Jottings from the Granite Studio

In our program’s library, I came across a copy of Chinese Views of Childhood edited by Anne Kinney. I remembered reading (or at least skimming) the book a few years ago for a seminar, but since I had a couple of hours to kill proctoring a make-up exam from last semester’s history class, I did what any graduate student would do: I skimmed it again.

Given that family and the perpetuation of one’s line occupies so high a place in Chinese culture, there have been surprisingly few studies of childhood and children in Chinese history. Certainly, as Kinney notes in her introduction, part of the problem is sources. Children do not often leave writings of their own, and so we are left to observe childhood through the gaze of parents or as memories recorded in later life, thus the contributors to this volume should be commended for doing a lot with a little.

One observation (and I apologize, I left the copy at the library so I don’t have the exact chapter in front of me) was the importance of socialization rather than inheritance in childhood development, and that made me recall Ann Waltner’s 1990 study Getting an Heir: Adoption and the Construction of Kinship in Late Imperial China. One of Waltner’s arguments is that the importance of blood lines, or blood affinity, found in European cultures, has no exact parallel in Chinese history. In short, in the debate on nature versus nurture, nurture wins in a forfeit.

So the issue of children in history was very much on my mind this morning when I came across a passage from the 6th century. Yan Zhitui (531-591) was born into a family of scholar-officials at a time when being a scholar-official wasn’t necessarily the easiest gig in the world, the tail end of the “Age of Division” (or as it is known in Chinese 魏晉南北朝 “The Wei, the Jin, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties”). In 581, Yang Jian, the future Emperor Wendi (r. 581-604) and at the time a general in the Xianbei dynasty of the Northern Zhou, rebelled against the throne, killing the heir to the Zhou crown–who was, by the by, also Yang’s grandson. He then consolidated his coup by putting 59 imperial princes of the Zhou royal house to the sword before rallying his armies and conquering China under the new Sui Dynasty (581-617). An era of family values it was not.

But Mr. Yan found the time to write a set of “household instructions,” his addition to a genre of writing quite common throughout the imperial period down to the last century. The fact that heads of households kept writing out the rules for living under their roof suggests that family life in old China was a bit more chaotic and disordered than contemporary stereotypes would have us believe. It’s an axiom in history that lists of rules don’t always tell us much about what people were doing, but they can tell us quite a bit about what some people felt others SHOULD HAVE been doing but were not. (As historians would say, such sources are more ‘prescriptive’ rather than ‘descriptive.’)

So given my recent readings on childhood in Chinese history, I thought this passage was particularly appropriate. It also made me think about differences in child-rearing practices between my own upbringing in the United States and that of my friends from China as well as those of the parents I observe interacting with their children here in Beijing.

Anyway, our Mr Yan suggests:

“Those of the highest intelligence will develop without being taught; those of great stupidity, even if taught, will amount to nothing; those of medium ability will be ignorant unless taught. The ancient sage kings had rules for prenatal training. Women when pregnant three months moved from their living quarters to a detached palace where they would not see unwholesome sights nor hear reckless words, and where the tones of music and the flavor of food were controlled by the rules of decorum [rites]. These rules were written on jade tablets and kept in a golden box. After the child was born, imperial tutors firmly made clear filial piety, humaneness, the rites, and rightness to guide and train him…

…As soon as a baby can recognize facial expressions and understand approval and disapproval, training should be begun so that he will do what he is told to do and stop when so ordered. After a few years of this, punishment with the bamboo can be minimized, as parental strictness and dignity mingled with parental love will lead the boys and girls to a feeling of respect and caution and give rise to filial piety.

I have noticed about me that where there is merely love without training this result is never achieved. Children eat, drink, speak, and act as they please. Instead of needing prohibitions, they receive praise instead of urgent reprimands they receive smiles. Even when children are old enough to learn, such treatment is still regarded as the proper method. Only after the child has formed proud and arrogant habits do they try to control him. But one may whip the child to death and he still will not be respectful, while the growing anger of the parents only increases his resentment. Confucius was right in saying, “What is acquired in infancy is like original nature; what has been forced into habits is equal to instinct.”* A common proverb says, “Train a wife from her first arrival; teach a son in his infancy.” How true such sayings are!

*[translator note: Not in the Confucian classics, but quoted by Jia Yi (201-168? BCE) in Jiazi xinshu.

One final point, given the Confucian (or at least Mencian) emphasis on the innate goodness of human nature, it is interesting that Mr. Yan sees children as needing to be shaped and molded, especially early on, reminiscent more of Xunzi (and the parable of the warped wood) rather than Mencius. Though at the time, the ideas of Mencius didn’t receive the kind of attention they would get later from Tang thinkers such as Han Yu and the Neo-Confucian boys during the Song. But now I’m wandering dangerously into Sam’s territory so I think I’ll stop here.

(This post is dedicated to Hu Jianci, likely the tiniest political prisoner in the world.)

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Quotation from: Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume I. Wm. Theodore De Bary and Irene Bloom, eds. (Columbia Univ. Press: 1999), p. 543.

Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Cambridge Illustrated History of China. (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), p. 109.