DEATH ON MA WEI SLOPE

The astute reader will have noticed the clickable label 唐人街 under several posts discussing Chinatown on this blog.
The words 唐人街 ('Tong-Yan Kai') literally mean Tang Person Street - that being the name for the Chinese district in San Francisco, as well as most Chinatowns elsewhere. It is strictly a Cantonese term; the Cantonese refer to themselves as men of Tang, after China's arguably most splendid era.
In the Western World, the Tang dynasty is known mainly for San-Tsai pottery and horse paintings, whereas to the Chinese that period is famous primarily for poetry, fat beauties, and Turks.
The Cantonese, like all Chinese, take great pride in the poetry.
Not so much the fat beauties or the Turks.

Here in San Francisco we have Chinese people, and also enough plump hell-cats to make an emperor drool. Quite likely we have Turks as well.

[Honestly, what is it with modern San Francisco girls? Why do so many of them pack more poundage than I do? Why is there such a surfeit of young ladies here, so much younger than yours truly yet so much heavier? I'm a mature man, Fercrapsakes!
I'm not supposed to look trimmer and spryer than you lot! Really!]

No other Chinese describe themselves as Tang, only the Cantonese. It is deliciously odd.



INCESTUOUS THREATS

The Tang Dynasty (Tong Chiew: 唐朝 - anno 618 CE to 907 CE) was one of the high-water marks of Chinese civilization, during which the empire reached its furthest expanse. Great advances in the arts and sciences were made, and due to the many splendid achievements, especially in literature, the Tang Dynasty truly counts as one of the golden ages of human history.
Yet there was always a haunting sense of fragility.
Several societies have traditionally been endangered by howling savages from the north - Rome had the Germanic tribes, Israel has the Lebanese, and we have the Canadians.
China for centuries has had the Turks.

More than the fashionably fat temptresses beloved by the grandees of the capital, the constant threat of invasion by barbarians from beyond the frontier shaped Tang society. Scholars and officials for generations either were posted north to fend off the fur-clad mob, or fled south to escape their depredations. The sight of men on horseback was a constant in metropoles north of the Yangtze, and returnees told harrowing tales of deprivation and endurance in the waste lands.

Ironically the Tang Dynasty itself was actually part Turkish, albeit long Sinicized and acclimatized. The ruling clan, and of much of the Northern aristocracy, had been on the frontier for generations, and represented a subculture that was more-or-less Chinese politically, but had overmuch in common with the tribes that beset the border.
The ancestors of many such clans had been heathen warlords co-opted by titles and power, and gradually brought into the civilized fold.
They were 'gentled' by their association with Chinese culture, but not entirely converted - during periods of instability, their opportunism and rapacious native tendencies would resurface.


The following poem adds to that irony - it references the killing of the emperor's concubine during a period of crypto-Turkic rebellion and bloodshed.
Now please note: the ruling family of Tang was named Li (Lei: 李), a surname that very often indicates a Barbaric origin (hence so many Turco-Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and others of questionable antecedents thus appelled). The lady in this quatrain was surnamed Yang (Yeung: 楊), that being also the name of the crypto-Turkic clan that the Lis of Tang had superceded (and both she herself as well as her lord were in fact related by blood to the previous dynasty), yet Yang is a very Chinese name with absolutely no heathen hue.
Though people with these surnames are USUALLY fully Chinese, these particular Lis and Yangs were MOSTLY of 'foreign' origin.
This poem could NOT be more Chinese - yet the people in it were barely so.

If anything, they were Tang.



馬嵬坡 - MA WEI PO
 
玄宗回馬楊妃死， 雲雨難忘日月新。
終是聖明天子事， 景陽宮井又何人。

[詩者: 鄭畋]


MA NGAI PO ('Ma Wei Slope')

Yun-Tsong wui ma Yeung-Fei sei,
Wan-yiu naan-mong yat-yuet san;
Jung-si Sing-Ming tien-ji si,
Ging-Yeung Gung jeng yau ho-yan?

[Written by Zheng Tian (Jeng Tin 鄭畋) ]

Translation:
Hsuan-Tsung return horse Yang honoured consort dead,
Cloud-rain difficult forget day month new;
Finality indeed Sheng-Ming son-of-heaven business,
Ching-Yang Palace waterwell once-more who?

Paraphrasis:
When Hsuan-Tsung came back from his ride Lady Yang was already dead,
His love for her will be remembered for all eternity;
‘Recollect the affair of the Sing-Ming emperor............
And who (also) ended up in the well at the Ging-Yeung Palace?’


In short, while the emperor was off riding, his soldiers killed his concubine, whose family they hated.


CLARIFICATORY BACKGROUND

In the year 712 CE Li Longji (Lei LungKei: 李隆基 born 685 CE, died 762 CE) became the seventh emperor of the Tang Dynasty (styled Tang Hsuan-Tsung / Tong Yun-Tsong: 唐玄宗), reigning till 756 CE. After several years of quite able rule, he grew lax and careless, eventually bringing the empire to the edge of ruin. The name most associated with this latter period is Yang Kweifei - the imperial consort Yang.
Yang Yu-Hwan (Yeung Yiuk-Waan: 楊玉環 - born 719 CE, died 756 CE), the daughter of Yang Hsuan-Yan (Yeung Yun-Yim: 楊玄琰), was the wife of Hsuan-Tsung's son the Prince of Shou. After emperor Hsuan-Tsung noticed her, she divorced her husband, became a Buddhist nun for while to ensure plausible deniability, then rejoined the world (circa 737 or 738 CE) and became the emperor's concubine, receiving the title kweifei (gwaifei: 貴妃 honoured consort).

[The Prince of Shou (Sau Wong: 壽王): Li Mao (Lei Mo: 李瑁) born 715 CE died 775 CE. The eighteenth son of the emperor, whose mother was Consort Wu (Wu Wuifei / Mou Waifei 武惠妃), daughter of a clan that had nearly usurped the throne in a previous generation. Consort Wu never became empress due to the extreme wariness of court officials, who remembered what had happened. She never the less had great status and influence in the palace, and was deferred to as the highest lady in the land. She died in 737 CE.
Like many other power-circles within the imperial court, the Wus were border aristocracy and related by blood to the imperial family. The surname Wu (Mou: 武) means martial, military, warlike - characteristically a surname chosen by Sinified barbarians in the North. ]


As the emperor became ever more besotted by his lady, he acceded to her requests to bestow favours upon her relatives, making her cousin Yang Kuo-Chong (Yeung Kok-Chung: 楊國忠) prime minister, and several of her other kinsmen high officials. Over the years while the power of the Yang family grew affairs of state were neglected and the treasury despoiled, leading to rebellion in the provinces.

In 755 CE, An LuShan (On LokSan: 安禄山), a feudal lord of mixed Sogdian and Central-Asian Turkish ancestry from the North-Eastern border of the empire, raised the standard of revolt and marched on the capitol Chang-An (Cheung-On: 長安 - modern day Hsi-An/Sei-On: 西安).
The imperial court fled south towards Shu (Suk: 蜀 - modern day Szechuan), and at Ma Wei Station (Ma-NGai Yik: 馬嵬驛) in Shaansi (Simsai: 陝西) the military escort decided to exact revenge for the destruction that the emperor's concubine and her rapacious relatives had wrought.

The emperor's tearful objections were stilled when he was reminded that ONE death might not be enough - killing ineffective rulers also had historic precedents.


SO FAR, SO GOOD .......

After slaughtering several court officials and members of the Yang family, troops and officers remonstrated with the emperor.

Thereupon Yang Kweifei was taken to a nearby Buddhist temple and strangled, following which she was unceremoniously buried at Ma Wei slope (馬嵬坡).

In 757 CE, when the now retired emperor Hsuan-Tsung returned to Chang-An, he wished to retrieve her body for a proper entombment, but was dissuaded by his officials, who feared tumult if the military should hear of it.

Historians are of two minds about the reputation of Lady Yang – was she the root of trouble, or merely a symptom? And who deserves more blame – the emperor for his weakness, Lady Yang for her manipulation on behalf of her kinsmen, or her relatives for being so unworthy of benefice?
Was she a vixen, or merely a victim of her time and place?

[I need not even mention that she was also rumoured to have had an affair with An Lu-Shan. Who was, notabene, an honorary 'adopted' son of the emperor!]


Whatever her true role in the convoluted court politics of Tang may have been, Yang Kweifei is mainly remembered as one of the greatest temptresses of all time, charming enough to alter the course of history - pleasingly plump and full figured, pale, with a lively and intelligent face.
A classic Chinese beauty. And thus a dangerous woman.


TONG YAN KAI

To the Cantonese, the distant Northern Border might as well be on the far side of the moon. Nothing in their environment prepares them for the extreme cold, the dryness, the aridity. The idea of being sent to man an outpost in the sands of Turkestan is enough to make them blanch.
Yes, the Cantonese are proud of China's achievements, and of the extension of empire along the Silk-Road - but everything North of the great river is a foreign world, and arguably not even Chinese. Certainly not proper Chinese.
They talk funny, eat weird crap, and smell funky, up there in the North.
Why, they're probably even half Turks!



NOTE: The two types of pronunciation given for Chinese characters above reflect Mandarin, which is the official language, and Cantonese, which is spoken here in San Francisco. In addition to being the Chinese language with which I am most familiar, Cantonese is also much more appropriate in the context of this post: It is the Chinese language whose pronunciation is closest to the koine of the Tang period.
As many Cantonese proudly assert, and educated Northerners grudgingly acknowledge.


==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================