The Lesser Wall of China

La'er Mountain, still a site for non-Han communities. From a tourism website

The Lesser Wall of China (an unpublished paper I’m not supposed to cite -- I’ll update with citation info if the author publishes or gives me permission)

A new paper from an upcoming conference on “borderlands” at my university presents a fascinating new view of the Ming state conducting what amounts to diplomatic and missionary relations with the non-Han peoples within the Ming borders.

The author’s main example concerns the so-called “Miao 苗” people , who are actually multiple interrelated cultures scattered throughout China's south and southwestern border regions. Ming officials actively cultivated a "mission" to "civilize" the "Miao" and other non-Han people. The groups of people who held lots of commerce with the Chinese and began paying taxes and making other investments into Chinese culture were labeled "cooked" 熟, while the many communities who fiercely opposed becoming Chinese were labeled the "raw" 生. Since the "raw" Miao lived outside the cultural values that really defined "China" to the Ming political apparatus, then there we have the curious situation that certain locations in China were not Chinese. Examples included La'er Mountain in Hunan province, with its "raw" non-Han villages.

There were two very interesting examples in this paper that I wish to note, even though I'm actually violating the author's request not to cite the work. If he sees this and protests against my action, then I will of course remove this whole post.

First, the Ming official Tian Rucheng 田汝成 (1500-1563) described the great multiplicity of "Miao" peoples in his memoir "Yanjiao jiwen." Tian describes how filthy and unmannered they were. Men and women were promiscuous; funerals consisted of laughing parties; they held deep grudges and had no compunction against murder for revenge.

Second, the author makes use of a fascinating true crime story that simply cries out to be told using English true crime conventions. The Grand Secretary Gao Gong (1512-1578) reports that when a "pacification commissioner," presumably a "cooked" Miao, killed the son of a tribal leader, the victim's brother sued for justice in the Ming court. The court sent a military expedition to put down this "pacification commissioner," despite the Grand Secretary's vigorous protest that these murders among barbarians should be left to them to sort out. Apparently, the troops were unsuccessful in putting down the commissioner, or else the Grand Secretary's view prevailed. The commissioner was pardoned on the condition that he make reparations to the government, the brother of the man he killed, and the mother of the man he killed.

A generation later, this story repeated itself, with the commissioner's son, now commissioner, committing a similar murder. But this time the Ming allowed the commissioner's son to go free from the very beginning, with the understanding that he would murder more "raw" Miao. The government realized clearly that divided, the Miao fall faster, much to the benefit of the Ming.

Our author hammers home the point that all this demonstrates that the Ming was far from the monolithic empire it is often conceived as, in contrast to the more diverse Qing dynasty. The point is fair enough, but I note the descriptions and stories here for their own sake. I'd love to tell the tale of two generations of murder, rebellion, and court intrigues against the "barbarians" in some historical fiction of my own some day.