Summer Issue, 2013

21 Emperor’s court, Professor Spence identi ed ve categories of people living below the state, exerting some degree of personal power under the level of imperial control. He characterised these as peddlers and doctors, internal exiles, examination takers, inn-keepers and fortune-tellers. Of these the peddlers and doctors, who often worked closely together, were the most mobile. “People pop out of pages all over the place selling, giving away, recommending or manufacturing medicines,” says Professor Spence. Peddlers travelled enormous distances on foot. “They were herbalists who sold medicines and treatment herbs but they were also interested in teaching their skills, informally with no state involvement.” Peddlers maintained friendships with doctors based on shared learning, often across huge distances. “The amount of hospitality in the texts is startling. Every linkage we can pursue goes into the towns and out again to the countryside, with youngsters being trained along the way. So you have a sense of a society in motion, looking after its own health, a sympathetic, learned sub-culture.” Malfeasance against the state was typically punished by exile. “Internal exiles come up again and again among those on the roads, brushing shoulders with the doctors and the peddlers,” said Professor Spence. Small groups of such convicts would be escorted into exile by militia. At night, the two groups would pitch camp together, share food and perhaps a bottle of liquor, and discuss the news of the day, with the conversation ranging across the latest missives from the north via the palace bulletins, and the counter-current of local news. “They would re ect on the emperor, on society,” notes Professor Spence. Those who successfully or unsuccessfully took the imperial examinations formed another sub-set of society: educated men who could not nd employment within the state bureaucracy, whose lives revolved around the world of the examinations. They fostered a sub-culture of learned exchange based on a sharing of books, meals and reminiscences, also with no involvement of the state. Two common social meeting points – inns and marketplaces – were where the other important players in this tapestry of life beneath and beyond the state could be found. Inns were typically walking distance from each other and close to important intersections and centres of social life such as temples. The inn-keepers were connected to the scholars and the peddlers and they knew in ne detail the mountain trails and paths that connected communities. Those who professed connection to forces beyond the human realm, the fortune-tellers, played a signi cant part in daily life, typically offering their services at markets. For eight copper coins a farmer down from the foothills could ask for a prognostication on the fate of his crops and “erudite men came looking for certain kinds of data from fortune-tellers,” says Professor Spence. The seditious potential of this geographically mobile, often well-educated, opinionated and well-informed population was not lost on Yongzheng. “He woke up thinking: they’re after me,” says Professor Spence. “This was a conquest generation, the Manchu rulers who had conquered the Chinese, and people did often hate their rulers.” Should there be any doubt about the utility of studying early 18th century Chinese history, Professor Spence points out that across 300 years, it is not dif cult to identify potential parallels with the present-day authoritarian regime. “I have been on the watch for the simple folk. Social history can show us that there were very tight inter-connections between the individuals who were critical of the state structure.” On Campus “I have been on the watch for the simple folk. Social history can show us that there were very tight inter-connections between the individuals who were critical of the state structure.” living below the state