It’s a slow news week in China, means it’s time for the different Beijing bureaus to trot out the history features. Last week, NPR had the court music of the Tang Dynasty, this week the IHT looks at Pingyao banks from the Ming and the Qing eras.
At Pingyao’s height, the 22 banks here thrived on the flourishing trade in Shanxi Province, as silk and tea moved north to Mongolia and Russia from southern China and wool went south.
Compared with the excesses of today, scholars say, the early days of banking were a time of solid business ethics. There were no toxic mortgages, no opaque financial instruments. Trust among businessmen was so strong that the banks were able to start a system of remittances, credit and check-writing, the first of its kind in China. Currency was in silver ingots.
Yet, some of the banks’ practices might raise eyebrows today.
Still visible in the two-story courtyards of the defunct banks here are opium dens and mah-jongg tables, as well as rooms where prostitutes hired by the banks plied their trade to win over potential customers.
I thought of about 15 different jokes related to the last bit there, but none
Sharp-eyed visitors to the Palace Museum will note the number of signs which are written in both Chinese and Manchu. Makes sense considering who actually ruled the Qing Empire and so many of the signs at the Forbidden City look something like this:
But the signs on the main attractions, the big gates and halls of the outer court, the ones EVERYBODY sees (even the “In 35 minutes we have to be at Badaling” package tourist) have signs only in Chinese. By way of example, check out this picture of the Hall of Preserving Harmony (Baohe Dian), in which scholars of centuries past toiled away to pass the highest level of exam.
Only Hanyu. What gives?
I’ve been wondering this for awhile, and on the off-hand chance that either Freda Murck or Geremie Barmé reads this blog they could drop me a note. Until then, Joel Martinson, the translation machine behind the Danwei blog, tipped me off to this article from 163.com posted back in 2004 which claims to have the answer. I’ve translated and appended it below the fold, but I’m not entirely convinced…sounds a little too neat and clean to blame old Yuan
On this date in 1402, the second Ming emperor Zhu Yunwen (朱允炆 b. 1377) died in a palace fire. Reigning as the Jianwen Emperor (建文 r. 1399-1402), Yunwen as the grandson of Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋 r. 1368-1398). After taking the throne, Zhu Yuanzhang enacted a series of reforms/edicts, one of which was to mandate the imperial line of succession be the first son of the emperor. (One suspects Yuanzhang just wanted to avoid a terrible headache–the man had 24 sons after all.)
Zhu Yuanzhang’s first son, Zhu Biao 朱標, predeceased his father, and so according to the code, Zhu Biao’s first son became the new crown prince, by-passing his 23 uncles. Not good.
One of those uncles, Zhu Di 朱棣, was a talented commander and a cunning strategist. Perhaps a bit too cunning. Zhu Di had been dispatched north to the area around the old Yuan Dynasty capital of Dadu (present day Beijing) to keep an eye on the Mongols, who were still spoiling for a fight.
Zhu Di was already unhappy and Yunwen, upon taking the throne, poured gasoline on the fire by taking a series of steps to limit the powers of the regional commanders, especially
On this date in 1403, Zhu Di (the Yongle Emperor) agreed to a recommendation from his Minister of Rites to move the Ming capital from Nanjing to Beiping, henceforth renamed Beijing.*
There were a number of reasons behind the move.** First, Zhu Di had usurped the throne from his nephew Zhu Yunwen in 1402, when Zhu Di’s troops stormed the Ming capital at Nanjing. Hard worker though he was, Zhu Di never felt like he quite finished the job of purging all of his nephew’s allies and supporters, and so he never really took to Nanjing as a permanent home. It’s also possible that after incinerating his own nephew and ousting a generation of officials, he may have felt like a fresh start was probably in order.
Which brings up the second reason for moving north: The Mongols. The Ming had kicked out the Mongols forty years earlier, but the Khans’ descendants were spoiling for a rematch.Zhu Di knew this. His father, Ming Taizu, had once charged him with the extremely important task of northern border defense, and the new monarch felt that Beijing offered a better vantage point to keep an eye on what was happening out in the
(This post was originally published last February 1 on the old site. But since the old site is blocked, and I’m crashing a few pre-Spring Festival deadlines, I’m putting it up again.)
Today marks the 345th 346th anniversary of the liberation of Taiwan from the Dutch by the Ming loyalist Zheng Chenggong (1624-1662), better known in the West as Koxinga.*
He was born in Nagasaki, the son of Zheng Zhilong, a Chinese merchant and occasional pirate, and a Japanese woman named Tagawa, but moved to Quanzhou in Fujian as a child, and there spent his youth preparing to enter official service under the Ming.
After the fall of Beijing to the Manchus in 1644, his father, Zheng Zhilong, joined one of the Ming pretenders/contenders to the throne, Prince Tang, who at the time was ensconced in Fujian. After the Prince was captured, Zheng Zhilong–ignoring his son’s pleas–went over to the Qing side, but Zheng Chenggong continued his struggle against the Manchu invaders. After a series of defeats at the hands of Qing banner troops, however, he was forced to flee across the Taiwan straits to Formosa, then under the control of the Dutch.
On April 30, 1661, Zheng Chenggong
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