ANCIENT CHINESE SOCIETY

The Chinese government periodically conducted a census of inhabitants, and the results for 2 c.e. revealed 12 million households and 60 million people. Then, as now, the vast majority lived in the eastern river-valley regions where intensive agriculture could support a dense population. The fundamental unit was the family, including not only the living but all previous generations. The Chinese believed their ancestors maintained an interest in the fortunes of living family members, so they consulted, appeased, and venerated them. Each generation must produce sons to perpetuate the family and maintain the ancestor cult that provided a kind of immortality to the deceased. In earlier times multiple generations and groups of families lived together, but by the imperial era independent nuclear families were the norm.
Within the family was a clear-cut hierarchy headed by the oldest male. Each person had a place and responsibilities, based on gender, age, and relationship to other family members, and people saw themselves as part of an interdependent unit rather than as individual agents. Parents’ authority over children did not end with the passing of childhood, and parents occasionally took mature children to court for disobedience. The family inculcated the basic values of Chinese society: loyalty, obedience to authority, respect for elders and ancestors, and concern for honor and appropriate conduct. Because the hierarchy in the state mirrored the hierarchy in the family—peasants, soldiers, administrators, and rulers all made distinctive contributions to the welfare of society—these same attitudes carried over into the relationship between individuals and the state. Traditional beliefs about conduct appropriate for women are preserved in a biography of the mother of the Confucian philosopher Mencius (Mengzi):
A woman’s duties are to cook the five grains, heat the wine, look after her parents-in-law, make clothes, and that is all!... [She] has no ambition to manage affairs outside the house... She must follow the “three submissions.” When she is young, she must submit to her parents. After her marriage, she must submit to her husband. When she is widowed, she must submit to her son. In reality, a woman’s status depended on her “location” within various social institutions. Women of the royal family, such as wives of the emperor or queen-mothers, could be influential political figures. A young bride, whose marriage had been arranged by her parents, would go to live with her husband’s family, where she was, initially, a stranger who had to prove herself. Mothers-in-law had authority over their sons’ wives, and mothers, sisters, and wives competed for influence with the men of the household and a larger share of the family’s resources.
“Lessons for Women,” written at the end of the first century c.e. by Ban Zhao (bahn jow), illuminates the unresolved tensions in Han society’s attitudes toward women. Instructing her own daughters on how to conduct themselves as proper women, Zhao urges them to conform to traditional expectations by obeying males, maintaining their husbands’ households, performing domestic chores, and raising the children. Yet she also makes an impassioned plea for the education of girls and urges husbands to respect and not beat their wives. People lived in various milieus—cities, rural villages and farms, or military camps on the frontiers—and their activities and the quality of their lives were shaped by these contexts. From 202 b.c.e. to 8 c.e.—the period of the Early, or Western, Han—the capital was at Chang’an (modern Xi’an [shee-ahn]), in the Wei Valley, an ancient seat of power from which the Zhou and Qin dynasties had emerged.

Protected by a ring of hills but with ready access to the fertile plain, Chang’an was surrounded by a wall of pounded earth and brick 15 miles (24 kilometers) in circumference. In 2 c.e. its population was 246,000. Part of the city was carefully planned. Broad thorough fares running north and south intersected with others running east and west. High walls protected the palaces, administrative offices, barracks, and storehouses of the imperial compound, to which access was restricted. Temples and marketplaces were scattered about the civic center. Chang’an became a model of urban planning, its main features imitated in cities and towns throughout China (it is estimated that between 10 and 30 percent of the population lived in urban centers). From 25 to 220 c.e. the Later, or Eastern, Han established its base farther east, in the more centrally located Luoyang (Lwoe-yahng).

Han literature describes the appearance of the capitals and the activities taking place in the palace complexes, public areas, and residential streets. Moralizing writers criticized the excesses of the elite. Living in multistory houses, wearing fine silks, traveling in ornate horse-drawn carriages, well-to-do officials and merchants devoted their leisure time to art and literature, occult religious practices, elegant banquets, and various entertainments—music and dance, juggling and acrobatics, dog and horse races, and cock and tiger fights. In stark contrast, the common people inhabited a sprawling warren of alleys, living in dwellings packed “as closely as the teeth of a comb.”
While the upper echelons of scholar-officials resided in the capital, lower-level bureaucrats were scattered throughout smaller cities and towns serving as headquarters for regional governments. These scholar-officials, or gentry (JEHN-tree) as they are sometimes called, shared a common Confucian culture and ideology. Exempt from taxes and compulsory military or labor services, they led comfortable lives by the standards of the time. While the granting of government jobs on the basis of performance on the exams theoretically should have given everyone an equal chance, in reality the sons of the gentry had distinct advantages in obtaining the requisite education in classical texts. Thus the scholar-officials became a self-perpetuating, privileged class. The Han depended on local officials for day-to-day administration of their far-flung territories. They collected taxes, regulated conscription for the army and labor projects, provided protection, and settled disputes.
Merchant families also were based in the cities, and some became very wealthy. However, ancient Chinese society viewed merchants with suspicion, accusing them of greedily driving prices up through speculation and being parasites who lived off the work of others. Advisers to the emperors periodically blamed merchants for the economic ills of China and proposed harsh measures, such as banning them and their children from holding government posts. The state required two years of military service, and large numbers of Chinese men spent long periods away from home as soldiers in distant frontier posts, building walls and forts, keeping an eye on barbarian neighbors, fighting when necessary, and growing crops to support themselves. Poems written by soldiers complain of rough conditions in the camps, tyrannical officers, and the dangers of confrontations with enemy forces, but above all they are homesick, missing and worrying about aged parents and vulnerable wives and children.

By Richard W. Bulliet-(Columbia University), Pamela Kyle Crossley- (Dartmouth College), Daniel R. Headrick- (Roosevelt University), Steven W. Hirsch- (Tufts University), Lyman L. Johnson- (University of North Carolina—Charlotte) & David Northrup- (Boston College) in the book "The Earth and Its Peoples"- A Global History, Wadsworth (Cengage Learning), U.S.A.,2011, excerpts p.170-171. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

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