The relaxation was most notable during the reigns of the scholarly Han Wendi (r. 180–157 BC), one of Gaozu’s sons who became emperor when the Dowager Empress Lü died, and that of the filial Han Jingdi (r. 157–141 BC), who was Wendi’s son. But if a Confucian gloss was later given to this leniency, it was only partly thanks to their employing notable scholars, some of a Confucian bent, and more obviously because in retrospect the whole half-century from Gaozu’s death to that of Jingdi came to be seen as a golden age. Relative peace prevailed, although at some cost in respect to the northern frontier, as will be seen; harvests were generally good, a sure sign of celestial favour; and remissions and pardons were frequent. Wendi’s virtue was ‘of the highest order’, concluded Sima Qian, who even found a good word for Dowager Empress Lü: during her ‘reign’ ‘punishments were seldom meted out and evil-doers were few; the people applied themselves to the work of farming; and food and clothing became abundant’.14
Jingdi’s moment of glory came in 154 BC when six kingdoms rose in revolt and were defeated. The trouble dated back to Gaozu’s reign and was a legacy of his war with Xiang Yu. At the decisive battle of Gaixia in Anhui, the victors had been the Han generals. It was their forces which had overpowered Xiang Yu’s while, in Sima Qian’s words, ‘the King of Han followed behind’. Doubtful whether Liu Bang would ever defeat his rival, the generals had risked their troops only after being promised substantial kingdoms by way of reward. When the same generals had urged Liu Bang to assume the emperorship, they had done so partly in comformity to a traditional formula for such occasions, partly because it really mattered to them; for as they explained, ‘if our king does not assume the supreme title, then all our own titles will be called into doubt’.15 Thus, when the king of Han obliged and stepped up to the imperial throne, a clutch of far from submissive generals clambered on to royal thrones of their own.
The new dynasty required an imperial capital to accommodate its ancestral tombs and temples, not to mention its court and administration. Emulating the Eastern (Later) Zhou, Gaozu had lit on Luoyang, which was well sited in the heart of the Zhongyuan (‘central plain’) between Qin and Chu. But no sooner had he settled there than he was persuaded to remove to a remoter but far more defensible site at Chang’an in the western fastness of Qin (it was near Xianyang at the modern Xi’an). Luoyang had been revealed as a death-trap, for in rewarding his generals Gaozu had relinquished direct control over much of its hinterland. He had in fact alienated practically all the territories that had been awarded to Xiang Yu when in 203 BC the exhausted rivals had partitioned the empire between them. Thus the entire eastern half of what had been the First Emperor’s domain had been parcelled out as ten kingdoms, with only the western half remaining as directly administered commanderies. In effect victory had been bought at the cost of reinstating the discredited system of hereditary ‘feudal’ enfeoffment, plus all that it implied in terms of diminished imperial authority. Luoyang and the pitiful fate of its last Zhou emperors may have served as a reminder.
Though the work of clawing back these enfeoffed kingdoms had begun immediately, they remained a threat, and the task would not be completed for the best part of a century. Gaozu’s efforts concentrated on a change of personnel. Erstwhile generals and other potential challengers were gradually replaced as kings by less bellicose members of his own family. Empress Lü continued the process by installing members of her own family. Wendi, in replacing them, took the opportunity to break up some kingdoms and reclaim others. The 154 BC revolt suppressed by Jingdi provided a further opportunity for undermining the kingdoms. All of this forestalled a relapse into the chaos of the ‘Warring States’ era, although so long as kingdoms rejoicing in illustrious names like Qi, Zhao, Yan and even Chu survived, the integrity of the empire remained compromised.
Dynastic history tends to portray these Han kingdoms, or ‘subkingdoms’, as recalcitrant satellites vainly contesting a manifest imperial destiny. Archaeology once again provides a corrective. Several royal tombs of the early Han period have been discovered; and until the day when Qin Shi Huangdi’s great mausoleum is opened, they afford the most striking glimpse of ancient China’s material culture. Admittedly subterranean chambers are less exciting than Graeco-Roman colonnades. But stone was scarce in much of China. The population was concentrated on the alluvial flood-plains where construction meant hangtu footings and wooden superstructures. Buildings of several storeys slung with saddleback roofs and upcurled eaves are depicted in tomb paintings and described in texts. They look spectacular. But timber rots and brickwork crumbles. Save for extensive foundations, such as those traced at the new imperial capital of Chang’an, and a few glazed roof tiles, very little survives.
Yet if China’s landscape is short on ancient monuments, compensation lurks beneath. Courtesy of a mental outlook that avidly embraced the afterlife, ancestors were cherished not just as loved ones but as progenitors deserving of the Confucian respect due to all parents, and as intermediaries in any dealings with the spirit world. Their tombs were carefully prepared. The deceased were interred in as pristine a condition as possible (cremation would have been even more dishonourable than dismemberment or mutilation); and to meet their ongoing needs in terms of comfort, sustenance, status and diversion, they were provided with the accoutrements they had enjoyed in life. In this sense every tomb reflected its occupant’s lifestyle and became, like the First Emperor’s, a microcosm of the material world that he or she had relinquished.
The tombs of the Han kings were no exception; they may be taken as providing reliable evidence of the resources and tastes of their royal occupants. When in 1968 some soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army discovered what proved to be the tombs of the king and queen of Zhongshan (a Han kingdom in Shanxi), it was the royal couple’s jade suits which excited the most interest. A dazzling hoard of silks, lacquerware, figurines and inlaid bronzes also impressed the fatigues-clad militiamen; but for sheer extravagance the jade tailoring was in a class of its own. Discoveries elsewhere of Han-period jade suits in various stages of disintegration have since ensured pride of place in many of the country’s museums for what may be the world’s only stone clothing.
Each tight-fitting suit covered its corpse entirely, including face, feet and fingers, like a suit of armour. Jade was supposed to have preservative qualities, presumably more spiritual than chemical, that were effective only if no part of the body remained exposed. But though appearing to be a single garment, each outfit was typically a fourteen-piece suit including matching gloves, footwear, face-mask, separate sleeves and helmet. Like the armour of the ‘terracotta warriors’, all these items were made up of small and precisely butted rectangular plates, some two to three thousand jades per suit, each sewn to its neighbours using thread of either gold, silver or silk. Not even the pharaohs dressed their dead in jade-mail stitched with gold. Whether assessed in terms of craftsmanship, weight or value, such tailoring testifies to an opulence and patronage beyond the means of most ‘satellite kings’ – and possibly even emperors.
At Changsha, the capital of another kingdom created by Gaozu for one of his generals (but this time south of the Yangzi in Hunan), no royal tombs have been discovered. A mound excavated at Mawangdui in the city’s outskirts in the 1970s, however, was found to conceal comparable treasures within the gargantuan nested coffins of the kingdom’s chancellor, otherwise the marquis of Dai (d. 186 BC), of his wife the Lady Dai, and of a literary gentleman thought to be their son. Not being kings, none of the family merited a jade suit, although more mundane methods of preservation – such as carefully sealing the coffins against damp and bacteria – had served one of the deceased well. After 2,100 years, silk-wrapped and swaddled in her innermost coffin, the Lady Dai was found to be intact, albeit phenomenally aged and in dire need of a hairdresser. Unlike the Tarim Mummies, her corpse was not desiccated; her joints could be moved and her flesh was responsive to a gentle poke. A post-mortem revealed her medical history, plus ‘138 and a half seeds’ still lodged in her digestive system; the Lady Dai had last snacked