The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 06. Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368

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SOCIAL CLASSES: SUB-ELITE AND COMMONER 653

and thus would not effectively integrate them into their military machine.

That was possible because the Chinese military units were never the sole, or

even the main, component of the Mongolian army. The Mongols benefited

from a mystique of invincibility that lingered long after it was deserved. But

the major part of the explanation is that their system, modeled on Mongolian

institutions, was imposed on Chinese society without regard for congruence.

On the one hand, the alien rulers could not create on command the structural

conditions that would have been necessary to make it work in the way it did

in their own nomadic society. And on the other hand, Chinese society, unless

restructured, could not absorb that model of military organization into its

dominant and enduring cultural patterns. A third element in its failure

reflects a general condition hastening the rapid decline of the Yiian dynasty

in the fourteenth century: In both the Mongolian and the Chinese armed

forces, the management became utterly corrupted and debased, subjecting

common soldiers and their families to unbearable exploitation. They re-

sponded by deserting in large numbers or by refusing to fight. They no

longer were soldiers.

Artisans

Artisan households presented somewhat different problems. The Yiian house-

hold registration system provided a number of different artisan

(kung,

chiang)

classifications. Some designated specific specializations in production, such

as ceramics, smelting, weaving and dyeing, wine and oil making, and salt

production. In the Chinese language the designation of artisan was not

extended to skilled workers in all productive activities, for example, fishing,

milling, food processing, and some others, although the registration system

also established separate household classifications for those.

In short, the system did not grow naturally out of Chinese concepts or

linguistic usages; it was conceptually Mongolian, reflecting their sense of

social functions. This is particularly apparent in the case of three classes of

artisans

{chiang)

that were specially favored in the Yiian system and given

differential status to bring them under close government supervision. The

three of greatest importance to the Yiian rulers were the categories of artisans

for construction or engineering works, for those who produced items for

military use, and for those who supplied government offices and produced

luxuries for elite consumption. They were designated

government artisans,

military artisans, and civilian artisans.

All were specially favored by exemp-

tions and grants of rations, salaries, and other forms of material support.

48 Huang Ch'ing-lien, "Yiian tai hu chi chih tu yen chiu," pp. 81—3.

654 CHINESE SOCIETY UNDER MONGOL RULE

These artisan households were comparable to the military households in

the degree to which their favored treatment set them apart from other

commoner households. Many people sought artisan household status; indeed,

their numbers had to be restricted, and proof of competence occasionally had

to be demonstrated. It was well known that in times of warfare, Mongolian

army commanders in the field were under rigorous orders to identify and

protect all kinds of artisans when populations otherwise were subjected to

slaughter or enslavement. Accordingly, in such circumstances many ordinary

people claimed to be artisans to save their lives. The numbers of artisans

taken in battle thus would appear to be inflated. One historian calculated

that the number of artisans employed in government workplaces midway

through Khubilai's reign was 400,000.

Western Asians as well as Chinese were registered in artisan households.

Artisans were taken captive in the early Mongolian campaigns in Central

Asia, when great cities famed for their crafts, such as Bukhara and Balkh,

were captured, and some of those craftsmen were brought eastward. Most of

those in China, however, had been specially sought out in the Chinese

population. The bureaucratic management of skilled workers was carried out

on a vast scale, and they became one of the more important components of

Yuan government.

The so-called government artisans were attached to various government

agencies, to produce their products or construct buildings, bridges, fortifica-

tions,

and the like, as ordered. The military artisans were attached to the

military registers and so were not under civilian control. They produced

mainly weapons, armor, wagons, siege machinery, and so forth. Civilian

artisans were under jurisdiction of the civil authorities, mostly under the

Ministry of

Works;

it appears that their numbers included workmen skilled

in many fields, those of military significance as well as others. All three

groups were required to perform assigned tasks for a certain number of

months each year, or they were assigned quotas of work to be performed.

After that they could hire themselves out for pay or make products for sale.

Many details of

the

system remain unclear, though further research could add

considerably to our knowledge.

The management of artisans under the Yuan dynasty system clearly re-

flected the place of artisans in Mongolian society before their conquests of any

sedentary peoples. The few skilled artisans native to Mongolian society were

held in the highest regard. The outstanding example is the blacksmith, whose

skills were crucial to the maintenance of the armies. Blacksmiths typically

49 Chii Ch'ing-yiian, "Government artisans of the Yuan dynasty," in

Chinese social

history:

Translations of

selected

studies,

trans, and ed. John

Francis and E-tu Zen Sun (Washington, D.C., 1956), pp. 234-46.

50 Sun K'o-k'uan,

Meng-ku

Han

chiin chi

Han

wen hua yen

chiu,

pp. 66—74.

SOCIAL CLASSES: SUB-ELITE AND COMMONER 655

traveled with armies and also served as fighters. Early in the period of

Mongolian rule in China, artisan households from Western Asia and the

Chinese population were required to supply a quota of men who could also

serve as soldiers.'

Within the societies they conquered, the Mongols dis-

played little regard for farmers or scholars; they honored the professional

religious of

all

kinds, but in particular they valued the artisan classes for their

strategic relationship to the conduct of war. Skilled craftsmen also were the

source of less essential but eagerly sought luxury goods: furs, textiles, jew-

elry, leather products, fine steel objects, and the like. Thus the Mongols were

in the habit of classing artisans as prize booty even before they entered China.

In China the system under which artisans were organized invited corrup-

tion and evasion and other forms of misuse. One example from the base level

of society illustrates this. The family of the future Ming founding emperor,

Chu Yuan-chang, had been registered as a "gold-panning household," one of

the artisan household classifications. They then lived in southern Kiangsu,

near modern Nanking, where in the fourteenth century there was little gold

production. They appear, rather, to have been professional gold panners who

washed gold from ore-bearing sands, and they were obligated to produce and

present to the government a certain quantity of gold dust each year. Failing

to locate sources of such gold but unable to escape the household classifica-

tion and its obligations, they had taken in desperation to tenant farming in

order to exchange agricultural products for gold in the marketplace. But

merchants with official protection manipulated the price of gold in order to

extort more money. The head of the Chu household, like many in similar

circumstances, found it necessary to flee with his family into the Huai River

region north of the Yangtze. There, as migrants liable to capture and prosecu-

tion, they were all the more susceptible to exploitation by landlords who

took in the family as sharecroppers; they had to work vacant land desolated

by war and disaster.

The history of this family through the two generations before the birth of

Chu Yuan-chang himself in 1328, in a destitute household forced constantly

to move about in search of livelihood, exemplifies the evils of the system.

This story of a desperately poor family can be reconstructed only because it

produced a future emperor. Otherwise we know very little about the impact

of the household registration on the lives of ordinary artisans or, indeed, on

the lives of the farmers who constituted the vast bulk of the population.

Nonetheless, the little that we do know strongly suggests that the system did

not fit the needs of society, that it was neither economically rational nor

socially equitable. If those qualities are not prominent in the social histories

51 Ibid., pp. 66—7.

656 CHINESE SOCIETY UNDER MONGOL RULE

of most countries in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they nonetheless

are more apparent in Chinese social history in both pre- and post-Yuan

times.

Curiously, the emperor of the succeeding Ming dynasty who had experi-

enced the inequity of the system in his own family and who made discerning

efforts to improve the lot of China's poorest farmers nonetheless retained the

Yuan concept of hereditary military and artisan households, attempting to

keep them separately registered and tied to hereditary occupational status.

Otherwise the Ming did not maintain the elaborate differentiation of house-

holds imposed in the Yuan; instead, they established essentially four classifi-

cations: official, commoner, military, and artisan.

Only the latter two were

hereditary, and in the case of each, the system broke down, soon failing to

provide the necessary manpower for the army or for the government

workplaces. The Ming founder's judgment in this was faulty. One must

assume that the special circumstances of breakdown and disorder in the late

Yuan had deprived him of experience with Chinese society under normal

conditions, thereby distorting his judgment.

During the Yuan period, however, the systems for administering artisan

households functioned quite differently from that for military households,

and so the two must be evaluated separately. The Yuan government had

nothing to fear or to lose from sponsoring the widest development of the

artisanate; it did not threaten any Mongolian prerogatives. The lives of

artisans saved in warfare repaid the conquerors and the entire society, many

times over. The broadly conceived organization and the large numbers of

skilled workers deployed contributed directly to the regime's readiness for

war and to its capacity to build and rebuild cities, restore public works, and

provide lavishly for its elite. This organization undoubtedly helped preserve

and diffuse skills, maintain traditions of craftsmanship, and enrich society.

To be sure, these men's skills might have been better preserved and diffused,

and society made richer still, if there had been no alien conquests. But given

such incursions as historical realities, one must be grateful for whatever

amelioration of disaster the Mongolian focus on craftsmen provided. It

clearly strengthened the Mongolian regime, and it also helped Chinese soci-

ety survive.

52 Salt-producing households (tsao hu) also were a hereditary occupational group whose specialized

productive function was highly important for revenues and the Ming defense system. See Ray Huang,

Taxation and

governmental

finance

sixteenth-century

Ming China (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 189—224. It

should be noted, however, that Wang Yuquan, in a forthcoming study, shows that the early Ming

employed an elaborate system of more than 80 household categories, showing the influence of the

Yuan model.

YOAN DYNASTY SOCIAL HISTORY 657

OTHER ASPECTS OF YOAN DYNASTY SOCIAL HISTORY

Cities

North and south China underwent distinctly different patterns of social

change following the Chin conquest of the Northern Sung in the early

twelfth century. Differences between north and south China stemming from

the ecology have always been present. During periods of national unity, the

impact of those differences on patterns of social life and cultural expression

has tended to diminish. From the tenth century onward the differences in the

natural setting were coupled with those caused by the alien incursions, the

dislocations of warfare, altered networks of trade, and changes in the modes

of government reflecting the interests of alien rulers. The Jurchen Chin

conquest of the entire north in the 1120s was the culmination of two centu-

ries of such disturbances; it deepened the division of north and south China

that was finally overcome by the Mongolian reunification in the 1270s.

When the Mongolian dynasty at that time reunified China by force of

arms,

there were striking differences between the economically declining

north and the flourishing south - by which is meant the "historical south" of

the Yangtze drainage area in central China and the southeast coastal prov-

inces.

Population shifts are the most obvious indicator of those differences.

The north, which had included the demographic center of China well into

T'ang times, now held at best one-third of the population. It supported

much less regional trade, was served by its poorer and much more expensive

land transport routes, and now contained far fewer cities of large size. The

Mongolian ruler, to be sure, had built a magnificent capital at Ta-tu (modern

Peking), and one designed according to classical Chinese imperial plan," but

it probably held at most 500,000 inhabitants. Although that put it in the

first rank of world cities at that time, it was not as large as the Sung or earlier

capitals in Chinese history. The former Southern Sung capital at Hang-chou

remained at that time the greatest city in China, with a population close to 1

million.

Other than Ta-tu, no cities in Yuan north China had populations

in excess of 100,000. The former Northern Sung capital at K'ai-feng had

been in the range of

million in the eleventh century but had dwindled after

its abandonment by the Sung court early in the twelfth century. In the late

thirteenth century the entire prefecture in which it was located had a regis-

tered population of only 185,000 persons.

53 NancyS. Steinhardt, "TheplanofKhubilai khan'simperiaJ city,"

Ar»;A/u

Afi<K, 44(1983), pp. 137—58.

54 Gilben Rozman, Urban networks in Ch'ing China and Toiugawa Japan (Princeton, 1973), pp. 30—6.

This work offers a systematic survey of urbanism in Chinese and Japanese history.

658 CHINESE SOCIETY UNDER MONGOL RULE

Below the Huai River line that separated north and south China from Chin

dynasty times until the Mongolian reunification, there were many great

Yuan period cities with populations from 250,000 to 500,000 and some that

were larger. Separate population figures for cities apart from the county or

prefecture by which they were administered usually do not exist, but the

1290 census figures for the prefectures in which major cities were located tell

the story: Yangchow's prefecture had a registeted population of 1.5 million;

nearby Ch'ang-chou Prefecture had 1 million; Chia-hsing (adjacent to Hang-

chou in northern Chekiang) had 2.25 million; several other Chekiang and

Kiangsu prefectures had from 1 million to 2.5 million registered inhabitants;

and for Jao-chou Prefecture in northern Kiangsi, which included the great

ceramics center at Ching-te-chen, we find a (scarcely credible) figure of more

than 4.5 million inhabitants. The population densities indicated by such

figures not only indicate the probable size of urban concentrations, but they

also can be taken as an indicator of labor available for crafts and industry, of

specialized agricultural production for commercial distribution, and of well-

developed water transport by inland waterways and coastal shipping to main-

tain the dense populations.

The core region of central—south China appears to have remained economi-

cally well integrated, as we know it had been in the Southern Sung period

preceding the Mongolian conquest." The Japanese social historian Shiba

Yoshinobu calls attention to the "medieval Chinese commercial revolution"

that elsewhere has been described as a "fundamental transformation" of Chi-

nese society between

A.D.

750 and 1000, in which the striking feature is the

"enormous expansion of trade," accompanied by "progressive urbanization and

the emergence of an identifiable urban class with its own sub-culture."'

The

development that had transformed China in the immediate pre-Mongolian

centuries was not sustained in north China after 1125, but it continued apace

in the Sung south. The questions before

with regard to

cities,

urban culture,

trade, and the commercialization of the agrarian sector of the economy are to

what extent the reunification of China helped the north regain momentum

during the Yuan and whether Yuan rule depressed the economy in the south.

The Mongols favored the

ortogh,

merchant associations of Western Asians

that were given both trading privileges and fiscal duties in service to the

state.

Ortogh

merchants operated throughout the breadth of the Yuan empire

from Persia and the Mediterranean to China and Korea; they may have

55 Shiba Yoshinobu, "Sung foreign trade: Its scope and organization," in China

among

equals:

The Middle

Kingdom and its

neighbors,

loth-iqth

centuries,

ed. Morris Rossabi (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983),

pp.

89—11;.

See also Shiba Yoshinobu, Sodai shogyo shi tenkyu (Tokyo, 1968) or the abridged

translation by Mark Elvin,

Commerce

and

society

in Sung China (Ann Arbor, 1970).

56 The quotations are from Denis C. Twitchett, "Merchant, trade and government in late T'ang," Asia

Major, 14 (1968), p. 63.

YOAN DYNASTY SOCIAL HISTORY 659

contributed to a more international character in China's long-range trade at

this time. Did

ortogh

privileges disrupt trading patterns in China, or did they

contribute to the overall growth of commerce and add to China's wealth? It is

not possible to give full answers at this time.

The reputation of

the ortogh

Yuan China is one of base collusion with the Mongolian overlords whose

capital, wrung from the exploited Chinese population, was then lent to the

ortogh

finance

their, at best, shady operations that harmed government and

people. The Mongols and Western Asians in high positions clearly did lend

money to the

ortogh

merchants, who in turn lent it at usurious rates to units

of local government that could not otherwise meet tax payments or to indi-

viduals facing similar financial needs, and then they relied on their special

relation with the governors to collect their debts. The merchants' reputation

for unbridled avarice may be exaggerated, but ordinary persons seem to have

regarded them as the cause of much general suffering. Descriptive comments

of the time often note that the Western Asian

ortogh

merchants "understood

the ways of cities," where commerce was conducted, and ruthlessly used

those skills to fatten their own purses and those of their Mongolian masters.

There are some descriptions of life in great cities such as Ta-tu and Hang-

chou in Yuan times. Hang-chou greatly attracted Mongolian and Western

Asian officials, religious personnel, and merchants to its scenic beauties and

mild climate, its luxury and entertainment. The high levels of urban sophisti-

cation for which it was famous in the last decades of the Sung survived the

conquest.'

Marco Polo came to know the city well during his years in China,

1275 to 1291. He called it "the most noble city and the best that is in the

world." But that great city suffered destructive fires in the mid-fourteenth

century and exchanged hands several times in the civil wars of

the

late Yuan.

That it underwent a decline throughout the dynasty seems clear. No other

cities give evidence of having experienced notable expansion. The reopening

of the Grand Canal undoubtedly had a beneficial impact on the domestic

economy. Operations had not been affected in its southern portion, from

Hang-chou to the Yangtze, but the canal had to be reconstructed in northern

Kiangsu, and it was extended north from the Yellow River to reach Ta-tu. It

was damaged by floods and intercepted by warfare from the 1340s onward.

The economic integration of north and south was at first aided by the canal's

reconstruction but then failed to gain full and lasting benefit. Large trading

57 Two new studies of the

ortogh

appeared as this chapter was being prepared. See Thomas T. Allsen,

"Mongolian princes and their merchant partners, 1200—1260," Asia Major, 2 (1989), pt. 2, pp. 83—

126;

and Elizabeth Endicott-West, "Merchant associations in Yuan China: The ortogh" Asia Major, 2

(1989),

pt. 2, pp. 127-54.

58 The city is magnificently described in Jacques Gemet, Daily life in China on the eve of the Mongol

invasion, 7230-1276, trans. H. M. Wright (New York, 1962). This work first appeared in French as

La vie quotiditnne

Chine, a la

vielle

I'invasion

Mongole,

I2}o—i2j6 (Paris, 1959).

660 CHINESE SOCIETY UNDER MONGOL RULE

cities along its northern portion revived but did not flourish. No sector of the

economy appears

have genuinely flourished during Yiian times, but there

was

wide variation

regional conditions.

Some

the most direct and colorful information about the life of urban

China

Yiian times comes from

the

Yiian dramas

(tsa-chii),

whose social

history we have already discussed. Many of those depict the lives of ordinary

persons

familiar settings, and although their plots may

fanciful,

the

dramas nonetheless reveal a wide range of urban pursuits, show the interac-

tion

urban and rural life, expose us

the cycle of festivals and religious

observances that punctuated

the

year, and depict the attitudes toward rich

and poor, toward officials,

and

occasionally toward aliens then resident

China. Some of the dramas have been well translated, but their analysis as

resource for the study of Yiian society is as yet only beginning.

The same is

true

the great compendium

case law

and

precedents,

the

Yiian tien

chang,

and other kinds of documentation of

Yiian

social history.

Rural life

If our knowledge of urban society is inadequate, the situation with regard

the lives of the vast majority of

all

Chinese, the village-dwelling farmers and

small craftsmen

and

traders who constituted

the

rural sector

society,

even less satisfactory. The dramas, informal notes and sketches

(pi-chi),

and

other unofficial

and

informal kinds

historical source materials

are

less

frequently informative about rural life than about urban life,

about

the

elite

various settings. Nonetheless, the possibility exists for developing

much more detailed understanding of some aspects of rural society than has

yet emerged.

The base level of government was built

two systems

local manage-

ment derived from earlier Chinese practice.

the beginning of Khubilai's

reign, his government ordered that the various categories

households

brought under local supervision.

cities and towns and their immediate

suburbs, as well as in rural areas, the households were organized into what we

might call wards,

precincts,

for

which

variety of Chinese names were

used, differently designated

different parts

the country. Their heads,

nominally chosen by acclamation, appear

fact

have been selected with

county government concurrence from among

the

largest taxpayers. Their

59 See George

Hayden, Crime and punhbmtnl

medieval

Chinese

drama: Three Judge

Pao

plays, Harvard

East Asian Monograph

no. 82

(Cambridge, Mass., 1978). This work uses courtroom dramas

explore concepts of social justice. Many

the Yiian dramas have now been translated.

60 For a comment on studies

the

Yuan

tien

chang,

see my "Note on traditional sources for Yiian history"

in this volume.

HOUSEHOLDS IN BONDAGE 66l

duties were

supervise tax collection, labor duties, and other levies

on the

population, as well as

be responsible for order.

Early

in his

reign, Khubilai ordered that rural households

all occupa-

tional categories,

but

principally farming households,

organized into she

communes, nominally

fifty households each. The

she

system was extended

to south China after the conquest of the Southern Sung, but bits and pieces of

evidence indicate that the

she

varied widely

size and might include several

hundred households.

the beginning, nominally

least, the

she

units were

responsible

for

supervising

and

promoting agriculture

and

rural rehabilita-

tion. Eventually, the

she

units tended

be amalgamated with the wards and

precincts

of the

tax-collecting

and

peacekeeping base-level organization.

There

suspicion that neither system was universally applied

effectively

maintained. Yet both show that the patterns of communal organization more

or less natural

to the

society were acknowledged

and

utilized

for

social

management purposes, much

they

had

been used under previous dynas-

ties.

To most Chinese farmers, petty tradesmen, or craftsmen

rural areas,

the hereditary household categories and the fourfold system

social classes

probably were less demanding impositions on their daily lives than they were

for urban and suburban populations.

HOUSEHOLDS IN BONDAGE

The aspect of Yuan rule that most directly affected rural life was the attach-

ment

total local populations

—

sometimes

numbers running

thou-

sands

even tens

thousands

households

—

along with their farming

lands,

conquering army leaders.

The

Mongolian practice

was for

con-

quered peoples

to be

included among

the

kinds

war booty that could

seized during military operations

or to

be granted

the appanages

impe-

rial relatives

and

meritorious officers, removed from

the

regular population

registers, and placed

in a

status like that

serfdom

slavery. The term

for

that category of persons was ch'ii-k'ou (meaning something like "captives").

this practice was most widespread

north China early

the conquest,

but

it continued

some degree through the reign of Khubilai and was extended

into the southern provinces.

In 1235, immediately following

the

Mongolian conquest

of the

Chin

dynasty, an attempt was made

count and register households. The motive

61 See Elizabeth Endicott-West's chapter on government in this volume and also her study Mongolian rule

in China: Local administration

the Yuan dynasty (Cambridge, Mass., 1989) pp. 119—22 et passim.

62 For a collection

impressionistic materials

ch'ii-k'ou

and persons held

other kinds

bondage,

see Li Kan, Yuan

tai

she

hut ching chi shih kao (Wuhan, 1985), pp. 38—58.

63 Examples from Khubilai khan's reign are given

in Li

Tse-fen, "Yuan

tai te

she hui,"

vol.

5 of

his

Yuan shih hsin

chiang

(Taipei, 1978), pp. 348—528, esp. pp. 506—11.

662 CHINESE SOCIETY UNDER MONGOL RULE

was

determine

the

number

households claimed

fief

the appanages

of the military leaders

and to fix

uniform

tax and

service schedules

for the

entire population.

The

number

households then held

appanages

was

found

to be in

excess

760,000,

out of a

total registered population

roughly

million households.

The

Yuan court attempted

place

the

administration

the appanages under officials

its appointing,

order

in the

revenues drawn from

the

"captive" households,

but

fief

holders

tended

regard those

their private property,

conceal actual numbers,

and

exploit their productive capacities

to the

fullest extent. Some

the

north China appanages were held by Chinese military leaders

{Han-chiin)

who

held their fiefs

hereditary right, just

as the

Mongols

and

Western Asians

held theirs. The central government's interests conflicted with those

their

military nobles

in the

exploitation

the conquered Chinese population,

conflict that continued throughout

the

dynasty. The ordinary people had

way

protecting themselves

this conflict

interests, except

flee

their

homes

and

become vagrant households

wandering individuals.

large

portion of the reduction

north China's registered population between 1215

and

1260

thus must

explained

such large-scale internal migrations.

Khubilai khan and his advisers saw the seriousness of both the competition

with nobles over

the

control

captive populations

and the

disruption

rural life caused

by the

excessive exploitation

them. They attempted

implement broad measures

curb excesses

and to

stabilize

the

agricultural

villages. Through the

she

system of promoting agriculture and the wards and

precincts

for tax

collection and security, just described, Khubilai's govern-

ment attempted

reduce

and to

administer directly

the

rural households

assigned

appanages and to make their tax and service obligations similar to

those

free farming households.

Yet

Khubilai khan could

not

abandon

the

Mongolian institution

the appanage with

its

attached serf and craftsmen

households.

The

compromise

was to

appoint supervising administrators

the appanages

and to

grant annual payments from

the

revenues

to the

fief

holders. That

did not

fully succeed

eliminating evasion

and

exploitation

and other points

conflict with the central government. During Khubilai's

long reign, about 15 percent of

the

population still was registered as attached

households,

and

the concealed numbers may have been equally high. Abuses

the

ultimate sources

revenue,

the

producing farmers

and

craftsmen,

continued through the dynasty.

In managing

its

rural population, the Yuan government retained forms of

taxation

and

service obligations established before

1260 in the

north

and

64 See the table

Han Ju-lin et al., Yiianch'aoshih(Peking, 1986), vol. i,p. 222, and the accompany-

ing discussion.