3. The Unknown Centuries

The Creation according to China—The coming of culture—Wine and chopsticks—The virtuous emperors—A royal atheist

China has been called “the paradise of historians.” For centuries and millenniums it has had official historiographers who recorded everything that happened, and much besides. We cannot trust them further back than 776 B.C.; but if we lend them a ready ear they will explain in detail the history of China from 3000 B.C., and the more pious among them, like our own seers, will describe the creation of the world. P’an Ku, the first man (they tell us), after laboring on the task for eighteen thousand years, hammered the universe into shape about 2,229,000 B.C. As he worked his breath became the wind and the clouds, his voice became the thunder, his veins the rivers, his flesh the earth, his hair the grass and trees, his bones the metals, his sweat the rain; and the insects that clung to his body became the human race.¹³ We have no evidence to disprove this ingenious cosmology.

The earliest kings, says Chinese legend, reigned eighteen thousand years each, and struggled hard to turn P’an Ku’s lice into civilized men. Before the arrival of these “Celestial Emperors,” we are told, “the people were like beasts, clothing themselves in skins, feeding on raw flesh, andknowing their mothers but not their fathers”—a limitation which Strindberg did not consider exclusively ancient or Chinese. Then came the emperor Fu Hsi, in precisely 2852 B.C.; with the help of his enlightened Queen he taught his people marriage, music, writing, painting, fishing with nets, the domestication of animals, and the feeding of silkworms for the secretion of silk. Dying, he appointed as his successor Shen Nung, who introduced agriculture, invented the wooden plough, established markets and trade, and developed the science of medicine from the curative values of plants. So legend, which loves personalities more than ideas, attributes to a few individuals the laborious advances of many generations. Then a vigorous soldier-emperor, Huang-ti, in a reign of a mere century, gave China the magnet and the wheel, appointed official historians, built the first brick structures in China, erected an observatory for the study of the stars, corrected the calendar, and redistributed the land. Yao ruled through another century, and so well that Confucius, writing of him eighteen hundred years later in what must have seemed a hectically “modern” age, mourned the degeneration of China. The old sage, who was not above the pious fraud of adorning a tale to point a moral, informs us that the Chinese people became virtuous by merely looking at Yao. As first aid to reformers, Yao placed outside his palace door a drum by which they might summon him to hear their grievances, and a tablet upon which they might write their advice to the government. “Now,” says the famous Book of History,

concerning the good Yao it is said that he ruled Chung-kuo for one hundred years, the years of his life being one hundred, ten and six. He was kind and benevolent as Heaven, wise and discerning as the gods. From afar his radiance was like a shining cloud, and approaching near him he was as brilliant as the sun. Rich was he without ostentation, and regal without luxuriousness. He wore a yellow cap and a dark tunic and rode in a red chariot drawn by white horses. The eaves of his thatch were not trimmed, and the rafters were unplaned, while the beams of his house had no ornamental ends. His principal food was soup, indifferently compounded, nor was he choice in selecting his grain. He drank his broth of lentils from a dish that was made of clay, using a wooden spoon. His person was not adorned with jewels, and his clothes were without embroidery, simple and without variety. He gave no attention to uncommon things and strange happenings, nor did he value those things that were rare and peculiar. He did not listen to songs of dalliance, his chariot of state was not emblazoned. . . . In summer he wore his simple garb of cotton, and in winter he covered himself with skins of the deer. Yet was he the richest, the wisest, the longest-lived and most beloved of all that ever ruled Chung-kuo.¹⁴

The last of these “Five Rulers” was Shun, the model of filially devoted sons, the patient hero who fought the floods of the Hoang-ho, improved the calendar, standardized weights and measures, and endeared himself to scholastic posterity by reducing the size of the whip with which Chinese children were educated. In his old age Shun (Chinese tradition tells us) raised to a place beside himself on the throne the ablest of his aides, the great engineer Yü, who had controlled the floods of nine rivers by cutting through nine mountains and forming nine lakes; “but for Yü,” say the Chinese, “we should all have been fishes.”¹⁵ In his reign, according to sacred legend, rice wine was discovered, and was presented to the Emperor; but Yü dashed it to the ground, predicting: “The day will come when this thing will cost some one a kingdom.” He banished the discoverer and prohibited the new beverage; whereupon the Chinese, for the instruction of posterity, made wine the national beverage. Rejecting the principle of succession by royal appointment, Yü established the Hsia (i.e., “civilized”) Dynasty by making the throne hereditary in his family, so that idiots alternated with mediocrities and geniuses in the government of China. The dynasty was brought to an end by the whimsical Emperor Chieh, who amused himself and his wife by compelling three thousand Chinese to jump to their euthanasy in a lake of wine.

We have no way of checking the accounts transmitted to us of the Hsia Dynasty by the early Chinese historians. Astronomers claim to have verified the solar eclipse mentioned by the records as occurring in the year 2165 B.C., but competent critics have challenged these calculations.¹⁶Bones found in Honan bear the names of rulers traditionally ascribed to the second or Shang Dynasty; and some bronze vessels of great antiquity are tentatively attributed to this period. For the rest we must rely on stories whose truth may not be proportioned to their charm. According to ancient tradition one of the Shang emperors, Wu Yi, was an atheist; he defied the gods, and blasphemed the Spirit of Heaven; he played chess with it, ordered a courtier to make its moves, and derided it when it lost; having dedicated to it a leathern bag, he filled the bag with blood, and amused himself by making it a target for his arrows. The historians, more virtuous than history, assure us that Wu Yi was struck dead with lightning.

Chou Hsin, royal inventor of chopsticks brought the dynasty to an end by his incredible wickedness. “I have heard,” he said, “that a man’s heart has seven openings; I would fain make the experiment upon Pi Kan”—his minister. Chou’s wife Ta-ki was a model of licentiousness and cruelty: at her court voluptuous dances were performed, and men and women gamboled naked in her gardens. When public criticism rose she sought to still it with novelties of torture: rebels were made to hold fiery metals in their hands, or to walk greased poles over a pit of live charcoal; when victims fell into the pit the Queen was much amused to see them roast.¹⁷ Chou Hsin was overthrown by a conspiracy of rebels at home and invaders from the western state of Chou, who set up the Chou Dynasty, the most enduring of all the royal houses of China. The victorious leaders rewarded their aides by making them almost independent rulers of the many provinces into which the new realm was divided; in this way began that feudalism which proved so dangerous to government and yet so stimulating to Chinese letters and philosophy. The newcomers mingled their blood in marriage with the older stocks, and the mixture provided a slow biological prelude to the first historic civilization of the Far East.