃劝胡氏堕胎，她答："岂敢爱身不举"。16最终她未被处死，或许只因朝中无人能强行实施道武帝旧制。但胡氏与高氏家族均被禁止接触皇子——掌控继承人即掌控权力，宣武帝不愿将其交付任何人。17
