A Political Life in Ming China : A Grand Secretary and His Times 9781442223783, 9781442223776

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A POLITIC AL LIF E IN M IN G C HIN A

A POLITIC AL LIF E IN M IN G C HIN A

A Grand Secretary and His Times John W. Dardess

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

Published by Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom Copyright © 2013 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A political life in Ming China : a grand secretary and his times / John W. Dardess. pages cm Includes index. ISBN 978-1-4422-2377-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-2378-3 (electronic) 1. Xu, Jie, 1503–1583. 2. Prime ministers—China—Biography. 3. China—History—Ming dynasty, 1368–1644. I. Title. DS753.6.X77D37 2013 951'.026—dc23 2013014863 TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Introducing Xu Jie

vii

1 A Star Ascending

1

2 As Grand Secretary: On Jiangxue and on War in the North

35

3 The Coast

89

4 Chief Grand Secretary

139

5 Bowing Out

185

Index

205

v

INTRODUCING XU JIE

I first came upon Xu Jie in two earlier books I wrote. In A Ming Society (1996), he shows up as a younger friend and colleague of Ouyang De, who was a committed follower of the celebrated Ming Confucian Wang Yangming. In Ming China, 1368–1644 (2012) he makes a few brief appearances as a chief grand secretary, the highest position in Ming bureaucracy. I had long thought, however, that his was a life and a story that cried out for more than a fleeting mention or two. If Xu Jie is, nowadays, a rather obscure figure, even to people in the field of Chinese history, his obscurity is wholly undeserved. He needs to come out of the shadows and bask in a bit of the limelight. There are several reasons for bringing him back. First and foremost, he spent nearly twenty years at the highest level of Ming China’s official establishment, the Grand Secretariat. That body sat at the center of a nationwide web of official communications. Xu Jie was on duty during the great turmoil that afflicted the realm in the middle years of the sixteenth century—the raids from the steppes in the north, and those by sea along the coast to the east. He played a strong hand in the difficult job of bringing some semblance of calm to those scenes of apparently unstoppable violence and destruction. His writings show just how hard that was, and how persistent he had to be. Second, Xu Jie was a good writer. He never wrote autobiography. His published works, however, are full of his letters—some 231 of them—from Beijing to officials in the field and other communications as well, over 150 of them being exchanges with the Jiajing and Longvii

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qing emperors, all relating to the challenges he faced during his time in office. These letters and the record of what he said to the emperors exhibit an impressive degree of honesty, specificity, and detail. Xu seldom lapsed into platitudes or vague generalities. He avoided literary affectation. His writings are so candid, forthcoming, and expressive, and they translate so readily into a foreign tongue like English, that I thought by avoiding the usual summary condensations and directly citing a large selection of them instead, I might convey a real sense of what it was like to try to shape the destinies of what was one of the largest regimes on the face of the earth at the time. Xu’s persistent recourse to informal letters to officials in the field, whose thinking and actions he ventured to influence and stimulate, seems to be a new governance technique, bypassing the formal channels, first put to regular use by him. He always calls his addressees by their intimate and polite “style names” (hao), which are never used in formal bureaucratic communications. He thus made an end run around the established circuits, and in so doing he made an important impact on policy implementation. Third, Xu Jie’s career shows clearly how politics served as the dirty underside of administration. Politics meant interpersonal and factional fighting. It meant clientage and often bribery. The lust for power unleashed dishonest favor seeking, sly maneuvering, and cutthroat and indeed lethal rivalries. Xu Jie was good at power games, patient most of the time, opportunistic and ruthless when he had to be. But as he once explained, absent the unpleasant methods of politics, one cannot get and keep high position. And without high position, one can do nothing administratively to make life better in China. To the extent that posterity has looked askance at him, it is his politics that has besmirched his reputation. As for using government to make life better in China, Xu as chief grand secretary (1562–1568) developed a set of three principles that he openly expressed and regularly acted upon. This more than redeemed the occasional ugliness of his politics. He made the emperor a vital and indispensable resource for powering the system. He devolved executive authority from the Grand Secretariat to the Six Ministries (Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War, Justice, Works). And he reopened the “avenue of speech,” encouraging the kedao (censors and supervising secretaries) to speak out, criticize, and impeach without fear of retaliation, repression,

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or punishment. A wide public consensus (gonglun) was, in his opinion, preferable to a dictatorial fiat. This was, in its time and context, a liberal dispensation, enough to cause one to reflect that Ming government was not, after all, a total and irremediable despotism. Finally, though Xu Jie was not a philosopher or ideologue, he used his political influence to bring the Wang Yangming mode of ethical thinking to its national high point. As it played out, this way of thinking emphasized the original goodness in each one of us, demanded that we grasp and develop it and radiate it out into the world that surrounds us. Xu Jie projected this cast of mind into high-level politics, blunting the ugly edges of rivalry. He injected it into governance, freeing up the system’s tendency toward rule-bound sclerosis. The Wang Yangming philosophy gave a new and inviting interpretation to the Confucian doctrines that the official Cheng-Zhu school had made rigid and forbidding. While aware that people exploited them for wrong purposes, Xu remained to the end a sponsor of the jiangxue circles and meetings, devoted to “discussion and study,” through which Wang Yangming’s ideas were propagated. After Xu retired, the fifty-year-long reign of Wang’s ideas at the forefront of China’s intellectual life came under severe attack and faded, supplanted first by a series of nonpolitical movements that were focused on literature and literary expression rather than philosophy, then later by the combative Donglin movement and its politically militant brand of Cheng-Zhu neo-Confucianism of 1604 and after. I invite the reader to accompany Xu Jie on his long and outstanding career—his beginnings, his early education, his engagement with the evangelical followers of Wang Yangming, his entry into the world of government, his early experiment with protest politics, his discovery that he preferred administration above all else, his eager participation in national crisis management, and finally his retirement into an old age that was not altogether serene. This, then, is a biography of a major figure in Ming history. We have, so far, all too few of these in a Western language. While deep research into circumscribed Ming topics is common and indeed needed, it is also important to gain some sense of how people coped with the whole range of opportunities and constraints of the world they lived in. Xu Jie is an example of the possibilities in Ming biography. One hopes we will see many more.

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My deepest thanks for all their help with this project to George Dardess; Vickie Fu Doll; Pam LeRow; Julie Petr, an outside reader; and the superb editors at Rowman & Littlefield: Susan McEachern, Carrie Broadwell-Tkach, and Janice Braunstein.

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1 A STAR ASCENDING

Xu Jie stood out from his fellow students. His teachers thought him a star. While no supernova, he was indeed a star. Small in stature, pale in complexion, he radiated charm in an unassuming and effortless way, inspiring neither fear nor worshipful devotion, nor incurring hatred or venomous envy either. For all his aptitude, his presence bordered on the bland, effectively masking an intense ambition. He came from a family that enjoyed neither great wealth nor outstanding distinction in a county—Huating, in Songjiang Prefecture, in the Southern Metropolitan Province (Nan Zhili, nowadays Jiangsu)—in the richest and culturally most sophisticated part of sixteenth-century China. But Xu Jie was always uneasy with cultural sophistication. Indeed, he belonged to a social group about which we know little: modest families that lived in a world quite apart from the luxury-loving and self-indulgent elite. Xu’s family rose slowly from poverty and indebtedness to middling success during the generation of his father and one of his uncles, who managed to climb only to the lowest rungs of Ming bureaucracy. Family income depended heavily upon silk cloth manufacture; Xu’s mother, née Gu (1473–1539), his first wife, née Shen (1505–1530), and his second wife, née Zhang (1516–1583), as well as his daughter-inlaw, née Ji (who married his son Xu Fan in 1547), all supervised a labor force consisting of weaving girls held in bondage. Income from this manufacture was devoted not to profligacy and display but to education and other charitable endowments for all the families. 1 1

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Xu wasn’t born in Huating. His father, a one-time clerk, rose from that low status to the bottom level of the mandarinate. Something close to a caste system ensured the ex-clerks could never aim higher. Xu Jie was born in Xuanping, a nondescript county in Zhejiang Province, where his father was vice magistrate. His earliest years were spent there and in Ningdu, a county four hundred miles to the southwest in Jiangxi Province, where his father served memorably and well, also as vice magistrate. Xu Jie retained a lifelong awareness that “credentials” (zige) were a poor guide to man’s true abilities, and no doubt it was his father’s example that led him to this conviction. Young Xu showed a precocious aptitude for study. That delighted his father—so much so that he quit his post and returned to Huating so that his son might qualify to become a county student (shengyuan) and surely someday win the academic degrees (the “credentials” of the provincial juren and national jinshi degrees) that would land him somewhere in the upper echelons of Ming bureaucracy, heights his father could never aspire to. Xu Jie passed a test and at the age of fourteen was admitted to the state-supported county school. He proved to be so adept a student that at the very young age of sixteen, the authorities allowed him to go to Nanjing and take the provincial exam for the juren degree. He failed. He returned to Huating, still a shengyuan. It was at this juncture that a new appointee arrived in Huating to serve as magistrate. This was Nie Bao (1487–1563), and the year was 1520. Nie had won his jinshi degree in 1517, and Huating was his first official assignment. Nie was forceful and energetic and eager to prove himself. He made a strong impression upon young Xu because he combined activism with a teaching impulse. He prosecuted local land fraud; he developed irrigation; he resettled 3,223 refugee households; he built a shrine honoring local worthies; he set up an archery range; and in 1522, he refurbished all the county school buildings, including student quarters. But it was his extracurricular teaching that set him apart. Somehow he found the time to hold daily meetings with some of the shengyuan in order to “discuss study” (jiangxue) with them. Nie was propounding what Xu Jie later called lixue, the “study of principles.” This caught Xu’s favorable attention. Jiangxue was rapidly spreading among not just students but senior literati and officials in south China at this time. Men were concocting philosophical recipes for self-improvement that they wove from bits of wisdom culled from the Four Books

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and Five Classics. Nie centered his own personal recipe on “solitude” (ji), a term he extracted from the Book of Changes. At that contemplative starting point, one nurtured an “interior harmony” and then pressed onward to ethical social action—to filial piety and fraternal submission, and finally to the sages’ level of self-completion and the transformative teaching of others. Nie’s official activism showed that the formula worked. Only in 1526, after leaving Huating, did Nie meet Wang Yangming (1472–1529, Ming China’s greatest Confucian) and worshipfully declare himself one of Wang’s large and enthusiastic following. Xu Jie is often carelessly labeled a follower of Wang Yangming (whom he never met) by way of Nie Bao, but that is not quite the case. 2 Indeed, as he related some years later in a letter to Ouyang De (1496–1554), a fervent Wang Yangming follower and a jinshi year-mate, Xu’s earliest ambitions had nothing to do with Nie Bao or with ethical self-improvement. For three years, he said, his sights were set on no more than riches and high rank. Then somehow he came to see that as misdirected. So for the next four years, he shifted, thinking literary brilliance could win him fame. Only later, about the time he won his jinshi degree and met the older Ouyang De, did he suddenly see that riches, rank, and literary fame were all external things, and that “I simply must seek what definitely exists in my heart-mind as the spot from which, for the rest of my life, I must act.” 3 But both Nie Bao and Ouyang De mattered greatly to him. As a grand secretary in the 1550s, he in fact became both men’s patron and sponsor for appointments at the highest level, as ministers of war and rites, respectively. Looking at the whole later pattern of his career, Xu never really abandoned his earlier fixations with riches, rank, and fame; rather, it was a matter of how one got there—one first fine-tuned one’s mental state, and then the other objectives might be aimed for and, with luck, achieved. In 1522, Xu Jie had another try at the provincial exams, joining some thousands for 135 slots. This time he did exceptionally well. The examiners ranked him seventh, and his answers were among those printed up for the enlightenment of future examinees. The next year, he and some 3,500 others, nationwide winners of the provincial degrees, journeyed to Beijing for the metropolitan and palace exams for the coveted jinshi degree. The quota for this year was four hundred. 4 Xu Jie again did exceptionally well. At the final ranking, after the palace exam, the

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readers toyed with the idea of giving him the highest place of all but in the end decided to rank him number three. That was still an outstanding result, particularly in light of his very young age (eighteen). The grand secretaries granted him an interview. The impression Xu made must have been very good. Chief Grand Secretary Yang Tinghe looked at his colleague Fei Hong and remarked that, young though he was, Xu was a fellow who merited immediate admittance to their exclusive circle. “Why don’t you transmit your robe and begging bowl to him right now?” he jokingly said to Fei. Xu was appointed a Hanlin junior compiler, as was normal for second- and third-place degree winners. (The top winner was Yao Lai, appointed a Hanlin senior compiler; he was flogged in the Great Rites protest of 1524 and died in 1537, never rising higher than Hanlin reader-in-waiting.) 5 Ming bureaucracy did not accept unmarried men, so Xu Jie at once hurried home to marry a girl of the Shen surname, a match arranged by his parents. Then, as Xu and his bride were en route back to Beijing by boat along the Grand Canal, someone from Huating, perhaps a family servant, informed them of the death of Xu’s father. So they immediately turned around and went back to Huating for the required year of mourning leave. They returned shortly after the harrowing Great Rites protest of August 14, 1524, when over two hundred officials who were demonstrators were arrested and flogged, with seventeen dying of the abuse. The rest were deprived of official status and sent into exile. Three of the survivors were Xu’s friends. He visited them, commiserated with them, and gave them gifts of traveling money. But, typical for him, he hesitated to express his own opinion on the issue. Some accused him of “observing things from the back of the boat.” The Great Rites controversy, which split officialdom into two superheated factions, while technical in its details, was essentially over whether rites, or ritual, should always express deeply felt personal emotion (the Jiajing emperor’s position) or whether canonical text should rule when and if ritual should ever come into conflict with felt emotion. Wang Yangming, at home on leave at this time, leaned toward Jiajing’s position. Chief Grand Secretary Yang Tinghe and a good portion of Beijing officialdom (including Wang Yangming followers) were willing to defend to the death the opposite side of the dispute. Jiajing, all of sixteen years old, resolutely crushed the protest and all the protesters and decided the issue not only by brute force but also by published

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argumentation, the Minglun dadian (Great Canon Elucidating Correct Ritual Order). That laid the issue to rest. At least, no one ever challenged it again. But the demonstration and crackdown were traumatic events for officialdom, and they evidently weighed on Xu Jie’s mind for the next six years or so. Meanwhile, as Hanlin junior compiler, Xu Jie was assigned the job of tutoring palace eunuchs in their school inside the Forbidden City. His predecessor had disliked the task and used to arrive late and leave early. Not so Xu Jie. He believed the eunuchs needed a sound education, because some of them might have important future roles in governance. So Xu would start classes in the predawn hours and keep at it until late afternoon. Some young eunuchs whined that their lot had been freer under the Zhengde emperor. Xu explained that they didn’t know history. Zhengde had been too lenient, and so after his death his eunuchs had been punished for indulging in too much luxury; but the eunuchs of the preceding Chenghua and Hongzhi emperors had done well enough under greater restraint—just look at all their elegant tombs and mansions! The eunuchs liked and respected their teacher. This would pay future dividends, when Xu entered the Grand Secretariat and could count on their surreptitious goodwill and support. Xu was also an occasional lecturer in the classics seminars arranged for the young Jiajing in the late 1520s. 6 That gave Jiajing an early opportunity to get to know him and decide he liked him. Political ambition was clearly driving Xu Jie at this time. It was not so much intellectual interest that led him to edit and revise the sections on ritual in the Da Ming huidian (Compendium of Statutes of the Great Ming) as it was his knowing the great importance the emperor placed on all questions relating to rituals and their reform. He would need to know ritual thoroughly and correctly if he hoped to rise in the ruler’s estimation. Thus, the death-defying act of protest Xu carried out in 1530 almost defies explanation. Here is what took place. The year 1530 was a busy one for revising formats and programs for the conduct of imperial ritual and ritual music. One change, heavily favored by Jiajing and strongly backed by Chief Grand Secretary Zhang Fujing (1475–1539), was directed at all the nation’s temples to Confucius. It would deprive the sage and all of his many followers of their elaborate titles of feudal nobility and replace their statues with simple tablets bearing only their given names. Zhang’s proposal for making this change was sent up to

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the palace. Following standard procedure, Jiajing directed that the proposal be sent to the outer court for all the officials to discuss. The ruler expected an endorsement by consensus. Only one voice was raised in opposition. That was Xu Jie’s. On November 20, he submitted a list of objections to the reform that was weak in argument but hot in fervor. The grand secretaries called him in to explain his position. He got into an argument with the chief grand secretary. He was rude. The other grand secretaries, Chai Luan (1477–1546) and Gui E (d. 1531), urged him to apologize. He refused. Jiajing demanded a written retraction. He declined to provide one. The ruler then ordered that he be sent away to an outside post somewhere. But a censor thought the case serious enough to warrant a more severe penalty. Censor in Chief Wang Hong (d. 1536) charged Xu with championing false ideas and placing the “national right” (guo shi) in danger. So Xu was arrested, imprisoned, and probably tortured. On December 4, the order to revamp the Confucian temples was issued. 7 Some friend of Xu’s leaked Wang Hong’s charges to him ahead of time, so he had a bit of time to prepare. His wife, née Shen, was seriously ill back in Huating and would soon die. It was possible Xu himself would die of abuse in prison. The family servants stood about and wept. Xu gave them twenty taels of silver to cover his burial expenses if needed. There was a year-old baby son to think about. Xu arranged with two friends, Huating natives Li Rizhang (1493–1563, a drinker and litterateur and a bureau director in the Ministry of Justice) and Shen Kai (who had just won his jinshi degree, perhaps a relative of his wife’s), to take the baby back to his mother in Huating, where Xu’s younger brother Xu Zhi (1513–1570) could take care of them. So Xu Jie prepared to die. Fortunately for him, two senior officials, Wen Yuan (1480–1563) and Tang Long (1477–1546), made strong pleas in his behalf. Jiajing harbored no deep-seated hatred for Xu and agreed to drop the prosecution. He sent him away to Fujian Province, with a demotion to the post of judge in Yanping Prefecture. Xu would spend the next nine years in the southern provinces. Why did Xu Jie risk his life in protesting the Confucian temple reform? There may be two threads to an explanation. The first is the young man’s likely sense of guilt for not having been on the spot at the time of the August 14 crackdown on the Great Rites demonstrators. His solo protest six years later may have been in part done in atonement for

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that. At the same time, Xu was surely making a bid to connect himself in a visible way with the smoldering underground of Beijing officials who resented the suppression and who hated all those involved in a partisan way in supporting it. Jiajing suspected that was the case. Grand Secretaries Zhang Fujing and Gui E were not only the principal intellectual architects of Jiajing’s position in the rites controversy; they and many others had benefited from it and had ridden the issue to high office. Xu’s impulsive gesture won him the respect and good opinion of the cowed “good species” (shanlei) in Ming bureaucracy. That would pay him future dividends. As for himself, Xu later came to judge his protest as having been rash and naïve, prompted by the thought that “Heaven gives men tongues and the power of speech, so why be afraid to use them?” 8 In sum, at the age of twenty-seven, Xu Jie had achieved a modest level of national prominence. Many important people knew who he was. He had placed very high in the provincial and metropolitan exam lists; he had a fine position in the Hanlin Academy; he had an engaging personality; and now the Confucian temple issue had made it possible for him to make a convincing gesture of solidarity with valued colleagues. These would turn out to be helpful elements in his future successes as a politician and top official. And on top of all this, it must also be noted that during the seven years he spent in Beijing, Xu participated in serious philosophical discussions with his older friend and jinshi year-mate Ouyang De as well as several others who later achieved national prominence—Zou Shouyi (1491–1564), Luo Hongxian (1504–1564), and Tang Shunzhi (1507–1560) among them. This, too, mattered to his future. Indeed, Xu was able to enlarge his place in the nationwide jiangxue circles and in the Wang Yangming philosophical camp during his years away from Beijing. Xu Jie decided not to sulk but to make the best of his demotion and exhibit the initiative and energy he would later come to demand of others. Over the years 1530–1539, he did very well out in the provinces. Yanping Prefecture lay about a thousand miles due south of Beijing. It comprised seven counties in the middle of Fujian Province, a glum backwater that, Xu noted, was ravaged by famine and epidemic disease, having never fully recovered from the damage it had suffered in the Deng Maoqi rebellion eighty years before. 9 Xu spent three years there.

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As judge, his first job was to clear a large backlog of litigation. Then he devised a successful plan to capture a gang of bandits who were creating panic throughout the prefecture. He reduced corruption in the Yanping silver mines. He turned then to other tasks, apparently self-appointed. He collected and burned copies of the Deng Xizi, a pre-Han LegalistDaoist text that the students had been reading. He helped one of the prefectural students tear down a heterodox shrine and build in its place a community school (shexue) devoted to teaching young boys Confucianism. It was likely for this school that he cast in rhyme form certain maxims from the Song dynasty Neo-Confucians for the youngest learners to recite. 10 It was as a self-directed activist in education, not in his judgeship primarily, that Xu left his mark during the decade of the 1530s. He joined in the great groundswell of philosophical reinvigoration that was sweeping through the ranks of officialdom, literati, students, and even common people in the sixteenth century, through the work of such luminaries as Wang Yangming (1472–1529), Zhan Ruoshui (1466–1560), and their many disciples and admirers. By teaching the Yanping students in addition to his administrative work, Xu was of course emulating his old mentor, Nie Bao. In addition to his local teaching, Xu wrote letters and published tracts that focused on intellectual issues. As noted previously, Xu Jie is often carelessly placed in the camp of Wang Yangming (Huang Zongxi’s influential seventeenth-century anthology of Ming Confucian thinkers was one of the first to do this). The ascription is only slightly true. For one thing, Wang typically showed empathetic insight into the personal needs of his students. Xu did not. Xu shows this in the messages he wrote to each of the forty-one students in the prefectural school upon his departure from Yanping. One looks there for Wang-school catchwords and for signs of personal concern. Both are absent. The messages elucidate excerpts from the Four Books, but only one message asserts the “unity of knowledge and action,” one of Wang Yangming’s key precepts. The tone of the letters is impersonal and cool. In a letter to his younger brother Xu Zhi back home, Xu did urge him to read Wang’s Chuanxi lu, but to none of his students did he make any direct mention of Wang. Not once did he mention the crowning phrase of the Wang school: zhi liangzhi, “extend the good conscience,” or, as some translate it, “extend innate knowl-

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edge.” When he departed Yanping at the end of his three-year term there, the students performed the usual courtesies and escorted him to the prefectural border, and Xu in turn composed a general message of encouragement and advice for them. “Study hard,” he wrote. “Don’t be satisfied with small gains. Don’t let up in the face of difficulties. . . . If you just think about me but don’t make yourselves strive, then in the future people will say that my friendship with you was based on selfinterest and not on the Confucian Way; and that your friendship with me was based on sentiment rather than righteousness. That I deeply fear. You don’t want that either.” 11 The exact chronology of Xu’s life at this juncture is a little hard to untangle. The surest dates are these: 1534, when his students arranged for the publication of his collected writings; his 1534 promotion to the post of provincial educational intendant for the province of Zhejiang; his assumption of the same function in Jiangxi in 1536; and then his recall to Beijing in 1539. Much of his philosophical and educational writing can be dated to these years. Later he became too busy with administration to continue further efforts in those fields. The promotion and new assignment involving education may have come about because his official superiors had been favorably impressed by his teaching aim: to wean students from selfish pursuits and point them toward an original state of uprightness (zheng), wherein one’s ethics are pure and good and one’s emotions are centralized and harmonious. The heart-mind, he argued, is not the physical organ inside our bodies so much as it is the totality of principle and emotion, where benevolence joins love, decorum joins respect, and wisdom joins reasoned discrimination. 12 Apparently just before the end of his tenure in Yanping, his students acted in his behalf and contacted a regional censor (Lu Shiqi, otherwise unidentified) and Pan Huang, the Fujian educational intendant. They made a case for Xu’s teaching prowess and asked that he be put in charge of a certain Zhengxue Academy, probably local. Xu wrote letters to both dignitaries declining the honor. The letters hint at his real ambitions. He explained that Lu and Pan needed to consider other candidates, because the true purpose of such a post—to change prevailing ways of thinking and acting—contradicted the students’ misplaced purpose in recommending him. The students aimed to curry favor. Obviously, his teaching in Yanping had failed, and that disqualified

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him. 13 To Pan he insisted that he was still philosophically and ethically undeveloped and thus could not take up the function of guiding jiangxue (discussing learning). He would be a fraud to agree to it. He suggested a half-dozen other names. 14 There is a tone of panic in these letters. He definitely did not want the job. He did not want to abandon a future career in administration and instead become a full-time lecturer and Confucian evangelist. He would in the coming years become a supporter of others who took up jiangxue, but he would not be a participant. He may have lacked the charismatic presence before large gatherings that he would need in order to become a success in that field. So Xu Jie was not going to be a full-time teacher or lecturer, but he might be a theoretician. He published around this time a work he called the Xue ze (A Standard for Study). It is no longer extant, but Xu’s preface to it survives, as does a rejoinder to colleagues who raised questions about it. The work gathered the relevant citations and on that basis aimed to argue the primacy of Zhu Xi’s philosophy and the secondary importance of Lu Xiangshan, Zhu Xi’s “idealist” contemporary and rival, and in some respects a Wang Yangming forerunner. Xu denied that there was any fundamental difference between the two. He insisted that all doctrine stemmed from a primeval unity and that the current split between inward-looking “idealists” and outward-oriented go-getters was an abuse and a mistake. He admitted that his recombining of the two Neo-Confucian tendencies was controversial, but he dared to make his mark with it. 15 Some of his critics argued that the inner and the outer were different and that the outward search for knowledge must precede the inward search for one’s moral essence. Others granted that while both Zhu Xi and Lu Xiangshan were genuine followers of the sages’ path, they entered by separate gates and should not be forced into a unity that didn’t exist. Xu’s rejoinder emphasized that the origin of all study was heaven; that heaven was one, not two; and that a careful reading of both Zhu and Lu shows that neither really split the outward from the inward. 16 Xu was utterly serious about this. Pan Huang, the Fujian educational intendant, told the newly appointed local Confucian instructor to talk to prefectural judge Xu Jie about what to teach the students. The instructor complied. “I told him that it all stems from uprightness,” noted Xu. “How is that?” asked the instructor:

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I said, “The heart-mind joins nature with emotion. It originates in total uprightness. By ‘nature’ we mean benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trust in their purest state of goodness. By ‘emotion’ we mean pleasure, anger, grief, and joy. Before they emerge, we call it ‘centrality’; and when they emerge, and keep a central moderation, we call that ‘harmony.’ All that is wholly upright. So where does deviance come from? It comes from drifting off, blinded by selfish desires, and lured on by material things. Then what happens is that love is abused, and so benevolence drifts off. Appropriateness is abused, and so righteousness drifts off. Reverence and reason are abused and so propriety and wisdom drift off. Thus when situations arise that spark anger, fear, joy, or sorrow, then those correct emotions also drift off. All this is what I mean by ‘letting the heart-mind drift off.’” 17

Readers of this statement were a bit puzzled by it as they tried to square it with their own understanding, so Xu explained it in further detail. 18 And while he was developing and publishing this philosophy, Xu didn’t insist on his own formulations. He was pleased, for instance, to be asked by students to preface a publication of some remarks Zhan Ruoshui had recently delivered at an academy, in which he endorsed Zhan’s stress on the unity of heavenly principle. 19 Xu’s thinking in fact had a close resemblance to Zhan’s. As for Wang Yangming, Xu had a hand in assisting Wang’s close disciple Qian Dehong in compiling the great man’s works and readying them for printing. 20 But much in Wang’s philosophy was unclear to him, probably because it did not coincide comfortably with his personal talents. He exchanged some letters with his friend Ouyang De, a personal disciple of the now-deceased Wang, seeking clarification of the Wang school’s great buzzword—“extending the good conscience.” Xu didn’t quite grasp it. He thought “sincerity” preceded and controlled it, that understanding the ancient sages came first and that then one might extend the indestructible brightness of the good conscience and thus “restore wholeness.” 21 But no. Ouyang’s replies explained that by the two words “good conscience” (liangzhi) we mean metaphorically the very nerves and blood vessels upon which life depends; that the good conscience is the original substance of the mind, which doesn’t follow, but precedes sincerity and indeed creates it. He counseled Xu to be modest and self-contained yet at the same time independent and unafraid. He agreed that the great

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groundswell of jiangxue was not a complete success, that many students were getting tired of it, still intent upon worldly self-advancement or using it to create factions. The best way to understand “extend the good conscience” is to discuss it with teachers and friends. 22 Ouyang was an evangelist for Wang Yangming and had the evangelist’s knack for touching and winning the souls of others. Xu Jie leaned in a different direction. He preferred to discuss one’s ethical and emotional dispositions by terms other than “good conscience.” And for him, “extension” had to do with an outward reach toward an appropriate knowledge of the world rather than with emitting moral and spiritual vibrations that touched and transformed other people. He divided inner from outer in a sharper way than did others in the Wang Yangming camp. It is hard now to say exactly what the “good conscience” was. Whatever it was, it stemmed from a primitive set of impulses that, according to Mencius, were embedded at birth in the psyche of each person— compassion, a sense of right and wrong, deference, and a sense of shame. With meditation, study, discussion, and experience one chipped away at the incrustations of ignorance and selfishness that block the ripening of these impulses into the “good conscience,” a mature ethical state that should guide our behavior and should be “extended” (zhi) daily—into every dimension of the world round about, with all its complexities, dilemmas, and corruptions. No simple matter, that. As the commentator He Liangjun (1506–1573) noted, however, the more liangzhi got discussed, the more profuse and diverse the analysis devoted to it became, the more the branches and leaves spread, the more the water dried up and the roots shriveled. 23 From 1534 to 1536, Xu Jie was educational intendant for Zhejiang Province, a job that took him from place to place testing the progress of thousands of registered government students (shengyuan). It is said that he made sure to downgrade even leading students when he found their writing too convoluted or deliberately obscure. When he had to have a student flogged, he did so in regret rather than anger. Reportedly he made a good impression on the students. In 1536, he was made educational intendant for Jiangxi. Jiangxi was the home province of Xia Yan, who became grand secretary late in 1536 and chief grand secretary early in 1539. Xu Jie is reported to have

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successfully fended off the inappropriate demands of Xia’s many young kinsmen for preferential treatment. “Your relative occupies a high position and is [a reader for the 1538 metropolitan exams] and he has entrusted me to instruct you, not advance you.” That’s what Xu is said to have told them. Jiangxi was also the home province of Xu’s mentor Nie Bao and his friend Ouyang De and was a national hotbed of enthusiasm for Wang Yangming and his legacy. Many locals were building academies as sites for jiangxue and the furtherance of Wang’s ideas. Xu Jie was a supporter of jiangxue and no enemy of Wang. He conducted rites in Wang’s behalf. He went out of his way to find portraits of him. Later on, he did all he could to rescue and reassert Wang’s reputation as a stellar provincial military commander. 24 Xu still wasn’t sure he understood Wang’s ideas, so he consulted Liu Shiqi (d. 1547), at the time Jiangxi surveillance commissioner. Liu was a good source. He had been flogged in the protest demonstration of 1524 and was later demoted to prefect of Wuzhou in Guangxi Province, where he acted as an informal teaching assistant to Wang, who was posted there as overall commander of a major military action. As Xu later recalled the conversation, he was still puzzled by the idea of “extending the good conscience.” He’d discussed it with Ouyang De and had read up on it in Wang Yangming’s writings. He understood that the good conscience lay within, but Wang’s many aficionados had developed different interpretations of it and were definitely ignoring the requirement that one “extend” it. They weren’t right to do so, were they? Liu reassured him. “Master Wang spoke of the ‘good conscience’ in order to differentiate it from everyday knowledge,” he replied. “He spoke of ‘extending the good conscience’ in order to distinguish it from the erroneous Buddhist idea of focusing solely on the intelligence. People who misunderstand this are themselves either ignorant or Buddhist. This is not what Master Wang was saying.” Xu expressed himself reassured by the reply, even though it didn’t fully address his question. 25 So, once again, the facts cannot support the assertion commonly made that Xu himself was ever an adherent of the Wang Yangming school. How could he be? He repeatedly confessed to an inability to grasp its main precept, the “good conscience.” Even as an old man in his eighties, living in retirement, Xu exchanged letters with Wang Ji (1498–1583), one of the last living personal disciples of Wang Yangming. Xu was still perplexed by the term “extend the good conscience,”

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and he queried Wang Ji about it. After fifty years, still perplexed! (But that was vintage Xu Jie: asking others for enlightenment was his way of cultivating a network of friends and supporters.) When Xu left Jiangxi in 1539 to assume a new position in Beijing, Nie Bao was on home leave and, at the behest of some of the Jiangxi students, wrote a message in honor of the departure of his old protégé. His remarks, while warm, said nothing of Wang Yangming and deployed none of the terminology associated with the Wang philosophical school. 26 Xu’s six years’ work as education intendant in Zhejiang and Jiangxi was fairly routine and involved no direct teaching. He checked up on student performance, chiding and punishing misfits and laggards. There is no indication that he conducted jiangxue on the side. He did, however, ask Zou Shouyi, an eager disciple of Wang Yangming’s, to lecture to advanced Jiangxi students who were preparing themselves to take the provincial examinations. 27 The Beijing air had changed in the nine years since Xu Jie’s censure and departure for the provinces. For one thing, Chief Grand Secretary Zhang Fujing had retired sick in 1535 and died in early 1539. Besides having been the Jiajing emperor’s main backer in the Great Rites clash of 1524, Zhang was also a fierce opponent of Wang Yangming and his ideas. It will be recalled that Xu Jie had clashed with him over Confucian temple reform. The new chief grand secretary was the powerful and controversial Xia Yan, proponent of military aggression against the Mongols to the north and Vietnamese to the south. Under his auspices, the Great Rites matter, long settled, faded as an issue, and the hostility toward Wang Yangming and his legacy eased. Xia Yan was not happy with Xu Jie because of his refusal to give special help to Xia’s kinsmen. It was mainly Xu’s friends among the kedao (censors and supervising secretaries, the so-called speaking officials) who together with the minister of personnel lobbied Jiajing and so got Xu recalled. In fact, Xu Jie was one of a small cohort consisting of the brightest stars in the firmament of literati, top-level jinshi degree winners, who were simultaneously summoned to Beijing to assume places in the Hanlin Academy and concurrently serve as instructors in the newly established Office of the Heir Apparent. This was Jiajing’s signal to the realm that with Zhang Fujing’s death, hostilities against the Wang Yangming school would ease. Because the heir apparent, Zhu Zairui (1536–1549),

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was only three years old, there was ample leisure for his tutors to socialize and “discuss study” among themselves. That they did. They firmed up personal ties that would prove useful in the national security crises of the 1550s. Who were these stars? One of them was Luo Hongxian (1504–1564), the number one jinshi of 1529 and a famed and profound developer of Wang Yangming’s thought. His father had forbidden him to go study under Wang. Just reading Wang’s Chuanxi lu had made him a convert. He and Xu Jie agreed about how not to interpret Wang’s “extend the good conscience.” They agreed that many students were getting it all wrong. Some of Wang’s followers (they had Wang Gen and Wang Ji in mind) argued that the good conscience didn’t demand study and practice. They didn’t explore the meaning of loving one’s parents and respecting elders. They mistook desire for principle and emotionalism for natural outgoingness. They condemned as unnatural salutary caution and fear. They talked “conscience” minus the adjective, or “good conscience” minus its extension. Liangzhi by itself was not enough. It had to be extended into the world of society and government. For Xu Jie, 1539 was a chance to revisit with Luo. They had met in Beijing years earlier. 28 Also called in to help tutor the heir apparent was Zou Shouyi (1491–1562). Like Luo Hongxian, he was from Jiangxi Province. He was the number one jinshi of 1511. His examiner was none other than Wang Yangming himself, and Zou soon became a sworn disciple. He was flogged and demoted in the Great Rites crackdown of 1524. Like his friend Wang Gen, he was very much an evangelist who appealed to a wide audience that included commoners as well as students and literati. According to Xu Jie’s epitaph for him, Zou’s main precept was that extending the good conscience demanded an attitude of restraint, caution, and fear. He saw that the vigorous men of the world aimed for power, but they lacked an inner harmony. Circumspection, caution, and fear helped produce that harmony. “Watchfulness over oneself when alone” was another name for it. 29 Tang Shunzhi (1507–1560), a native of Nan Zhili Province, won his jinshi degree in 1529 as the number one man on the metropolitan list. He came along too late for the 1524 protest, but he pointedly refused to cooperate with Chief Grand Secretary Zhang Fujing, who forced him to retire in 1535. With Zhang now dead, he was recalled to Beijing in 1539

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to join Xu, Luo, and Zou as tutors to the heir apparent. Tang was mainly a litterateur, polymath, and between extended bouts of illness, a strenuous activist in the dynasty’s behalf. His engagement with Wang Yangming’s philosophy had been intense but brief. In Beijing in 1529 he came under the spell of the evangelist Wang Ji. However, ethical theory never became an abiding preoccupation of his. 30 Zhao Shichun (1509–1567) resembled in some respects his friend Tang Shunzhi—a brilliant litterateur, deeply involved in military matters, and very much an activist. A native of the northwestern frontier prefecture of Pingliang in what is now Gansu Province, he was the number one metropolitan degree winner of 1526, at the astoundingly young age of seventeen. In 1530, as a bureau secretary in the Ministry of War, he sent up two wide-ranging, scathing, but constructive critiques of Jiajing’s misrule, for which he was imprisoned, tortured, removed from official registry, and sent home. Then, in 1539, he was rehabilitated, along with Xu and the others. Zhao admired Zou Shouyi, but his grasp of “extending the good conscience” extended no further than to equate it to filial piety and submission to seniors. Like Tang, he was never especially interested in the question. 31 Xu Jie’s place in this stellar gathering was as the central pivot of a small coterie of talented friends. He engaged himself on the one hand with people who were seriously involved with ethical self-adjustment, and on the other with apostles of an outer-directed thirst for knowledge and vigorous action. Only Xu Jie, with his particular talents and tendencies, could bring the two types of men together. This is one important clue to how and why he eventually became chief grand secretary, an effective and well-liked one at that. The group was soon compelled to break up. Zou Shouyi was sent away to Nanjing for his part in writing a textbook for the heir apparent that contained passages that appeared critical of Jiajing. Xu Jie left Beijing in 1540 for the mandatory mourning period for his mother. It was lucky for him he was not on duty in Beijing in 1540. If he had been, he might well have felt compelled to join Luo, Tang, and Zhao in their proposal that, since Jiajing had canceled his annual New Year’s court appearance due to illness, the little heir apparent should stand in for him. There were several Ming precedents for such a move. To these pleas, the palace reacted with slow fury. Jiajing sensed covert criticism. Perhaps the tutors even wished him dead! Grand Secretaries Xia Yan

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and Gu Dingchen, good sycophants, proposed that they all be beheaded. Li Kaixian (1502–1568), a noted dramatist and official in the Ministry of Personnel, did all he could to defend the three. For twentysix days, the palace sat on the case. Then, on January 21, 1541, it announced its decision. All three were removed from the official registry and sent home. Luo Hongxian would never return to official life. In the crisis of 1550, Xu Jie would help leverage Zhao and Tang back into important roles fighting the northern steppe raiders and the coastal pirates. Xu Jie, meanwhile, returned from mourning leave to a new appointment, chancellor of the National University. Here he showed his hand not as a teacher but as an administrator. His main accomplishments were disciplinary. He created a register to record expenses and another to grade the students each month on their deportment. Students assigned to on-the-job training in the various ministries were to go strictly in order of seniority and were forbidden to cheat the process through bribes. In 1544, he was made a vice minister in the Ministry of Rites. In 1545 he was assigned the same position in the Ministry of Personnel. Both were high posts, ranked 3A. In Personnel, he was thrown into the thick of an ongoing scramble among the officials for promotion and preferment—a scramble in which he, too, was after all a participant. How would he handle that? Here he gave the first indication of how he intended to act under high pressure. He composed and hung on his office wall a message for himself. Probably the writing was large enough for others to read as well. You passed your jinshi at age twenty-one [by Chinese reckoning], and now at forty-three you’re a vice minister of Personnel. The dynasty has treated you well. How do I fulfill my duty? By giving every ounce of loyal effort. If instead I build a faction and exclude worthy men, or take bribes and sell preferment, or forget impartiality and play favorites, or grab salary to enrich myself, may the gods destroy me and all my progeny. Take fear! 32

Xu took his own advice seriously. He served under four ministers of personnel, all elderly men of wide experience but fading energies. They were Xiong Jie (1478–1554), whose long and stormy career had found

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him in and out of Jiajing’s favor and who held the office during 1544–1545, when the ruler dismissed him angrily and reduced him to commoner status. Then came Tang Long (1477–1546), whose health was bad. He was impeached and reduced to commoner status in 1546. Then came Zhou Yong (1476–1547), who died in office after half a year. Finally came Wen Yuan (1480–1563). During those four years, Xu Jie acted, with Jiajing’s full approval, as minister of personnel in all but name. Already well known, he tried to make himself well liked also. He refused to do as some of his cautious predecessors had done—barricade himself indoors and avoid mingling with the other officials so as to escape any imputation of favoritism or impropriety. No; he showed his face, freely moved about in official circles, greeting everyone, younger men included, with deference and kind words, perhaps acting out one meaning of “extending the good conscience.” He was credited for advancing some half-dozen talented officials, including his old friend in philosophy, Ouyang De, appointed a vice minister in the Ministry of Rites and concurrent acting chancellor of the National University in 1547. In 1547, Wen Yuan came on board as minister. Wen preferred to run things himself and did not give Xu Jie the free rein he had been enjoying. Unhappy with the restraint, Xu sought and obtained a concurrent post as Hanlin academician. He and Ouyang De then took turns offering instruction and moral advice to the latest cohort of Hanlin bachelors, thirty-one elite finishers in the metropolitan exams selected for special training (among them were two future chief grand secretaries, Li Chunfang and Zhang Juzheng). Xu checked the trainees’ writing. He made them desist from stylistic affectations and directly express what was on their minds. His criticisms and encouragements were, reportedly, well taken. Also, he got them to focus on Ming institutions and on the people’s well-being. Xu also joined Ouyang De in reediting the Da Ming huidian, a task he’d undertaken some years before. In 1549, Xu was rewarded for all this with a promotion to the post of minister of rites, a job for which his earlier study of rites surely qualified him. The ministry had for the preceding five years been run by Fei Cai (1493–1548) and then by Sun Cheng’en (1491–1561). Fei was a close friend of Grand Secretary Yan Song. Sun Cheng’en was a Huating native, a local compatriot of Xu Jie’s, whom Xu admired. Fei Cai was

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considered corrupt. Sun was upright and honest, but too old. Sun was also unwilling to don Daoist vestments and take part in what had become Jiajing’s personal program of ritual, and so he resigned. 33 Thus, a promising opportunity opened up, and Xu took full advantage of it. The episode shows in a clear light the three-edged character of the man in full maturity at age forty-six: a philosophical and ethical thinker, an alert and thoughtful manager of bureaucracy and bureaucratic detail, and now an opportunistic and skillful player of high-stakes power games. No wonder his star rose. Where Sun Cheng’en begged off, Xu jumped forward and agreed with a convincing show of enthusiasm that he was an eager supporter of Jiajing’s Daoist rituals (on which more below). He took charge of a Rites Ministry that had grown lax and corrupt. The ministry’s officials had been making money from bribes—paid by members of the imperial clan seeking authentication for the inheritance of princely titles; chiefs of the tusi (native administrations of the southwest frontier) seeking the same; foreign envoys seeking tributary privileges; or high officials seeking posthumous titles for ancestors or state funding for funerals and burials. The ministry would simply sign these petitions and not send them to the emperor for his approval. Xu Jie attacked the bribery by requiring that henceforth all such petitions be reviewed and either allowed or disallowed by Jiajing personally. There was more. Attached to the Ministry of Rites was the Translators Institute. Xu found it corrupt, badly run, and demoralized. He issued detailed orders for its reorganization and for the discipline and testing of its students, given that, as he put it, it was vital for the Ming state to have accurate intelligence about all the doings of the surrounding barbarians. 34 Xu also found there were too many ritual singers and dancers—1,759 of them when only 1,153 were required; too many ritual cooks—1,363 of them when only 1,000 had ever been authorized. Economy in government demanded that hundreds of them be let go. 35 There was disarray in the Imperial Academy of Medicine, too; so Xu Jie instituted a stiffened regimen of training and exams. Jiajing was pleased. He invited Xu to come live inside his own West Park. The center of all decision-making authority in the huge realm that was Ming China, eight times the size of modern France, was West Park. In 1542, after the failure of the palace ladies’ attempt to strangle him, the

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Jiajing emperor vacated the Forbidden City forever and moved to a new palace complex outside, on the west side of the Taiye Pond, inside the Imperial City. There he lived and worked until his death early in 1567. Jiajing made West Park into a Daoist religious complex as well as a center of government. The religion featured altars to the god or gods of thunder, whose chief priest was the adept Tao Zhongwen (d. 1560), a specialist in the occult. Tao could heal, exorcise demons, and foretell future events. He and his religion catered to Jiajing’s needy and endless quest for health, fecundity, long life, and psychic reassurance. Not totally centered on the emperor, the religion also catered to national needs, as for example in 1550, when some people credited Tao’s special “ritual altar to quell barbarians by setting up amulets” with deflecting Altan Khan’s panic-inducing raid on Beijing. Daoist rituals could also end floods and droughts. 36 Ambitious officials, nominally Confucian in belief, joined in Jiajing’s religion in two main ways. Those in the capital offered up elaborate paeans to every turn of imperial good fortune. Officials in the provinces earned rewards when they sent up evidence of felicitous omens: white deer and white rabbits were always welcome submissions, as were rare mushrooms. Ambergris (“dragon’s tears”), collected on the Fujian coast, was highly valued as an ingredient in the perfume used in Jiajing’s Daoist rituals. Jiajing needed the love and loyalty that all these offerings seemed to show. Another way in which officials might show even greater love and loyalty was by composing the special Daoist prayers or entreaties called qingci, or “lines written on colored paper.” These were not easy to write. They had to be executed in a strict and ancient format on dark paper with vermilion or gold-dust ink. They were taken to a special altar where they were sent up to the gods by being burned. The gods answered the pleas by communicating through a planchette held by two acolytes over a plate of sand, with Tao Zhongwen standing by to interpret the gods’ will. Never fully sure of his own judgment, Jiajing had frequent need for this prayer service, often several times a day, at any time day or night. So prayer writers had to be available on short notice. None of these occult transactions ever entered the official records, and no example of a qingci seems to survive. However, it is known that some involved decisions on policy and personnel. It became a requirement that the grand secretaries be expert writers of qingci. 37

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After 1542, the grand secretaries all had to move their personal quarters to West Park. There they were housed in small, dark, and damp huts on the east bank of Taiye Pond, linked by a causeway across the pond to Jiajing’s Wanshou Palace. 38 All, that is, except Chief Grand Secretary Yan Song, whose roomier and sunnier south-facing quarters looked down on the smaller dwellings lined up north to south where the other grand secretaries lived, as did the occasional minister of rites, an imperial in-law or two, and Lu Bing (1510–1560), the commander of the Embroidered-Uniform Guard (effectively Ming China’s chief of police). Lu Bing apparently never wrote qingci, but he had rescued Jiajing from a fire in his traveling tent in 1539 and remained in his favor ever since. The officials might come during working hours to offices in the Wuyi Hall, named after a chapter in the Book of Documents. It was attached to Jiajing’s Wanshou Palace. Later it was given a Daoist name. 39 One or two grand secretaries would leave West Park during the daytime to work in offices in the Forbidden City. It was into this odd world that Xu Jie was invited to move in 1549, as minister of rites, not as a grand secretary. Not yet. He had submitted qingci that pleased Jiajing. Equally important, Jiajing had long taken a liking to him. That was a vital condition for residency in West Park. Xu Jie would call West Park home for the next seventeen years, as long as Jiajing lived. No prayer-writing official actually believed in Jiajing’s religion. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the show of personal devotion. Xu Jie’s strong ambition for high office can be inferred from his willingness to endure for so long the strain of devoted service to an emotionally needy ruler whose beliefs and values he did not share, and of working under a chief grand secretary, Yan Song, whose egregious corruption and cliquism were repellent to him and to many of his friends. But he did everything he could to ingratiate himself with all of his West Park colleagues. He arranged a marriage between his third son, Xu Ying, and a daughter of Lu Bing’s. Another marriage may have been arranged, perhaps involving his second son and a granddaughter of Yan Song’s; but if it ever took place, it was ended and expunged from the record after the Yan family’s downfall and disgrace in 1562. Yan Song invited officials whom he hoped to draw into his orbit to inscribe appreciative remarks on his portraits. Ouyang De and other luminaries had done

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that years earlier when Yan was serving in the Ministry of Rites in Nanjing. Xu Jie added his fulsome remarks to a new portrait of Yan Song, done when he rose to chief grand secretary in 1545. 40 Such were the requirements of the power game that Xu Jie was determined to play. But we would underestimate Xu Jie if we labeled him a slick gamesman and no more. He really had larger aims. He played the power games because he had to; he had to leverage himself by whatever means into a position where he could exert the positive and constructive influence he hoped to exert over the fortunes of Ming China. Indeed, Xu Jie called in some chips immediately upon taking up residence in West Park. Jiajing’s heir apparent, Zhu Zairui, died on April 14, 1549, at the age of thirteen. Two younger half-brothers, both twelve, one a few months older than the other, survived. On August 1, Xu memorialized a request that the next-oldest son, Zhu Zaihou, be formally named heir apparent. Xu must have known that Jiajing hated the boy’s mother, consort Kang, and favored the other son, by consort Lu, whom he liked. He must have known that his memorial threatened to reopen the wounds of the Great Rites controversy of 1524, by once again defying the emperor’s personal feelings about imperial family matters. But the emperor ignored the impertinence and simply declined to respond to the request. Until 1552, Xu repeated the request once a year, pointing out that the ruler must follow explicit Ming house law and formally install Zhu Zaihou because by not acting he was kindling intense speculation among the officials and encouraging them to form cliques behind this or that son. Nothing came of it. After 1552, Xu gave up. (Finally, in 1560, Jiajing sent the younger son away to a princedom in Huguang; still, the elder, who became the Longqing emperor in 1567, never did get formally designated.) Meanwhile, a few months after Xu Jie’s invitation to move into West Park, an unexpected event nearly ended his career. His son, Xu Fan, though already accorded status as a National University student via the protection (yin) privilege for the sons of high officials, preferred the more prestigious exam route. Unfortunately for him, the substitute he hired to sit the 1549 provincial exam for him in Nanjing was found out, Xu Fan was imprisoned for fraud, and the censors were getting up a report and an impeachment of his father to send to Beijing. This is where jiangxue helped bring off a lucky escape. Xu Jie’s young Huating

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friend, Yang Yusun (1521–1567, a jinshi of 1547) was on duty in Nanjing as a secretary in the Ministry of Personnel’s Bureau of Evaluations. He was an emerging ethical theorist (assigned by anthologist Huang Zongxi alongside Xu Jie himself to the Wang Yangming camp). He rushed a messenger off to Beijing to give Xu Jie advance warning. That gave Xu time to compose and submit a confession and apology to Jiajing before the censors’ paperwork arrived. Xu took full blame for failing to supervise his son, offered to resign, and asked that Xu Fan’s yin privilege be rescinded as punishment. Jiajing had nothing but warm words in his reply. He ignored the censors’ report and impeachment. Xu Jie and his son got off scot-free. 41 Xu Jie pressed his luck further. As minister of rites, the question of how properly to arrange the tablets of the dead emperors and their consorts in the Imperial Ancestral Temple and in the Fengxian Hall fell within his sphere of competence, both intellectually and administratively. The established rules clearly awarded precedence to Jiajing’s first empress, née Chen, who had died in 1528. Another consort, née Fang, died in 1547. Jiajing had hated Empress Chen and preferred consort Fang, and he insisted that consort Fang’s tablet precede Empress Chen’s. Here again, as in the Great Rites showdown of 1524, abstract rules scraped against the ruler’s personal emotions. Xu Jie tried to insist on the rules. For his defiance, Xu was risking a severe flogging and reduction to commoner status. But here Jiajing played a subtle power game of his own. Yang Sizhong, chief supervising secretary for rites, sent up a memorial strongly backing Xu on the issue of the tablets, followed later by an unfortunately worded message of New Year’s congratulations to the emperor. The emperor left Xu Jie alone and unleashed all his venom on Yang—finally having him publicly flogged a hundred lashes early in 1553 and removing him from officialdom. As he had done before in his clashes with Jiajing, Xu Jie backed down and let the matter drop. 42 Around this time (early 1550s), Jiajing and Chief Grand Secretary Yan Song were evaluating some of the top officials. The ruler asked Yan Song what he thought of Xu Jie. Yan Song didn’t fully trust Xu Jie; he took him to be a one-time protégé of his deadly rival, the recently ousted Chief Grand Secretary Xia Yan. “Xu doesn’t lack for talent,” Yan is reported to have replied, “but he is often of two minds.” He was referring to Xu Jie’s difference with Jiajing over naming an heir appar-

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ent and casting doubt on his loyal devotion to the ruler’s wishes. Xu Jie heard about these remarks, probably through eunuchs, some of whom preferred him to Yan Song. Terrified, Xu backed down. Outwardly he deferred all the more to Yan Song and worked all the harder to please Jiajing by writing Daoist prayers. 43 An unfriendly commentator likened Xu Jie’s posture to that of a simpering concubine. 44 He’d certainly won Jiajing’s affection; when the outer court recommended his appointment as minister of personnel following Wen Yuan’s retirement in 1549, Jiajing refused to let Xu Jie leave in order to take the position. He wanted him to stay close by him in West Park. Jiajing was boss, Xu Jie a tamed housecat. Then came a complete turnabout: the security crisis of 1550. Xu leaped forward to seize the occasion. Altan Khan (1507–1582), chief of the Twelve Tümed north of the Shanxi frontier, was Xu Jie’s surprise rescuer from what appeared otherwise to have been a dismal future as Jiajing’s captive pet, cowed and housebroken, a minister of rites who was powerless to effect any change at all in the ruler’s ritual preferences. The “crisis of 1550” (kengxu zhi bian)—that is, Altan Khan’s raid on Beijing and the panic it created— afforded the unhappy minister the chance he needed to demonstrate his latent talents as strategist and organizer in Ming China’s hastily arranged response. In late September 1550, Altan Khan launched a major plundering expedition east from the Shanxi frontier into territory he’d never before harassed. He and some hundred thousand fighters, guided through unfamiliar territory by erstwhile Ming allies, the Uriyangkhad, made an end run around the well-fortified western approaches to the Beijing region and, reaching Ming territory at Gubeikou, about seventy-five miles northeast of Beijing, made a zigzag drive southwest through Miyun, Huairou, and Shunyi Counties, looting the countryside and burning stables and stockpiles of hay and fodder for the Ming cavalry as they went. Meeting resistance at Shunyi, they proceeded directly south to Tongzhou and the terminus of the Grand Canal, about twenty-five miles due east of Beijing. There they were stopped for the time being at the Bai River, formed up an encampment, and from there made raids along a fifty-mile arc from Changping (to the north of Beijing) to Sanhe (east of Tongzhou).

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News of the invasion threw Beijing into a panic and a flurry of confused official activity. No Ming military units put up anything like a serious resistance. It was impossible for the authorities to sort through the blizzard of reports and proposals coming up through channels to West Park. Civil and military officials were hurriedly assigned to guard the nine gates of the Imperial City and four gates of the Forbidden City. Commander Qiu Luan (more on him later) was ordered to move his forces down from Juyongguan, a few miles northwest of Changping, and establish a front against Altan Khan at Tongzhou. Fresh troops were summoned from farther away—Henan, Shandong, and, fifty miles east of Beijing, the Jizhou garrison. A call was put out asking for volunteers. Work began on digging a moat around Beijing’s inner precincts. Lu Bing, commander of the Embroidered-Uniform Guard, ordered immediate food relief for Qiu Luan’s starving troops at Tongzhou. Jiajing scolded the Ministry of Revenue for its delay. The ruler ordered the issuance of fifty thousand shi (piculs) of grain at a low fixed price to feed all the refugees who were streaming into the city to escape Altan’s raiders. Meanwhile, Ming resistance at Tongzhou was wearing thin. Only a reported 1,700 men were holding the city. Jiajing ordered reinforcements, plus 5,000 taels of silver and double rations to reward all extra efforts made by the soldiers. Inside Beijing, the volunteers were little more than a disordered mob lacking commanders, weapons, food, or rewards. Something needed to be done. Late in the afternoon of September 30, some seven hundred mounted raiders reached the exercise field outside the Anding Gate on the north edge of Beijing. On October 1, raiders began looting villages in the Western Hills. Panic seized Beijing. Food prices shot up. 45 Altan Khan sent a captured eunuch back to Beijing. The eunuch was given a letter written in Chinese. The letter made its way to Chief Grand Secretary Yan Song. A meeting consisting of Jiajing, Yan Song, Grand Secretary Li Ben (who later changed his name to Lü Ben, 1504–1587), and Minister of Rites Xu Jie met to decide how to reply. Yan pulled the letter out of his sleeve and passed it around. It was a demand to establish tributary relations and open border markets. Jiajing wanted to know how they should reply. Yan Song said the raiders were simply starving bandits looking for food and not worth worrying about. As for the letter, he said that was for the Ministry of Rites to discuss.

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This was Xu Jie’s main chance. He stole a march on Yan Song and for the first time staked a claim to future national leadership. He challenged Yan Song. Those weren’t simply starving bandits, he insisted; they were right outside Beijing itself, looting, killing, and burning, and had to be stopped! Jiajing agreed. As for the letter, Xu Jie accepted responsibility for formulating a reply, but he insisted that because the “national body” (guoti) was in peril, the emperor had to decide personally. Jiajing frowned. “Everyone has to discuss this,” he said. “How can this be left to me to decide by myself?” Xu Jie replied that the court might err and yield to their demands while they were right outside the gates and while the defenses were in a state of collapse, which would just encourage them to raise their demands even further. Jiajing said it might be best just to pay them what they want. Xu Jie put a scare into Jiajing. “If we can’t satisfy them, then what?” he asked. The emperor asked Xu Jie what he would suggest. Xu’s idea (and here I paraphrase) was that China should neither agree to the demands, nor refuse them. We cannot negotiate with them under duress, he argued. We should instead procrastinate. We should doubt the genuineness of the letter written in Chinese. We should demand that they withdraw back across the frontier. They should put their letter into Mongolian (fanwen) and submit it to the military authorities at Datong in Shanxi Province. That will give us time to organize our defenses. Jiajing thought that a good idea, and he directed Xu Jie to discuss it with the officials outside. Xu then joined Yan Song and Li Ben in begging the emperor to act on what many officials were urging and lift everyone’s morale by making an immediate public appearance before an assembly of the outer court. Jiajing was reluctant, thinking it too hasty a move. Xu argued that it would be like rain after a long drought, immediately welcome. Jiajing agreed to make an appearance the next day, October 2. 46 Xu then went out to the Meridian Gate to conduct a general assembly of Beijing officialdom. The whole issue of Ming strategy was opened for discussion. At first, no one ventured to say anything. Then, probably by prearrangement, Zhao Zhenji (1508–1576) spoke out. Zhao was director of studies in the National University and a fervent convert to Wang Yangming’s philosophy. In time he would become a charismatic teacher and a philosopher of ethics in his own right. 47 Zhao voiced exactly what Xu Jie had been urging in West Park. Reject Altan’s letter. Have the emperor make a public appearance and publicly accept blame

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for the crisis. Release military commanders presently in prison for minor infractions. Distribute silver rewards to all soldiers who fight hard. Jiajing’s eavesdropper, most likely a eunuch, reported to him what Zhao had said. Jiajing liked most of what he said, had Zhao submit his ideas in writing, and directed Yan Song to write up the appropriate directives. But he turned down Zhao’s plea for posthumous honors for Zhou Shangwen (1475–1549), a meritorious general who had fought Altan earlier, and for the release of Shen Shu (1514–1581), a supervising secretary for rites, who had made arguments in behalf of Zhou Shangwen and other frontier generals and had run afoul of Yan Song, who had him flogged and locked up in the Decree Prison, where he would stay for many years. Jiajing promoted Zhao to censor and gave him 50,000 taels of silver, with instructions to visit each camp in the vicinity of Beijing and distribute the silver as rewards to commanders and troops. Yan Song didn’t like this move at all. Before leaving, Zhao went to West Park to arrange with Yan Song for support for this trip. But a close adherent of Yan’s, Zhao Wenhua of the Office of Transmission, overheard Yan’s doorman tell Zhao Zhenji that Yan was napping and that the realm’s affairs could be discussed later. Zhao Zhenji exploded in rage. “You’re nothing but a guard dog to the mighty! What do you know about the realm’s affairs?” He stormed off. Yan was indignant when told of the incident and sabotaged Zhao’s dangerous mission by affording him no escort or authority to issue orders. Zhao went out but was forced to hire his own transportation and had to return after a day, his funds mostly unspent. Yan provoked Jiajing into one of his frequent fits of rage. The Embroidered-Uniform Guard arrested Zhao and flogged him fifty times. He was then demoted and sent away to a low post in Guangxi. Even at the height of crisis, personal politics trumped all. 48 On October 2, with the raiders rampaging not far away, Jiajing proceeded, by sedan chair probably, from his palace in West Park to the Fengtian Hall (later renamed the Huangji Hall), a huge structure located inside the Forbidden City. Some high officials assembled there. The Court of State Ceremonial (a component of Xu Jie’s Ministry of Rites) relayed the emperor’s words to the mass of other officials gathered outside the Meridian Gate, the south entry to the Forbidden City. Jiajing’s words were harsh. He accepted no blame. Nor did he issue a stirring call to arms. He said it was Chinese defectors who prompted Altan’s raid. He scolded the officials, all kowtowing as they listened.

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They’d done nothing to defend China because they thought their ruler was living a life of ease and idleness in his seclusion in West Park, so why should they bother? They’d now forced the ruler to come to the Forbidden City, simply in order to make fine reputations for themselves. They don’t realize that the ruler, far from idle, is on duty day and night making decisions with his grand secretaries near at hand! The censors and supervising secretaries have failed to impeach all who form cliques and fail to act. Jiajing asked for volunteers. He threatened severe punishment for all who continued to gaze unconcernedly at all the panic and ruin. And that ended the speech. The great convocation was over. At least people were now assured that Jiajing was alert and on the job. Perhaps the gods acted in China’s favor. Miraculously almost, Xu Jie’s policy suggestions proved right. Altan Khan had no plan to destroy the Ming. His fighters were soon glutted with plunder. Cartloads of loot began moving north, followed some days later by the main army. By October 5, Beijing canceled the emergency, and the refugees began drifting back to what was left of their homes and villages. By October 8, all the raiders had exited China. Measures to bury the dead and succor the survivors got under way. Penalties ranging from decapitation, to flogging and demotion, to dismissal and exile to faraway places fell upon many high- and mid-level officials for failure to perform. Except for the highest authority of all—Qiu Luan. On September 21, Jiajing appointed this hereditary military officer “generalissimo for pacifying the raiders,” with supreme command over all the armies that were on the spot and called in to fight Altan Khan. He was given housing in West Park and the unique privilege of direct secret communication with the throne, bypassing the Ministry of War and all other intermediaries. Qiu Luan (1505–1552) was well educated, sported a literary studio name, had been a supporter of Jiajing in the Great Rites affair of 1524, had served the ruler as an escort on Jiajing’s trip to his birthplace in Huguang in 1539, and had been instrumental in the removal and execution of war hawks Zeng Xian and Xia Yan in 1548. In the summer of 1550, Jiajing hurriedly called him out of retirement and put him in command of the Datong garrison as a replacement for Zhang De, who had just been killed fighting Altan Khan. Jiajing thought Qiu Luan brave and personally loyal. Qiu also enjoyed close ties with Yan Song and his son, Yan Shifan. He had reportedly bribed them to get the

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Datong post. Qiu was very much a military politician, not a fighting general. Rather than fight Altan at Datong, Qiu allegedly paid him a huge bribe to move his raiders east and raid China through Gubeikou while he himself moved his army to a defensive position at Tongzhou. Thanks in some measure to Qiu, China was completely unprepared for Altan’s raid. Administrative gridlock and sloth ensured that the emergency forces called in to defend the capital were unpaid and unarmed. The hereditary guards units (wei) were undermanned and untrained. None could fight. Adroitly, Qiu avoided any violent engagement with Altan’s forces. Jiajing’s confidence in him remained unshaken. Meanwhile, Beijing’s military weakness had been shockingly exposed. Yan Song seemed complacent. Xu Jie was determined that something be done. On October 9, Xu wrote up a summation of sorts in a memorial to the emperor, in effect chiding him for cracking down too hard on poor performers and terrorizing everyone in the process, and for going along with the high value currently being placed on officials who were xiujin, “cultivated and cautious,” with none of the courage or imagination needed to respond to emergencies. He urged a change of attitude and in that connection recommended his old mentor Nie Bao for minister of war, a post made available due to the public beheading of its incumbent, Ding Rukui, for his miserable performance during Altan Khan’s raid. Jiajing responded favorably. 49 In a letter sent sometime during the following year, 1551, Xu Jie described his situation to his friend Ouyang De. He described his role in the crisis and how, with the ruler angry and the people in panic, it was only by a miracle that things quieted, leaving behind a climate of hatred and blame. He felt frustrated and surrounded by a hostile crowd. While he had been able to recommend successfully Nie Bao for the post of minister of war, he thought it not a good time for him to recommend Ouyang or their other philosophical friends—Han Bangqi, Zou Shouyi, Luo Hongxian, or Tang Shunzhi—for positions in Beijing. 50 After the great raid of 1550 subsided, Xu Jie returned to the writing of qingci and the performance of duties more appropriate to a minister of rites. He unburdened himself a bit in letters to distant friends. He mentioned his frustration at his inability to get Jiajing to name an heir

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apparent. He had misgivings about the court’s decision to respond favorably to Altan’s new letter (written in Mongolian and submitted to the military authorities at Datong) asking for the opening of border markets. His fear was that officialdom would conclude, mistakenly, that the crisis was over. Stress was turning his temples white. Many outer court officials were men whom he didn’t know; others were greedy, sycophantic, slanderous, and dangerous. He saw a road ahead full of pits. That was why he was being blocked in his attempt to get effective commanders appointed and China’s defense posture strengthened. 51 We will leave Xu Jie here for the moment, poised at the edge of the firmament, soon to be appointed a grand secretary. He arrived there on the strength of his own drive and talent and ingratiating ways, and with the considerable help of friends and colleagues in bureaucracy who shared his ethical standards, and of course with the favor of the Jiajing emperor. He made his mark by volunteering to be the leading man in charge of rallying Ming China’s defenses—quite out of bounds, one would think, for a minister of rites. Where would his ideas about military defense strategy have come from? Xu Jie was a man of many parts. He had, as we’ve seen, social ties with military men, and his interest in military matters dated back to at least 1536 when, as educational intendant in Zhejiang, he wrote a preface to a reprinting of literary pieces he’d edited about the Song soldier-patriot and martyr Yue Fei (1103–1141), famous for his refusal to concede an inch of Song territory to the invading Jurchens. 52 Confucian ethics were never the only matter on his mind.

NOTES 1. Jiang Decheng, Xu Jie yu Jia-Long zhengzhi (Tianjin: Tianjin guji chubanshe, 2002), 5–25, 337–51. 2. Xu Jie, Shijing tang ji (hereafter referred to as SJTJ), 79:758–60 (epitaph for Nie Bao); Songjiang fuzhi (1817; reprint, Taipei, 1970), 2:685–86 (Xu Jie’s inscriptions for the school); L. C. Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 2:1097–98 (biography of Nie Bao). 3. Xu Jie, Shaohu xiansheng wenji, 60:288–89 (letter to Ouyang De).

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4. The usual quota was not so high, but this was the first exam held under the auspices of the new Jiajing emperor. He and the grand secretaries were eager to help assert the primacy and prestige of civil bureaucracy, which the preceding Zhengde emperor, Jiajing’s cousin, had suppressed. 5. The second-place finisher, Wang Jiao (1479–1541), ended up a vice minister in the Ministry of War. 6. On this, see Hung-lam Chu, “The Jiajing Emperor’s Interaction with His Lecturers,” in Culture, Courtiers, and Competition: The Ming Court (1368–1644), ed. David M. Robinson (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008), 186–230. 7. Ming shilu, 77:2822–26. Xu Jie, who later edited the shilu for Jiajing’s reign, gave himself very short shrift while quoting in detail the winning proreform arguments. 8. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:571–72 (a send-off message). 9. Xu Jie, Shaohu xiansheng wenji, 60:234–35. 10. Ibid., 60:246–47, 297. See, on the whole subject of community schools, Sarah Schneewind, Community Schools and the State in Ming China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), esp. 91–93. 11. Xu Jie, Shaohu xiansheng wenji, 80:291, 292, 293–304. 12. Ibid., 80:289–90. 13. Ibid., 80:289. 14. Ibid., 80:289–90. 15. Ibid., 80:237–38. 16. Ibid., 80:284–86. 17. Ibid., 80:286–87. 18. Ibid., 80:287. 19. Ibid., 80:236–37. 20. Ibid., 80:290–91. 21. Ibid. 22. Ouyang De, Ouyang Nanye xiansheng ji, 80:363–64, 399–400. 23. He Liangjun, Siyouzhai congshuo (1573; new ed., Beijing, 1959), 30. On the question of the origin and meaning of the term liangzhi, see Tang Chun-i, “The Development of the Concept of Moral Mind from Wang Yang-ming to Wang Chi,” in Self and Society in Ming Thought, ed. William Theodore de Bary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 93–120. 24. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:647–48. 25. Guangxi tongzhi (1598; reprint, Taipei, 1965), 2:614; Jiao Hong, ed., Guochao xianzheng lu (1594; reprint, Taipei, 1965), 7:4147; Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:578–79, 647–48. 26. Wang Ji, Longqi xiansheng quanji, 98:363–64; Nie Bao, Shuangjiang xiansheng wenji, 72:294–95. There were two main problems with the term

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liangzhi. One was that it wasn’t a direct citation from the Four Books. It took the words “extend knowledge” out of their context in the Great Learning and spliced them together with liangzhi, a chance fragment from the Mencius. Critics condemned it as crypto-Buddhist, twisting the sages’ original intentions completely out of shape, conjuring up a mysticism. Second, even if one accepted zhi liangzhi as authentically Confucian, many tried but failed to make it work in real life because they were introverted or cold in personality. Xu Jie had an outgoing and engaging personality (his whole career shows that), but he could never imagine himself an evangelist or especially susceptible to evangelism. 27. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:26–28. 28. Ibid., 79:761–63 (epitaph). 29. Ibid., 80:26–28. 30. Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 4:2745–52. Biographies of Luo, Zou, and Tang may also be found in Goodrich and Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography. 31. Ming shi, ch. 200; Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:760–61 (epitaph); Zhao Shichun, Zhao Jungu ji, 87:416–17. 32. Quoted in Wang Shizhen’s account of conduct for Xu Jie. 33. Yan Song’s epitaph for Fei Cai is in his Qianshan tang ji, 38:1a. Xu Jie’s epitaph for Sun Cheng’en is in Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 2:736–38. 34. Chen Zilong, ed., Huang Ming jingshi wenbian (1638; reprint, Taipei, 1964), 15:719–23. 35. Ibid., 15:724–27. 36. Barend ter Haar, “Tao Zhongwen,” in The Encyclopedia of Taoism, ed. Fabrizio Pregadio (London: Routledge, 2008), 2:971–72. Also see Goodrich and Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography, 2:1266–68. 37. For Jiajing’s religious preoccupations, see Maggie C. K. Wan, “Building an Immortal Land: The Ming Jiajing Emperor’s West Park,” Asia Major 22, no. 2 (2009): 65–100; Yang Qiqiao, Ming Qing huangshi yu fangshu (Shanghai: Shiji shuju, 2010), 78–114; Gu Yingtai, Mingshi jishi benmo (1658; several modern editions), ch. 52 (Shizong’s Daoist worship). 38. Hou Renzhi, ed., Beijing lishi ditu ji (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 1988), 33–34 (map of the Imperial City). 39. See Wan, “Building an Immortal Land,” 86. For the housing arrangements, see Shen Defu, Wanli yehuo bian (1619; new ed., Beijing, 1980), 1:216. 40. These portrait appreciations are given as front matter in Yan Song’s Qianshan tang ji. 41. Tan Qian, Guo que, 4:3704, 3737; Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:480–81; Huang Zongxi, ed., Mingru xue’an (1667; several modern editions), ch. 27; Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 4:2761 (an anonymous biography of Yang Yusun); Xu

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Xuemo, Shimiao zhiyu lu (late sixteenth century; reprinted in Siku quanshu cunmu congshu, 1997), 49:282–83. 42. Ming shi, ch. 207 (biography of Yang Sizhong); Xia Xie, Ming tongjian, 4:2303. 43. Ming shi, ch. 213 (biography of Xu Jie); Tan Qian, Guo que, 4:3767, 3769. 44. Wu Duancui, Linju manlu (1607; reprint, Taipei, 1977), 1:92. 45. The raid of 1550 is well covered in Arthur Waldron, The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 159–60. There are various other English-language accounts also. 46. For dates, I generally follow the Ming shilu. The Guo que dates often differ. Xu Jie’s written memorial asking Jiajing to make a public appearance is dated September 27 (Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:369). Discussion of it apparently took place four days later. 47. Huang Zongxi, Mingru xue’an, ch. 33. Huang puts him in the Taizhou school. 48. Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 1:636–42 (biography by Hu Zhi); Tan Qian, Guo que, 4:3759; Gu Yingtai, Mingshi jishi benmo, ch. 54 (Yan Song in power); Huang Zongxi, Mingru xue’an, ch. 33. 49. Ming shilu, 85:6510. 50. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:83. 51. Ibid., 80:83–84 (letters to Zhang Chengxian and Tang Shunzhi). 52. Xu Jie, ed., Yue ji (Siku quanshu cunmu congshu, ser. 2), 83:204–5.

2 AS GRAND SECRETARY On Jiangxue and on War in the North

In April 1552, the emperor elevated Xu Jie to the position of grand secretary, “with authority to participate in critical matters.” This was mainly a raise in title rather than responsibility, as Xu had been serving for some time as a de facto grand secretary anyway. He joined Yan Song and Li Ben in a three-man Grand Secretariat that stayed in place for the next decade. Yan Song, as chief grand secretary, held the upper edge. Li deferred both to him and to Xu Jie, the stronger personality. 1 The grand secretaries were not executives, but advisors only. The sole executive was the emperor. The emperor wanted to be emotionally close to his grand secretaries, but at the same he manipulated them and regularly set Yan Song against Xu Jie and vice versa. In this behavior, he bore some resemblance to Franklin D. Roosevelt. The situation called for interpersonal skill on the part of Xu Jie. He had to bow before Yan Song yet at the same time make subtle moves to erode Yan’s standing in Jiajing’s affections and esteem. He had to submit to a demanding ruler yet from time to time challenge him on extremely sensitive matters of policy. Not an easy situation at all. Yan Song was boss of an informal bureaucratic machine that was fueled by thinly disguised bribery and coercion and managed by his son Yan Shifan from his private mansion located somewhere outside the Imperial City. He Liangjun, who saw that mansion several times in 1552, vividly described the scene there. Yan Shifan’s home was like a 35

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market. Crowds of low-ranking officials gathered daily to press their wants, squeezing by the house servants. Sometimes, three or four servants could be seen in the street outside playing ball. They looked on the favor seekers superciliously. They deferred to high officials. When high officials came in, lower officials would clear the hall and crowd in the gatehouse. The servants often played zither or board games or acted out bits of popular opera. All day, every day, there was noise. Xu Jie’s private residence was, by contrast, “like water where you might net birds.” Family servants were nowhere to be seen. Off-duty officials might come and visit occasionally, with only butler Li to greet them. Xu would treat everyone, high or low, friend or stranger, with respect. Li Ben’s place was, for noise, somewhere in between, with few officials coming by but many old friends and other people from his home county, Yuyao in Zhejiang. 2 While Yan Song and his son developed one sort of machine, Xu Jie worked hard to establish another, not so much a machine as a looser following based upon a commitment to Confucian ethics. Xu signaled this intent by changing his literary name (hao). It had been Shaohu, “Lesser Cove,” after the edge of a pond back in Huating where he used to study and where he may have thought of retiring to. Now it became Cunzhai, “Studio of Preservation,” an ethical notion suggesting preserving values coeval with heaven and earth. 3 Xu was able to use his new fulcrum in the Grand Secretariat to leverage appointments for his old mentor, Nie Bao, as minister of war, and for his friend Ouyang De as his successor as minister of rites in 1552. Unfortunately, Ouyang died of natural causes in 1554; and Nie, out of his depth (Xu Jie had to write lengthy military reform plans for him), was forced to retire in 1555. Besides arranging high-level appointments for a few close friends and colleagues who shared his Confucian orientations, Xu Jie also aimed to cultivate a wider following in the bureaucracy by sponsoring a series of large jiangxue (discussing study) gatherings in Beijing that were intended to inspire hope, enthusiasm, and ethical behavior and so dampen corruption and sloth among the degree takers and junior officials at the outset of their careers. Jiangxue was an informal extracurricular activity, and thus it lacks the extended documentation reserved for official acts. Informal remarks are all we have.

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The gatherings may have attracted five to seven hundred participants at a time. They went on for weeks and may have been divided into plenary sessions and small-group meetings, but that isn’t known for sure. They were all held in a Daoist temple called the Lingji, a facility located just outside the Imperial City, immediately to the west of West Park. The temple was certainly made available to Xu Jie by Tao Zhongwen, Jiajing’s chief Daoist priest. The connection to Wang Yangming’s philosophy was probably strongest in the earlier meetings, those of 1553 and 1554, that featured as discussion leaders Cheng Wende, Nie Bao, and Ouyang De, onetime personal disciples of Wang, all of whom emphasized “extending the good conscience” in their teachings. The 1553 meeting was a huge success; several hundred attended, and the affair lasted two months. 4 Then Ouyang died and Nie was forced to retire, as noted above, and so no gathering was held in 1556. In 1558 a controversial official and jiangxue aficionado by the name of He Qian (1501–1574) arrived in Beijing from parts south and tried to lead another such grand convocation at the temple. He was a one-time follower not of Wang but of Zhan Ruoshui. He had since developed his own recipe for moral understanding. But the crowd was thin. He Qian lacked the prestige and national visibility needed for a good turnout. 5 The big meetings crested in 1565, after Xu had become chief grand secretary. A spellbinding lecturer, Luo Rufang (1515–1588), got Xu to convene it. This one, too, enjoyed great attendance. Though he sponsored it, Xu did not attend himself. He didn’t have the time. He sent his son Xu Fan over to the temple with two questions for the congregants to discuss. Neither question had anything to do with Wang Yangming. One was about “the calmness of [one’s] nature,” taken from the writing of the orthodox Song Neo-Confucian Cheng Hao. 6 The other was an orthodox injunction: “The learner must place knowledge about benevolence at the forefront.” Copies of the full quotations were handed out, and everyone was asked to discuss and write down his thoughts as to how they were to be understood. Xu Jie then wrote critiques of the papers, resolving the problems. These were then printed up for learners everywhere to read. 7 Apparently, this was the last of the big Lingji Temple meetings. Wang Yangming’s ideas in the abstract and “discussion and study” in the concrete were both showing signs of degeneration nationwide. Xu Jie

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himself was never a partisan of Wang’s philosophy, but he’d been a strong supporter of jiangxue. His own recipes for moral self-correction he drew directly from the Four Books, avoiding Wang-school formulations but often approving their use by others. He was no unquestioning champion of jiangxue either. Far from being a euphoric cheerleader, he was in many instances a disapproving critic. He thought the discussions taking place in schools and other gatherings might be high-minded and analytically subtle, but this didn’t seem to him to have much positive effect on the participants’ behavior. Falsity, suspicion, and corruption continued to command men’s minds, and this, he averred, lay at the root of all disorder in the realm. 8 Sometimes doctrine itself was patently wrong. Xu alleged that there was circulating among many scholar-officials (shidafu) the mistaken idea that we must attain a mental state above and beyond all emotion (qing). That notion was based on a deviant reading of a passage of the Book of Changes. No! People are not made of wood or stone. They truly feel joy, anger, pleasure, and grief. These feelings just have to be appropriately centered and harmonized. That’s what we need to understand. The big villains of our world feign anger, fake grief, show false pleasure, and mistake lust for joy. That’s the awful practical result of mistakenly understanding a correct precept. 9 In a letter to Wang Shenzhong (1509–1559), Xu expressed despair at “today’s jiangxue.” It was all vain speculation or blind imitation; too much “discussing” (jiang) and too little “learning” (xue); too much talking about ethics in the abstract but chasing power and advantage in the here and now. 10 In a letter of around 1562 to Geng Dingxiang (1524–1586), at the time educational intendant at Nanjing, Xu warned him to be careful about what he taught. “Don’t make empty discussion,” he advised. “Don’t set up cliques” (menhu). To Jiang Bao (1514–1593), educational intendant in Sichuan, he urged that the students be made to focus on ethical fundamentals, not “empty talk” or topics too difficult for them; the aim was to help all those with the right resolve to proceed along the road to success. 11 To another educational intendant he complained that students everywhere were interested only in writing examination essays and knew nothing of studying books, let alone the study of the self and mind. 12 As for “extending the good conscience,” too many students unfortunately cultivated the inward part only, forgetting the need to actively extend it in one’s everyday transactions. 13

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Sometime late in his term as chief grand secretary, Xu wrote a joint letter to Wan Shihe (1516–1586) and Hong Chaoxuan (1516–1582), younger colleagues who were hoping to organize another big convocation in Beijing but were encountering ridicule and hostility. Don’t be angered or discouraged by that, counseled Xu. Just as we need food and clothing, we must also have study. We don’t stop eating or wearing clothes in order to please others, nor do we go hungry and cold in order to fight others. Perhaps those who denounce and mock us have a valid point. In that case, they do us a favor, getting us to correct our mistakes. Just don’t organize a clique (menhu) or turn away from matters of governance and retreat into “pure talk and silent sitting.” 14 Xu Jie, in other words, had pretty much given up on jiangxue. Xu Jie maintained a lifelong ambivalence about jiangxue. Ming law forbade and most Confucian thinking discouraged the formation of factions among the officials. Yet jiangxue in one way or another facilitated that very thing, or at least helped create a loose following or fellowship of the like-minded, and that was vital to Xu Jie’s purposes. He could have done little administratively without friendly support, especially among the “speaking officials.” Yet he had long expressed deep misgivings about the value of these discussion meetings. And yet, as noted, Luo Rufang reemphasized their value and convinced Xu Jie to agree to sponsor a final big jiangxue convocation in Beijing in 1565; human talents were needed, he argued, and jiangxue was the best means for developing them. No more such meetings were ever held. As grand secretary, Xu Jie focused most of his attention on problems relating to national security—the defense of the northern frontier and the coast; military leadership, organization, and deployment; and logistical infrastructure and finance. While his chief, Yan Song, had a hand in these matters, Xu was much the more energetic; and it is testimony to his interpersonal skills that he was able to go as far as he did without fatally provoking Yan’s opposition. As grand secretary, Xu’s main job was to help advise Jiajing by replying to his queries, drafting edicts, and suggesting responses to official memorials. But Xu went beyond that. His collected works contain some 231 letters, by far the majority of them sent out to regional officials, both civil and military, directing defense along the northern and coastal frontiers. Xu could not issue orders to these officials. But because he sat

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at the hub of a nationwide communications network, right by the emperor himself, and given his outgoing and friendly personality, his writing skills, and his wide following in bureaucracy, he was able to engage them all in a positive way, inform them of current attitudes in Beijing, suggest effective strategy and action plans, and promise his backing for their memorials provided that they emphasized certain things that clearly needed doing. I propose to look at Xu’s letters to officials and his talks with Jiajing concerning the northern frontier first and then, in the next chapter, his correspondence with regard to the coast. Ming China confronted the vast steppes of Mongolia along a fortified line that stretched some 1,500 miles from Jiayuguan in the far west to Shanhaiguan, 200 miles east of Beijing, not far from the Communist Party resort at Beidaihe. Spotted along this frontier were nine defense commands (zhen), and within each command lay a fairly thick infrastructure of walled cities (cheng), garrison cities housing hereditary military guards units (wei), long ditches, barrier walls, lookout towers, signal stations, small forts (duntai), and fortified villages (bu). The number of civilian inhabitants of these frontier regions is hard to guess, but as of 1541, some 427,000 soldiers were on duty, 30 percent short of the prescribed number. Defense costs rose nearly tenfold between 1521 and 1593. Revenue income failed to keep up. This is generally how things stood during the three decades Xu Jie held high office in Beijing (1539–1568). 15 Arthur Waldron’s otherwise admirable work on China’s defenses, The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth, argues that an “ideological veto” over normalizing foreign trade relations led the Ming to an unnecessary and ultimately self-defeating hostility toward the outside world and that this culturally determined stance characterized the years 1550 to 1571, when Xu Jie’s voice was most strongly heard. 16 A close reading of Xu Jie, however, suggests that instead of wielding an ideological veto, he championed a reasonable interpretation of the facts: that the northern attackers and the coastal raiders were anarchic, multiethnic plunder machines, not ordered societies; that it was unthinkable for China simply to surrender territory and cave in to demands from such entities; that China’s weak defenses must by all means be improved and enlarged first; and then, if agreements were to be made, it must be China that controls the terms.

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Alastair Iain Johnston’s Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History mentions neither Yan Song nor Xu Jie. But the three chapters the author devotes to an analysis of the Ming experience downplay the impact of Confucian or other ideology on northern defense matters. Instead, he argues that Ming policy makers pressed for strategies that were based upon their readings of facts as they currently lay on the ground. This approach seems to fit rather well the policy approaches and debates that Xu Jie, for all his commitment to Confucian ethics, and his contemporaries engaged in. Confucian ideology played a very minor role at best. 17 In Xu Jie’s time, the long frontier was fairly quiet in the far west and in Manchuria, to the east. The main trouble spots lay along an arc hovering around Beijing, guarded by defense commands at Datong (about 175 miles northwest of the capital), Xuanfu (100 miles northwest), and Jizhen, 50 miles to the east. Supreme commanders oversaw Xuanfu and Datong together (as Xuan-Da), and Jizhen and Liaodong together (as Ji-Liao). The questions of who should be appointed to the top civil and military posts in the commands as supreme commanders (zongdu), grand coordinators (xunfu), and regional commanders (zongbing) and what their aims and methods should be took up a great deal of Xu Jie’s time, thought, worry, and energy. His many personal letters to officials on the spot testify to his intense interest in Ming China’s ongoing security issues. The threat from the steppes was not in any real sense a revival of the grand enterprise of Chinggis Khan, dead now for three centuries. No ordered, centrally managed regime with a powerfully established leader and clear goal of conquering and ruling China existed. Neither Ming official documents nor Xu’s personal letters ever refer to an ethnic entity called “Mongols.” The name never comes up. Nor do the names of the various Mongol tribes, such as Altan Khan’s Tümeds. Whenever it was necessary to refer to the people causing trouble along the northern frontier, the term in use was occupational, not ethnic. They were “Lu.” The word means “raiders,” understood to mean those to the north, not along the coast. As far as Ming government was concerned, raiding was what they did for a living. They didn’t farm, engage in commerce, or work crafts, as did most Chinese. Their pastoral economy counted for nothing. They were raiders, also often simply called “ban-

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dits” (kou) or “robbers” (zei), terms that also applied to ethnic Chinese and to coastal pirates. On rare occasions, the Lu were politely referred to as beiren, “northern people.” Their written language, used in diplomatic correspondence with Ming government, was not “Mongolian” but simply fanwen, or “foreign writing.” What the Ming authorities saw as they looked north of their frontier were scattered encampments of mounted raiders, living close to a mainly Chinese border population that was forever struggling to make a living on marginal land. Most raider encampments were lured into good behavior when Beijing agreed to open border markets so that surplus horses from the steppes could be traded for Chinese silks, manufactures, foodstuffs, and other goods. That arrangement characterized much of the frontier, but not in the center, where Altan Khan’s encampments were to be found. Many times Altan asked for trading privileges. The Jiajing emperor sternly refused him. After each such refusal, Altan would raid, kill, burn, and plunder, and then return to the steppes. A vicious cycle got set in motion. Jiajing could not yield to Altan’s requests, because to do so looked to him like caving in to a superior force. Such a show of weakness could have catastrophic consequences for the future security of the Ming state. Not everyone agreed with Jiajing on this, but Xu Jie generally supported him. The reasons for Jiajing’s refusal to deal with Altan Khan are complex, but one factor raised at the time was that Altan’s domain contained many Chinese runaways, religious sectarians, and advisors, and that any trade with him in grain and other goods would only strengthen them and make defection all the more attractive as an option for all struggling border Chinese. 18 Ming China’s regional commander at Datong, Qiu Luan (1505–1552, whom we met in the crisis of 1550), in a report to Beijing, argues that Ming China simply does not have the military capability to stop Altan’s destructive raids. He explains why (and here I paraphrase his remarks). The frontier is, he maintains, completely out of control. The Lu have a large population and need China’s resources to survive and raid when their needs so force them. Four big encampments are based more or less permanently outside the Great Wall, where they pasture their horses. Chinese troops sneak out of their forts by night and trade with them. Some of the frontier officials condone this and even conduct private trade with them themselves. Some of the people,

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commoners as well as military people, have even entered Altan’s service. They know all about the command’s deployments, while the command can learn nothing of theirs. Qiu suggests that the best way to deal with the situation is to open border markets and place all trade under direct official regulation so that the profits might accrue to the state rather than to uncontrolled private parties. Jiajing thought there might be merit in Qiu’s proposal, and he ordered it sent down to the Ministry of War for discussion and reply. 19 Shortly after, Qiu allegedly bribed Altan and secretly encouraged him to raid China via Gubeikou. Qiu Luan’s conviction that fighting the Mongols was a hopeless endeavor was an attitude definitely not shared by Xu Jie. Xu Jie’s involvement with frontier issues already began in the late 1540s, not long after he’d moved into West Park and was still minister of rites. He contacted Weng Wanda (1498–1552), who was near the end of a long and effective career dealing with frontier issues and in 1545–1549 was supreme commander at Xuanfu and Datong (Xuan-Da). It should be noted of Weng that he favored opening border markets to Altan Khan and his people but was not personally friendly with Qiu Luan or Yan Song. Weng was, however, a devotee of philosophical discussion (jiangxue), friends with Ouyang De, Luo Hongxian, Tang Shunzhi, Wang Ji, and others, and a tireless participant in talks on ethics with students and colleagues. He was also an excellent leader of troops (unlike Qiu Luan), often putting himself in the front lines and getting his men to give maximum effort—just the sort of man Xu most admired. Even at this early stage of his career, Xu was closely concerned both for defense strategy and for choosing the right commanders to conduct that strategy. “I hear the Lu have gone west,” wrote Xu to Weng after some flattering opening remarks: I don’t know if they’re tricking us, or whether, since all our border forces are gathered at Xuan-Da, they’re looking for opportunities elsewhere. How will we find out their plans and attack them? Defense forces have gathered from far and near, but many of them are old and weak and of no use in resisting the raiders, and we just waste resources on them. Please tell me what you’re doing about this.

Xu goes on:

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Bai Jue and Li Chaoyang are lower-class types, but I heard they’re clever and brave, so I joined with the ministers of personnel and war and got the emperor to agree to put them to use. They’re in camp now. But if you don’t trust their skill and give them no authority, then they’re just two commoners. A bit ago, Bai Jue told me that the troops at Xuan-Da are useless, and that the Yan-Sui troops [from Shaanxi] were the bravest, and that if he could lead three hundred of their horsemen, he’d win battles for sure. But we rely on you to make sure idlers aren’t draining rations. Li Chaoyang says that the Lu crowd is in good shape, while our troops are untrained and not up to confronting them. Plus we must fix our forts, and improve our patrols and observers. When the Lu come, we must hurry to safety, leave them nothing to plunder, and occasionally send skilled horsemen to kill their laggards and then return. Once the troops are trained, we can have a big battle and annihilate the Lu.

Xu had listened to Bai and Li and was impressed. “I am untutored in this sort of thing,” he confessed, “and never heard such plans before, but I think there’s something to what they said. Please check into it.” “Bai Jue is a bully,” he went on to say. “If you send him to Datong, then maybe you’ll be afraid he won’t defer to the regional commander Zhou [Shangwen]. But Regional Commander Zhao [Qing], when he left, told him how to harness Bai Jue, and he’s right. Put those two under Zhou, and I think your worries on the left flank will be over.” Xu ended his letter on a polite note and a plea: They say those short on wisdom don’t plan far ahead, and those low on strength don’t plan for big things. Our officials these days all have their specialties. I violate all expectations by discussing frontier matters with you. But I don’t dare keep silent. The grand strategy of the realm is at stake here. I rely on your great knowledge and tolerance, and know you’ll make the best of any plans you may come across, especially if low-ranking colleagues who share your concern for the fate of the world present them. 20

So here Xu Jie began acting as an informal mediator of personnel and plans, leveraging his position in Beijing to advantage. Though they shared jiangxue connections, there is no indication he and Weng were close friends.

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A matter Xu raises here he will raise again and again—the absolute necessity to discover, appreciate, employ, and protect talented military leaders. That someone like Xu, from the quintessentially civilian heart of China, the Su-Song prefectural region, should argue the military’s case so strongly, may come as a surprise; but the Xu family did not enjoy close connections with the high literati. They did have long-standing military ties. Xu’s older sister was married to a hereditary military officer in Shandong Province. 21 His third son, Xu Ying, married a daughter of China’s top policeman, a favorite of the Jiajing emperor and a man of hereditary military origin, Lu Bing. As noted in the previous chapter, Xu admired the hero Yue Fei. And in a letter to a friend, describing in detail a side trip he took while en route from his home in Huating to Beijing, probably in 1541 after mourning leave for his mother, Xu described visiting Buddhist temples, hiking up mountains, drinks and long talks with fellow jiangxue aficionados Tang Shunzhi and Xue Yingqi, taking archery practice, and then taking another excursion, this one with a certain Tang Yidong, a hereditary military officer from just south of Shandong, in command of coast guards at Zhenjiang, where the Grand Canal crosses the Yangzi. Tang showed him a drum made of human skin he’d taken from the corpse of an executed sea raider. Xu said it carried less well than a cowhide drum. Tang brought in two of his big men for a hand-to-hand fighting exhibition. Then came an alarm: sea raiders were coming. “I’d better get battle-ready,” said Tang. “I don’t spare this bag of blood. I’ll fight to the death for the dynasty.” And off he went. This was the only pleasure trip Xu Jie ever took. But the larger point is this: Xu had marriage connections with military families, enjoyed the company of rough but capable fighters, and was not squeamish about the gory business of war. 22 There is another letter from Xu to Weng Wanda. This is a short one, probably sent not long after the first letter to Weng. Here he tries to ease Weng’s dismay that other officials had questions about his planning. “I was much relieved to read of your careful plans for frontier management,” wrote Xu. When the officials discussed your proposals, however, there was some disagreement about them, but big plans have always been subjected to this. . . . You shouldn’t mind it; eventually we’ll get it right and things will quiet down. I think the officials argue because they’re trying to get it right. They’re not being selfish. At court they vie like

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tigers, but when off duty, they remain friendly. This is how the ancient worthies acted, and we should model ourselves after them. I trust to our mutual esteem for Confucianism [daoyi] and await your reply. I hope you’ll forgive me. 23

Here Xu shows his liberal side, arguing that open debate is ultimately constructive and ought to be encouraged. A letter to Sun Jin, Grand Coordinator at Xuanfu, also dates to the late 1540s. In it, Xu Jie expresses a deep concern that the military commanders are being badly mistreated: The messenger arrived, and I see how hard it’s been for you on the frontier. The early fall temperature varies from warm to cool, and I hope you won’t overdo it. I’m an ignoramus, but I’ve all along maintained that civil officials who have come up through the schools differ greatly from military men in talent and temperament. If you get effective officers, you have to overlook their illiteracy and not expect them to behave decorously. In past years, our discipline has been far too constraining, so much so that promotion prospects for lower commanders are nil. Yet we expect their total obedience. Even without going so far as to mistreat them, we keep suppressing their eagerness and dampening their bravado, year after year, and we don’t realize what we’re doing. Surely you’re too smart to fall into this pattern. I hope you’ll forgive my saying this. 24

Unfortunately, a deep enemy raid of 1548 occasioned so much slaughter and destruction that an impeachment ended in the arrest of Regional Commander Zhao Qing, the temporary demotion and dismissal of Weng Wanda, and the demotion and transfer of Sun Jin. 25 However, the point Xu stressed, about the need to set aside regulations on the books and instead do all to encourage initiative and vigor among the military, was a matter he would keep pressing over the years ahead. Not long after the 1548 death sentence given the Ordos recovery proponent and extreme war hawk Zeng Xian, Xu wrote Wang Bangrui (1495–1561), a seasoned official posted in the years 1547–1549 out west in Shaanxi Province as grand coordinator for Ningxia. Here, it is clear that Xu Jie disagreed with the chief grand secretary, Xia Yan, on the issue of whether to invade and annex steppe territory:

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I spoke to you on your departure about the impossibility of recovering the Ordos. Recently Zeng Xian maintained that it would be easy, but I was in no position to stop him. He answered me grandiloquently and put me to some shame for not helping him. He answered you this way too. I read your memorial, but I feel regret that it was sent at the same time as the report on military command. You didn’t forget what I said to you when you left, did you? The court discussion praised your attention to duty, and said selecting generals, training troops, buying horses, and gathering grain are basic requirements for frontier defense. So they focused on these four things, and hoped they could stop the Yan-Sui forces in midcourse. Fortunately our ruler fears Heaven, protects the people, and disagreed [with Xia Yan]. By his own hand his edict changed the discussion. So you escaped worry on the battlefield, and we here can breathe easier too. 26

What is notable here is how Xu Jie acted a bit like like a press agent for Jiajing. None of the other grand secretaries seems ever to have done this, nor did they maintain anything like Xu Jie’s large file of correspondence to officials in the field. The next relevant letter dates to 1550 and Altan Khan’s raid on Beijing. Xu Jie was still minister of rites, living in West Park. His letter is directed to Wang Yu (1507–1560), at the time regional inspector of Shuntian, the prefecture that includes Beijing. When news of the raid reached him, Wang rushed out to the grain transport hub at Tongzhou just east in order to help prepare its defenses. There was a breakdown in communications with Beijing, and so Xu Jie promised to step in and expedite matters. This is clear evidence of Xu’s eagerness to serve as a military crisis manager, even though his position in the Ministry of Rites would seem to have made that an uncalled-for grab for power. “Your son [probably Wang Shizhen (1526–1590), who later became a very famous literary man] came by with a report about what’s on your mind. I sympathize with you. But people will avoid difficulties, and they will be jealous of the talents of others. That’s always been the case. I’ve experienced plenty of it.” Xu turned to the problem at hand: Tongzhou is at Beijing’s throat, an important place. The Lu will lust to take it. Its walls have to be rebuilt in a hurry. On the nineteenth, I told the Ministry of War to endorse the memorial you sent earlier,

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and I asked them to agree that all wall-building responsibilities be entrusted to you, and that you should memorialize in detail how you plan to proceed. Unexpectedly the responsible officials didn’t act, and the seal-bearer only just got appointed, so the matter has been delayed, and for several days no endorsement has been made. I’ll have to press this business again. How you’ll be able to proceed depends on the arrival of your detailed memorial. I’ll ask the emperor to endorse it and sign it for action, and so the Ministries of Revenue and Works won’t be able to hold it up. It would be hard now to have to contend with them. 27

One would not be fully aware of Xu Jie’s influence both in West Park and in the outer court without access to these letters. Although he would not be formally appointed until 1552, Xu was already a grand secretary in fact, with an impressive degree of resonance with and input into Jiajing’s decision making. As it turned out, Wang Yu’s work at Tongzhou was a success. Three months after Altan’s raid, Xu wrote Wang De (1512–1558), an energetic but arrogant supervising secretary for revenue who had been sent down to Shandong Province to recruit defense troops. The letter affords a remarkable look into Xu’s strategic thinking. I was much consoled to read how you recruited a large group of braves while avoiding harassing the people. Your point about combining infantry and cavalry was especially good. I hear the Lu are aiming for Linqing, and I don’t know whether the Shandong troops can defend it or not. The realm’s affairs are the affairs of all of us, and I hope you’ll secretly confer with [Xiang Tingji, 1502–1562, Shandong regional inspector]. Local stalwarts can surely be gathered in to prepare against southbound raiders; the regional inspector has the power to do that. Wude subprefecture has been reassigned to Bei Zhili [the northern metropolitan province], so I’m unsure how you’ll deal with that. If you have to include it, you should join the Shandong assistant surveillance commissioner [probably Zhao Shichun; see below] and memorialize to get authorization. As for your discussion about a northern campaign, the emperor is keen on that, but he’s heeded the advice of a few officials and says he’ll wait until everything is ready. The worrisome thing is that since the Lu went back to the steppes three months ago, the bureaucrats have dallied and have done nothing about training troops and stockpiling grain.

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So we’re not going to be able either to attack or defend. I’ve heard about Magistrate Hu at Xiongxian and Censor Wang; Wang awaits another opportunity, but I don’t know about Hu. Perhaps you can recommend their hire. Sorry I can’t write more, but my fingers are frozen stiff this morning. 28

This is an engaging letter. Xu Jie congratulates, instructs, suggests, shares his knowledge of Jiajing’s thinking, conveys his own impatience with the state of military preparedness, and ends on a purely personal note. Xu unburdened himself in a letter to Supervising Secretary Zhang Chengxian, a Huating compatriot. “Since you left, I haven’t been able to get in touch with you. Now the messenger has come with your letter, and I’m much flattered and relieved. Your memorial was excellent, but I’m afraid those in power don’t share your public-spirited and upright state of mind, and can’t act on it.” Here Xu shifts focus. “At the beginning of the month I asked that the heir apparent be set up, but my request was ignored, and I sent up another one, but the emperor felt he was being pressured and ordered me to back off, so I did.” Then he brings up frontier policy: We are discussing opening horse markets with the northern Lu, so they’ve stopped their raids temporarily for that reason, but what concerns me is that once peace has been achieved, the high officials will think all is well, and they’ll develop some chronic disease that will prove fatal. Whatever are we going to do about that? I’ve asked to resign, but was not allowed to. Yet I can do nothing here, and I worry and feel shame that won’t leave me for a moment. Where do I find respite? What do you think I should do? I have some stomach trouble, and will end here. 29

Xu replies to Zhao Shichun, a bravo and one of his favorite colleagues. He sounds a bit unsettled. We met Zhao earlier. I got your letter, detailing the military training you’ve undertaken. When a worthy man like you can do virile things like this, it puts all decadent pedants and eaters of idleness to shame, great shame. The imperial order regarding military leadership and deployment was miscopied, but the Grand Secretariat allowed me to correct it for you. However, gathering and then dispersing [troops] uses up a lot of

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resources. Perhaps you should follow the ministry’s communiqué and not do that. Where is Assistant Regional Commander Xu right now? How is he performing? If you want to put someone else in his place, you can do so right away by notifying the ministry that he hasn’t shown up. The problem with these types is that it’s easy to replace them, but hard to ensure that the replacement is the better man. You served in the Bureau of Operations, so surely you have some feelings about this. I hear the troops that [Shang Dajie, 1489–1553] recruited are teachable, but unfortunately there’s no one to lead them. [Wang Yu] has a good mind and will, but I’m afraid southerners aren’t accustomed to military affairs. I hope you can have a talk with him, not just for his sake, but for yours too. 30

It might be explained here that Zhao was probably serving as assistant surveillance commissioner for Shandong Province when Xu wrote this letter. Shang Dajie’s troops were leaderless because Qiu Luan had him imprisoned for insubordination after the 1550 raid. Xu wrote Zhao again, with the apparent aim of keeping his mind on the game. I wasn’t able to escort you east, and here I sit in West Park in peace with plenty of food, while you brave the heat, put on armor, grab a weapon, and place yourself at the head of the troops. This shames and upsets me. I’ve long admired you as a learned man who really does his job. The emperor knows all about your stout bravery, and just doesn’t want to place you in a position where you’d be of no use. That’s why he didn’t keep you here. Gubeikou is close to Beijing, and the emperor watches it carefully. If the raiders come through Gubeikou and then go east to Lengkou, you’ll have to obey the ruler and hold the place. Don’t let yourself be easily sent elsewhere and so violate the ruler’s trust in you. Reports say the Lu horsemen get through rugged terrain as though it were level ground. Gubeikou is a road to the Lu, but not the only one, as we saw last year. Don’t mind that there are so many reserve troops. They may not be good enough for you to lead them at the front, but they add to our overall strength. Your ancestors led troops for the dynasty and were surely aware of this. I speak out of place here, but I rely on our friendship for forgiveness. 31

Obviously Xu saw it as his job to keep his friend Zhao Shichun resigned to a position that he didn’t much like. And he freely uses

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Jiajing’s authority as a resource in fortifying his argument and making it persuasive. He writes Zhao again. “The messenger arrived, and I learn you’ve stationed troops at Tongzhou. I send you greetings in this summer rain, which makes me think on our separation. It’s long been the case that a pure and just world will be infested by troubles brought on by small men who have corrupted their tasks, giving worthy men cause for deep distress. . . . The emperor is very merciful, and can only put up with it.” Here Xu Jie alludes to the state of affairs as influenced by Chief Grand Secretary Yan Song, whose appointments and promotions machine was built on corruption, plus an eye for effectiveness, and who usually got Jiajing to go along. Xu went on to relate some personal views of pending appointments, and then he turned to frontier matters: Datong has just reported a Lu raid on Liaodong. Right now there are floods in Liaodong and communications have slowed. I believe [the Lu] are at Xifengkou. You might secretly send a knowledgeable agent to go look at the Xifengkou road and see where they’re headed. This year the Ordos Lu haven’t crossed the Yellow River, and it’s only the branch led by Badur [Altan Khan’s brother] that’s gone east. Altan is nursing wounds and didn’t accompany him. So the bandits are weak and can be defeated. I’ll stop here until I get more reports. 32

Here, Xu Jie’s access to military intelligence (plus other remarks I’ve eliminated) indicates that the year is 1552, when he was made a grand secretary, with authorization to “participate in critical matters.” He freely shares what he knows with his friend and colleague Zhao Shichun. Here he is writing Zhao again, with advice as to what he should be doing and why. The ministry has received an imperial order for you to move your troops back to their proper location. If you want a short rest, you should notify [He Dong, 1490–1573, supreme commander for the JiLiao frontier garrisons], and just be ready to respond to any emergencies. The top general of these troops didn’t get along with his superior who wanted to get him dismissed, but I thought he definitely should not be dismissed, and I was able to negotiate and get an order to that effect. You should focus all your efforts on nurturing and training your troops so they can prove truly effective. Your pro-

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posal for military farms is surely beneficial fiscally, but I fear the ranks are too full of rich bravos who couldn’t stand the labor, while recently our officials are too fond of ignorant discussion and that just gets disruptive arguments going. Think carefully about that. We’ll talk about all this again in the fall. 33

Xu Jie seems to refer in this letter to He Dong’s refusal to agree to Qiu Luan’s plan to launch an invasion across the frontier into the territory of the Uriyangkhad, who were occasional Ming allies. Jiajing was indeed persuaded to reject the plan. He Dong owed his appointment to this position to Xu Jie’s earlier recommendation. Xu here makes no secret of his skill at high-level maneuver and shows short patience with the open discussion and debate that he normally supported. In a subsequent letter to Zhao Shichun, Xu Jie briefs him on the current situation: I’m informed that the Lu bandits are fighting each other, so it looks as though this year luck will run with us and we’ll be all right. You’ll recently have heard of our shift in policy. We’ve abolished the supreme command and we’ve split in two the command of capital and frontier forces. That is in accordance with my memorial. Our ruler has acted on it, and there’s been a lunar eclipse, which seems to portend something bad for the Lu chief. Many thanks for your fine essay on crooked teaching, but I’m just now overworked and can’t reply to it. Shi Chen has been appointed as the new commander. I enclose the announcement. 34

What has happened is that the controversial generalissimo Qiu Luan has died of a tumor, and Jiajing was persuaded not to give anyone else the total powers of unified command and privileged access to the emperor that Qiu had enjoyed. Soon Lu Bing’s interrogation of two of Qiu’s housemen under torture revealed Qiu’s earlier bribing of Altan, and so Qiu was posthumously executed for treason. Zhao himself was violently opposed to Qiu Luan, and he wrote a detailed and scathing account of Qiu and his deserved demise. Here, in his letter, Xu made sure Zhao knew of his own role in splitting the powers Qiu had wielded. It was usually to officials out of office that Xu expressed the strains his position had on him personally. Xiong Jie (1478–1554) had been Xu’s boss earlier in the Ministry of Personnel, and he was now in retire-

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ment, living at home in Jiangxi, reading the Capital Gazette (Dibao), often with dismay at ongoing developments. Xu wrote him: Last month your grandson came and delivered your letter, and I am much obliged for your kind remarks. Right now China is in dire straits, while the northern Lu run rampant. I guess the best statesmen of the past would weep every day over the situation. Our high officials reckon bribery as capability, banqueting as success. We are like a sick man afflicted inside and out, while a mediocre doctor sees that the patient can still talk and move and concludes he’s all right. How can we hope for the recovery of such a patient? Despite my shallow ignorance I have this important position, and I worry day and night, and exert every ounce of my mind and strength to fixing problems as they arise. But I find myself hampered and frustrated at every turn. Like recently, we abolished Qiu Luan’s supreme headquarters, and split its power into capital and frontier components. That was all at my urging. The emperor fortunately agreed to it. However, the men being considered as Qiu Luan’s replacements aren’t exactly worthy; and while military power has been split, the discussion about how to handle it hasn’t been on target. I’ve contested these things as forcefully as I can, but it’s all still up in the air. It’s hard changing the ruler’s mind, but just as hard changing the officials’ minds. Maybe you can instruct me. I send this by way of your younger brother as he departs. My best regards. 35

Xu’s complaint about certain high officials is surely aimed at Yan Song and his son Yan Shifan and their corruption-ridden machine. Again, he credits himself with dividing Qiu Luan’s powers, a move popular with many of his friends in government. A frank letter to He Dong (1490–1573) discusses northern frontier defense. He Dong was, as noted above, a man Xu Jie had recommended and was supreme commander for Ji-Liao from 1550 to 1553. I was recently talking with Regional Commanders Liu and Zhao about camp affairs, and we happened to mention Jizhou. Then unexpectedly they were reassigned. But our ideas I did convey orally to the messenger, and I suppose he’s already informed you. Baoding was originally under your control, so if you want to select some crack troops to serve under you, you can either memorialize in full or else just send a notice directly there, either way is all right. Shi Chen is just an old soldier. Do you think I value him so much that I don’t

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want him under your command? He’s a soldier from the hereditary guards, not a Jizhou militiaman, so he’s not attuned to matters. Moreover last year he memorialized in full, and received an imperial directive to defend Gubeikou and Baiyangkou, so how does that conflict with his being under your command? Why don’t you use your greater talent to control and direct him? Why put him [back] in the guards? That just lets him avoid his responsibility. If Shi Chen is too physically weak to do the job, and you have a good and brave replacement for him, then for the sake of the dynasty and people you should at once send up a memorial of protest and request the change so the ministry can act on it. Then if in future there is some negligence there where you are, you’ll have no regrets about it. You really shouldn’t keep people under your command who aren’t up to the task, as that might cause blunders. I’ve received the exceptional beneficence of the ruler, and have had a long friendship with you, in good times and bad, so I must frankly state to you what’s on my mind. 36

Xu Jie’s concern here was to untangle lines of command and authority and help his civilian friend deal with a difficult military commander, Shi Chen, mentioned above in a letter to Zhao Shichun. He Dong had earlier personally inspected and reorganized the entire Great Wall frontier, and at Ji-Liao he built more walls and successfully fought the raiders. He and Xu Jie had been in complete agreement about the folly of Qiu Luan’s desire to attack the Uriyangkhad; they were a soft target for Qiu and were unfairly blamed for acting as guides for Altan Khan’s deep raid of 1550. 37 Xu writes Zhao Shichun again: “I’m waiting for the ministry to respond to your memorial. After they’re done, I’ll get it put into an imperial order. As to measuring the right dosages of mildness and sternness, and anticipating crises, that’s up to you. The adage says: ‘go slow when pulling teeth.’ That’s a good approach.” Xu switches the topic: What Nie Bao said and Tang Shunzhi proposed show they don’t know you, but that doesn’t mean they don’t care for you. It’s all right that they opposed your ideas and cut your verbiage. Zhang Jian and the others got their imperial orders before hearing criticism; nothing can be done about it now, maybe later. I hear the two newly appointed assistant regional commanders are brave and stout. Try them out and see what they’re like. As for the action with respect to the

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hereditary guards, you need to plan. Make sure the bandits have crossed the frontier before you take to the road. The bandits are going to raid east of Xuan-Da, but if you leave too soon, they’ll just take advantage of that and go back west. Liu Chenghui has been detailed to defend the old camps and forts, and I hope you’ll note that. I’ll stop here. 38

Zhang Jian was posted to Datong in 1554. Zhao Shichun was sent to Shanxi as grand coordinator in 1553; there, in January 1554, he rashly donned armor and led a mounted counterattack on the raiders. He was ambushed, his men were routed, and Zhao had to be hauled up by rope from a cistern where he’d hidden. He was impeached and sent home in disgrace. 39 Wang Yu was mentioned earlier in a letter to Zhao Shichun as a southerner unused to military affairs. Despite this deficiency, he occupied a series of grand coordinator posts over the years 1553 to 1555: Zhejiang, Datong, Ji-Liao, Baoding. Xu’s letter finds him in Zhejiang. He scolded Wang for his poor leadership and suggested what he should be doing. Whenever I hear of bandits on the rampage, I tremble both for the dynasty and for you. The reason our forces keep getting beaten is not for lack of troops, but for lack of good leadership. How can they march forth without sending out scouts first? How can they be so ignorant of the enemy and of themselves, and go off so nonchalantly into peril? The “wolf troops” [fighters recruited from the ethnic minorities of the southwest] are brave, but I hope you’ll pay attention to defense, and not overuse them, as you won’t be able to prevent them from getting beaten again. I hear Shen Xiyi is an old and experienced commander; you should memorialize and get him recalled from retirement. I also hear there’s a certain Ding Sen from Wuyi [county in Zhejiang] who knows astrology and geography and is skilled in military affairs; you should invite him in politely and ask his advice. What do you think? We can only go forward, not back. I earnestly hope you’ll give every effort. 40

Shen Xiyi was a very capable officer who had once served under Wang Yangming in Guangxi. Xu replied again to Wang Yu, since shifted from Zhejiang a thousand miles north to Datong, rather a puzzling personnel move. Xu wished

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him well and informed him that the situation in Datong was looking favorable: I got your letter, and was pleased to hear of your new assignment. This year the Lu have been fighting each other and haven’t raided us. And there’s been a superb harvest at Yunzhong. You should take advantage of this, and of the court’s sending out officials to take charge, to make a thorough reform of the military. General Ma Fang’s family troops [jiading, “personal housemen”] are stout fellows and surrendered Lu; gathered, they’re troops, scattered, they turn outlaw. But it’s usual for soldiers to be coarse and violent, just let that go. I hope you’ll handle them well. 41

Ma Fang (1517–1581) was an exceptionally good fighter and commander with a promising future still ahead of him. Xu valued him highly, even though he was, as he noted elsewhere, totally illiterate. In 1555, Wang Yu was reassigned yet again, this time from Datong to the Ji-Liao sector, as supreme commander. Xu just missed seeing him face to face in Beijing and so sent this letter, which related in great detail the current state of affairs along that sector of the frontier and what Wang might try to undertake there: “I much regret not seeing you when your cart passed through Beijing the other day. But [Lu Bing] and my son told me about you, and Luo Kai [unidentified] gave a full account of your administration at Datong. Not only can the court congratulate itself on making a good appointment, but the country can rely on you too.” Xu then goes on to brief Wang on what he needs to do at JiLiao. Right now the Lu horsemen have gone back, the spring grass will emerge, and the horses will be thin. But come fall, and they’ll think up new plans to raid. I hear that Khakhači’s tribe [one of the Uriyangkhad] was utterly plundered by the Lu, and that area is suddenly empty. The grass and water there are excellent, and if the Lu should ever occupy it, we and they will be direct neighbors, and we’ll be on permanent alert. Last year, Wang Dayong [1479–1553, grand coordinator at Datong] and Zhang Yizhai [unidentified] said there was a certain Wuling mountain outside the frontier, and if we take and hold that, then from Gubeikou to Xifengkou it’s only three hundred li, as compared to seven hundred li as at present. It’s like cutting through an arc. South of Wuling are Khakhači’s pastures, which we

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couldn’t seize earlier because it was his. Now it seems Heaven has given it to us. I hope you’ll check this out and grab the opportunity. If you can, move troops there to occupy it, and make plans. I hear that the mountain is steep, the approaches few, and the roads narrow. I calculate that the border wall you’ll need to build would be only thirty to fifty li, and you would only need to build forts by the river to house the troops. If you can’t move troops there, then call in any subordinate tribes [of the Uriyangkhad] that want to live there, have them help with the wall building, and have them defend it as an outer hedge for us. This is a very important matter, but what I know of it is by report, as I haven’t seen it for myself. I rely totally on you to give it your attention. 42

Despite Xu’s friendly thoughts and suggestions, Wang Yu came to a bad end. To jump a bit ahead of the story, Wang was alternately in and out of Jiajing’s favor—at times rewarded for his work, but at other times angrily penalized for his failures. In April 1559, Altan Khan’s estranged son, Sengge Düüreng (whom the Chinese knew as Xin’ai), led a major raid westward across the Luan River into northeast China, plundered Jizhou and three nearby counties, and after five days in China withdrew to the steppes, meanwhile creating another panic in Beijing akin to that of 1550. Wang Yu did nothing to stop it. Jiajing, who had favored him for so long, considered the debacle a personal betrayal and had him arrested. Wang Yu’s sons pleaded with Yan Song, hoping for his intercession. But Yan Song and his son disliked Wang Yu, and they refused to help. On Jiajing’s personal orders, Wang Yu was publicly executed on November 17, 1560. 43 Xu writes Li Youchi (unidentified). Li was on duty in the Datong area, and Xu was both closely involved in and perplexed about personnel matters there. “I’ve read your three far-reaching plans. Where is that so-called Lamplighter Buddha? Can you catch him and put him to use for us?” Xu turns from some sort of joke to a serious note on northern frontier affairs: The family troops [personal military housemen] are best led by Ma Fang. But I hear Mozhai [unidentified] won’t put them under Ma, because he’s presently an assistant regional commander. But if someone unused to military command is given it on the spot, the results will likely be bad. You know Ma to be a superb general. Make a request to give him exclusive command of family troops, and appoint

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another assistant regional commander for Yanghe. If the family troops are too few, have Ma Fang recruit more, and look everywhere for escapees and feed them. What do you think? I recall Luo Kai saying he knew of someone very close to Zhou Yuan who is usable. I don’t know if he meant Zhang Hui or not. . . . Here I’ve been told that Qi and Han haven’t won the troops’ minds. Is that really so? Or is that just an excuse for their avoiding their duty? Why not send me a detailed secret report on what happened the twenty-fourth of the seventh month? I’d appreciate that. 44

Xu Jie was surprisingly closely concerned for the details of military personnel management on the frontier, with a special eye out for Ma Fang’s benefit. Another letter to Li Youchi followed. The Ma Fang matter came up because the ministry mistakenly thought it was Liu Huan who was leading the family troops. So they made the switch. Now it’s up to the supreme commander to put all the family troops under Ma Fang. Since the Lu fear Ma Fang, he must be protected, so that we’re always in a position where we have a tiger and leopard on the hill. If you reduce his troops, or lightly send him over the frontier and he gets beaten, then the Lu aggressiveness will skyrocket. We need to keep our battle merit and their killing and looting together in the same discussion. I hope you think this through again. 45

There is another letter to Wang Yu, now supreme commander at JiLiao, his demise soon to come. This letter shows that, from Xu Jie’s perspective, the frontier and coastal crises were in some ways interconnected. “Jiangnan has been severely damaged by the Wokou [SinoJapanese raiders],” he writes: You’ll be concerned about that, both for the sake of the state and your home area [Taicang] as well. Yang Yi [supreme commander of coastal Zhe-Zhi, i.e., Zhejiang and Nan Zhili, in 1555–1556] has memorialized asking for northern troops. The ministry discussed this, and at first wanted you to pick two hundred men from Shuntian and eight hundred from Zhen-Bao. Now they’ve dropped Shuntian and want to pick five hundred men each from the Baohe and Zhen-Shun militias. This is because it would be hard to move the troops at JiYong. My own thought is that the Baohe troops are hereditary guards. If you think things are quiet on the frontier, then act at once

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on the ministry’s order. If you still must maintain defenses, then notify Ai Xichun [grand coordinator at Baoding] and have him pick five hundred men from his unit, and put them together with the five hundred from Zhen-Shun, making a thousand in all. Or, select three hundred from Ai’s unit, plus two hundred from Baohe, however you reckon is best. I hear that officer Huo Guandao of the Baohe army and Cao Xun of [Ai’s] unit are usable, and I ask you to appoint them to make the picks and lead the forces off [to the south]. As to the officers at Baohe, I don’t know who’s usable, or who could serve as overall commander. I expect you to make that choice. When people in desperate straits scream for help, my emotions are divided between an urge to help and the thought that it’s not my responsibility. Please give this matter your attention. 46

As things turned out, Yang Yi was unable to control the armies he requested from all over China and was soon impeached, dismissed, and replaced as supreme commander by the redoubtable Hu Zongxian. Xu did all he could to help Yang Yi, to no avail. Xu writes Li Youchi again. His thoughts now focus on food supply and local military mobilization. First he praises Li, no doubt to lift his morale. “Your memorial said just what the ruler wanted to hear, and he sent a messenger immediately to [tell you to] proceed. Then he ordered a merit reward for Dong Yikui. Dong’s receiving such exceptional favor shows that you’ve developed a good insight into the ruler’s mind. Congratulations!” Xu then turns to the main topic: I hear there’s a food shortage in your area. During the summer, the emperor ordered the Ministry of Revenue to buy wheat to feed the army, so the ministry sent officials to buy three hundred thousand piculs. But they saw that the fall harvest at the two frontier posts looked good, so they used that for monthly rations for the capital army, and proposed sending three hundred thousand piculs of rice in the capital granaries to the two frontier posts. This should be easy to do. Think about it. I also hear that the rich commoners in each of the walled forts, concerned about the Lu threat, have volunteered to make stout soldiers of their housemen, and prepare saddle horses and weapons for defense purposes. They’re looking for a response from the ruler so they can impress all their neighbors with it. When you go out on inspection tour, check and see if people are really willing to do this. If they are, then discuss the particulars and set up a

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rewards schedule and memorialize this. I’ll help you. I’m so relieved that affairs in the west are under control. I look forward to the details. 47

Yang Bo (1509–1574), recently appointed minister of war after Nie Bao’s ouster in March 1555, was still somewhere out on the frontier when Xu Jie wrote him. Yang was Wang Yu’s predecessor as supreme commander at Ji-Liao. Xu’s letter shows his intimate relationship with this famous and well-regarded official and suggests how Xu could use, underhandedly but creatively, his position at the center of communications to move things in desired directions. Lu Bing’s messengers just left carrying my report to you; please excuse me for expressing my feelings in it. What you did at Xuan-Da was like what the physicians do with a critical case—treat the symptoms. The ruler is paying close attention to things. The recent Ministry of War discussions of defense plans are either incomplete or inoperable. I hope you’ll speak out fully. If you find that difficult, then I hope you’ll inform me secretly, and I’ll pass it on. The aim is to pacify that defense post to meet the ruler’s expectations. The two Embroidered-Uniform guards are both loyal and righteous; Lu Bing selected them and sends them. You can tell them everything. I’ll stop here. 48

Yang Bo was a frontier official of wide experience. Xu Jie replied to Yang’s reply: I got your letter. I ventured to ask you for your reconstruction plans, and have your reply. Fortunately you not only spoke, you acted. You need to tell the local authorities about issuing the requisite amounts of cash and grain. The guidelines for making the big pianxiangche [“war carts”] you can find in detail in the Li Zhongding gong ji. Are the carts they make in Xuanfu similar? How would it be if you took another look and made sure they’re right for fighting the Lu? All the firearms and the gunpowder manufactured by the palace eunuchs are useless. I’m told that the Shanxi firearms are the best. Can you get some of their artisans to make them? Also they say the walls and forts at Xuan-Da are not as solid and defensible as those at Yan-Sui. Is that because of a soil difference? Or a difference in the builders? Please let me know. 49

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Xu writes Yang Xuan, who was apparently at the time surveillance vice commissioner for Shanxi Province. Yang was a careless bureaucrat, and Xu was frustrated with him: I’ve seen your financial report. You have an important job, and the emperor is placing his hopes on you, and many people rely on you. I’m relieved by your three replies. You’ve recently reduced the unit troops and added them to those being led [south to fight the pirates, perhaps]. That’s good. But there’s a catch here. If you’re not careful, the new replacements won’t be usable, while the veterans will be weak. I want you to rethink this and plan accordingly. The cash and grain needed for this year are how much for local troops, how much for guest troops? This is outlay. How much income is there from military farms and salt vouchers? How much does each province deliver? How much does the Ministry of Revenue have to make up? These are income. What are the present shortfalls in annual deliveries of grain from the provinces? You need a separate log for easy reference on income. How much from the military farms and salt vouchers can you spend, and how much provincial frontier grain? I await the details. I hasten to close. 50

It is perhaps symptomatic of the chronic deficiencies in Ming frontier defense that a responsible official such as Yang Xuan would need schooling in the rudiments of financial accounting from a grand secretary back in Beijing. Xu replies to Lin Mouhe, an official serving in some capacity at Xuan-Da on the frontier. Serious trouble was brewing. Xu was not sure how to proceed: The adage has it that resistance to attack begins with putting our own side in order. What you wrote is plans for ordering our side. These should be carried out. There is no better plan than yours: to call for volunteers, make every man a fighter, every family a defender, to keep the Lu at bay. I’m indeed impressed. Your series of memorials on Datong affairs and how to deal with them cover everything comprehensively. Xuanfu is closer to Beijing than Datong is, and the Lu who are presently giving the Right Guard trouble plan to hit Dushikou. Unless something is done about it right away, the trouble will intensify. I hope you’ll gird up and make a temporary move east to handle it. I recently got a letter from Zhu, supervising secretary for the Ministry of War, who gives an apparently full discussion of the

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situation at Xuanfu, and I’d urge that you consult with him. Shi Lin has been strongly commended, but he’s a fighting general, full of spirit, and may not be a capable administrator. It would be good if you would instruct him. 51

Xu writes Yang Bo again. Clearly the northern defenses are in a ragged state still, and Yang’s help is desperately needed to change things. A few days ago I heard of your successful sortie into the steppes. This is a move I’ve always insisted that all the frontier commanders should undertake. Unfortunately no one has been able to do it until now, and I very much admire what you’ve done. The Lu can’t make deep raids, just as you figured. But I’m deeply worried about Jizhen. The Lu are going to hit it again in the fall. Inside, [our officials] use comprehensive inspection as an excuse to extort goods, while outside they use troop support and fortification repair expenses as sources for the bribes they circulate. So our frontier defenses are never ready, and our soldiers’ morale never rises. This is a grave failing. Where will it end? I dare say this only to you. Forgive me. 52

Xu takes the initiative and writes Li Wenjin (1508–1562), supreme commander at Xuan-Da in 1561–1562. His tone is urgent. The entire defense strategy is in danger of collapse, and something must be done fast. Recently the emperor received Yang Xuan’s memorial, and he is eager to provide more food for the troops there. My own thought is that Jizhen is the dynasty’s spine, while Xuan-Da is its right armpit. Both are crucial areas. But discussants constantly value them differently, and consider Lu raids on Xuan-Da as routine, which is both laughable and lamentable. So I asked the ruler to include an investigation of Xuan-Da in his edict, which fortunately he did. Now a messenger has returned, but I fear he didn’t learn much about local conditions. I really must ask you to break with routine and send up an urgent statement that will win the ruler’s approval, as he favors breaking precedents. It won’t be an empty gesture. I gather that food shortage is not the only problem at Xuan-Da. A thorough reform is essential. When your memorial arrives, I’ll do everything in my power to support it. I hear Li Xian is near death, and wonder who could replace him? I await your reply. 53

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One can read from this letter that Xu Jie’s influence with Jiajing has risen, that he is using the emperor as a vital power resource in support of his efforts to effect some degree of positive change in Ming China’s defense posture along the northern frontier, and he wants Li Wenjin to know that. The scene in the north under Yan Song’s overall supervision has been one of sloth and corruption, perpetuating a state of war in which opportunities abound for officials and military leaders to manipulate defense funds, supplies, and construction costs for personal profit and advantage. A letter to Yang Wei is very abrupt. Xu Jie, when he wrote it, had replaced Yan Song as chief grand secretary and had a freer hand. Yang was grand coordinator at Xuanfu in 1563–1564. Xu tells Yang Wei how to do his job: When people of China [Zhongguo] rebel and become bandits, they must be exterminated. And all the more so if they’re under the direction of foreigners. But if you indict [our] military commanders for encouraging killing and letting the bandits destroy people, that’s surely wrong. Yet if you conceal all the facts and leave cause for later accusation, that’s wrong too. You should just report your observations and in your merit evaluations ascribe all that to the Lu leaders, and make some discriminatory rankings [of our generals], that would seem to be the fair thing. This is my superficial view. Think about it again. 54

Xu writes Wang Zhigao, grand coordinator at Liaodong from 1562 to 1564. The Ming defenses there were in about as sad a condition as those at Xuan-Da, and Xu advises Wang as to what needs to be done there. The Liaozuo area is as impoverished as you say. So it’s impossible to get results. But it’s not just natural disaster that has brought this frontier post to such a sad state. Human action is involved too. For example, the silver stock of 240,000 taels, accumulated over a century, has in three to five years all been spent on official entertainment. Heaven will surely destroy those involved! Why haven’t they incurred even the slightest criticism? I would like to join you in devising ways to clean this up with loyalty and sincerity. If for two or three years we fix the ruins and replenish the vacancies, things will look

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better. We’re friends, but because this matter affects the dynasty, I mention these things. Forgive me. 55

Xu replies to a letter from Wang Zhigao. “I read what you said about Yang Zhao. But it wasn’t just Yang Zhao himself who did so well; it was you who were able to use him. It’s up to us to move the realm’s affairs along.” After this explanation of why high officials are essential to national security, Xu turns to issues of financing economic recovery in Liaodong: Yang Xuan has good ideas about Liaozuo. But our finances have shrunk, and reducing expenses is not going to work. If you give refugees an enticement of ten taels per family to come back, I’m afraid the local officials won’t be able to pay that. For now, how would it be to call back the Liao refugees, allot them land, oxen, and seed, excuse their back taxes, and cancel three years of new taxes? I wrote a letter to Yang Xuan asking him to discuss this in detail with you. Has he done that? I await your reply. 56

Xu Jie replies to Yang Xuan and scolds him for his awful administration and for his petulant whining: Nothing has been heard here of what you say about Tongzhou. I don’t know where you got that [information]. Maybe you heard some disputant say it. I want you to check that again carefully. As for the discussion about military rations at Yongping, the ministry says two things: one, you shouldn’t get the provincial surveillance commissioners to authorize that, and then have the Ministry of Revenue carry it out, because that violates procedures; two, you must calculate on the basis of the original troop quota only, and you shouldn’t anticipate food needs for troops that haven’t yet been assigned, because that opens the door to waste. Actual collections are the main thing. You shouldn’t add the uncollected tax increase on grain to the allowed-for tax remissions and list these outside the actual collection. This just lets the local officials avoid their duty and opens the way for cheats to horn in. I have no other aim here than to get you to confer on this and get it right.

Xu moves on to another scolding, followed by a self-revelation and sound advice:

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Gao Yao [minister of revenue, 1560–1567] outranks you; how would he benefit by your removal? Think about it. For years, I’ve tried to single out men of talent and reform abuses in government, and I’ve made people unhappy. People who don’t know me slander me recklessly. I not only hear about this, I get it to my face. I have to keep it in mind that the realm’s affairs are important and just put up with it and not get angry over it or distracted by it. I can only rely on Heaven to encourage the ruler’s favor and not remove his protection. That keeps the attackers at bay. Just consider: Are people’s minds now what they were back in the Golden Age? How can you expect them to fully agree with you? Every day you occupy a post, you must every day do what the post requires. You must not betray the ruler, nor abandon your learning. Even naïve men trust themselves on this. But if they can’t stand being provoked, then there’s something wrong with their learning. That just becomes a lever to heighten the obloquy. Think it over carefully. 57

Thus, for ten years, from 1552 to 1562, Xu Jie as a grand secretary under the chieftaincy of Yan Song focused much of his time and attention on issues relating to national security along the northern frontier, especially the garrisons at Xuan-Da and Ji-Liao, closest to Beijing; and even more to the situation along the coast, as we’ll see in the next chapter. We take up northern frontier raids further in chapter 4, on Xu’s term as chief grand secretary. Xu occupied a strategic place in a large bureaucratic network, read much of the incoming memorials and other reports, conferred with colleagues in the key Ministries of War, Personnel, and Revenue, and suggested how the emperor should respond to requests for authorizations to proceed coming in from the field. In addition, he responded to the emperor’s queries put to the grand secretaries jointly or to him personally. Xu’s replies to questions coming from the throne, called zoudui, number some 150, and these, together with the letters he sent to officials out in the field, offer a very good view into how the imperial Ming state coped with what appeared to be permanent war and violence along two of its major interfaces with the outside world. The powers and functions of the grand secretaries were ill defined. Most of them were content to fulfill their one certain duty, which was to sit at their desks and passively draft imperial replies to incoming memo-

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rials from the bureaucracy. Xu Jie, by contrast, unbidden, simply took it upon himself as a junior grand secretary to seek favor with Jiajing and step into the leadership void created by the aging Yan Song’s complacency. How might one step up and venture to steer Ming China through all the hidden pitfalls and unremitting dangers it faced on its northern frontier? Xu’s letters show how one could accomplish that by a close reading of all incoming memorials and reports, a careful study of all the difficult problems these raised, and a formulation of precise and imaginative suggestions as to how to deal with the whole range of thorny troubles involving troop recruitment, training, leadership, supply, and strategy—praising here and scolding there, as the situation required. It was no soft job. The demands were unrelenting. Yet Xu Jie was eager, even hungry, to take them on. Xu’s job demanded candid consultations with the emperor as well as letters to officials in the field. A flurry of communications with Jiajing took place in 1552, in the aftermath of the death and posthumous condemnation of generalissimo Qiu Luan. Here, Xu Jie’s determined but often unavailing struggle to eliminate corruption in frontier defense becomes evident, as does his determination to keep Xuan-Da as a bulwark in the protection of Beijing and not abandon it or deprive it of troops and supplies. That’s why he urged, successfully, that Qiu Luan’s powers be split, with Xuan-Da having a limited offensive capability while troops posted nearer Beijing concentrated on defense, each under its own separate command structure. He told Jiajing that many of Qiu Luan’s adherents continued in positions of authority; that they routinely sent up false reports; and that the Lu livelihood required cooperation with border Chinese. In December 1552, Xu reported to the ruler that China’s defenses were in complete disarray, with Datong in ruins, Jizhen isolated and weak, troops in and around Beijing unfit for any kind of action. Capital troops, he said, normally assigned to camps, were instead to be found trading in the markets or milling about the yamens of officials. While in training, they’re unfed and grow angry. The officials defer action. What the ruler must do, Xu advised, is impose clear rules, offer rewards, and provide food. They could afford to pay for all this if they went through the camps and dismissed up to ten thousand old and unfit soldiers, using the savings to benefit the trainees. 58

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Perhaps some improvements were then made, but big defensive gaps remained. Three years later, in July 1555, Xu reported to Jiajing: Recently I’ve checked into the two garrisons of Xuanfu and Datong. [I’m told] the frontier wall is in ruins, the beacons unlit, so the Lubandits come and go without hindrance. Plus inside traitors lure them in and take down many of the fortified villages. The Lu camp is at Datong now, and we don’t know what their plans are. Our troops are starving, oppressed by greedy and cruel [commanders], and can’t survive, so they desert in a stream. I’m not sure how accurate this information is, but the implications of it are grave and I must let you know about it. I would urge you to send a secret agent from the Beijing police to go check and get the facts, so we can act.

The rest of what Xu offered Jiajing was a detailed quantitative breakdown of the cost of buying and shipping food to Xuan-Da and an imaginative suggestion of how the Ministry of Revenue might go about paying for it. 59 Beside all his other interests—ethical philosophy, rites, personnel management, and security strategy—Xu Jie had an aptitude for financial matters and accounting. No wonder that he should have become a grand secretary. Xuan-Da for years remained a war zone. No one in Beijing, Xu Jie included, seems to have thought about how to put an end to it. Yan Song proposed to pull out altogether, simply abandon the region to the raiders, and reposition the Xuan-Da troops closer to Beijing. That made some sense. Xu Jie, however, would have none of it and effectively argued against it. Reports of what life was really like for civilians, soldiers, and raiders at ground level in Xuan-Da are, unfortunately, scarce; but Xu’s remarks sketch in a partial picture. In October 1561, Xu advised the ruler that the fortified villages had been issued firearms and had been warned not to make offensive strikes. Why? If defense isn’t tight, the bandits can get through, and even if we beat them in an offensive strike, they’ll already have caused destruction in the areas they’ve raided, carrying off young men, plus oxen, horses, and weapons to enhance their power. The Lu horsemen come and go like wind and rain, while it’s hard for us to concentrate forces to oppose them, and meanwhile the bandits will have already looted and killed and gone. That’s just useless effort and expense. Your

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warning to defend and not lightly go on offense is spot-on. I’ll have the Grand Secretariat copy your statement for general circulation. 60

A few days later, Xu said to Jiajing that “this year the bandits’ plans have changed; they’re following the advice of Chinese defectors in conducting their raids. But our frontier officials have, under your guidance, taken precautions and have as of now blocked their entry.” Xu then gave the ruler some new facts: I understand that in recent years some troops and people have been deluded by heterodox religion, while others have been abused by the officials, and in both cases they have fled to the bandits. Many others have been abducted. . . . And our defenders must have food. XuanDa reports an extreme lack of food. The Ministry of Revenue says they’ve issued plenty, but corruption prevents it from getting there. I would urge you to tell the Ministries of Revenue and War to check up on this and rectify it. 61

Jiajing had a follow-up question, to which Xu explained that besides corruption, grain delivery shortfalls had two other causes: taxpayer delinquency and silver purchase delays, after rice prices had risen and less could be bought with the same issuance of silver. Xu’s advice was that too many officials are dishonest; that a vice minister who is honest and experienced in financial matters should be sent first to Jizhen and then to Xuan-Da, prosecute corrupt officials, and correct the other abuses. That should solve it. 62 Shortfalls were still noted in the spring of 1562; Xu thought confiscating cash and grain from corrupt officials should suffice to make up the deficit. 63 The Xuan-Da situation improved under the administration of Jiang Dong, supreme commander from 1562 until his death in 1565. Xu was initially suspicious of him but changed his mind after Jiang helped break Altan Khan’s siege of the military city of the Datong Right Guards, beat off one of Sengge Düüreng’s raids, and made efforts to rebuild the fortified villages. The raiders then moved off to find opportunities elsewhere. 64 Altan Khan shifted his attention west toward Gansu, Qinghai, Tibetan territory, and began his love affair with the Tibetan Buddhist Yellow Hat (Gelukpa) church. Meanwhile, his son Sengge Düüreng and younger brother Badur moved their bases eastward and set their sights on raiding Ji-Liao. In October and November 1563, the

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raiders mounted a huge assault on Jizhen and looted the counties of Shunyi and Sanhe, reaching as far as the grain transport hub of Tongzhou and the outer gates of Beijing itself. Jiajing could see from inside West Park the flickering nighttime reflections in the clouds of big fires the raiders had set. There was panic in Beijing. Xu Jie hurriedly arranged to have the ruler order Jiang Dong, General Ma Fang, and others to come with their troops from Xuan-Da to help in Beijing’s defense. By mid-November, after eight days in China, the raiders returned north to the steppes. The supreme commander for Ji-Liao, whose bumbling incompetence had allowed such a deep raid to occur, was none other than the hapless Yang Xuan, whom Xu Jie had scolded and tried to guide earlier on. Arrested and tried, Yang was publicly executed, just like Wang Yu in 1560. 65 Xu Jie served as chief grand secretary from Yan Song’s dismissal in 1562 until he himself resigned and returned home to Huating in 1568. While many officials, including many corrupt ones, lost Yan Song, their protector, and Xu was at last free to deal unobstructed with Jiajing, it cannot be said that Ming China’s posture along the northern frontier changed very much. There was some improvement: no later raid caught the Ming so unprepared as it was in 1550. Altan Khan, Sengge Düüreng, and their distant kinsman Tümen continued to raid here and there along the Great Wall line. The 1563 panic was followed by another in the fall of 1567, as Tümen invaded at Jizhen and Sengge at Xuanfu, and Beijing was put on military alert yet again. Failed Ming commanders were, as usual, arrested and executed. 66 What was required was a major policy change, but that would come about only in 1571 after Xu Jie’s retirement, when Altan Khan established something approaching a stable regime at Köke khoto (nowadays Hohhot in Inner Mongolia) and the Ming court, dominated by Xu Jie’s protégé, Chief Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng, opened formal tributary and trade relations with him. Xu Jie’s policy was simply to build, rebuild, adjust, and, wherever possible, improve China’s defense capabilities. He certainly felt any negotiation with the raiders could take place only when China was strong enough to dictate terms. Meanwhile, his file of communications with Jiajing and his letters to officials in the field show that he was so buried in the convoluted and interconnected details of de-

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fending the realm that he seldom had the leisure to reflect on the broader picture. As chief grand secretary, Xu’s letters to frontier officials continued to be full of questions, suggestions, promptings, scolding, and here and there well-earned praise. He was also, as ever, impatient with formal credentials and eager to find and boost talented men from the lower ranks. He had thoughts about where to post and how to deploy military units of various types, such as hereditary guards, special forces, local militias, generals’ personal housemen, and outfits called in from outside. How to supply and reward all these troops was a maddeningly hard problem. There were always the urgent needs that young recruits be trained and old ones beyond fighting age discharged. Corruption was always at hand, ready to cripple any effort either to manage things as they were or improve them. Mismanagement was endemic. Auditing was hit and miss. Xu tried to prod people into action and stand behind them as best he could. He tried to promote the best technology: he sent Liu Tao (Yang Xuan’s successor as supreme commander at Ji-Liao) a selection of southern fire arrows and another incendiary (a “fire-rat” 67 for igniting hay in moats and trenches) for him to experiment with. Despite years of piecemeal remedies, the situation at both Xuan-Da and Ji-Liao, Beijing’s outer defenses, remained precarious. Xu writes Zhao Bingran, supreme commander for Xuan-Da and Shanxi in 1565–1566: Earlier I sent a message via courier, which I suppose you’ve shared with your entourage. Now that we’ve cut relations with the Lu, they’ll definitely attack. But our troops and horses are weak and incapable of battle. It seems best that we concentrate on defense: fix walls and moats, train cavalry, store grain and fodder, prepare firearms, improve scouting and espionage. As soon as [the Lu] enter, gather in people and cattle, firm the walls and clear the countryside to put them in difficulty. So even if you capture and kill nobody, you’ll lose no territory, the Lu will suffer, and the merits and faults of the commanders can be assessed. You can also make opportunistic attacks on their laggards, but you’re well versed in border issues, and probably know all this. 68

In a letter to Zhang Ximing, grand coordinator at Liaodong in 1565–1566, Xu vents his concern that the Lu will invade via a weak

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spot, Nanshan, wedged between the Xuan-Da and Ji-Liao defense commands. He worries that the walls and ditches in place and on the drawing board at Nanshan aren’t enough in themselves to stop the raiders. “If the walls and ditches aren’t defended with troops,” he warns, the walls can be climbed and the ditches filled in. Some say we can omit that, and have troops hold the forts outside the walls, which will save men and horses and not waste grain. This seems all right, but the trouble is the two forts are three hundred paces apart, beyond the range of arrows and stones, and the Lu can slip through. Also there are only ten guardsmen per fort, and they’ll flee if the bandit group is large. So in a crisis, this is no improvement on the Nanshan option. In quiet times, the posting of men and horses here is pointless, and food a needless expense.

Xu had no solution of his own to offer. He reminded Zhang that supreme commanders, grand coordinators, and regional commanders have different responsibilities. He counseled Zhang to confer with his predecessor, Wang Zhigao, and plan carefully. 69 As chief grand secretary, Xu Jie talked often with Jiajing, especially in times when the Lu made deep raids and set the ruler’s nerves on edge, as in the fall of 1563. Most of their conversations focused on the intricate details of immediate defense needs. Late in 1563, however, Jiajing asked whether the second outside wall ringing the entirety of Beijing had been worth the effort and expense. Xu replied that it had: South of Beijing is a residential area where goods gather, and it must be protected. In 1550, the common people there panicked, but this year they all relied on the wall. In 1550, commoners from all four points of the compass fled into the city, while this year most of them stayed inside the outer wall, so the interior of Beijing was free of crowding and tumult. . . . Prior to the Chenghua era [1465–1487] there weren’t so many residents, so there was no need for such a wall. 70

Some years later, Xu was pleased to write an inscription for the walling of Zhangjiawan (Zhang Family Cove), showing again his firm belief in stout defenses. He described in beautiful detail how the project was accomplished:

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Sixty li [twenty miles] southeast of Beijing is a place called Zhangjiawan. Taxes from the whole realm gather here, as do the boats of officials coming to Beijing. Here they hire horses and carts and proceed by land to the capital. This is a major land and water junction. In the crisis of late 1563, Jiajing [dead as of the time of this writing] ordered capital troops to garrison it, and so the raiders didn’t dare attack it. But there was no wall, and the defenders couldn’t stay on full-time alert for very long. So in spring 1564, the Shuntian prefect Liu Ji asked Minister of Works Lei Li [who had built the second wall around Beijing] to wall it. Lei got the ruler’s assent, and so the Shuntian vice prefect Guo Rulin, the prefectural judge Ouyang Yu, and the palace eunuch Gui Qi started work on March 4. The money came from official fines and local contributors. The timber came from leftover camp construction, the bricks from the palace eunuchs’ storage barn, and the stones were discards from road and bridge construction. The laborers were guardsmen from Tongzhou plus [the servants of] rich merchants and residents. But when the work got under way, money ran short. I reported this to Jiajing, so the Court of Imperial Entertainments released 30,000 taels from their funds to help out. That raised everyone’s enthusiasm, and Regional Inspectors Dong Yaofeng and Wang Yongzhen monitored the project carefully. In three months, it was finished. The wall is about 905 zhang [about a mile and a half] around, over 10 feet thick, and 20 feet high. It’s faced inside and out with brick. On the south and east it fronts on the Lu River; on the north and west there’s a moat. There are four gates, each with a tower. There’s one side gate, and three water barriers. There are buildings inside where in emergencies tribute grain can be offloaded and refugees accommodated. A commandant in charge of five hundred men is posted here. Thanks to all this, the local people, officials coming in from all over the realm, tribute envoys from China and foreign lands, Grand Canal transport commanders and troops, right on down to merchants, peddlers, and servants have a safe place to stay. It helps protect Beijing, too.

The inscription ends with a paean to Jiajing. The account shines a bright light on how Xu Jie thought Ming government could truly accomplish things when it was on its best behavior. 71 During the fall of 1564, Xu had occasion to discuss some deeper matters with Jiajing. A panic of sorts arose, sparked by rumors that a White Lotus sectarian underground inside China was planning to join forces with Lu raiders in open rebellion against the Ming state. “The

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northern people adore the Buddha,” Xu explained, referring to the Mongols, and the White Lotus sectarians shared in that adoration. Xu had come into the possession of some material evidence that something was afoot: underground letters of appointment and a package of “grainreplacing medicine” (perhaps some kind of emergency ration). A few arrests were made. But the Beijing police and troops were frightened off by reports that the sectarians might launch magical flying swords and spears, and so they did nothing. Xu said he did not know who the leaders of this underground were, but he was informed that sectarian rebels (yaoni) were to be found all over northern China. 72 A few months later, Jiajing queried Xu about the regime’s inability to exterminate the sectarians. Why had a leader surnamed Lü been allowed to escape? Xu explained that Lü was believed to be in league with top Chinese advisors in the service of Altan Khan and that unless it were possible to arrest him secretly and fast, he had to be let go, because an attempt at an open arrest would probably provoke an open rebellion. Xu went on to state that the same reasoning applied to the gangs of thousands and ten thousands of sectarians active everywhere in northern China. The Beijing police and the provincial grand coordinators should gradually make low-key arrests of the leaders and not ignite an uprising by conducting open-field operations. 73 This was apparently sound advice; no sectarian rebellion in fact occurred. But it might have. The root of the whole issue, explained Xu, lay in the corruption created by Yan Song: In past years, the rumor spread that you just wanted the officials to do their jobs, that you didn’t care about the people, but cooperated with greedy men, so officials everywhere openly gouged the commoners, with neither shame nor fear. Those officials got promoted, their families got rich, while the common people grew poorer, and their minds ever more resentful. Thus recently sectarians inspired simple-minded people with their propaganda about suffering. This is how the demand for money becomes the basis for all the harm. But in the past year the Ministry of Personnel, acting on your orders, has been purging wantonly corrupt men, and so the realm now sees that you won’t stand for this anymore. The ministry hasn’t purged all of them, but not many remain, and those that do remain don’t dare act rapaciously any longer. Middling talents have changed their thinking, and now feel shame for their prior behavior. The people are feeling

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the relief and won’t be absconding so much. Another year or two like this will bring about the peace we’ve been seeking. 74

Xu Jie’s optimistic forecast notwithstanding, defense remained the main issue, and Ming China remained underdefended, despite Xu’s successful efforts to bring Jiajing around to his way of thinking. In a conversation of October 9, 1565, Jiajing recalled that he once asked Yan Song to make military preparations, and Yan, citing a phrase from Laozi’s Daode jing, replied that “enhancing the military was not a fortunate thing.” Why, wondered Jiajing, did he say that? Altan Khan’s raid of 1550 was no small affair, and now recently Yang Bo didn’t report the raid of 1563, “and why hadn’t he prepared ahead of time? I think it’s best to make every effort ahead of time, rather than seek success later.” Xu agreed: Yan Song cited that precept to block your order to make military preparations. That was absurd. Now the northern raiders have a large population of [Chinese] defectors and captives that have to be fed, so of course they have to raid. Yang Bo takes defense seriously. But he can in no way stop all raids. Plus the Ministry of War has a very hard time managing the frontier. That’s the responsibility of the supreme commanders, the grand coordinators, and the military defense circuit supervisors. But the Ministry of Personnel makes those appointments, and the kedao [supervising secretaries and censors] do the impeaching. The silver and grain needed in deploying men and horses are, as the Ministry of Revenue states, forever in short supply. Sideline critics complain of the expense. The only men who can do anything are the generals. But they have no authority. Despite your demands that the generals’ roles be enhanced, the civil officials cling together and don’t heed you, which is why they blame the Ministry of War. Recently the censors impeached [Minister of War] Yang Bo [for having failed to stop the raid of 1563], but you saved him. The generals still can’t get the protection they need. The Ministry of War wants to impose your policy, and it also wants the generals to obey. That’s hard! You’ll have to issue an edict to remedy this. 75

Later that same day, Xu and Jiajing conferred again. The ruler thought it impossible to give the generals complete freedom of action; but if they kept on being humiliated and abused, they couldn’t cooperate in the dynasty’s defense.

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Xu explained that he hadn’t meant to imply that the generals should wield total power. The problem was they were too constricted to perform their jobs. The Ministry of War received the ruler’s authorization to appoint squad leaders and the like, but the grand coordinators and military defense circuit supervisors still have a say in that, and many of them aren’t good officials. They’ve chosen leaders for troop selection and training, and they should let those men do their jobs, just like the emperor relies on experienced tenants for farming, or maidservants for weaving. But it’s now bookish ex-students who plan and have charge, and they don’t produce good results. Military operations demand rapidity, but the cash and grain are inadequate and slow to arrive, causing frequent starvation. The regional commanders, military men, have regional executive authority, yet the prefectural, subprefectural, and county officials disrespect them. The assistant regional commanders and mobile corps commanders can issue orders, yet the grand coordinators will flog them and yell at them as they kneel, which is too demeaning. Jiajing agreed that the Ming couldn’t prevail without exceptional military talents. Xu replied that if they stopped humiliating the military leaders, they’d raise their morale and end their present pitiful condition. They’d exert themselves. “When men’s minds are impartial, they’re unified; if selfish, they go off in all directions. When civil and military are unwilling to cooperate, it leads gradually to the situation we have now, where the supreme commanders, the grand coordinators, and the military defense circuit supervisors don’t get along.” Xu advised Jiajing to issue an edict demanding cooperation among all parties. 76 What have we learned about the northern frontier by viewing the matter from Xu Jie’s perspective inside the Grand Secretariat? First, we learn that, except for 1550 and the short-lived agreement to open markets, there were no state-to-state or empire-to-empire relations between Ming China and its Mongol neighbors. There was no attempt by the Ming court even to identify, let along single out and demonize, a Mongol adversary. There was no attempt, by Xu Jie or anyone else, to make Altan Khan into an evil icon and thereby encourage a thirst for war among the Chinese. The northern frontier wasn’t a problem in foreign relations at all. It was seen as a worrisome and apparently permanent security crisis involving Chinese raiders, sectarians, advisors,

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and victims for the most part. They all fled north for survival, and as Xu Jie said, they had to be fed, hence all the raids. As for the ethnic Mongol part in all that—Xu Jie and others seem to have viewed it as marginal, not the main issue. What do we learn about the security crisis, then? China’s defenses, whose serious neglect had made possible Altan Khan’s deep raid of 1550, were for years afterward still so flimsy as to invite frequent minor raids and the occasional deep penetration. From his spot in the Grand Secretariat, Xu Jie viewed the huge, powerful, and complex machinery of Ming bureaucracy as a machine that was flawed and clogged by poorly functioning parts, yet amenable to patient reform by slow degrees; and, always the optimist, he never seemed to tire of doing whatever he could to make repairs whenever that machinery suffered serious breakdowns. He certainly harbored no radical plans for change. He was not an executive and could not issue commands. His métier was suggestion and persuasion. For some ten years he conducted a subtle competition with Chief Grand Secretary Yan Song to win Jiajing’s approval. He sponsored jiangxue sessions in Beijing and, with some misgivings, encouraged such meetings nationwide in the hope of cultivating a following of ethically aware young officials with whom he might eventually cooperate in bringing about piecemeal improvements in security along the northern frontier and elsewhere. He made clear his opinion that official corruption, graft, and bribery were Ming China’s worst and most insidious enemies. He had no powers of impeachment, but there were “speaking officials” (kedao) who sided with him and did have such powers. He had friendly colleagues in the ministries as well, but his transactions with Beijing officialdom were mostly face to face and therefore off the record. But his large file of preserved correspondence with officials in the field shows very well how he used his vital spot at Jiajing’s right hand to read all incoming memorials and reports, monitor everything that was going on, and then use that knowledge to make a compelling argument why and how certain things needed to be done. Did Xu Jie’s efforts have any measurable effect on China’s northern security? Perhaps they did. Perhaps he reduced corruption by some modest degree. Perhaps he mitigated a bit the demoralizing effects of the caste system he so often complained about—where those with privileged credentials (zige), the jinshi degree especially, demeaned and even brutalized people below them, including talented military leaders.

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Once he no longer had Yan Song to vie with, Xu Jie’s influence was enhanced. And his personal relationship with Jiajing was absolutely key to whatever success he was able to achieve. (Chapter 4 looks more closely at that matter.) To look ahead to the next chapter, Ming China’s national security involved more than the Great Wall frontier. Also involved, and linked to it, was the Jiangnan rice tax and its transit along the thousand miles of Grand Canal through Nan Zhili (the Southern Metropolitan Province), Shandong, and Bei Zhili (the Northern Metropolitan Province) to Tongzhou and Beijing, where it fed soldiers, among many others. This vital flow was forever under threat: from drought, flood, and corruption in the rice-growing regions, Xu Jie’s home area of Suzhou and Songjiang (Su-Song) Prefectures included; from the Yellow River’s periodic rampages, disabling the Grand Canal; and from the so-called Wokou (Japanese raiders), who wrought destruction upon communities all along the coast, including Su-Song, in the 1550s and 1560s. Official communications relating to all this took up more of Xu Jie’s working days and nights than did jiangxue or, indeed, the northern frontier. The northern frontier crisis, the onset of the Wokou raids along the coast, and the challenges of politics in Beijing all took a toll on Xu Jie’s energies and psychological resources. Xu would write to friends lower in the official hierarchy who served out in the provinces about his sufferings and frustrations. These letters may also have served to deflect any feelings of envy or jealousy his friends might have been harboring about his fortunate placement so near the summit of all authority in the realm. A reply to a letter from his friend Tang Shunzhi dates on internal evidence to 1551: Finally after five years I have a letter from you. I detailed my troubles in a letter to Prefectural Judge Xu. I’m forty-nine now, my temples are white, so you can guess my condition. Few friends are here. Most of the best ones have been dismissed over the last ten years. Men I don’t know hold high offices. The rest are greedy, sycophantic, slanderous, dangerous. The roads are full of pits, and no progress is possible. When Zhao Shichun came to court they ridiculed him, then charged him with deviant cliquism. He had to be assigned outside. I got him put in charge of troops in Shandong, and

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now the Shandong troops are the best of all. The official elite are now convinced of Zhao’s talent, yet his critics complain that the troops are arrogant and undisciplined. The rumors show up in memorials. It’s impossible to do anything in these conditions. Last year I really tried to have you brought out of retirement, but failed. I’m to blame for that. Zhao Daochang [unidentified] described your troubles; mine are worse. 77

Xu contacted Zhu Tingli (d. 1566), an upright official and a friend in philosophy, who was impeached and sent home to Huguang Province in 1549. He had served a scant two months as vice minister of rites. This letter appears to date to 1556; it expresses Xu’s sense of isolation, given the recent loss of several close friends and associates: “We both regret being so far apart, but myself especially, as you can’t come, Ouyang De has died, and Nie Bao has been dismissed. I’m like the last reed standing in the swamp, braving the frost and wind. That’s how I feel. The fortune-tellers I’ve consulted all say we’re due for a violent turnabout. I don’t know if they’re right or not. Have you heard anything about that? Let me know.” 78 In an especially forthcoming letter to one Lin Mouhe, Xu confessed to some severe psychological troubles. Lin had retired home to Fujian in 1559 after short stints in provincial positions. He apparently held no post when Xu wrote him. Lin was noted for his rise from extreme poverty, his writing skills, and a large personal library. 79 As for Xu Jie, he was under stress over the fallout from a revival of warfare along the northern frontier and, connected with that, policy and personnel differences with Yan Song and his crowd. Put briefly, this is what happened. An unfaithful concubine of Sengge Düüreng’s was found out and, fearing for her life, fled in 1557 from her home in the steppes to Datong, where Grand Coordinator Yang Shun and his colleague, Regional Inspector Lu Kai, took her in and used her (together with their frame-up and murder of the vehement Yan Song opponent Shen Lian) as a ploy to win favor with the chief grand secretary. 80 Yang gained promotion early in 1557 to the post of supreme commander for Xuan-Da. Lu Kai was also rewarded. But an enraged Sengge Düüreng, deeply stung by his concubine’s defection, unleashed a fierce assault on the Datong area in December 1557 and laid siege to the Datong Right Guards, a garrison city located on the Great Wall about fifty miles west of Datong itself. Meanwhile,

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Yang Shun persuaded Yan Song’s man, Minister of War Xu Lun (1495–1566), to agree to let him bargain with Sengge Düüreng and exchange the girl for two Chinese defectors who were serving the raiders as high-level advisors. But Yang surrendered the girl too soon. Sengge, in fury, killed her. Then he decided not to honor his part of the agreement. He did not deliver the defectors. Instead, finding Ming defenses weak, he pressed on with his raiding and the siege. For six months, the Right Guards’ city was surrounded. In Beijing, this situation so heated up the political atmosphere that Xu Jie withdrew into semiseclusion. Yan Song argued that defending the besieged city was too costly. He urged its abandonment. (This advice was consistent with the position he took in 1548 when he advised the abandonment of the Ordos region and so overturned his hawkish rival, Xia Yan. But as in Altan’s raid of 1550, Jiajing’s mind had changed.) Jiajing preferred Xu Jie’s argument, that the Xuan-Da region was vital to national security and that there were ways to supply it and reinforce resistance. Wu Shilai, supervising secretary for the Ministry of Justice (and, as will be noted later, a successful defender of Songjiang, Xu Jie’s home prefecture, against the Wokou raiders in 1554), impeached Minister of War Xu Lun, together with Yang Shun and Lu Kai, for gross mismanagement and corruption. Yan Song was unable to save them. All three were arrested and dismissed in March 1558. On May 2, 1558, the raiders abandoned the siege of the Datong Right Guards, thanks to an unyielding defense and the appointment of new men to replace Yang Shun and Lu Kai (they were Jiang Dong, Yang Xuan, and Zhang Chengxu). 81 Meanwhile, Wu Shilai went a step further. In April 1558, he impeached Yan Song himself together with his son, Yan Shifan, as the architects of a bureaucratic machine so corrupt that it was the main cause for the current collapse of northern frontier security. The same day, two young bureau secretaries in the Ministry of Justice, Zhang Chong and Dong Chuance, added their impeachments in support of that of Wu Shilai. It all appeared to be orchestrated. Yan Song certainly thought it was and suspected that Xu Jie was the hidden hand behind it all. Xu had been a jinshi examiner for Wu and Zhang, and both had also served in Songjiang. Dong was, like Xu Jie, a native of Huating County. All three men were arrested and tortured in the Decree Prison to get them to

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confess that Xu Jie had directed them. All three confessed to nothing but concern for the future of the dynasty. Lu Bing, Xu Jie’s in-law and ally, had charge of the Decree Prison and probably didn’t press them too hard. In the end, all three were removed from the official registry and exiled to the far southern frontiers. 82 Xu Jie said nothing in their defense. This was the situation that drove him into seclusion and silence. His career and—in light of the executions of Xia Yan, Shen Lian, and Yang Jisheng— perhaps even his life were at risk. He worked all the harder to please Jiajing by writing Daoist prayers for him. But his mental agony comes through in his letter to Lin Mouhe, who was probably another of his jinshi examinees: I got your long letter, with its warmth and its advice. You wrote as though you and I were related. I’m profoundly grateful to you. I’m aware of the adage that we mustn’t fret about things unless they threaten to destroy us. As you say, if the time isn’t right, then there’s no compelling reason to go through with things. I get involved because when grave matters of state are concerned, I do what I can to mediate and remedy things. But officials who trust me to excess [he’s referring here to Wu Shilai et al.] seize on the implication of some statements I’ve made to prove they’re not sycophants [of Yan Song’s]. Those who hate me point to men whom I protect and claim that I’m listening to slander and plotting to ruin everyone else. So the roots are planted. And then my three sons have done things that offend them, and they won’t forgive me, just like you said. This is why I haven’t been able to make trust, compliance, loyalty, and reverence [toward the ruler] produce any results. But then, even if the sages had to consign to fate the question whether the Way prevailed, all the more must I.

Xu lets ethics temper his partisan feelings. Xu goes on to etch a more intimate picture of his plight: Since the beginning of summer, I’ve thought that if I keep doing as I have, I’ll just cause ruin and create no benefit. But if I abandon everything I’ve ever stood for, I’d blush in such shame that I wouldn’t be able to describe it. So every day I shut my gate and refuse guests, hoping to do well by others and myself. Then I reflect on that, and realize the Grand Secretariat and the ministries aren’t places where we peacefully draw salaries. That’s why day and night I

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think of resigning: I could preserve some self-respect and visit my ancestors’ tombs. But I still have doubt and fear and haven’t dared to declare that wish. My mind is in upheaval. I can’t sleep or eat. For five months I’ve been like this. The fear never subsides, and I’ll surely get sick. I don’t think I’ll live long. But you’re a pure talent, intelligent, and respected by the elite. Take care of yourself for the dynasty’s sake. Someday you’ll do great things and win fame. Wherever I may be, I’ll be glorified by that. 83

Around the same time, in the same distraught frame of mind, Xu writes one Zhao Zhushi, an official in the Court of the Imperial Stud in Nanjing. Xu begins much as he did in his letter to Lin Mouhe: I got your letter, and was so moved by your intent concern for me, a hundred times greater than what a kinsman would have said. As I think about it, my approach to the world is to go to all lengths to yield and forbear. Only in discussion and conversation do I keep in mind principle and the Way, and show respect for the laws. I thought that’s what anyone would do. I never expected it would cause such controversy. I suppose only by retiring to the mountains and forests can I avoid the pitfalls. But even when I withdraw, I raise suspicions. The rumors fly until I can’t stand hearing about them. The saying, whether to serve or resign poses a hard dilemma, surely applies to me. Since summer, I’ve shut my gate and refused guests. I keep quiet and lie low. My safety can’t be guaranteed. My self-respect diminishes, my determination sags, to the point where I can’t rank myself with the gentleman-elites anymore. I think of this at night, and really have no idea how I’ll ever recuperate. I’m a tile floating in an empty boat. Your advice was good. Do you have any more? You’re in Chuyang, where I can’t ask you in person. I’m depressed as I write this. 84

In a reply to his friend Zhu Tingli, Xu expatiates further on his anxieties, self-pity, and sense of isolation. “We’ve long been separated,” he begins, and things here grow ever more shameful, lamentable, worrisome and fearful. I haven’t the strength to cope with all the darkness and folly. Nor can I do anything to cleanse the go-getting wantonness of the filthy current [i.e., Yan Song’s crowd]. For years I’ve accomplished nothing. Whenever I think of the ancients, good friends, and

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future generations, I grow apprehensive. The sweat rolls down my back; I wake up in the middle of the night; at meals I throw down my chopsticks. I think of speaking out in forthright indignation, then of retiring to my old home and garden; then the flattery hits me, followed by the slander, and fearing the traps and pitfalls, I stop. I’ve closed my gate in disconsolate loneliness. I long for one or two friends I might complain to and so get a bit of release, but aside from Wushan and Donghu [unidentified] there is nobody, and I don’t see those two very often. So I long for the high mountains and forests, and abhor the low and dirty way of the world. I’d like the company of dignified men, but I can’t manage it. The other night I got your letter, and the debasement of my condition struck me. I’m so demeaned that I reckon superior men will spurn me. You perk me up, and I’m grateful. From your last three letters, I see you’re as cheerful as ever.

Xu closed with some kind words of praise for Zhu’s compositions. 85 By the time of the last of his replies to Zhu Tingli, Wu, Zhang, and Dong have evidently been released from torture and prison, and the immediate danger to Xu has lifted. His focus changes to the frustrations he’s experiencing owing to the ongoing partisan struggle and his inability to get Zhu an appointment to office: After Shengjie [unidentified] left last year, I regret not having sent you a single letter. . . . I’m still as solicitous as ever for cherishing talents, and I dare not even think about living easy and enjoying myself. I can rest easy and free of regret and fear only when talented and good men [like you] get positions, and I see no more piteous looks. It’s hard to discuss the intricacies of things here, but you’ll know what I mean. Recently the reform of the salt tax has been in the air, and everyone sided with you, but those in charge [Yan Song and his son] demanded that the appointee come through their gate, so I dropped the matter. Good men [like you] will choose what and whom they follow, and surely won’t let office-holding issues diminish their lives. They don’t know you very well. The revolutions of Heaven turn bad, then better. Seasons change from cold to hot. Human affairs aren’t doused in perpetual spring warmth. Keep standing tall; that’s what the realm is expecting from you. 86

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The appointee to head the reform of the salt tax that Xu refers to was probably Yan Mouqing, a firm partisan of Yan Song, but no relation (the surnames are different in script and in speech tone). Yan Mouqing was given unprecedented control over four major salt production areas on April 5, 1560. 87 If that is what Xu meant, it helps date the letter. (An outrageously corrupt voluptuary, Yan Mouqing nearly doubled the salt quota, creating serious hardships for the salt producers and merchants. He was purged not long after Yan Song’s dismissal in 1562, and the increase was canceled.) Xu Jie replies to Wang Yuling (1508–1564), a native of Shanxi, who has long been living at home after his 1544 ouster by Yan Song (he had been director of the Bureau of Appointments in the Ministry of Personnel and had declined to endorse Yan’s partisans). He had also been one of a circle of junior officials—Luo Hongxian, Zou Shouyi, Tang Shunzhi, and Xu Jie—who used to meet to discuss Wang Yangming’s ethical precepts. “I’ve had eye trouble all year, and haven’t kept up with my correspondence,” Xu begins. I felt great guilt when the messenger came with your letter. As the years have gone by, we’ve both been turning gray, and I can only say to you with deep regret that we were never able to achieve our cherished aims. The ruin caused by greed and oppressiveness doesn’t just affect Pingyang [Wang’s home]. The cause of it all lies in the current administration. As long as the roots survive, the leaves and branches that we clip from time to time keep sprouting back. What can we do about that? Ever since Nie Bao and Zhanquan [unidentified] left, our party has grown ever more isolated, as I supposed you know. We feel so badly about what this does to the common people. The weather is turning cold; take good care of yourself until Heaven settles things. I’ll stop here. 88

A last letter Xu sent while Yan Song was still in power he directed to Wang Chonggu (1515–1589), when Wang was serving as provincial administration commissioner at Ningxia on the northwestern frontier. Wang was a civil official with a special aptitude for military affairs (in 1571, after Xu Jie retired, Wang would become a major architect of the agreement with Altan Khan that at last brought peace to the frontier). Here, Xu Jie tries to allay Wang’s anger at unnamed officials who were

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unfairly maligning him. Xu could speak with experience about this sort of thing: I have your three letters. I’m amazed that in this era, under a wise and enlightened ruler, a worthy and forthright man such as you could be driven to such grief and indignation! We all share the blame for that. Ancient worthies would consign to fate such outer events like life and death, being in or out of government, or praise and blame. The only matter they took responsibility for was their own inner state. . . . Why must you obsess about what others say? If you harbor no secret inner shame, then even if they oust you for some crime, you needn’t protest, much less if they just slander you. Anyone who can’t take calumny hasn’t adequate capacity. The ruler has given you high office, and you can trust to our friendship in Confucianism (daoyi) to accept what I’m telling you. Heed me. Don’t accuse me of overstepping. 89

Xu Jie was himself nothing if not resilient. Though the northern frontier issue had at several points pressed him to the limit of his psychological resources, in the end he pulled through. It must be borne in mind that simultaneously he was taxing himself with responsibility for achieving effective solutions for other national concerns, especially the Wokou coastal raids, tax inequities, and logistics breakdowns. We turn to those issues in the chapter following.

NOTES 1. Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 1:587–591 (biography of Li Ben). Later in life he changed his surname to Lü. 2. He Liangjun, Siyouzhai congshuo, 71–72. 3. Nie Bao, Shuangjiang xiansheng wenji (Siku quanshu cunmu congshu), 72:328–30 (inscription for the Cunzhai); Jiang Decheng, Xu Jie yu Jia-Long zhengzhi, 26–47. 4. Luo Rufang (1515–1588), Xutan zhiquan, ed. Cao Yinru (reprint, Taipei, 1960), 297–98. 5. Huang Zongxi, Mingru xue’an, ch. 39 (section devoted to He Qian), ch. 27 (section devoted to Xu Jie); Xu Xuemo, Shimiao zhiyu lu (Siku quanshu cunmu congshu, ser. 2), 49:353; epitaph in Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou shanren xugao (reprint, Taipei, 1970), 12:5954–64.

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6. See Wing-tsit Chan, tr., Reflections on Things at Hand: The Neo-Confucian Anthology Compiled by Chu Hsi and Lü Tsu-ch’ien (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 39–41. 7. Luo Rufang, Xutan zhiquan, 307–8; Chen Shilong, Mingdai zhongwanqi jiangxue yundong (Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2005), 107–8; Li Chunfang, Li Wending gong Yi’antang ji (Siku quanshu cunmu congshu), 113:126 (preface to the jiaoyan). Xu’s written remarks may be those reproduced by Huang Zongxi as Cunzhai lunxue yu at the end of his section on Xu Jie; see his Mingru xue’an, ch. 27. 8. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:591 (a departing message for Zhou Fu, leaving to become prefectural judge in Hejian). 9. Ibid., 79:598–99 (a departing message for Xu Yangzheng). 10. Ibid., 80:70. 11. Ibid., 80:131–32. 12. Ibid., 80:132. 13. Ibid., 79:578–79 (a departing message for Liu Shiqiao). 14. Ibid., 80:142–43. 15. Henry Serruys, “Towers in the Northern Frontier Defenses of the Ming,” Ming Studies, no. 14 (1982): 9–76; Wang Yuan-kang, Harmony and War: Confucian Culture and Chinese Power Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 129, 130, 140. 16. Arthur Waldron, The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 174–92. 17. Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 18. See, on this, Thomas J. Barfield, The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, 221 BC to AD 1757 (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1989); Henry Serruys, Sino-Mongol Relations during the Ming, vol. 3: Trade Relations: The Horse Fairs (1400–1600) (Brussels: Institut Belge des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1975), 145ff. 19. Ming shilu, 95:6483–84. 20. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:74–75. Zhou Shangwen (1475–1549) was soon killed in battle. 21. Ibid., 80:156 (poem, sending nephew Zhao to military quarters in Weihui). 22. Ibid., 80:69–70 (letter to Zheng Wenfeng [unidentified] of the Ministry of Revenue). 23. Ibid., 80:80. 24. Ibid., 80:76–77. Sun Jin served as Xuanfu grand coordinator from 1545 to 1549.

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25. Wu Tingxie, Ming dufu nianbiao (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980), 1:135. 26. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:80. 27. Ibid., 80:82; Ming shi, ch. 204 (biography of Wang Yu). 28. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:82–83. 29. Ibid., 80:83. 30. Ibid., 80:83–84. 31. Ibid., 80:84. 32. Ibid., 80:87. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., 80:87–88. 36. Ibid., 80:89. 37. Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 4:2425–26 (epitaph for He Dong). 38. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:91. 39. Wu Tingxie, Ming dufu nianbiao, 1:185. 40. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:92–93. 41. Ibid., 80:93. 42. Ibid., 80:97. 43. Ming shi, ch. 204; Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 4:2426–32 (epitaph and biography). 44. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:100. 45. Ibid., 80:101. 46. Ibid., 80:105. 47. Ibid., 80:108. Li Youchi may have been regional inspector at Xuan-Da. 48. Ibid., 80:111. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid., 80:112. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid., 80:117. Yang Xuan was supreme commander at Ji-Liao in 1561. Li Xian was probably a general. 54. Ibid., 80:124. 55. Ibid., 80:121. 56. Ibid., 80:124–25. 57. Ibid., 80:125. 58. Ibid., 79:371–73. 59. Ibid., 79:375–376. 60. Ibid., 79:377. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid., 79:377–78.

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63. Ibid., 79:379. 64. Ibid., 79:376, 379–80. 65. Ming shi, ch. 204; Xia Xie, Ming tongjian, 4:2448–50. Mongol affairs at this time are discussed in Dmitrii Pokotilov and Wolfgang Franke, History of the Eastern Mongols during the Ming Dynasty from 1368 to 1634 (Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1976), 1:120–24, 2:56ff.; Carney T. Fisher, “Smallpox, Salesmen, and Sectarians: Ming-Mongol Relations in the Jiajing Reign (1522–67),” Ming Studies, no. 25 (Spring 1988): 1–23; Johan Elverskog, The Jewel Translucent Sutra: Altan Khan and the Mongols in the Sixteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 23–34, 97–117. Also see Henry Serruys, “Chinese in Southern Mongolia during the Sixteenth Century,” Monumenta Serica 18 (1959): 1–95. 66. Xia Xie, Ming tongjian, 5:2499–2500. 67. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:130; Wu Tingxie, Ming dufu nianbiao, 1:4. 68. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:134. 69. Ibid., 80:138. 70. Ibid., 79:392–93. 71. Ibid., 79:665. 72. Ibid., 79:398. 73. Ibid., 79:399. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid., 79:410. Yang Bo thought it best not to interrupt Jiajing while he was engaged in religious devotions, which is why he failed to notify him of the raid. 76. Ibid., 79:410–11. 77. Ibid., 80:84. 78. Ibid., 80:97. 79. A short biography of Lin in the Min-Hou xianzhi (1931; reprint, Taipei, 1966), 285–86, focuses mainly on his wretched childhood and youth. 80. See Goodrich and Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography, 2:1182–85, for a biography of Shen Lian (Shen Lien). 81. Xu Jie appears somehow to have managed to get Jiang Dong (d. 1565) appointed as Yang Shun’s replacement and had the Embroidered-Uniform Guards commander Lu Bing send two officers to him with Xu’s plans for delivering the besieged Right Guards from its likely utter demise. See Wang Shizhen’s account of conduct for Xu Jie in Yanzhou shanren xugao, 13:6280–81. 82. Tan Qian, Guo que, 4:3906; Xia Xie, Ming tongjian, 4:2371–78. 83. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:112. 84. Ibid., 80:112–13. Zhao was probably also one of Xu Jie’s jinshi examinees.

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85. Ibid., 80:113. 86. Ibid., 80:116. 87. Xia Xie, Ming tongjian, 4:2403; Ming shi, ch. 308 (biography of Yan Mouqing). 88. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:117–18. 89. Ibid., 80:118.

3 THE COAST

As a native of Huating County, Xu Jie had an understanding of the situation along the coast that he did not have for the northern frontier, which he’d never visited personally. So while his suggestions for northern defense were those of an armchair strategist, even though they were based upon reportage from officials on the spot, his involvement in the fiscal and security crises taking place along the coast was grounded in intimate personal knowledge of the situation and was much more intense. Xu never tired of pointing out that Su-Song, that is, the prefectures of Suzhou and Songjiang, was of all of China’s regions the leading provider of the revenue that made it possible for the Ming state to function. As the highest-ranking Su-Song native in Beijing, Xu always felt free to meddle at will in local issues of taxation and hydraulics; and as the destructive Wokou piracy wars of 1552–1559 heated up and became a formidable security challenge, he took a close interest in regional defense matters as well. In Ming times, Su-Song was part of the Southern Metropolitan Province (Nan Zhili), headquartered in Yingtian (nowadays Nanjing). The main civil officials were the grand coordinator (called the Yingtian xunfu), and the regional inspector, or xun’an. Xu Jie carried on a thick correspondence with them as well as with the military, prefectural, and even county officials further down the line. Official turnover was very high. Few held their positions for more than a year or two, often less. The headquarters of Songjiang Prefecture shared urban space with the 89

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Huating county seat, and Xu considered the county as his home. His sons continued to live there part-time, where they managed an estate of some unknown but considerable size. Songjiang Prefecture had jurisdiction over one other county besides Huating. That was Shanghai, some twenty miles to the northeast. From 1542 to 1553 a third county, Qingpu, was set up, carved out of the poorest and least productive fields of Huating and Shanghai. Xu Jie successfully agitated for its abolition in 1553. The highest regional authority in charge of coastal security was the supreme commander (zongdu) based not in Nanjing, but in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province to the south. Most of these dignitaries were dismissed and punished after but a short time in office. Xu corresponded with three of them—Zhang Jing, Zhou Chong, and Yang Yi— in an unavailing attempt to help them succeed. The one supreme commander who did succeed—Hu Zongxian—held the position from 1556 to 1562, and Xu wrote him but once, mainly because he was a protégé of Chief Grand Secretary Yan Song and thus not a member of Xu’s personal network. Xu’s letters to officials in Nan Zhili (in the part that is nowadays Jiangsu Province) begin prior to the onset of the Wokou troubles. His urgent messages to them centered upon national rather than purely local needs. Nan Zhili generally, and Su-Song Prefectures (Suzhou and Songjiang) particularly, were major revenue sources for the Ming state, and climate challenges and drought were creating a serious fiscal problem for an already overstretched central budget. Even after he became a grand secretary in 1552, Xu could not issue orders. He could only make strong suggestions about how best to handle the situation and offer the support stemming from his proximity to the fount of all authority, the Jiajing emperor. That would account for the polite, deferential, even diffident tone of many of his letters. Earliest of Xu’s letters to regional officials was his urgent joint letter to the xunfu and xun’an at Nanjing, datable to 1545, in which he asked in the strongest terms that they rescind their ongoing plan to impose a tax equalization reform in Songjiang Prefecture. The grand coordinator, here unnamed, was Ding Rukui (executed as minister of war in 1550 for his failure to act at the time of Altan Khan’s raid on Beijing). The xun’an

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was Lü Guangxun (1518–1580), an active follower of the Wang Yangming school. For technical reasons of maddening complexity, which will be omitted here, Xu argued that their projected reform would fail to achieve its goal of equity. Especially so, given the current drought. “I hear a tax equalization program is underway in the prefecture,” he wrote. “The common people are in an uproar, suffering from it. In this bad harvest year, refugees fill the roads, outbreaks of looting occur, so you should ease things. Why the big rush to burden the people?” After his long, lucid, and detailed discussion of the various bad points of the proposed reform, Xu concluded: “I’ve studied for more than thirty years, and have been in office for twenty-three, and if I can’t benefit the whole realm, I can still hope to benefit one part of it. I dare tell you all this because you have important assignments from the court, and the people rely on you. Stop the tax equalization plan at once, for your own good, and the good of the ruler, realm, and people.” 1 Two months later, Xu wrote the grand coordinator (Ding Rukui) again, this time on a completely different matter, Songjiang hydraulics, something Xu apparently knew a great deal about. “For two months I haven’t written you, not because of neglect, but because I haven’t had any personal matters to convey to you. Nor did I want to exchange commonplaces, so I just let it go.” These were words from a busy administrator. Xu then asked Ding to slow down. It seems Ding received authorization from the Ministry of Works to carry out some large-scale and expensive construction of irrigation facilities. “In this bad harvest year, with refugees on the road, and looting breaking out, to get this project going in the absence of funds to pay for it, placing heavy demands on the prefectures and counties, flies in the face of Lü Guangxun’s original proposal, harms the people, and worries the court beyond words. That’s why I want you to restudy the whole matter, for the people’s sake.” Xu went on to explain how the twin needs of drainage for flood control as well as storage for droughts were best met. Then he argued for smaller, scaled-down projects: Big projects use much money and labor. It’s hard to gather those quickly. For now, let’s take care of the small projects, in which case it’s best to build polder embankments. But that’s not enough. In my county, the fields to the east and west are very different in elevation.

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The east isn’t flood-prone, so if the embankments are too high, then much effort is needed from waterwheels. Here you need to put effort into clearing streams to store water, moving the mud far away, so it doesn’t clog again. In the west, you have to build dykes, but it’s hard to get the dirt, so you have to oversee river clearance and take the mud and pile it on top of the old dyke to make it higher and broader. Then you don’t waste money and labor, and drought and flood are prepared for.

Xu ends with words of flattery and encouragement. “I’m aware of your aims and education. You’re no commonplace official. Your record in government proves that. But I run on. The adage has it that merit needn’t come from oneself. I submit that to you. Another adage says that the sage can choose even from what a crazy fellow says. I put my hopes on you.” 2 Ding and Lü Guangxun had some differences in their approach to Songjiang hydraulics, then. In a separate letter to Lü, Xu gave detailed advice about how to alleviate the effects of the current drought. “Since we last met, I haven’t asked after you, but I think of you, and how when you first took up your post, you reported the drought, thus benefiting the people and meeting the ruler’s concern. I’m much in admiration.” “Drought alleviation,” Xu continued, by the rules can only be met by canceling 20–30 percent of the tax grain designated for local use. But we have very little of that in my county. It won’t benefit the people. The people’s poverty is now extreme, even though the state has never raised tax rates beyond the established rate. The trouble stems from corrupt officials, their old clerks, and crafty runners. The storehouses are empty, so no relief can be issued. It’s up to those officials to empty their own purses to help the poor. That’s the main relief policy. Beyond that, there are excess expenses, such as honorific arches; [wages for] sailors, lictors, and leaders; and official entertainment. You can get detailed statements about abuses written by the Suzhou prefect Wang Kaoyi and the Kunshan students and read them. I hope you can investigate and make cuts to give the people a little help.

There were more things he suggested Lü might do: “You can urge the rich commoners to issue grain at reduced prices. Last year rice was .6 taels per shi, and now it’s already 1 tael. If reduced to .7 or .8 taels, it

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wouldn’t be harmful. And reduce the interest on loans. By law, that’s no more than 30 percent. But now, it’s as much as 70–80 percent. It wouldn’t be harmful to insist on the legal 30 percent. Prosecute those who disobey.” Xu urges some harshness. “Outlaw elements take advantage of the times to form gangs. They claim they’re poor men seeking loans, but actually they’re violent looters. They must be suppressed, to stop banditry. . . . When people are impoverished, of course they can become thieves, but sometimes they randomly gather together and violate the law. Then they ride tigers that they can’t dismount, so they brave death and conduct plunder.” Xu ended on a personal note, as he often did. “I rely on our friendship to raise these matters. I hope you’ll think about them and then decide. I’ve tried twice to resign, but so far I haven’t been allowed. So I stay for now and exert all efforts. . . . The messenger is returning, so I’ll stop here.” 3 Another letter to Lü, as he was about to take up another post elsewhere, appealed to Lü’s belief in Wang Yangming’s precept that “the ten thousand things form a single entity.” It’s not wholly clear what Xu meant by that, but it stands as a rare instance of his calling Wang’s philosophy to anyone’s attention. Xu went on to offer a thoroughgoing plan for managing the regional impact of severe drought. While he was no institutional reformer, Xu Jie showed a liking for commuting in-kind tax payments into silver (prefiguring the later “Single Whip” reforms). He also noted that it was essential that the local people care for each other better than they did: It was the custom in Songjiang for big families with fields they couldn’t work themselves, to rent them to tenant households. If the tenants wanted to farm but were underfed, they looked to the big families [for loans]. This dependency was familial in nature. Although there were some abuses in landlord-tenant relations, the lords didn’t dare overdo it, for fear no one would farm for them. The tenants may have been a bit in arrears but they didn’t go too far for fear no one would lend to them. Before the Zhengde era [1506–1521], the people were well off and there were no evil rural customs. The state got its taxes and the prisons held few prisoners, for this reason.

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Xu then stated that under harsh local official pressure for debt repayment, the tenants have become unrighteous and untrustworthy, and the landlords fearful. “The mutual dependence of earlier times has changed into mutual suspicion and enmity. Not only are debts uncollectable, but rents are unpaid.” The local officials didn’t realize that when rents don’t come in, taxes aren’t forthcoming. The big families, concluded Xu, need to be told to care for their tenant households, heal village rifts, and reform degenerate customs. 4 Xu hoped that Lü would share these ideas with whomever his successor might be. At the time Xu wrote these letters, he was serving in the Ministry of Personnel in Beijing as virtual chief of that ministry. Probably he had a close hand in selecting and appointing the officials to their various positions in Nanjing and Songjiang. There are signs that he had met and forged ties with some of these men at jiangxue meetings in Beijing. Ding Rukui’s successor as grand coordinator was Ouyang Bijin (1491–1567), who occupied the position from 1545 to 1547. Xu’s letter to him pointed up local official corruption as a main cause of the ongoing rural distress and urged that he crack down on it. Xu thought the taxation regime should be restored to what it was a century earlier after Zhou Chen (1381–1453) reformed it during his long tenure as grand coordinator in Nanjing, 1430–1451. Things now were very bad in SuSong. “The messenger arrived,” wrote Xu, “and I hear you’ve reached Nanjing, and so all the elders and juniors will have someone to rely on. The area has had successive years of disaster, corpses litter the roads, and those who managed to stay in their old homes have no resources to begin farming again. Their food and warmth depend on your benevolent care. Your predecessors cared for the people, but the local officials think only of themselves. Needless to say, they’re shamelessly corrupt.” 5 Not Feng Bin. Feng was Songjiang prefect during the years 1546–1548. The prefectural gazetteer gives him high marks for his service there. Xu wrote him a very long letter of advice, restating in detail many of the points he’d made to Ouyang Bijin. 6 Xu also wrote Ouyang Bijin’s successor, Zhou Yan (1499–1561), grand coordinator from 1547 to 1549. Xu discussed in detail what he now thought to be the main problems: a huge backlog of unpaid taxes; abuses in commuting rice to silver; badly kept land tax registers. He also lobbied with Zhou to get him to initiate a proposal to abolish Qingpu County, which Xu promised to support to the fullest at court in Beijing. 7

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As the Lu raids eased momentarily along the northern frontiers, seaborne raids fired up along the coast, and for some of the same reasons: the refusal of the Ming court to liberalize foreign trade and the Chinese peasant population along both the inland and coastal frontiers, under great economic stress, resorting to large-scale banditry. The coastal raiders have often been called (in English) “pirates.” That is not a wholly accurate label. Unlike pirates elsewhere in the world, China’s pirates in the mid-sixteenth century did not raid shipping or hold prisoners for ransom. Rather, they used the sea and offshore islands much as land-based raiders would use mountains or steppe lands—as sanctuary, and as places from which to raid villages and, where possible, cities. The coastal raiders were called in Chinese Wokou, or “dwarf [i.e., Japanese] bandits.” But as Ming officials were aware, the leaders and most of the Wokou followers were Chinese: the leaders, Huizhou merchants such as Wang Zhi and Xu Hai, and the followers, young Chinese peasants whose homes lay near the sea. The Japanese role in coastal raiding was far smaller than the Mongol role in northern frontier raiding. There was no Japanese Altan Khan or Sengge Düüreng. For the most part, Japan contributed seaports in Kyushu and a modest portion of the manpower. The high tide of warfare along the coast took up the years 1552–1559, during which time Xu Jie was a grand secretary, close to the Jiajing emperor but constrained and sometimes overborne by the more powerful chief grand secretary, Yan Song. The main command center for anti-Wokou operations was Hangzhou, the Zhejiang provincial capital. There a man whom many considered to be Yan Song’s protégé, Hu Zongxian, was promoted to supreme commander over the three provinces of Nan Zhili, Zhejiang, and Fujian. Hu used that position effectively from 1556 until the demise of Yan Song and his own impeachment and arrest on corruption charges in 1562. This state of affairs would seem to have left Xu Jie little scope for shaping resistance efforts in his own home province (Nan Zhili) and prefecture (Songjiang). That was far from being the case, however. Xu Jie wrote Hu Zongxian but once, probably in 1554, when Hu was first sent to Hangzhou as a censor to investigate, plan, and report. Xu appears among other things to have been angling to win Hu to his side.

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“Your letter detailing the foreigners’ situation and the pluses and minuses of our defense is extremely clear,” Xu’s flattering note began: Only you know of these things, and only you with the power of your pen could have written as you did. I’m in awe. But militarization under the supervision of specially appointed officials without calculating the yearly costs raises the question whether the people can pay for it. After a few years, when the people don’t care as much and the defenses soften, and the expense can’t be cancelled, then the advantages disappear and the harms remain. Do you have a good plan for that? What if we don’t set up grand coordinators, but leave it to the regional inspectors of the prefectures and counties? Please inform me.

Xu reminded Hu that they were friends, and as one friend to another, Xu warned Hu that Beijing would not countenance headstrong regional officials who insisted on having everything their own way and failed to inform higher-ups of what they were doing. 8 Hu Zongxian was highly effective, but he was a bon vivant and Yan Song’s man rather than Xu’s, as things turned out. The two never communicated again. Xu writes a reply to Peng An, a friend and grand coordinator for Nan Zhili during the years 1551–1553. Late as this date is, the Wokou haven’t yet become the overriding coastal issue, and Xu bears down on fiscal problems. “You’re familiar with Jiangnan’s distress,” he writes, after a friendly opening, but north border alarms come in and military defense expenses are up 300,000 and more annually, and the accountants have no plans other than to raise tax rates. The people’s strength is not up to this, plus what [the accountants] will get from squeezing more will not suffice. Both state and people are in desperate straits. The abolition of Qingpu County is a real blessing, but I hear local clerks have recently run rampant, as in the matter of the silk-for-horses market exchange [on the north border]. The state pays two taels per bolt. The people are assessed two taels per bolt, but the clerks and weaving households collude to send up poor-quality bolts, with each bolt having as many as two or three seams. The War Ministry investigates, sees they don’t pass, sends them back, and buys separately. Then when they’re done buying, they insist on redelivery, putting the burden on the delivery households. This sort of thing goes back and

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forth three times, and so constitutes a harm hardly less than that caused by Altan Khan. Suppressing villains is how to preserve the good species. You should crack down hard on this. The granary clerks are especially corrupt. You have to investigate, to give the people a little respite. 9

Several letters to Regional Inspector Sun Lianquan, who is not further identified, show that Xu could insert himself into military operations in Nan Zhili, where earlier he had taken an intense interest in tax issues. I got your letter, and was much impressed by your careful compassion for the people. Right now, with war ongoing, rice prices have leaped up. If you can issue stored grain at a reduced price at government sales, then your silver quota of delivery charges will be met and the people will benefit a bit. Or, use that grain to feed the troops, and use different government silver to pay for delivery. Then the people who buy rice to pay to the government will have their burden reduced a little. If there’s a surplus of rice, then both ideas can be implemented together. What do you think?

Xu turns to military matters: For sea defense, we’ve set up a regional vice commander, and, on your recommendation, have appointed Tang Kekuan to that post. Reportedly the prefecture using the existing registers has ordered that one third of all able-bodied males be enlisted to fight the raiders. But the peasants out in the fields are ignorant of war, and while there are a lot of them, they’re useless. It just creates opportunities for the village elders to wreak fraud. Vice Commander Tang right now leads three hundred troops from Peizhou [in Shandong Province]; if you have him lead seven hundred more men from Peizhou and Xuzhou, and recruit one thousand men from Chongming and Shashang plus salt workers from all the counties, and add one thousand people’s militia runners, that totals three thousand. They can be grouped into ten branches, each led by a bazong. They can be posted at strategic spots in Jinshan, Shanghai, Taicang, Jiading, Changshu, and Haikou. If there’s a raid at any one place, then help can be had from three or four other places. This will produce success, and won’t be a big drain on resources. Please think it over. 10

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Sun made a reply to that, and Xu wrote him a follow-up letter: The messenger arrived with your second letter, and I see how conscientious you’ve been. If you’d been appointed to handle the sea defenses earlier, and had a year to plan, we wouldn’t be in our present state of unpreparedness. Regional Vice Commander Tang Kekuan has used the powers you gave him and has prepared a statement for the ministry. As for having the Yangzi River controller take on the added duty of coastal defense, discussants said this isn’t the old system, so earlier there was an imperial directive putting an end to the idea. So now the ministry doesn’t dare request it again. The idea of putting Wang Yu in charge of both is good, but Wang is from Suzhou Prefecture and it wouldn’t be convenient to have him do it [the rule of avoidance forbade officials from serving in their native provinces]. But your thoughts of what the future may bring are right on, and we need to revisit the issue. Generally, suppressing bandits requires two things: troops and rations. You have Tang Kekuan in charge of troops, so you just need a grand coordinator who is willing to handle cash and grain. He won’t also have military duties, so you don’t need to add an inspecting censor or retain the Yangzi River controller, and yet victory will be assured. From what I’ve seen, only you among the high officials have talent, ideas, and devotion to the dynasty. Tang Kekuan owes his position to your recommendation, and I hope you’ll support him so he can exert himself. I append five considerations for you to think over and decide. 11

Xu’s appended list gives a good insight into his thinking at this time. Although he was never the topmost player in the anti-Wokou effort (Hu Zongxian was, if anyone was), Xu was heavily involved, and his ideas are those of a high-level administrative strategist, not a sideline commentator. He emphasizes among other things the absolute need to support and respect military talent. His comments are very much focused on the realities on the ground: “Corrupt, lazy, and timid military officers must be impeached,” he insisted. But if any can be used, it’s because we officials lift them up and revive them. Earlier on, Tang [Kekuan]’s father was maritime regional commander; at first, the higher officials respected him, so local officials didn’t dare humiliate him, and he was able to do well. Later, the higher officials looked on him as an excrescence, so the local officials despised him, and he ended up dismissed. Now [his

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son] Tang [Kekuan] is on duty, and I hope you’ll caution the local officials, except for the prefect, that they have to treat him as they would a lower civil official. . . . When you issue orders, be careful not to impede him. Let him achieve his aims with all his strength. We all must give the military its due respect.

Thus, the Ming military had no independent power whatsoever. It was wholly the choice of civil authority whether to protect the commanders or abuse them. Second on Xu’s list was the need for generous troop support: To direct troops in battle is definitely a job for the regional commander. Grain, fodder, weapons, messengers, observers, travel expenses, troop entertainment, and rewards for merit are wholly for the grand coordinator to handle. . . . If you undertake a big campaign but are too stinting of expenses, the affair will fail. And the expenses have risen because the raiders have gone unsuppressed for so long. I hope you’ll be liberal in meeting the demands, so that Tang [Kekuan]’s soldiers can fight to the death when they go to battle.

The behavior of outside troops brought in to fight the raiders will continue to be a troublesome problem. Here Xu urges Sun to turn a blind eye. “Tang has brought down soldiers from Peizhou, and they will surely cause some trouble. But as long as we need them, we need to be lenient with them. Once we’ve increased their rations and rewards, you can have their officers impose discipline on them.” Collaboration was also a problem. “There are those who spy for the bandits, and other local idlers who take the name of the bandits and go looting. Rather than flog and kill them, it would be better to improve surveillance, so as to give the people something to fear, and stop robbery and rebellion before it starts.” The last item appears, at this distance, impossible for Sun or anyone else to achieve. Perhaps Xu’s normal realism failed him. “Every time the Wokou seize a city they conduct a massacre. So the people of the prefectural cities have moved to villages for refuge. They have no other recourse. But who then is going to defend? The local officials should forbid it.” 12 Xu next writes Fang Lian (1513–1582). The Ministry of Personnel appointed him prefect of Songjiang in response to Xu’s personal recom-

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mendation, which he made right after the Wokou raids began in earnest. The Songjiang gazetteer notes that Fang performed outstandingly as prefect in the years 1553–1555. I was led on by partiality toward my home area when I troubled you to go take care of it. Then the military situation worsened, and the added burden on you worries me. But now, of the thirteen provinces and two metropolitan regions, war affects eleven of them. What they call the “heavenly hall” of Hangzhou, Jiaxing, Suzhou, and Songjiang has all become a battlefield. It’s an awful calamity for the educated social elites. You must persevere. The seaside people of Shanghai and my county [Huating] have been plundered and they have abandoned their farming. You must remit the regular taxes, otherwise the people will suffer and the officials will be unable to collect. I hope you’ll memorialize; maybe you can’t get a complete remission, but even a reduction or postponement would help. I’ve written the grand coordinator and the regional inspector, but I hope you’ll be the first to raise the matter. In haste. 13

Praise and a hopeful outlook do not characterize Xu Jie’s third and last letter to Regional Inspector Sun Lianquan. A darker and chiding tone takes over. It’s been over a month since the messenger left. I’ve been thinking about your care for the people, and would like to get reports about what you’ve been doing, but many of the roads are blocked and letters haven’t gotten through. And right now is autumn defense time, and the reports have been worrisome. Some regional officials report that the sea raiders have been suppressed, but judging from the memorial sent up from Zhejiang, plus various oral reports, they seem to have left but are actually hiding in ambush nearby, and so one can’t rush to say peace has come. Which of these two versions is right? Both Shanghai and Jiading have been raided, Shanghai the worse. Logic and circumstance both mean it has to be walled. But right now the people are exhausted, and aside from building a wall, there are yet more expenses for troop rations, boat construction, and weapons. How should that be handled? And until the wall is completed, what defense measures should you take? I hear Assistant Surveillance Commissioner Dong knows troops and is versed also in civil affairs; I would have him put in charge of several hundred troops and post him at Shanghai, and have him also manage the wall

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building. So the people can rely on that wall and return to their former occupations. What do you think?

Xu moves on to scold Sun for shortcomings: The merits and demerits of local officials is a vexing issue. You checked into the prefectures and counties, but your report is full of cover-up verbiage. I would beg you to go inspect in person, assess on the basis of facts, and report. Then in future the officials won’t dare abandon the counties, betray the state, harm the people, and behave unscrupulously. You wrote earlier that you wanted to make a detailed statement, but after the abolition of the river controller’s position, you were waiting for the appointment of a regional commander before you did so. But remember that you can rely on my strong friendship for you, and also that my own home locale is involved. Forgive my rambling. 14

Xu next writes Xie Mingdao, regional commander for coast defense in 1554–1555. Xie was a soldier, not a civilian. Xu believed it essential to encourage and reward good military men. “The court took account of your fine reputation when it appointed you to this post, and it has placed great trust in you. I too am deeply worried for the dynasty, and have staked my own hopes on you.” Xu offers some advice. He is not afraid to use the prospect of imperial wrath to underline his suggestions. There are four reasons why the regional officials have not been able to achieve victories. The first is poor management. For example, favoring the Peizhou troops, disfavoring the Sha troops, or vice versa. So minds don’t home in on the task. The second is misuse of rewards and penalties. For instance, where assault troops have merits taken away, while cowards and deserters aren’t disciplined. The third is that distinctions aren’t made clear. As when the Peizhou troops and local militia are thrown together into one camp, and the militia run away, and the Peizhou troops have to step back, and on checking, they blame each other. The fourth is unprepared attacks: for example, when new recruits aren’t trained, given uniforms and armor, or weapons, and yet are ordered to fight. The root cause of all the above is commanders who lack wisdom and bravery, and lieutenants who don’t obey orders. The emperor has punished civil and military officials heavily for this. If local ruin worsens in future, it is impossible to

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guess how angry the emperor will become. You really must do a good job. 15

Xu was beginning to sound desperate about the situation in Su-Song in his letter to his old mentor, Nie Bao, dismissed as minister of war and sent home early in 1555. I received a letter from Feng En [1491–1571, a fabulously wealthy Huating native and ex-official], who said that the Wokou nearly seized Suzhou, killing the vice prefect. I also hear the Wokou are running rampant in the area between the Huai and Yangzi Rivers, blocking all the land and water routes. I didn’t wholly believe that, but in the month since the Su-Song grand coordinator and regional inspector’s report of the thirteenth of the fourth month, there’s been no word of the raiders withdrawing, so the general picture can be guessed at. Assistant Regional Commander Li has selected troops and has been sent south, so maybe there’s hope for Su-Song. But the most recent memorial has been sketchy. Steps haven’t been taken. For example, it speaks of exterminating and killing, but doesn’t clearly say the troops arrived at Su-Song. So there’s no certain direction for the troops. Five thousand of them should be divided into two branches, each headed by a bazong and lower officers, but even if the troops are divided into two branches they need authorization before they can be deployed. But the report doesn’t say that. If they ask for supplies, it’s going to be hard to comply. So I would beg you to prepare a proposal that ministry or censorate officials should be sent out either to select troops and return, or else the ministry officials can return while the censors can follow the army and check on merit according to regulation. I would also hope that in your memorial asking to send out ministry officials you state things clearly so as to avoid having them ask and so cause delays. The officials originally had no idea they had to go to war, and I had to urge them on, which is why they’ve been unwilling to think things through in detail and prepare drafts. But you were a minister of war, and you care for the dynasty, and I would beg you to give your whole attention to drafting an emergency proposal. The two prefectures will benefit, and the emperor will be relieved. Please forgive my temerity.

Xu gave a careful review of the situation along the coast in a reply to a new appointee as grand coordinator at Nanjing, Tu Dashan

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(1500–1579), who managed to hold the post for a mere few months in 1554: You and the people hope for the same things. When I heard you’d been appointed, I knew coastal security would have a reliable champion. In your three memorials, the facts are accurate and the language to the point. People inside and outside have said that no one surpasses you in this. So if you project your true mind even further, the raiders will be easily suppressed. Zhang Jing has been given extraordinary powers [as supreme commander] to deploy troops, and you should cooperate with him.

After these encouraging remarks, Xu gave his own description and analysis of the situation on the coast, and he reminded Tu that his key task at the moment was to instill discipline in the Ming armed forces. My own thinking is that the raiders use the wind and tides to come and go unpredictably, unlike the Miao bandits [in southeast China] who occupy permanent nests. And our coast is full of traitors who act as the raiders’ eyes and ears. If our troops gather, they run and hide; if our troops disperse, they come out and plunder. When will our people be free of this disaster? So deploying troops only comes about in response to immediate emergencies. I don’t know what long-range plans are appropriate. I would like you to give this your attention. I understand that local agriculture has ceased, and the refugees haven’t come back; if that’s so, how will we collect this year’s regular tax? Who will do next year’s plowing? I have a letter from [Regional Inspector] Sun Lianquan, who says he has called in refugees and sent up a memorial asking to remit taxes. This is what you must do right away. If you do your part, I’ll support you with every ounce of my strength. Fang Lian, prefect of my prefecture [Songjiang], is intelligent and capable, and I hope you can cooperate with him. [Your predecessor] Peng An was truly benevolent towards the people, but he had no troop leadership skills. Neither civil nor military officials were afraid of him, and that was locally damaging. You have command authority, and you’re different from Peng An. I would say that while you can’t behead officers for ruining the army, you can gather the facts and inflict forty or fifty lashes, strip them of their caps and belts, and make them redeem themselves through deeds of merit. Among the troops, arrest the leading deserters and flog each one of them to death. Then military discipline will prevail, and the soldiers

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will fight hard. In future, military administration should be imposed this way. It’s for you to decide. 16

It should be explained that Peng An’s benevolence was shown in his order to open the city gates of Suzhou to let in refugees who were escaping a Wokou raid. He was impeached, imprisoned, and reduced to commoner status for his military ineffectiveness. Tu Dashan fared no better; he soon took ill, was impeached, imprisoned, and reduced to commoner also. Meanwhile, the Jiajing emperor wanted to know just what all the trouble was along the coast and why the raiders had left Xu Jie’s own family home in Huating unscathed. Xu Jie replied on July 15, 1554. Xu put the blame on ineffective regional officials, especially grand coordinators who failed to act and covered up the calamity. He thanked Jiajing for agreeing to send Tang Kekuan and his Peizhou troops down from Shandong to help out. It was the emperor’s own aura, said Xu, on a sycophantic note, that preserved his Huating home from burning and ruin. 17 The decision was made at court to appoint a supreme commander with authority to “act at convenience” and to have charge of the entire anti-Wokou effort, from Shandong all the way down to Fujian, Guangdong, and Guangxi. The appointee was Zhang Jing, who held the post from 1554 until 1555, when he was arrested and executed in circumstances to be described later. Zhang’s appointment represented Xu’s main chance to oversee the entire anti-Wokou effort. Zhang’s failure (soon followed by the failures of Zhou Chong and Yang Yi) compelled Xu to share half of that supervisory responsibility with Chief Grand Secretary Yan Song and Hu Zongxian. Meanwhile, Xu tried as best he could to assist Zhang. In a reply to a communication from Zhang Jing, Xu reminded him of his powers and duties. I see you’ve gone personally to command the armies, and are exerting great efforts. But so long as local and outside troops don’t get along, victory is impossible. Officials looking on from the sides don’t forgive this, and they’ve won the emperor over. I’ve tried to stand up for you, as I think the messenger can tell you. But you’ve been given full authority, so it should be easy for you to act. I hardly need tell

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you that the bandits should be rapidly suppressed. I append a few thoughts for your consideration and decision. I’ll stop here.

For all his power, Zhang Jing was extremely cautious and refused to engage the Wokou in a major battle until all units called in from outside had assembled and everything was completely ready. This apparent reluctance to act prompted Chief Grand Secretary Yan Song and his protégés, Regional Inspector Hu Zongxian together with Zhao Wenhua, who were also given plenipotentiary authority, to maneuver against Zhang and eventually bring about his dismissal. Meanwhile, Xu Jie tried to help him and appended to his letter four suggestions about what he should do: (1) I hear you’ve just opened your supreme headquarters. But the civil and military officials are only aware of the grand coordinator and regional inspector. They don’t recognize your office. You have to make some big impression on them. . . . While killing people is normally no way to do things, it must be done to impose discipline upon troops on the march. Also, you received an imperial directive to deploy troops. You’ve been attacked by people who oppose your slowness. They ask for your arrest and interrogation. I’m afraid you can’t appeal this. A new imperial directive chides you heavily. You must heed it. (2) Although my home county [Huating] has never been known for war, recently there has taken place some military mobilization, and the Sha troops have been put to effective use. The outside troops that were sent in lack training and aren’t much concerned with helping the locale. They waste cash and grain and are useless as defenders. It seems you should weed out and dismiss the useless ones, and give more attention to raising local troops. The Sha troops can be used right now. This is a long-range plan. [“Sha” refers to a community on the Songjiang seacoast.] (3) I hear the petty commoners of Su-Song who live by the seacoast consort and trade with the raiders. The raiders pay them to be eyes and ears. So the raiders know all about our movements. If they built deep moats and high ramparts, and they had no traffic with us, we could do nothing about it. But they consort unimpeded with our people. If they can use our people, why can’t we use theirs? The big families of the coast have all moved into the city, and it’s just their tenants and servants who remain on the seaside. Our prefectural and county officials need to seek out the bravos from the big families,

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treat them liberally, and have them contact the tenants and servants so we can use them. We could gain information about the raiders, and use them as a fifth column. (4) Give assignments to commanders who have the people’s support. Yu Dayou [1503–1579] is widely known for his military leadership talents. I hope you trust those whom you employ. Don’t let villains get their way with their falsehoods. That’s vitally important. 18

Meanwhile, Xu writes Zhang Yanghua, an official in the Court of the Imperial Stud in Nanjing. He surveys the disheartening situation on the coast and explains why he cannot support Zhang’s reform ideas. Thickening the bureaucracy on the ground was not, he thought, the answer to the crisis. I was disturbed to read your letter about local conditions. When generals don’t impose discipline, the supreme commander and the military superintendent must punish them according to law. When troops are useless, those same officials must select [others] and deploy them. Those same officials must impose suitable laws on harmful matters. But I hear nothing of this. How are they different from women or wooden idols? The ruler is angry and imposes punishment and he can’t be said to be overdoing it.

Xu goes on to pour cold water on Zhang’s proposals. Your memorial has arrived, in which you propose adding new laws. Some of your critics say the ancestral system shouldn’t be hastily changed; others say adding officials, but not troops, is no way to resist the raiders. To set up an official in each canton is too much. To set up one official for every dozen or so cantons doesn’t differ from the present system. Building walls and storehouses and adding more salary rice and fuel are too expensive to undertake. Some say all our county officials want money. Many of our magistrates in Jiangnan hold the jinshi degree. They are arrogant; they belittle their superiors, and they mistreat the people, and if more of them are appointed, the people will be mistreated all the more. The above three criticisms are reasons why I couldn’t support your memorial. Now that I have your letter, I can discuss this again with the ministry. The messenger is leaving, and I’m a bit ill, and I’ll have to stop here. The realm’s affairs are weighty, the disaster in the locales is pressing, and I hope you can enlighten me. 19

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Tu Dashan’s successor as grand coordinator in Nanjing was Zhou Chong, appointed in 1554. Nine months later, in 1555, Zhou was made supreme commander of Nan Zhili (the Southern Metropolitan Province) and Zhejiang. After all of thirty-four days in that position, Zhou was impeached and reduced to commoner. Xu Jie tried to help him by writing him a long letter while Zhou was still grand coordinator: I have two letters from you, and I’m sending student Xie to you. I understand from your letters the heavy responsibility you bear, and how fortunate the common people are to have you protecting them. I pretend to no special knowledge, but I believe that center and periphery must cooperate, or else success cannot be had. Especially this is the case with Jiangnan, [main] source of the empire’s tax revenues. And it’s where my ancestors are buried. Any measures you wish to undertake will have my full support. I append a few views for you to consider and select from.

And there follow five very vexing matters for Zhou Chong to give his attention to: First: The officials in the prefectures and counties of Jiangnan are habitually arrogant and lazy. They care nothing about the people or military matters. The fu’an [grand coordinators and regional inspectors] have been too dilatory, which just adds to all the self-indulgence. You have to supervise and direct them by law. You must inflict painful punishments on greedy and oppressive [local officials] in order to win people’s minds. It’s very important that you ask for extraordinary promotions for outstanding ones. That’s a great stimulus. I’ll give your requests my full support. Second: I hear the little people of the countryside constantly carry fuel and rice to the raiders because of the high prices they pay. I don’t know why the local officials don’t stop this. The raiders traffic with the people, and I don’t know why the local officials don’t take advantage of this to recruit spies and set up fifth columns. And they don’t train troops; they just sit there and hold the cities, and look upon the common people of the countryside as sores or itches, of no account. You have to crack down hard on this. Third: Before the bandits of the interior go away, new arrivals come in a steady stream. So even if they’re killed or caught, they can never be totally exterminated. The stronger they grow, the weaker we become. You must ready the sea boats and stop them outside, and use

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the “wolf troops” and “lake troops” to attack them inside. Encourage local militia to scatter and harass them in between. Then pacification becomes a possibility. Fourth: The Sha troops can kill raiders. But earlier on, their supply was insufficient and their discipline poor, so they’d let the raiders go, or become raiders themselves. If you increase their rations, raise their rewards, give them weapons, and treat them with kindness and trust, they’ll exert themselves. If local people cut off raiders’ heads, reward them directly, and don’t let the officials and clerks cheat them. Then they’ll be eager to help. You have everyone’s trust, and you should take on this responsibility yourself. Fifth: The dynasty has never funded military expenses for headquarters. Resources have to be taken from the people. Officials are naïve and mistaken to think this wrong. Local officials used to be as reluctant to spend, as they were to collect. Yet it’s been the case that they stage banquets just as though the times were normal. The funds may have come from anywhere, but the people are suspicious and think funds intended for the military have been misdirected. If this leads to resentful slander, it’s the local officials’ carelessness that’s to blame. Don’t be afraid to spend where you have to. Just warn the local officials that they have to think about how to make changes to stop the slander. 20

On June 5, 1555, Xu briefed the Jiajing emperor about the situation on the coast: “Since the southeast is a key revenue source,” said Xu in his update, your concern is very welcome. As to official malfeasance, you see all; when you prosecute one miscreant, the others become respectful and fearful. Last year when I memorialized, I understood that the bandits were true Wo [Japanese]. But recently, detailed investigation shows the leaders are all violent bandits from Fujian and Zhejiang who have conducted maritime trade for years. Among them the real Wo are less than 30 percent, and they are hired mercenaries. Earlier the local officials couldn’t suppress them. So they wrote off those places. Also they got huge profits. So the earlier groups kept the bases, and new ones joined in a constant stream. Poor people along the coasts were lured or forced into following them. So [the raiders] grew in numbers and power. Recently the Wa-clan troops [nonChinese from the southwestern regions] arrived. The bandits were

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frightened at first, but the commanders of the outside troops were unable to lead a sharp charge, so they divided and dispersed them instead. This led to a big defeat. Now the bandits rampage, kill, and loot all over. It’s bad. Fortunately non-Chinese troops [tubing] have just come in from Huguang, but they haven’t fought yet. Of the defeated “wolf troops” [non-Chinese fighters] only the one branch, headed by the Wa-clan, was involved, so four branches remain, not yet engaged in battle. We’ll get a report in a day or two. Now that the supreme commander [Zhang Jing] has been replaced, the years of cover-up should end, as should the penchant for delay. I wrote Zhou Chong to urge him on. I await his planning memorial. . . . I’ll report further as news comes in. 21

There was, however, a letter from Xu to the doomed supreme commander Zhang Jing, focusing on the difficulties of commanding so many fighting units drawn in from all parts of Ming China. I was much relieved to read that your recruiting of soldiers is going so well. Just now the emperor objected to the request to deploy troops from Yongping and Baoding [in north China], but I argued that the Wokou were running rampant, that there were no local troops, so troops had to be brought in from Peizhou and Xuzhou. Then the Pei-Xu troops couldn’t achieve victory, so more had to be brought in from Shandong. And they couldn’t win either. So more had to be sent in from Yongping and Baoding. Otherwise, we’d have had to abandon the affected territory. The emperor then changed his mind, and so you now have a clear directive. These troops are good fighters, but the raiders are very tricky, and you need to come up with a careful strategy. Also, when so many troops from so many places gather together, they eye each other suspiciously and compete for merit, which may cause trouble. I would ask you to keep them separated so as to avoid that, and also to divide the raiders. What do you think? 22

The Yongping and Baoding troops eventually arrived and scored a big win over the Wokou, but they did this too late to save Zhang Jing from arrest and execution. Xu Jie clearly acquiesced in Zhang’s removal. His reaction to Zhang’s execution is not recorded. Xu’s final letter to Zhang betrays a certain nervous edge. He also urges that Zhang use Wang Yangming–style deception (though he doesn’t call it that) to disrupt the raiders’ plans:

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We’ve been getting confused reports about military matters, but your letter clarifies things. It isn’t yet known when the “wolf troops” and the Fujian troops will arrive. The raiders are very tricky. What is our strategy for defeating them? I understand that the local people may fake being recruits so as to act as a fifth column for the raiders. This you must definitely guard against. But how do you know the raiders aren’t starting this rumor so as to dampen what they see as good morale among the local militia? You should secretly tell the local officials that the newly recruited men of Qituan and Batuan should be nicely persuaded to go to other locations, and not enter the cities. And you should have the militia recruits form groups of five and ten, and have men you know [acting as agents provocateurs] persuade the others to traffic secretly with the raiders, or suggest that because the raiders don’t come and attack, we needn’t be prepared—talk like that, that takes us off our guard. Then you can arrest the other members of the group [if they listen to the treasonous talk] and prosecute them. Reward the obedient, and punish the disobedient. Then the difficulty can be gradually eased, and the raiders’ plans will be frustrated. You can decide.

Xu declined Zhang’s apparent offer to deepen their relationship. “Good friends can accept a diminution of largess and a raising of rectitude. Forgive me for saying that this is no time to be talking about social amenities. We should keep to our own quarters.” 23 Zhang was in serious trouble, and while Xu did what he could to help him, he was less than totally committed to saving him. Xu exchanged more than a dozen letters with Zhou Rudou, who was regional inspector for Su-Song in the years 1554–1556 and performed with great success. He was Xu’s man, clearly, and so Yan Song and Zhao Wenhua held him in low esteem. Zhou was trying to take an active role against the Wokou, which was all to the good. Xu cautioned him: I was disturbed to read your memorial, and I’ll do all I can to assist you. I was shocked to hear of the fall of Qingcun [village]. There’s been recently issued an imperial directive chastising the defending officials, because the officials leave military affairs to the generals, and then don’t provide them with cash, grain, and weapons, and just sit and watch. So they were reprimanded. I hear you’ve ordered the prefects to go lead troops. But the prefect is the ruler of the prefecture. If he goes out, the city defenses will suffer. He’ll take the best

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troops out with him, leaving the weak ones behind to defend. The raiders might take advantage of that to occupy the cities. Who’ll bear the blame for that? Thus we have the edict. They say you can’t tell a dream to a fool [as he’ll misconstrue it]. But I hope you’ll tell the prefects they have to change their plans. Then the government will preserve its territory, and millions of people will stay alive. 24

In another letter, Xu shares his evaluation of the situation at Su-Song with Zhou. I hear the bandits at Batuan and Jiutuan have been gradually defeated. If you can take advantage of their decline to lead all the troops and sweep them clean, then next you should send civil and military officials who can fight on land to defend the sea walls, and those who can fight at sea to gather boats and attack them out there. You and the grand coordinator should then visit the troops and reward the obedient and punish the disobedient. That should prevent a recrudescence of the disaster.

Xu turns to advice on rehabilitating the local economy: Right now is farming season, and the little people want to plow, but they lack oxen, tools, and seed. If you don’t do something about this, then frequent tax remissions will do no good, and the stores at Taicang will shrink. The local officials haven’t the strength to act. I would beg you and the grand coordinator to tell all the big families to take in and help the tenant households, and have them lend cash and grain at the legal 30 percent rate, violators to be punished according to law. The local officials should reward those big families who forgive interest payments. Then the fields everywhere will be farmed, the people will eat, and the dynasty will have reserves. What do you think? 25

Xu Jie never wrote Qi Jiguang (1528–1588), one of the top generals responsible for the eventual suppression of the Wokou. Perhaps that was because Qi was very young, and a protégé of Hu Zongxian. Xu wrote just one letter to Qi’s famed colleague, General Yu Dayou (1503–1579), regional commander at Zhejiang and Nan Zhili from 1556 to 1558, who also came under Hu’s jurisdiction: “I’ve long heard of your excellent reputation, and I apologize deeply that because I’ve been both busy and ill I haven’t written you. I think the Wokou are no match for a

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wise and brave man such as you. The only difficulty might be that your powers are too constrained and you’re hindered by regulations. But now fortunately you have the chance to cooperate with Zhang Jing, who shares your ambition, and you’ll definitely succeed.” Evidently, Xu wrote this not long before Zhang Jing’s dismissal and arrest. Xu continued: I read the letter you wrote to Weng Pu [d. 1556, vice minister of war, 1553–1556] in which you strongly recommended fighting at sea. Zhang Jing has already memorialized this, and his request has been granted. But I don’t know how many sea boats have been built, or where you’re getting the sailors. I would hope that you might select men who are used to boats from among the militiamen at Huating and Shanghai. Teach them how to fight at sea. Teach land fighting to those who can run fast. If you have one hundred men per boat, then a starting ratio would be twenty Songjiang men and eighty Fujian men from Zhangzhou. As more Songjiang sailors are trained, you can raise their ratio and reduce that of the Zhangzhou men. This would provide lasting benefits. What do you think about this? 26

Xu Jie’s preoccupation with national security and how practically to achieve it is shown in his letter to Pang Weiming, a newly appointed vice minister in one of the Nanjing ministries, who is otherwise unidentified. Here, Xu has come to the conclusion that local militias are to be much preferred to the earlier strategy of calling in troops from outside. I much regret that I didn’t get to see you off on your trip south. By the time you reach home, the battle will have been decided. One hopes it will be a victory. If not, we have a new situation, hard to predict. Either way, organizing and training militiamen has to continue, to man the defenses in case we did win, or to remedy the crisis in case we didn’t. We can’t rely on outside troops. There are no totally advantageous policies in this world. All the sage can do is follow whichever policy has more advantages and fewer harmful side effects. In organizing and training militiamen, the leaders of a hundred and a thousand must be given the power to discipline and deploy their troops. When they have this power, some of them will surely cause trouble. This the higher officials must control and resolve, and not let organization and training stop because of it. That would be like closing the throat against food, bringing on starvation and death.

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I hope you’ll tell this to Zhou Chong and Zhou Rudou when you see them. Stay alert and dutiful. 27

At about the time he wrote this letter, Xu answered a query from Jiajing. “You promised to report on the war situation,” said Jiajing. “I haven’t heard anything. What is going on?” The date of both the query and the reply was June 9, 1555. “As to a follow-up,” explained Xu: I discussed military matters with Yan Song and others, and sent up a draft request, which you approved. I have no new reports from recent days, so I didn’t memorialize you. But I think the bandits, who recently hit Jiaxing and Changshu, if they were old bandits, and their sharpness got blunted, then their nests would be easy to take. If they were newly arrived bandits, then it will take serious planning and bravery to seize their nests. But the officials’ reports aren’t clear. I don’t know what the current situation is. Probably, cover-up and delay continue. Matters mustn’t be hidden from you. . . . I would ask you to order the Ministry of Personnel to select loyal and honest men who know military affairs to serve as grand coordinators, and not allow stupid and lazy men to get recommended. Encouraging the honest and capable, ousting the greedy and timid, alleviating the hardships for the people, and getting the soldiers willing to exert themselves to kill bandits—this will pacify the south and is the proper thing for the ministry to do. 28

Good news came in from Jiaxing and Changshu, and the war seemed to be winding down, at least around Songjiang, when Xu next wrote his personal choice as Songjiang’s prefect, Fang Lian: “Several local people have come up to Beijing and told me about how you’ve been working to the point of exhaustion. That concerns me. But big victories have been scored at Jiaxing and Changshu, so the raiders’ extermination is not far off. You’ll soon be free of worry and danger, and you’ll be basking in honor, which cheers me.” Then Xu Jie raised an issue he hadn’t raised before, the troubling behavior of his three sons, their housemen, and other kinsmen in Huating. This matter he will raise again. “My family has long produced officials, and while I’ve often warned the kinsmen and the house servants that they must obey the law, I don’t know whether they have or not. I would have you impose some timely restraint on them, and crack down hard on the cheats. It’s not just a

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question of preserving the honor of my family and myself; your own good governance must not be stymied by anyone in its effort to reach everywhere. Please look into this.” 29 On June 29, 1555, Xu sent an important request to Jiajing, asking authorization to saddle all local officials with military responsibility: Earlier the [Nan] Zhili regional inspector Zhou Rudou, and now the supreme commander Zhou Chong, have reported on the bandit situation. I thoroughly interrogated the messengers, and have learned that the old bandits have not been exterminated, that new bandits have come in, that they rampage all over, that Su-Song is damaged, and that they plan to hit Nanjing. This is very serious. Officials who let the bandits do all this have been punished; more troops have been sent in; and the Ministry of War has ordered the military officers to exterminate [the raiders]. Aside from that, I think that while the military officers must do their duty, local officials also need to think about their areas; they need to amass cash and grain ahead of time, so troops don’t have to fight on empty stomachs. They need to scout information on the bandits, so the troops don’t have to fight blind. They need to arrest those in league with the bandits, so that our military plans don’t leak. Local troops must be trained and organized, so that the locales are no longer defenseless with only outside forces to rely on. None of that is now true, so the bandits can’t be exterminated.

Xu went on to buttress his argument for militarizing local civil officials: There are two reasons local officials dare act [so fecklessly]. One is, they’re looking ahead to the regular promotion criteria, they’re habituated to ambitious intrigue, so at this time of crisis, the higher officials rely on credentials [for recommending promotions], the lower follow that path, just hoping to get away from where they are, and no one is willing to do his duty. Second, prefects, subprefects, and county magistrates are supposed to defend territory. Although hereditary guards units [weisuo] have been set up, they say that the prefectural, subprefectural and county seat walls aren’t their sole responsibility, and they leave it to the government army [to handle]. Last year, the Ministry of Justice set up the rule that any military officers who lose cities are liable to the death penalty, while civil officials are subject only to demotion. So [the civil officials] neglect the walls, and don’t plan antibandit resistance. . . . I hope you’ll

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consider what I say. When the Ministry of War memorializes, you should issue an imperial order tasking the local officials [with defense responsibilities]. Order the Ministry of War to not to follow usual habit when it recommends promotions. After the bandits have been pacified, the meritorious officials should be promoted. The Ministry of War must join the judicial organs and punish civil officials who lose cities. That will benefit the war situation. 30

Xu Jie’s last letter to the doomed Zhou Chong, appointed supreme commander of Nan Zhili and Zhejiang after Zhang Jing’s removal, shows deep anxiety. Indeed, after just thirty-four days in office, a new man, Yang Yi, will replace him. “I hear the raiders’ power has revived, so I can easily imagine the worry and stress you’re under,” Xu began. I can’t rescue you; all you can do is use your power and move ahead determinedly. While we’ve called in troops from Sichuan and Guangdong, they have a long journey and may not be deployable right away. I also fear that there may be no food for them, so you’ll have to prepare for that. My thinking is that the raiders go out and kill and loot everywhere in order to harass us and wear us down. It seems best now to have the local militiamen hold the cities, and have the troops called in from outside conduct counterraids on the raiders’ strategic spots. When one spot is conquered, move on and reduce another, so that results can be achieved. Generals Shen Xiyi and He Qing are old and experienced, and I would ask you to consult with them. If they’re up to it, I hope you’ll be sincere with them and put them to use. You’re good at using discipline and encouragement to dispel jealousy and laziness. You don’t need me to tell you these things. Your defense plans have met opposition during court discussion. You need to send up a memorial of explanation. Our emperor is enlightened and will understand it to be loyal. But I am deeply worried and afraid for you. I’ll say no more. 31

Undiscouraged, Xu Jie set out his thoughts in a letter to Zhou Chong’s successor, Yang Yi. (Yang was ousted after half a year, as things turned out.) As often, Xu began on a hopeful note. “The Jiangnan elites have long looked forward to your appointment. They are glad to have you, but regret you took so long. Like with a sick man—early on, his spirits are up and his stomach easily digests the medicine. Wait too long, and the disease lingers, the vigor can’t overcome it, so the medi-

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cine has little effect. But the best doctors treat the worst maladies. This is your time.” Xu turns to the military situation: I keep my ears open waiting for victory reports. Since the wars began, many of our officials have performed ludicrously. Worst are those who use no brain and command armies as though it were a child’s game. They do no scouting beforehand and march blindly into disaster. They impose loose discipline and so their subordinates don’t fear them. The recruitment and training they do is slapdash, so the troops have no way to win. I hope you will change all this. You needn’t fear adverse criticism, as we have a sage ruler presiding. I’m steadily behind you too, so you can ignore conventional rules. Shen Xiyi and He Qing are old generals; if their reputations are based in reality, you should use them and let them act. The student Xie Dexing is a brave planner. He has been a military advisor, and you should use him. This all involves the security of the state and the well-being of the people, and I rely on our friendship to write [frankly] as I have. 32

The summer of 1555 was one of intense disaster for the Ming regime along the coast. The Wokou pounded away everywhere almost at will, and a small band of them even conducted a deep raid, unopposed, as far inland as the gates of Nanjing, and even beyond. Given that officials in the field could not be counted on to provide accurate or full reports, and reports and other messages, accurate or not, took weeks to reach Beijing, and more weeks for messages or orders from Beijing to arrive in the south, Xu Jie (and others in the top posts in Beijing) were often left to fly half-blind, as it were. Xu wrote Regional Inspector Zhou Rudou with further strong advice after having learned from him of a bit of good news. I learned in your letter that the raider nest in Zhelin is empty. That’s fortunate. Now is the time to arrange the defense so that they don’t retake it. The ruler has just endorsed a Ministry of War request to set up garrison troops, and he has also charged Yu Dayou with command of the defense at sea. So the court has laid out the overall strategy, but it’s up to the supreme commander and grand coordinator to work out the details. But both are new appointees, and they don’t yet know what to do. It’s up to you to take the initiative. I hear [Song-

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jiang] prefect Fang Lian wants to have university students Qiao and Yang each lead the militia they have been leading and garrison Batuan and Zhelin. The local officials will select and add more braves to help them, and will issue them food. Also they’ll call in refugees to farm the idle fields. They’ll designate ownerless fields and give them to the garrison troops who have no livelihood. They can both farm and fight. Discussions at military headquarters suggest this is possible. You should call them in and plan together. That would be a blessing to the locale. 33

After the bit of good news came some very bad news. Xu replied to Zhou Rudeng: I read in your letter of the sixth month, thirteenth day [probably July 1, 1555] that the government troops were defeated at Qitang, and I was both shocked and frightened. A month has gone by from the date of your letter, and I don’t know what the raider situation is now. How were our commanders so remiss? It’s awful. As for your memorial about setting up officials, the ministry has some differences with you. First, that it’s not convenient to put Zhenjiang, Changzhou, Guazhou, and Yizhen under one command, because the Yangzi River separates them. Second, naval warfare has been put under Yu Dayou, so the assistant regional commander at Jinshan can only be replaced. As for the placement of Yu Dayou’s headquarters, the ministry hasn’t endorsed that, as their idea of it differs from yours. The matter is hard to decide at this distance, so for now we leave it to the regional commander. I hope you’ll discuss this in detail with Yu. Among the issues we haven’t yet resolved are these: Yu controls three hundred li [about one hundred miles] of seafront, but does he have enough warboats at hand? Does the assistant regional commander at Jinshan have good surveillance over the routes the raiders take to and from Changshu? The basic need is to train local militiamen, as I’ve often said. Now Vice Director Pang Weiming has gone to Wujiang, and I’ve asked him to tell the local officials to do that. However, the local officials resort to empty words in this matter, and don’t conscientiously do it. Two years have now elapsed, and we still lack weapons, so the state of training is easily guessed. How can the localities blame Heaven or fate for the ruin that’s struck them? It would be great if you, the supreme commander, and the grand coordinator made a decision to shake things up.

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Xu ends with some words of encouragement. The Suzhou people have sent up a memorial asking to have you serve as regional inspector for another year. The people of my county, Huating, say to keep you. The censorate and your local colleagues say it’s all too burdensome for you. I think you’ve begun a solidly honest enterprise that has won praise everywhere, and the burdens you won’t avoid. I haven’t time to write separate letters to Yang Yi and Cao Bangfu [1503–1575, Zhou Chong’s successor as grand coordinator for Nan Zhili in 1555]. I ask you to show them this one.

Xu did write Cao Bangfu. He tried to warn him: The memorial bearer came, and I’m glad to learn you’ve taken charge along the coast. What the ruler hates most in his officials are two things: dishonesty and carelessness. You need to report the true facts about military and raider affairs. Don’t fear small blame, and in so doing incur a heavy penalty. You have to defend and train troops energetically. Don’t get used to the present momentary calm, as you’ll regret it later. I dare say these things to you because [as a Huating native] I come under your jurisdiction. I fear the raiders are only hiding on the coast for a while. One day they’ll take advantage of our laxity and come out to kill and plunder. That will deplete the dynasty’s tax base, and exterminate the people. Even if you can’t drive them out, you must strictly defend against them. The court’s reach extends thousands of miles, and it knows everything. So you must conduct public affairs with loyalty and truthfulness.

Xu’s words were in vain. Chief Grand Secretary Yan Song and his censorial arm along the coast, Zhao Wenhua, saw fit to impeach and remove Cao after he’d served but half a year as grand coordinator for Nan Zhili. 34 Zhou Rudou’s future was brighter. Xu clearly liked him. He sent Zhou the fruits of his current thoughts about military matters. “We have the memorial asking to keep you in your post, which is the best thing for the locale. I’m very grateful to you. The raiders at Jiangyin have withdrawn, and that would appear to leave the gang at Zhelin all the more isolated. I understand war boats have been sent to interdict them, which is excellent. I just fear that the raiders don’t have the big sea boats they need to make an escape, and so when their food runs out,

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they’ll come out to kill and loot again.” Xu turns to the effects of the sensational deep raid of the summer of 1555. We recently got the report from Nanjing that fifty raiders ran rampant over thousands of li meeting no resistance anywhere. This just raises the raiders’ morale. Doesn’t that cause us anxiety over what may happen next year? The “wolf troops” are too weak, and the Sichuan troops too far away to deploy, so you have no choice but to deploy the ethnic minority troops from Huguang. The raiders at SuSong have many routes of entry and they’re close to Nanjing, so it looks as though you’ll have to deploy as many as twelve thousand troops from Yongshun [in southern Huguang]. The Zhejiang raiders have fewer routes and are farther from Nanjing, so you’ll just need to post ten thousand men from Baojing [also in southern Huguang]. The topography features both broad and narrow places, so the size of the units you send out will vary accordingly. The generals Shen Xiyi and He Qing are old [and experienced], but the supreme commander and the grand coordinator haven’t given them any tasks. It won’t do to call them in on the spot for consultations. People won’t trust that, and the generals will use that as an excuse not to cooperate. I would assign each of them a branch of local militiamen, have them make the selections, and train the men to fight and defend. If they can act and exert themselves like that, then the locale will be blessed. If not, blame can be assigned. What do you think? It’s autumn, and getting colder, so you need to take care of yourself. 35

Xu then contacted Shen Xiyi directly in order to encourage his participation in the war against the raiders. “I very much hope you can help save our locale,” he wrote. I’m aware of your great reputation. If now, late in your life, you achieve nothing, you’ll throw away your long career. I truly hope you’ll unfold your far-reaching plans and destroy those puny raiders. They told me that when you were called in for military consultations, you wore a cloth robe and leather shoes and voiced a desire to retire to the woods and mountains. But I said you’d already stepped up, and you couldn’t go back now, so I didn’t believe the rumor. Indeed, I see from your letter you’ve vowed to destroy the raiders, and I’m pleased and relieved. After age fifty, a man’s vigor declines, but antiquity featured generals so sick they couldn’t walk who yet brought on victories. You can succeed without putting on armor, as you say at

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the end of your letter. Don’t underrate yourself. Remember the ruler’s confidence in you, and your twenty years’ friendship with Tang Shunzhi. I’ll reduce the favors and enhance the decorum and not treat you as a run-of-the-mill general. Won’t you treat me on the basis of the generations of goodwill our ancestors have built up? I’m asking the messenger to return the gem [you offered me]. Take care of yourself. 36

Xu contacts Zhou Rudou again and raises four matters with him: what to do about the raiders at Taozhai, a coastal settlement in Songjiang Prefecture; why local tax cancellation is not a good idea; approval of the local petition to keep Zhou on the job; and the bad behavior of Xu’s clansmen and servants. “I got your letter,” writes Xu, and am pleased to learn you want to exterminate the raiders at Taozhai very soon so as to prevent their linking up with others. I’ve received several letters in which the supreme commander and grand coordinator say they want to exterminate them in good time, so unexpectedly they agree with you. There are six hundred Taozhai raiders. They seem weak now only because they’re sick and starving. But as soon as fall with its cool weather comes on, they’ll recover. When they recover, they’ll be strong enough to go out and loot. Then they’ll eat to the fill and be even stronger. They still have a will to fight to the death. So they can never be underestimated. When fifty men could rampage as those did, how might twelve times that number do? Have you decided yet on an attack plan? If you hesitate and delay, and don’t hit them when they’re sick, the supreme commander and grand coordinator will in future be sorely troubled.

Why not cancel local taxes? “As to your request to remit taxes— when earlier I heard Magistrate Du, of Huating, my county, had this idea, I wrote him and argued that since the dynasty’s revenues had shrunk, a general tax remission can’t be done, so he’d need to ask to select unfarmed land at Punan and open it for permanent occupation and impose taxes on it. I hope you can get the peasants to go along. Memorialize at once, and I’ll back you.” Xu proceeds to the next matter on his mind. “The memorial of the elite and common people of my area asking to keep you in your post has been endorsed, and an imperial authorization has followed, and I can imagine the rejoicing down in Wu.

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The people’s minds are always affected by virtue, so why don’t the elites who want the people’s support seek that virtue in themselves?” Xu didn’t quite trust that Zhou and others weren’t going easy on his kinsmen because of his own high position in Beijing. “My son showed me the letter you wrote him. You seem to indicate that my sons, juniors, and family servants abide by the laws pretty much, but I fear the elites and commoners know that you and I are close friends, and that you may not have stated the true facts. I would ask you to check carefully, and crack down if any have made trouble or done evil things. That would show the greatest friendship.” 37 Things in Su-Song then seemed to take a turn for the worse. Xu’s next letter to Zhou Rudou showed him to be very troubled in mind. “How is the war at sea going right now?” he asked. If sea defense commander Dong Bangzheng blindly followed orders from military headquarters, then the raiders at sea and the bandits at Suzhou both survive, and we are simultaneously threatened in the back and in the stomach. The outcome of that can be foreseen. Here, the high officials credit Cao Bangfu with an extraordinary success, but in his victory report he shouldn’t have downplayed the military leadership. If the emperor finds out, the penalty will be unfathomable. The ministry has tried to finesse this, but Yang Yi’s reputation has been damaged. If he can put this out of his mind and join cooperatively in an effort to defeat the raiders, then his good act will override his bad. As to the two generals, we have gone along with what you said, but I suspect Liu Yuan has replaced He [Qing], as Li Daochang recommended him earlier, but I don’t know how that’s worked out. The Sichuan and “wolf troops” aren’t being deployed, and I’m afraid the local militia can’t engage in major battle. If they’re beaten, they’ll scatter, and the city defenses will be uncertain, and you’ll have to deploy Miao troops. The situation is very dangerous. What is Yang Yi’s thinking on this matter? I hope you’ll hold a detailed discussion with him.

Without explaining why, Xu changed his mind about taxes. “I hope you’ll soon send up a memorial asking to remit taxes.” So ended his letter. 38 Zhou sent up that memorial. Xu replied to him with some questions about it, and then, as he often did, he switched topics.

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Masses of people can be grateful to you for your excellent memorial on remitting taxes. I’ve begged the Ministry of Revenue to await Cao Bangfu’s memorial before acting on it. However, while you mention Pudong and Punan, you don’t give figures for cash and grain. You need to hurry and check that while we wait for the ministry’s reply to come down. Also my county’s registers show households located in the east while their fields lie west. If the fields are in Pudong and Punan, these are what need tax remission. The households at Puxi and Pubei should be not be given remission. I don’t know how the fields at Pudong and Punan should be handled so they get the real benefit of your compassion. I hope you pay attention to this.

Xu moves on to the security situation. Rumors here say our troops were beaten at sea, but for a long time now, no report has come in. The supervising secretaries have impeached everyone involved, and there’s no escape for them. Your memorial and that of Yuchuan [unidentified] came in too early. Ever since Zhang Jing got indicted, officials who are natives of the two provinces have been scrutinizing their replacements day and night for their strengths and weaknesses, but the replacements don’t quite realize that, and they fall into their traps, so they get criticized for hiding things. This is stupid. I’ve more to say, but will stop here. Please take note. 39

While Xu Jie declines to name names, it is evident that he is criticizing the Yan Song network. That network was busy building a case against Yang Yi, Zhou Chong’s successor as supreme commander over the coastal provinces in 1555–1556. Xu Jie wrote Yang Yi, detailing the facts and explaining the rumors that were undermining him. He added eleven detailed suggestions for managing the coastal defenses and their infrastructure in an attempt, unavailing as things turned out, to help him surmount his troubles. “The messenger has arrived,” wrote Xu, and I learn how hard you’ve been working. In three other letters, I learn about your bitter frustration, and I’m ashamed that I haven’t helped you. The impeachment generally rests on verified facts, but the rumors here swirl, and the impeachment is just one source for them. I fear more controversies will develop later. I rest on our thirty years of friendship, and I understand there is no foretelling when the

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raider disaster will end, but I dare detail the matter for you, and add on my personal views. Please think all this over and discuss these things with the good men in your headquarters.

Xu describes the unfavorable attention Yang Yi has been getting in Beijing. He believes it well grounded on the whole and is unsparing in relating it: When you received the appointment as supreme commander, the high officials were eager to hear your plans and thought you would change night into day. Two months later, your memorial came in. Everyone was astounded that it took so long, and the rumor began that you had wasted time banqueting and drinking in Hangzhou as though you didn’t care there were other things to do. That got the rumors going. When the impeachment of Dong Bangzheng came in, everyone said that the fifty raiders who rampaged over several prefectures, threatened Taizu’s tomb in Nanjing, plundered Suzhou, and made as though they were going to link up with the sea raiders had to be suppressed immediately, as both logic and circumstance required. However, you were in Hangzhou at the time. There was no agreed-upon plan to advance on Taozhai. It was Cao Bangfu who got his troops to exterminate them. That assuaged the ruler’s worries, wiped clean the humiliation dealt to Nanjing, got rid of enemies at the stomach and back, and put everyone’s mind at ease. The merit was great. But you were angry that Cao’s report of victory didn’t mention you, so you impeached him, turning merit into fault. That really stirred the rumors. And now there’s been the defeat of the Zhejiang and Nan Zhili troops, and now the impeachment has come in, so everyone says there’s been a cover-up, as your memorial came in talking about the earlier history and no hint of a plan. Everyone says you wield the powers of a supreme commander. You can execute the disobedient and act at convenience. If high officials don’t respond to queries they must be impeached; lower officials should be arrested and interrogated. But you did neither. You waited over four months, and then you memorialized asking for help. But the War Ministry couldn’t respond to that either legally or morally. And there was no clear plan for selecting and training local militia. Yet your earlier memorial said the militia could be used. The raiders control the seacoast. The troops of the two grand coordinators couldn’t beat them, yet your earlier memorial said the raiders had already withdrawn. Also you said they could be defeated any day. All this looks

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like lies. So the obloquy just can’t be stopped. Ever since Zhang Jing and [Grand Coordinator Li Tianchong] got indicted, the ruler has been very demanding and the high officials are alertly holding everyone to account. But you all just carry on as usual, which has provoked things to this point. The past is beyond remedy. Perhaps the future can be salvaged. I hope you give this your attention.

Xu appended to his letter eleven matters for Yang Yi to think about and, if possible, put into effect. Although these failed to save Yang’s skin, they do provide an excellent overview of Ming China’s difficulties along the coast as of 1555–1556. One might ignore these or simply summarize them, but Xu’s own words provide such fine detail and open such a good window into what it was like to sit in the Grand Secretariat and survey the situation as it was at a certain depressing moment in time that it is best to translate them directly. The hereditary guards [weisuo] garrisons are everywhere plagued by absentees and weak soldiers. There’s the Wokou disaster in Jiangnan, Jiangbei, Nan Zhili and Zhekiang. In Chenzhou and Yuanzhou prefectures of Huguang province there’s a Miao rebellion. [Huguang] may have troops, but they have no time to devote to your use, and they’ll certainly memorialize their objections, as Chen Ru says in his letter. The War Ministry won’t force them. It takes months for these letters to go back and forth. None of them helps you in your defense work. Even if one or two arrive, it’s just verbiage and of no use to the situation. You sit and consume military rations, and meanwhile, before the old Wokou are exterminated, new Wokou arrive in the blink of an eye. How can you avoid mishandling this? I’d advise you to forget outside help, and give your whole attention to selecting and training local militia. Get the Sha troops and the Shandong and Nan Zhili troops to produce results. Otherwise we have paintings of cakes, and those can’t ease hunger. Not a good plan.

Xu continues: It appears that the Miao troops can’t be deployed in present circumstances. The bandits have killed no fewer than one or two thousand of them. The two pacification commissioners have said nothing, but [the Miao troops’] minds are fearful, and they’re all disappointed that no rewards for merit have been issued. If you just called them in on the spot, they’d send a leader at the head of a few thousand weak

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men, and they’d straggle in, and be incapable of fighting. They wouldn’t dare return home if you released them, and if you tried to punish them, they’d riot. If you forgave them, you’d set a bad example for the other troops. You wouldn’t know what to do, would you? My thought is you should put up the two pacification commissioners for rewards for what they did earlier; have the court treat them liberally, and have them come leading their own personal troops. They will then fight effectively. And you need to choose talented and knowledgeable officers to take command. I hope you’ll consider this carefully.

Xu talks about the use of gunpowder weapons. He must have been reading a large file of letters and reports in order to be able to discuss this and other matters at such length. The Miao troops are resolute fighters who can kill raiders, but they are afraid of the raiders’ bird-beak guns. They blanch when they hear about them. You need to select and deploy two or three thousand soldiers from Fujian province who are skilled at firing guns and use them as a vanguard, and so restore the Miao troops’ confidence. Then train two or three thousand local militiamen to practice gunnery so as to add to their self-regard, and enable them to beef up shortfalls in the Fujian forces. As for defending against guns, the Fujian troops will surely know about that. You need to inquire among them and make the preparations.

Xu stresses once again his conviction that China’s commanders needed to be given greater respect and a freer hand. He is, again, extremely frank. “Talented generals are rare,” he noted: Shen Xiyi and He Qing are seasoned generals. They’ve been to see the high officials, but they’ve neither been given tasks nor treated courteously. They see they can’t act freely, and they don’t want to get themselves in trouble, so they both back away. They feign deafness. They seek to be impeached for lack of talent, or for being too disabled to serve. The War Ministry reads all these denunciations, and in order to preserve appearances can only endorse them. The generals hear their report, and gladly leave. But it’s not officials like you who got rid of them; those two generals made a fool of you. The past is irretrievable. Dong Bangzheng and Lou Yu aren’t outstanding talents, but they have battle experience. I’ve never heard of your ever

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having commended even one or two civil or military men for their ability to kill raiders. You’ve just dwelled on getting rid of those two. That was easy to do. But you’ve done nothing to compensate for that. You’ve made things even worse. Aren’t you isolating yourself? The ministry has made an inquiry into Dong Bangzheng. I would ask you to go easy, and give him a chance to redeem himself through merit. What do you think? I’m not an old friend of Dong’s, so I’m not pleading on his behalf. I’m thinking of you. Please note that.

Xu emphasizes again the necessity to ensure all troops are of fighting quality. Troops are more effective if well trained. They needn’t be numerous. Jiangnan has been at war for three years now, so which troops are useful, and which not? These things are impossible to hide. You need to make careful inquiry and before you deploy. The prefectural storehouses are empty, and the people’s ability to pay taxes exhausted. You need to stop rations for the useless troops and redirect them to the useful ones so they can eat. Otherwise you’re wasting resources. If you feed the idle, and can’t feed your real fighters, defeat is certain.

He reminds Yang Yi what the raiders’ strong points are. “There are,” he said, “generally speaking, two devices whereby the raiders prevail. One is ambushes. The second is the lure of profit. And there are two reasons why our troops fall into their traps. One is poor intelligence, and the other is loose discipline. You really have to rectify this. Give it your complete attention.” Xu tasks Yang Yi with the need to find ways to prevent the Ming forces from continuing their habit of avoiding battle. Our troops keep fleeing when they see raiders. They think this is their best option. They don’t realize the raiders take advantage of that to chase and kill us. Our troops must start advancing resolutely. At best they’ll win, and at least they’ll preserve their lives. This is absolutely clear. Yet they will flee. Why? Because their officers haven’t trained them, and headquarters has never executed a single deserter. I would ask you, when things are quiet, to give detailed instructions and standing orders to the effect that all deserters will be beheaded. On campaign, select especially trustworthy and intelligent officers to monitor the ranks, and on return from the front behead all

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those who fled, no forgiveness. After having done this once or twice, the troops will be appropriately motivated. The Book of Documents says things succeed when authority supersedes fondness. Nowadays our local officials endlessly flog commoners at the slightest provocation. If you can’t bear to put men to death, can’t you inflict flogging? If you don’t, the deserters can’t be stopped, and the powers the court gave you will have been for naught. You need to select idle land outside the city walls as a base for outside troops. This will avoid harassing the local people, and will relieve crowding and the threat of epidemics [inside the cities]. It’s always been true that surrendered troops are still enemies. The raiders are very deceitful, so you need to be on guard. All those who surrender should be scattered over the cantons, not brought into the cities. What do you think? In farming it’s peasants you must consult; in weaving, it’s the weaving maids. Not even a sage like Confucius matches up to an old peasant or gardener [when it comes to knowing farming]. You should consult widely about all aspects of warfare from among the military people and get it right. What you hear by ear and guess at is not the same as personal experience. To gaze on as a bystander and offer offhand remarks is also very different from actually participating in things. You have to understand that. 40

As if that letter weren’t enough to help his friend and salve his own conscience, Xu sent him a short follow-up note. “In the last ten days,” wrote Xu in a positive tone, I’ve gotten two reports of big victories, and am much consoled. The raiders’ having suffered defeat, their extermination won’t be difficult. But we’ve got to be on guard against the revenge of a wounded animal. I hope you’ll make preparations for the coming spring. In other letters I’ve gotten a lot of confused rumor; generally, people expect too much from you, and they’re too quick to impeach. It’s not caused by Dong Bangzheng’s accusations. Dong is just an annual tribute student from the Imperial University. What power does he have to get the attention of the high officials? The high officials empathize with him only because he impeached Lao Ji, and saw that it was not the fault of Luo Gongchen that he left. Don’t misunderstand.

Xu turns to the scene at hand.

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Although the outside troops are strong, they can’t stay forever a thousand li from home. It was hard bringing them in. I urgently ask you to inspire and lead them in an attack so as to alleviate that difficulty. I’d also like you to strictly supervise the local officials in selecting and training militia as the long-range plan. I emphasize militia training now, as I emphasized deploying outside troops earlier. This flies in the face of majority opinion, but you know I was right before, and won’t be completely wrong now. I realize I was too frank with you earlier, which makes me uneasy. But I also understand that true friendship requires that I not omit the big picture in order to avoid resentment. So I must offend you again. Please look into this. 41

Clearly Xu Jie was asking a great deal of a man who had no great administrative ability or leadership talent. Yan Song’s man Zhao Wenhua had no use for Yang Yi. He impeached him and got him dismissed. Yang’s main effort involved raising local braves and bringing in yet more outside troops—archers from Shandong; boatmen from the coastal provinces; special forces from Henan. Once they arrived, however, he couldn’t control them. Sichuan and Shandong troops fought each other. Troops from Huguang, defeated, ran amok. For all the corruption and high living associated with their network, Yan Song and Zhao Wenhua did demand effectiveness, and they finally found the right man in Yang Yi’s successor as supreme commander at Hangzhou, Hu Zongxian. Hu lay outside Xu Jie’s personal orbit, and except for the one early letter quoted earlier, he never contacted him. It is conceivable that the dismissal of Xu’s man Yang Yi and his replacement by Yan Song’s man Hu Zongxian could have led to a serious split in the topmost leadership. But it did not. There seems to have been made a tacit agreement that Xu Jie would direct operations on the northern frontier and on the four hundred miles of Nan Zhili coast while Yan Song handled the coast from Zhejiang Province south. So Xu Jie let Hu Zongxian alone and switched the focus of his attentions from the supreme commander at Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province to the grand coordinator and regional inspector in Nan Zhili Province, and to the local officials in Su-Song Prefecture. A reply to his friend, Regional Inspector Zhou Rudou, reveals just how intense was his concern for what went on in Zhou’s sphere of responsibility. “Fortunately your request for military rations has been

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met,” he wrote. “I’ve heard no report of any victories, and that worries me. The Sichuan troops are soon to arrive, but [general] He Qing has been dismissed and there’s no one to command them. So I’d ask you to retain him, so those troops and their leaders won’t make excuses for inaction. If you find that too peremptory, you can put him in charge while you rush a memorial here.” Xu goes on offer his views on how to manage the confusing mix of armies and personnel gathered in Nan Zhili. This is what proved to be beyond the ability of Yang Yi to handle. The Bei Zhili troops left here about ten days ago. All the outside troops that arrive need local guides. You’ll need to inform the new arrivals of the topography, and the raiders’ tactics and plans, so they’ll know how to act effectively. The reason the Shandong troops were beaten last year is because they were greedy for advantage and did no reconnaissance. This sort of thing has to be firmly stopped. You need to inform and warn the supreme commander [still Yang Yi] and the grand coordinator [Zhou Chong or Hu Zongxian] above, and the local officials and subordinate commanders below, about this.

Xu then slips into fine detail about personnel. The local people all say Instructor Han is loyal, brave, and usable; if what they say is right, I hope you’ll memorialize and get him appointed to some prefectural post so that he can lead militia. Many people also commend the maritime defender Dong Bangzheng, but the top command impeached him on the flimsy grounds that he wasn’t compliant. I wrote Yang Yi and asked him to go easy, but I don’t know whether he did or not. Generally, human talents are rare; yet before getting new ones, we deplete the ranks of the old. This won’t do. I hope you’ll take me seriously, as I have no special affection for Dong. When Cao Bangfu became a target of attack, your memorial was spot-on, but he was still impeached, and your followup memorial was ignored. I supported public opinion, but I was afraid of opening a rift [with the Yan Song faction]. You mediated and showed your skill, as you were able to calm everyone’s anger. I hear everywhere city defenses and militia training are perfunctory. This is a serious issue. I hope you’ll make the local officials exert better efforts. Don’t leave cause for regret. . . . I’m afraid I’ve rambled on here, so please forgive me. A memorial from the Huguang grand coordinator has come in, in which I learn eight thousand [nonChinese] troops from the Yongbao and Rongmei chieftains’ offices

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are on their way to help. I hear the Yongbao troops are hereditary enemies of those from Youyang. If they meet, they’ll kill each other. When the Youyang troops arrive, you’ll have to tell the supreme commander and the grand coordinator to be careful how they’re deployed. They must be quartered and deployed separately. Don’t let them see each other. The Youyang troops are eager for success; it’s a good technique for managing troops to take advantage of that. 42

Xu reached far down the official hierarchy to scold Wu Shilai, prefectural judge at Songjiang and leader of the local defenses during Prefect Fang Lian’s illness. Whether despite, or because of, this scolding, Wu Shilai is on record as having done a fine job as director of the Songjiang defense, sheltering refugees, quelling looting by outside troops, and rushing archers to defend a breach in the city wall during a driving rainstorm. 43 I read in your report of the twelfth of the previous month that the raiders’ power has grown, which worries me. I was afraid of this from earlier letters I received. I don’t know why you local officials didn’t prepare for it. You ignored the best plans, and agreed to wild talk, as though you thought the raiders could be easily put down. And you thought the local militia was enough, and that there was no need to deploy outside troops. How do you expect to achieve success this way? It’s good that the Sichuan and Huguang troops have arrived, but this makes for a large aggregation, and if they’re mismanaged, badly deployed, mistreated, and undersupplied, they’ll not only be incapable of killing raiders, they’ll start rioting and killing our people. This is serious business, and I don’t know how you local officials will handle it. I sent the top commanders a letter in the tenth month. I enclose copies of letters I’m sending to Zhou Rudou and Fang Lian, for your reference. 44

Xu’s letter to Wu Shilai’s superior, Zhou Rudou, was probably not the following one, because it has a much larger area than Songjiang in mind: I learn from your letter that while the raiders’ power has grown, our troops have gathered in great number, so I’m glad and fearful at the same time. I hear the raiders are based at Fushan. On the left they threaten Suzhou, and on the right Wuxi. On the south there is a land route to Nanjing, and to the north over the Yangzi they can reach

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Guafu, which imperils the Grand Canal. It’s a very strategic spot. If the raiders seize it, the top commanders will be unable to handle inland war on top of the coastal fighting. If the report is accurate, I hope you’ll press for action. If it’s not yet clear, I hope you’ll order the vice commanders at Changzhou and Zhenjiang to lead a large force and take it ahead of time. [General] Yu Dayou has been denounced by Cao Bangfu, and I have no idea who might replace him. By all means let me know. I’ll stop here. 45

Xu’s next several letters are replies to Zhou Rudou, and they reflect the grand secretary’s continuing anxiety about the progress of the war along the coast. (One is put in mind of Lincoln and Stanton as they monitored the news, often bad, from the battlefronts of the US Civil War.) “When your memorial asking for tax cancellation first came in, I already knew that we were short of silver, and the ministry feared the same was the case elsewhere, which is why we were unable to endorse it. Now you’ve troubled to send up another memorial, and now is the time to break the usual boundaries and ask the local officials to hold off collecting until an edict comes down.” Xu turns to the politics of coastal defense, and alludes to a covert but serious rift between him and Yan Song’s machine: Dong Bangzheng, the maritime defender, has been exonerated, thanks to your concern for talent. The top command [Supreme Commander Hu Zongxian, at Hangzhou] wasn’t so angry at his noncompliance; they just used the case to curry favor with the censor [Zhao Wenhua], as you said. I don’t know what the top command has been doing recently; I mean, first they impeached [General] He Qing, then they memorialized to keep him, and now they’ve dismissed him and sent him away. They have no fixed criteria, and they hire and fire without waiting for an imperial directive. If higher officials hate noncompliance among the lower, don’t they realize the emperor and his court hate ministers who usurp authority? If I’m queried about this, I don’t know how I could respond. The censor has been ordered back to Beijing. While he was down there, all the supreme commanders and grand coordinators were hamstrung somewhat, and they could use that fact as an excuse to avoid their tasks. Now they can’t do that.

Xu ends with some suggestions for his friend:

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Where are the plans for fighting and defending going to come from? I hope you’ll warn [the grand coordinator et al.] about this when you gather together. As possible associate commissioner for sea defense, both Luo and Han are acceptable. You should invite both, and maybe succeed in getting one of them. A vice commissioner is unnecessary; too many officials disturb the people, especially in these times. If you want to appoint a jinshi degree holder with gold belt to act as a greeter at military headquarters to enhance its respectability, you can prepare a request and await imperial authorization. You give such wholehearted attention to local affairs and have such great talent that I have to say everything to you. Please forgive. 46

Xu next suggested to Zhou how to develop a Songjiang militia, and it’s a bit puzzling why such basic principles had to be reiterated when Zhou had already been closely involved in a coastal war that had been going on for some four years. “Local militias must indeed be trained,” Xu wrote, but first you must make good selections. Then you must give them substantive training. In my county [Huating], only the men who live close to the sea can be taught to fight. Those from the interior don’t take to it. If you recruit men from each household in the townships, and go out to the fields to make announcements, the trainable men will be too few, and will cause trouble if they can’t be formed into units; while the untrainable, if forced into service, will be a drain on resources and will just scatter and flee in combat. So these aren’t good ideas. My own opinion is that we should first determine how many troops we need, seek out leaders, and discuss expenses for them all. We should have so many [leaders] set up bases in such and such places, recruit so many men, have them make the picks and conduct the training and lead the men in combat and in defense, and make those who can’t be soldiers provide financial support. Give them all weapons, and announce rewards and penalties, so that the training will produce results. You think this over and decide. 47

“I read your memorial plus your two reports,” wrote Xu in yet another reply to Zhou Rudou. You covered national calculations and military issues thoroughly. The ministry feels it has to agree with you, but I understand some nonChinese and northern troops have entered your area, that their sup-

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ply is insufficient, and they may cause trouble. These messages back and forth are too slow to be useful, so planning for victory is entirely in the hands of regional authority. We may have many troops, but if they can’t be used, success is unlikely. The root of all this, on the inside, is because officials take their illicit pleasures every day, while on the outside they make a habit of lies and concealment. People here were alarmed to get your memorial, yet letters reporting that the raiders are in retreat, and that there is nothing to fear, come in a steady stream. People say you worry too much. They say I’m a friend of yours, and too partial. They would, wouldn’t they! As for Assistant Regional Commander Zong Li’s troops, your letter of last month predicted his defeat. Yin Bingheng has a good reputation as a military talent. I hope you’ll tell the regional authorities this, so they’ll promote him. But don’t force him; you’ll just get him killed and his troops defeated, which is useless. The court has set up special troops to guard the imperial tomb at Nanjing, and the Nanjing Ministry of War has put Zhang Jingxian in charge, but this arrangement thins the sea defenses, and I don’t think it’s a good plan. I have no way to tell them so secretly, and I don’t know what to do. The student Xie Dexing from your home county [Yuyao, in Zhejiang Province] knows the two pacification commissioners, who have sent someone here to Beijing, and I’ve told that person many times about loyalty and righteousness. If there’s something you want to say to the commissioners, you can send student Xie. 48

By 1559, after seven years of combat, the war against the Wokou began achieving some results. A big victory came in June, at Miaowan, an important raider “nest” on the sea north of the Yangzi River delta, clearing that stretch of coastline of raiders. Land and sea operations, conducted by Hu Zongxian from his elaborate headquarters at Hangzhou, succeeded in capturing and, under pressure, executing two principal leaders of the Wokou, Xu Hai and Wang Zhi, in 1556 and 1557, respectively. After successfully defending their base in the Zhoushan (Chusan) Archipelago off Hangzhou Bay in 1558, the Wokou abandoned it early in 1559 and shifted their focus southward to engage easier targets and richer pickings on the coasts of Fujian and Guangdong Provinces. There they managed to stay active for another decade. As these developments took place, Xu Jie’s letters to officials in Nanjing and Songjiang began to address problems of postwar rehabili-

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tation. I will not cover this in the detail Xu devoted to them because much of what he had to say about such topics as hydraulics, taxation, and relief he’d already said earlier on to earlier appointees. But he did worry about a Wokou revival, and so he insisted that the recruitment and training of local militia continue unabated. And so we move from the great security crises of the 1550s and Xu Jie’s role in dealing with them and take up a different topic in the next chapter, his appointment as Yan Song’s successor and his service as chief grand secretary, 1562–1568. In sum, then, what can be said about Xu’s role in suppressing the Wokou? On the one hand, his were by no means the only letters of advice and suggestion in circulation. There were many others. Xu Jie encouraged intrabureaucratic consultation of this sort. We know little of how officials in the field reacted to Xu Jie’s letters. They may have resented the intrusion; on the other hand, they may have welcomed being informed of what Beijing expected them to do. Xu mostly wrote to new appointees and to officials who were experiencing difficulties. From beginning to end, Xu was involved in a subdued rivalry with Yan Song, Zhou Wenhua, and Hu Zongxian, who were the main architects of the Wokou suppression along the coast north of Fujian. Xu left them alone. He focused his attention on Nanjing, where the grand coordinators and regional inspectors waged a mainly defensive struggle along the four hundred or so miles of coast from the border of Shandong in the north to that of Zhejiang in the south. He was also very concerned with his home prefecture of Songjiang, which controlled the two counties of Huating (where Xu Jie’s home lay), Shanghai (site of the modern metropolis), and for a few years, a third county, Qingpu. There his influence was very strong and, from all signs, constructive. Xu Jie can be credited with having tried as best he could to help the dozen or more successive regional officials in their duty to defend the province of Nan Zhili against the devastation the Wokou marauders were perpetrating. But none of those officials measured up to Hu Zongxian. None of Xu’s favorite military commanders—men such as Tang Kekuan, Shen Xiyi, or He Qing—could hold a candle to Hu Zongxian’s top commanders, Qi Jiguang and Yu Dayou. Nonetheless, it is important to note that by their mere presence and, even more, their active participation in fighting off the raiders, Yan Song and his supporters

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were never able to get the Jiajing emperor to endorse their desire to push the hawkish Xu Jie and his following off to one side and arrange some sort of deal with the Wokou chiefs Xu Hai and Wang Zhi. For his part, Xu Jie devoted most of his time and energy to problems of national defense and set his rivalry with Yan Song on a low-heat simmer. Jiajing’s determination to work with both groups and not yield fully to either one was not a likely method for dealing successfully with the double security crisis, but it seemed to work. By 1562, much had been done to build walls and other defenses and to recruit, train, organize, supply, and deploy ground and naval forces. A regime that was completely unprepared to handle the widespread violence it faced during and after 1550 managed, by slow degrees, to gain the upper hand, reduce all the raiding, and make Ming China a much safer place in which to live. Still, the cause of all the raiding, along both the frontier and the coast, was only in part what Xu Jie said it was—official corruption and malfeasance— although those abuses surely did play a role. Rather, it was Beijing’s refusal to legitimize foreign trade. That would slowly begin to change after January 23, 1567, when Jiajing breathed his last.

NOTES 1. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:70–72. The fiscal history of neighboring Suzhou Prefecture has been well covered in Michael Marme, Suzhou: Where the Goods of All the Provinces Converge (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005). See pp. 217–19. The story of the Wokou has been written up many times, starting during the Ming period itself. The best and fullest English-language account is that of Kuan-wai So, Japanese Piracy in Ming China during the Sixteenth Century (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1975). However, the author favors Yan Song and makes Xu Jie out to be a villainous partisan. Several of the officials mentioned in this chapter have biographies in Goodrich and Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography: see especially the entries for Chang Ching, Chao Wen-hua, Ch’i Chi-kuang, Hu Tsung-hsien, and Yü Ta-you. Still very useful is an older work, Chen Mouheng, Mingdai Wokou kaolue (Beijing: Hafo Yanjing xueshe, 1934); the book is in Chinese, but its alternate in English is Ch’en Mao-heng, The Invasion of China by Japanese Pirates during Ming Dynasty. Yanjing Journal of Chinese Studies, vol. 6 (Beijing: Yenching University, Harvard-Yenching Institute, Peiping Office, 1934). 2. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:72–73.

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3. Ibid., 80:73–74. 4. Ibid., 80:75–76. 5. Ibid., 80:77. Zhou Chen’s important reforms of the early Ming system have been discussed in Marme, Suzhou, 116ff. 6. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:77–79. 7. Ibid., 80:80–81. Qingpu was abolished in 1553, but it was restored in 1573, after Xu had retired. 8. Ibid., 80:88. 9. Ibid., 80:86. 10. Ibid., 80:89–90. 11. Ibid., 80:90. 12. Ibid., 80:90–91. 13. Ibid., 80:91. 14. Ibid., 80:91–92. 15. Ibid., 80:92. 16. Ibid., 80:93. 17. Ibid., 79:373–74. 18. Ibid., 80:93–94. 19. Ibid., 80:94. 20. Ibid., 80:94–95. 21. Ibid., 79:374. 22. Ibid., 80:95–96. 23. Ibid., 80:97. 24. Ibid., 80:96. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 80:96–97. 27. Ibid., 80:97–98. 28. Ibid., 79:374–75. 29. Ibid., 80:98. 30. Ibid., 79:375. 31. Ibid., 80:98. Shen Xiyi was a hereditary commander with a long and distinguished career, but Zhou Rudou impeached him for his failure against the Wokou. He Qing had had a long and stellar career, too, as a commander at Songpan on the Tibetan frontier. But he was too old and the coast was wholly unfamiliar to him, and Zhou impeached him for failure as well. See Ming shi, ch. 211, for biographies of the two. 32. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:98. 33. Ibid., 80:98–99. 34. Ibid., 80:99. 35. Ibid., 80:99–100. 36. Ibid., 80:100.

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37. Ibid., 80:100–101. 38. Ibid., 80:101. 39. Ibid., 80:101–2. 40. Ibid., 80:102–5. 41. Ibid., 80:106. 42. Ibid., 80:105–6. 43. Ming shi, ch. 210; Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 6:3516–17. 44. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:106. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., 80:107. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., 80:107–8. Xu Jie wrote a funerary note for Zong Li; see ibid., 80:53–54.

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On June 2, 1562, the end came for Yan Song as China’s top bureaucrat, a position he’d held for fourteen years, the longest such tenure in all of Ming history. It was only with deep reluctance that Jiajing dismissed him. It was the criminal behavior of his son, Yan Shifan, that forced his hand. Jiajing had never liked Yan Shifan—partly, perhaps, because he saw in him a rival for Yan Song’s affection. Yan’s nonjudgmental subservience to the demands of the ruler’s Daoist religion, plus his ability to adapt to and exploit Jiajing’s quick temper and shifting moods, account heavily for his longevity in office. Beyond that, there was a deeper psychological and emotional tie. Yan in his prime is described as having been tall, always elegantly dressed, with high and prominent eyebrows and a sonorous voice. He was lean and vigorous, looking much younger than his true age. Nearly thirty years older than Jiajing, he was probably a substitute father (Jiajing’s own father, of fond memory, had died when the future emperor was eleven) and also a living example of the health and longevity that the ruler so desperately sought. The emotional bond between Yan and the emperor did not prevent their disagreement over northern frontier policy. Jiajing was hawkish. Yan Song was not. He was always looking for ways to avoid battle, work out deals with the enemy, and yield contested border territory rather than bear the costs of defending it. Here, Xu Jie consistently rallied to Jiajing’s side, in a way playing Churchill to Yan Song’s Neville Chamberlain. However, this policy difference had simmered for many years. 139

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Altan Khan’s deep incursion of 1550 and Sengge Düüreng’s siege of the Datong Right Guards in 1557–1558 had never put Yan Song’s position in peril. More troubling for Jiajing was the chief grand secretary’s waning physical stamina. In 1562, Yan was eighty-two and no longer willing or able to sustain his usual workload, and so he ceded many of his official duties, drafting edicts and rescripts, to his son and aide-decamp, Yan Shifan, who lived outside West Park in Beijing city. That arrangement proved to be the trigger for Yan’s downfall. Meanwhile, Xu Jie’s clever maneuvers helped grease the slide for Yan Song’s ouster. Xu drew closer to Jiajing as Yan’s energies waned. On December 31, 1561, Jiajing’s main palace, the Yongshou, caught fire and burned down. The ruler was forced to move to temporary housing in the Yuxi Palace, a small and damp structure on the west shore of the Taiye Pond. He definitely didn’t want to stay there very long. Yan Song suggested that he move out of West Park altogether to a vacant palace in the south part of Beijing, because rebuilding the Yongshou would be too expensive. Jiajing vetoed the idea. Xu Jie saw the opening and stepped in. He said the Yongshou could be rebuilt! It could be done cheaply and speedily by using timber and other materials left over from a just-completed rebuilding project in the Forbidden City! Jiajing joyfully endorsed this idea. The Ministry of Works took charge. Xu Jie’s son, Xu Fan, was appointed a project manager. On April 28, 1562, the work was done. Jiajing was able to resume his normal habits. How better to rise in the emperor’s estimation? Censor Zou Yinglong sent up the memorial of impeachment that successfully toppled Yan Song. Yan had been impeached a number of times before, but each of those attempts had failed, in one sensational case with lethal consequences for the never-forgotten memorialist, Yang Jisheng. 1 Yan was always able to convince Jiajing that all such impeachments were actually covert, partisan-inspired attacks on the emperor himself. Not this time, however. It came to Zou in a dream one night that he should attack Yan Song not directly, but aslant, by way of an impeachment of his son. Then Zou learned some important inside information. One day, he took shelter from a rainstorm at the home of a palace eunuch, who told him that Yan Shifan was barred from West Park because he was in mourning for his recently deceased mother; that he was indulging in partying and other amusements; that Yan Song was having difficulty getting him to do his administrative work for him and

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had to go back to doing it all himself but was too feeble to do it well; that his Daoist prayers, which he was now farming out to ghostwriters, were substandard; that his objection to rebuilding the Yongshou Palace had displeased the ruler; and that the Daoist diviner Lan Daohang (a successor to Tao Zhongwen) had gotten the gods to reply by planchette to a query of Jiajing’s that Yan Song and his son were causing disorder in the realm. The eunuch’s long recital gave Zou cause to think that the right moment had come to launch his impeachment, and so he did, scorching Yan Shifan and his family and his housemen for gross corruption, and secondarily Yan Song for letting them get away with it. 2 Would it work? It did, but the situation was volatile. Yan Song reportedly paid huge bribes to get eunuchs to denounce Lan Daohang for various falsities, thus placing his interpretation of the gods’ verdict in doubt. Jiajing ordered Lan put in prison, where he refused to back away from his reading of the gods’ reply or implicate Xu Jie in a manipulation of the procedure. Tortured, he soon died. Xu Jie’s exact role is not clear, but reportedly he offered assurances of protection to a terrified Zou Yinglong. So Yan Shifan and all the relatives and housemen cited in Zou’s memorial were put in prison. Yan Song refused to denounce or disown his beloved only son, so Jiajing informed him that he had to step down and go home, though with full honors. Yan Shifan and the others he then exiled to the frontiers, except for one grandson who was allowed to accompany the aged Yan Song as his assistant. Zou Yinglong was promoted. But Jiajing threatened that anyone who ventured to memorialize further on this matter would be sentenced to death. 3 Xu Jie became chief grand secretary. He was given permission to move from his cramped housing into Yan Song’s old quarters in West Park. Still, Yan Song and his many partisans had to be informed in some very firm way that no return to power was possible. That was Xu Jie’s next task in the big intrabureaucratic struggle. Xu proceeded very carefully with this. Anecdotal evidence has it that Yan Shifan used to treat Xu Jie impolitely, but Xu kept his resentment well hidden. When Zou Yinglong’s impeachment came up, Xu visited Yan Song and commiserated with the old man. Then Yan Shifan appeared along with his wife and children, hoping to ingratiate himself with Xu. Afterward, one of Xu’s

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sons, no doubt Xu Fan, was heard to advise his father: “You suffered deep humiliation, and now is your time [for revenge].” Xu Jie feigned anger. “Except for Yan Song, I’d never have reached this position. I can’t betray him now. No one would ever trust me again.” He repeated that statement to one of Yan’s intimates. Xu, always the realist, understood that it would be foolish, despite Yan’s dismissal, to further upset Jiajing emotionally and put Yan’s supporters on the alert. Yan Shifan and his sons and housemen, removed from service, went off to their various places of exile on the frontiers; but security was lax, and en route they escaped easily. Yan Song had asked for Shifan’s release, but Jiajing turned him down. On his own, Shifan returned home to Jiangxi and from there contacted Luo Longwen, his former security guard, who had also escaped and was in hiding in Shexian, about two hundred miles away to the northeast. (Shexian was home to both Hu Zongxian and the executed merchant chief of the Wokou, Wang Zhi.) Against his father’s advice, Shifan decided to use his great wealth and join Luo, who had connections with the bandit and ex-Wokou underworld of fighters and raiders. Allegedly, they further decided to gather forces and stage a rebellion. Whether these allegations rested on solid evidence is open to question. At all events, Yuanzhou prefectural judge Guo Jianchen, on an official visit to Yan Song’s township of residence, noticed work in progress on a garden and pavilion. Yan’s workmen treated him rudely. One threw a tile at him. The workmen looked as though they may have been rebels in disguise. Guo reported this to Censor Lin Run. Lin proceeded to outline a big treason case. Both Luo Longwen and Yan Shifan were arrested late in 1564 without great difficulty and transported to prison in Beijing. At first, Yan Shifan thought the case against them flawed and that he and Luo might eventually be pardoned and released. The main flaw was an emotional one—the prisoners learned that the indictment included the charge that Yan Song was to blame for Yang Jisheng’s wrongful execution nine years earlier, in 1555. That was actually Jiajing’s decision. Yan thought including it in the indictment would surely provoke the ruler’s anger and so ruin the whole case. He noted that the charge they had leagued with the Wokou was based on rumor only. And he thought Jiajing didn’t care about corruption. This is where Xu Jie showed an adept hand at backstairs maneuvers. He met in secret with Minister of Justice Huang Guangsheng (d. 1586)

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and Censor in Chief Zhang Yongming (1499–1566), longtime foes of Yan Song and authors of the bill of indictment, and persuaded them to agree to a substitute indictment that he had drafted based, it would appear, on his prior discussion of the matter with Jiajing. A flimsy charge of plotting rebellion had provoked Jiajing’s authorization of Generalissimo Qiu Luan’s posthumous execution in 1552. So now, Xu’s revised indictment of Yan Shifan and Luo Longwen accused them of organizing a vast conspiracy, recruiting raiders from the northern steppes, Japan, and the China coast; building an imperial-style headquarters in Jiangxi; and amassing an immense fortune. He further charged that Yan Song knew about all this but failed to report it. The reference to the martyr Yang Jisheng was dropped. This new set of charges was kept secret, then sprung as a surprise. Yan and Luo, unprepared, reacted in shock. On April 24, 1565, both were publicly executed. Many people were pleased to witness the two men’s demise. “He [Yan Song] killed Xia Yan; I killed his son. There will be people who won’t forgive me, but Heaven knows me.” Such were Xu Jie’s reported words. 4 Thus did Xu Jie pull off a remarkable coup. He did it with underhanded methods and with great finesse. Politics trumped ethical behavior. The once untouchable Yan Song was deprived of official status and died in 1565, a lone commoner bereft of family and reduced to poverty. The colossal holdings of the Yan family were confiscated. An official inventory reported an imperial-scale 32,967 taels of gold, 2,027,090 taels of silver, 857 jade dishes, 200 jade belts, 6,600 fine homes, 57 estates, 27,300 mou of fields and parks, 188,000 silver debt notes, plus much else. 5 Jiajing didn’t allow Xu Jie quite a complete triumph. He refused to pardon and recall from dishonor and exile several of Yan Song’s impeachers, 6 but he did authorize a nearly complete purge of Yan Song’s close protégés. Even Hu Zongxian, for all his success in directing operations against the Wokou, for all his fawning attentions on Jiajing (submitting rare and fine portents like white deer), despite his earlier release from prison (Jiajing had said Hu was his personal choice, not Yan Song’s)—even Hu Zongxian was now rearrested and imprisoned, because when Luo Longwen’s estate was confiscated, a letter to Luo was reportedly discovered in which Hu had drafted an imperial directive exonerating him from all charges. Luo was supposed to pass this on to

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Yan Shifan for submission to Jiajing. Hu Zongxian died on November 25, 1565, of “illness” in prison. 7 Yan Song’s death freed Xu Jie of any further need to hide his true feelings about him. A letter to Hong Chaoxuan (1516–1582), a jiangxue enthusiast and regional official, shows the partisan venom Xu Jie harbored. “The audit [of Luo’s estate] has been concluded,” he wrote, so that will ease things for you as regional inspector at Huizhou. It’s not enough to gladden the mind of the crowd that the evil ones have died, so it is good we had the confiscation and prosecution as well, otherwise Yan’s wealth would remain intact, his partisans many, and the possibility of a horrendous retaliation would have menaced all officialdom. As you no doubt know, the ruler backs Lin Run [1530–1570] in his intent [to prosecute the Yan faction]. A few days ago I wrote him a letter. The traitor Luo Longwen was to have 200,000 taels of his bribe money seized, but Wang Daochang [unidentified] reported only 140,000. The rest, 60,000, has disappeared without trace. We should figure out how to get this, but the ministry has been slow. 8

As noted earlier, Xu Jie was chief grand secretary for six years, from 1562 to 1568. For the first four years, he served the Jiajing emperor, whose state of mind, no doubt addled by the lead and arsenic in the elixirs he took, grew increasingly delicate as he struggled with depression, self-doubt, illness, and fears of death. Then, for a year and a half, Xu served under Jiajing’s unloved son and successor, the Longqing emperor, a very different character. Under impeachment, he decided to resign in 1568. As chief grand secretary, freed from Yan Song’s suffocating presence, Xu Jie conducted a minor revolution in Ming political life, a liberal interlude in the authoritarian framework of government, between the domineering regimes of Yan Song and that of Zhang Juzheng (in power 1572–1582). This was no small accomplishment. It involved enunciating a new set of guiding principles and educating Jiajing in their relevance to current issues. It required convincing Jiajing of the need to clear the decks of the odor of corruption but without going so far as to launch a thorough witchhunt—purging the top miscreants but not everyone who had ever cooperated with Yan Song’s machine. It

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involved intimate psychological counseling of the ruler. In addition to all that, Xu’s new position demanded his ongoing supervision of the always-dangerous situation on the northern frontier; of the coastal wars, as they shifted southward to Fujian and Guangdong; of fiscal issues, especially in Su-Song (Suzhou and Songjiang Prefectures); and of the unending problem of breakdowns on the Grand Canal lifeline. Let us take up these matters as they unfolded during Jiajing’s final years. First, the new rules for governance. Xu Jie wrote these out and posted them on his office wall for visitors to read. “Return supreme decision-making power to the emperor,” read the first. Jiajing wondered what that meant. Didn’t he already have that power? Not exactly. Xu Jie explained the ruler’s clearly issued directives were routinely ignored down the line. Required reports on official merits and faults went unattended to; cash and grain figures were never sent up; impeachments for corruption were lodged only against weak and unprotected men. “As ruler, your powers of command are not being respected,” concluded Xu. Jiajing agreed. The second principle read: “Restore administrative responsibility to the ministries.” That meant giving the most important ministries—War and Personnel—free rein to manage things without interference from the Grand Secretariat. Yan Song (and his predecessors) had compelled the ministries to heed instructions coming from the Grand Secretariat. This principle was an instance of Xu Jie’s distaste for dictatorship, even his own, and of his firm belief that one must place trust in the very best men in Ming government. The third was: “Restore to public opinion [gonglun] the authority to hire, fire, reward, and penalize.” That meant reopening the “avenue of speech” (the yanlu), allowing the kedao (censors and supervising secretaries) to freely criticize policy and impeach officials at all levels without the fear of imprisonment, torture, exile, or death that Yan Song had subjected them to. It is said that thanks to these principles, confidence and morale returned to all the organs of government. In addition to the above principles, the new order in government also involved issues relating to the makeup and power role of the Grand Secretariat. What was the function of that body? How should its members be chosen? Jiajing yielded to Xu Jie’s persuasive views on these questions.

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As noted earlier, Xu Jie’s collected works contain some 150 verbal exchanges with the emperor. These are called zoudui, or replies to inquiries. Unlike letters to colleagues, these are supplied with dates. They cover a very wide range of topics, from trivial to vital; often Jiajing sought reassurance or tried to draw Xu Jie out in order to gauge the depth of his personal devotion. It is not clear whether all zoudui began and ended in written form or whether they are later write-ups of earlier oral conversations. One of the topics they cover had to do with the Grand Secretariat. On June 28, 1562, there took place two exchanges on the issue of the Grand Secretariat. This was eight days after Yan Song’s departure. Aside from Xu, there was only one other grand secretary. He was Yuan Wei (1508–1565), a personal appointee of Jiajing’s, an accomplished writer of Daoist prayers and encomia on felicitous portents. He was haughty and uninhibited, and many people disliked him. Jiajing put him in sole charge of drafting rescripts on incoming memorials. Xu Jie didn’t like that. He insisted it was not good either in law or principle to let one man “speak on behalf of Heaven” and monopolize that job. He noted that Yuan Wei’s routine was to leave West Park for the Grand Secretariat’s office in the Forbidden City at around seven to nine in the morning and return at three to five in the afternoon. So Xu asked Jiajing to allow him to meet Yuan Wei around three o’clock in the Grand Secretariat and review everything he’d done. Jiajing replied that a joint review would be necessary only for important business. Xu Jie disagreed. All the realm’s affairs that needed decisions had to be shared around, he insisted. If one man monopolizes, then his personal predilections will breed all kinds of abuses. Even routine decisions reflect well or ill on the ruler, so those drafts, too, have to be vetted before the emperor sees them. (Xu conceded that nighttime emergency business might make such a procedure impractical.) 9 Apparently, Jiajing agreed. A story, perhaps true, suggests why Xu might have asked to review everything Yuan Wei did. When Xu Jie was educational intendant in Zhejiang in 1534–1536, he gave Yuan Wei, then a student, the lowest grade possible for his performance. A few years later, Yuan Wei did spectacularly well on his provincial and national exams. So when Yuan Wei entered the Grand Secretariat, the relationship between him and Xu Jie was naturally a bit uncomfortable. 10 Yet both men seem to have

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cooperated without great friction, as Yuan was neither corrupt nor cliquish. Two men, however, were not enough to handle the Grand Secretariat’s workload. On February 2, 1563, Jiajing told Xu Jie that he was willing to allow the appointment of a third man, and he wondered who might be capable of the job. Xu replied that Jiajing was well acquainted with all the top personalities and thus was well positioned to make that choice, but he needed to pick someone who was fair-minded, upright, hardworking, and honest as well as talented. Talent alone would surely cause damage. Jiajing answered later the same day. He compared himself unfavorably with the ancient sage rulers Yao and Shun and Ming founder Taizu, who knew men. He himself confessed that he was palace bred and didn’t know men and had made a big mistake in picking Yan Song. He said the Grand Secretariat did not carry the name of a prime ministry but that in fact it acted as one. Here, Xu Jie gave the whole question of the composition and powers of the Grand Secretariat a constitutional interpretation that proved definitive for some years. He still declined to recommend anyone. He reassured Jiajing that he was as great a sage as Yao, Shun, or Taizu. He reminded the ruler that Yao had to execute the Four Evil Ones and that Taizu had to put to death two prime ministers that he’d chosen, Li Shanchang and Hu Weiyong. He said Yan Song had talent and was a good choice at the outset; it was his clever and knowledgeable son whose aggressive corruption brought on his father’s downfall. Jiajing’s powers, he argued, were legitimate and intact; the ruler was fully competent, and his authority must be exercised. The emperor thought about that and replied the next day. Wasn’t Yan Song to blame for letting his son run rampant to the ruin of state and people? Xu Jie alluded to another of his three precepts in his answer. The problem was institutional. The impeachment channels had been blocked. If Yan Shifan’s behavior had been denounced early on, then the corruption connected with him would never have spread as it did. It was impossible for a ruler to read all men’s hearts and minds, which was why he must welcome impeachments. Of course, he must double-check to ensure their accuracy. That was the right way to go. 11 Despite Xu Jie’s urging, Jiajing appointed no new grand secretary until early 1565, when Yuan Wei collapsed from illness and overwork,

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leaving Xu Jie as the lone man in the office. On April 14, 1565, with Yuan Wei at death’s door, Xu and Jiajing engaged in another discussion about the nature of the institution. Was it actually a prime ministry, after all? Jiajing had second thoughts. He said Yan Song was not impartial and honest but had let his son concentrate power and exercise a dictatorship (duduan). Before his time in the office, Xia Yan, too, had been a tyrant whom no one had dared oppose. It was best now, he thought, to return to the original situation under the Yongle emperor, when three or four grand secretaries always conferred together and none dared dominate. Xu Jie agreed but added that it wasn’t just a matter of adding more men but of appointing people who were honest, calm, fair-minded, and diligent in the expectation that none of them would seek power. For his part, the chief grand secretary should offer up his resignation from time to time, giving the ruler an opportunity to dismiss him if he wanted and preventing his making the post his private property. Jiajing replied on the same day, in effect asking Xu Jie to recommend the new appointees. Again, Xu Jie declined to do that. That power had to be the ruler’s. It was Jiajing, without specific input from Xu Jie, who must choose two new grand secretaries and start thinking about replacements for Lei Li (1505–1581) as minister of works and Yang Bo (1509–1574) as minister of war, excellent men whose energies were beginning to fade. Still the same day, Jiajing answered. He suspected Xu Jie of a hidden desire to leave office. Xu denied such a desire. No! He was thinking of the needs of the dynastic state (guojia). Men’s lifespans are unpredictable, he said, and you need to be prepared for sudden vacancies. Minister of Personnel Yan Na (1511–1584) is reverential and careful and eager to appoint good people, so the official paths of promotion are now fairly clean, but Lei and Yang must recommend replacements, no easy task, because those posts demand men of mind, action, talent, and know-how, a rare combination, and the late overreliance on zige (formal credentials) impedes the process of finding such. 12 Twelve days later, the ruler told Xu to wait a year for any more appointees to the Grand Secretariat. It isn’t clear why he wanted this delay. Perhaps he really was unsure of his ability to make good choices. Xu’s reply was urgent. The job was too demanding for him to continue to manage single-handedly. He was sixty-three, he said, with declining

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energy and memory slips, and he was afraid of making big mistakes inadvertently. On May 8, again twelve days later, Jiajing said there was no rush; he had made a grievous error in appointing Yan Song in the past, which was why a court recommendation was now necessary in order “to be impartial and convince men’s minds.” Xu answered at once, continuing his ongoing seminar on how to manage the Grand Secretariat. He explained that it took a new man many months to learn how the institution operated. If Xu as sole grand secretary were to die suddenly, whoever his successor might be would be left to fumble about completely in the dark, not knowing what to do, and throw all of government into chaos. Court recommendations were not always faultless. The ruler is best placed to make the best choice and so retain authority over government. Xu added that the minister of personnel must be someone whom the grand secretaries cannot intimidate; otherwise, favor seeking and bribery creep in. So it must be the ruler who picks him, too. The minister has a hard job, and an ability to write Daoist prayers cannot be made an essential qualification for that post. Jiajing answered the same day. He understood Xu Jie’s wish not to have sole charge, and he agreed to appoint one or more new men, but he thought the outer court should nominate any new minister of personnel. Xu then told, or perhaps reminded, the emperor that monopolizing power was the worst kind of official crime; that ever since the summer of 1562 he’d kept posted in large script on the wall of his office those three guidelines, the first of which applied here; and that while it was all right to leave the appointment of, say, a minister of rites to outer court recommendation, grand secretaries and ministers of personnel were so important that they had to be the personal choices of the emperor. 13 Still, it is impossible to believe that the two new grand secretaries were not in some subtle way Xu Jie’s referrals. Yuan Wei left on April 22, 1565. Yan Na and Li Chunfang came aboard together on May 14. The courteous and self-effacing Yan Na (no relation to Yan Song) had risen to notice as a Hanlin academician. Jiajing had spotted both him and Li in 1556 as skilled writers of Daoist prayers, had invited them to live in West Park, and had given both men their appointments. Yan Na, like Xu Jie, had early in his life been an admirer of the ideas of

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Wang Yangming, but later in his life, like Xu Jie, he had come to despise the shallowness of the strivers who invoked the slogan “extend the good conscience” as though it were some sort of mantra. He was not at all an eager seeker of power, yet he was in the powerful position of minister of personnel when he was called to the Grand Secretariat, and he continued to hold that post concurrently until Guo Pu replaced him some months later. To understand Yan Na is to grasp something about Xu Jie and indeed the whole ethical-political movement against corruption that both men championed. Lifestyle was one key. The approved model was to be sociable, hospitable, and charitable but to avoid like the plague the luxury, bribery, and greed that Yan Song’s crowd had indulged in. Yan Na’s management style at the Ministry of Personnel was another key. He instructed his servants to keep all place seekers away from the gate to his home. He fully agreed with Xu Jie’s insistence that promotions and assignments should be made without regard to formal credentials—that valuable men might be found anywhere, not just among the crowd of metropolitan degree holders with seniority. Like Xu Jie, he trusted his top subordinates and shifted many of his duties to them. Yan is reported to have said that just as Xu Jie protected him, and (in line with Xu’s declared policy of restoring administrative powers to the ministries) didn’t interfere with him, so in turn Yan Na let his protégé, Bureau Director Lu Guangzu (1521–1597), do much of the work of identifying and recalling to office both good men whom Yan Shifan had dismissed as well as talented men lacking credentials who had thus far been overlooked or denied opportunity. (Lu was a Wang Yangming admirer and deeply ethical; unfortunately, a censor impeached him for exceeding his authority, and he was sent home in 1565.) Clearly, however, Xu Jie was conducting through Yan Na a low-key purge of officialdom, avoiding the venom and bloodletting that the self-righteous and aggressive Donglin Party would indulge in a half-century later. Yan Na soon grew ill from overwork. Every morning he’d leave his quarters in West Park to work in the Ministry of Personnel, returning by nightfall to write prayers and do other chores. He got little sleep. The damp constriction of his West Park housing affected his stomach, and on December 2, 1565, Jiajing gave in to his pleas to resign. He afterward lived very quietly at home in Changshu in the Southern Metropolitan Province. He died there nearly twenty years later. 14

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The other new grand secretary, Li Chunfang (1511–1585), was the third member of an unusual triumvirate at the top of Ming China’s governing order—unusual, in that they were so similar in outlook and background. Yan Song, after all, had been forced for many years to put up with a rival in Xu Jie. Xu Jie, Yan Na, and Li were, by contrast, fully cooperative, even though, as an unkind commentator said, Li and Yan would slink by Xu, bent as though they were his subordinate clerks— which, in a way, they were. But all three were top winners of the jinshi degree, came from the same province, and were admirers in their younger years of the leading lights of the Wang Yangming school. Li came from a peasant family in Xinghua County, north of the Yangzi. He had, at various times in his youth, come under the spell of Wang Gen, Lin Chun, Zhan Ruoshui, and, finally, Xu Jie’s friend Ouyang De. He was the number one jinshi degree winner in 1547. Like Xu Jie earlier on, he entered the Hanlin Academy and was made a tutor in the palace school for eunuchs. He was minister of rites when he was elevated to the Grand Secretariat. Li is described as deferential in manner, slow to speak, fair-minded, never harsh or overbearing, and a bit lacking in talent and forcefulness. 15 All three grand secretaries were agreed on fundamental principles and issues and worked together to attack governmental corruption. However, the early departure of Yan Na for health reasons broke up the group. Jiajing’s controversial choice for a replacement was Dong Fen (1510–1595), one of a small contingent of prayer-writing Hanlin academicians invited to live in West Park in 1564. His case shows up the depth of Xu Jie’s often hidden partisan feelings and proves that he could not always transcend factionalism. Dong Fen, a native of Wucheng County in Zhejiang Province, was a special pet of Jiajing’s. In 1541, Jiajing ranked him fifth of all the jinshi winners for that year. He was made a Hanlin bachelor. Xu Jie remembered him as a county student whom he’d rated highly when he was educational intendant in Zhejiang in 1534–1536. Years later, when Dong Fen took leave from Beijing to escort his mother home, Xu wrote him a departure message that praised his literacy, talent, behavior, and high resolve. 16 But Dong Fen seems to have spurned Xu Jie and gravitated into Yan Shifan’s camp; his father-in-law, Minister of Personnel Wu Peng, was a Yan Song protégé. 17 Xu Jie’s friend and ally, Geng Dingxiang (1524–1596), impeached Dong for extreme partisanship in 1560, but Jiajing ignored

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the charges and protected him. Dong rose to vice minister of personnel and in 1565 was minister of rites when Jiajing thought to appoint him as a grand secretary. Xu Jie is on record as having argued that bringing in Dong Fen would overload the Grand Secretariat with southerners and that Guo Pu, a careful, generous, and even-tempered northerner, was a better choice. Off the record, Xu is said to have protested vehemently. Possibly by prearrangement, a supervising secretary, Ouyang Yijing, impeached Dong Fen, mainly on the allegation that the imprisoned Yan Shifan had bribed him 20,000 taels of silver. So Jiajing changed his mind. He not only rescinded the appointment, he removed Dong from official status altogether and sent him home in shame as a commoner. Just like Yan Song used to do, Xu Jie got his way here by provoking Jiajing’s anger. 18 There were two prayer writers, both northerners from Henan Province, waiting in the wings in West Park: Guo Pu and Gao Gong (1512–1578). Xu Jie welcomed the addition of both men to the Grand Secretariat. He seems not to have foreseen that they would drive a deep wedge into the institution. He thought he could get along with both, but clearly he overestimated the beneficent powers of his collegiality or underestimated Gao Gong’s contrarian streak and thirst for power. Guo Pu was a committed Confucian but not in any way a follower of the school of Wang Yangming. An epitaph describes him as full cheeked and loud voiced, with measured and stately stride. He was a vegetarian and penurious in lifestyle—the opposite, one supposes, of the rejected Dong Fen. Ethical maxims hung on the wall by his chair as constant reminders of how to think and act. He’d scored high on his 1535 jinshi exam, entered the Hanlin Academy, and, as a young man whom Jiajing liked, was later on brought in to live in West Park as a qingci writer. Jiajing was pleased when Guo showed his personal devotion by declining an offer to leave West Park and become minister of rites in Nanjing. He was soon appointed minister of personnel in Beijing. Then Jiajing recalled him from mourning leave and appointed both him and Gao Gong as grand secretaries on April 17, 1566. Gao Gong was, by contrast to his self-effacing coprovincial Guo Pu, proud and assertive. (A story depicts him as a narcissist. Early in his career, looking at himself in a mirror, he remarked: “Well now, I believe I’m a divine dragon!” A senior colleague joked: “A dragon? I’d say just an earthworm!” Gao didn’t appreciate the joke.) 19 He was also

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exceptionally talented and something of a storm petrel. Xu Jie often championed men like him when they served out in the field. Having one such at close quarters was another proposition entirely. Gao would not be deferential. Their personalities soon clashed. On January 8, 1567, the chief supervising secretary of the Office of Scrutiny for Revenue, Hu Yingjia, impeached Gao Gong. The situation was this: Gao Gong established his personal household very close to West Park, and he would sneak out and go there at night to have intercourse with his concubines because as yet he had no sons. Someone observed that and reported it. Then a eunuch reported, prematurely as it turned out, that the emperor was dead. Except for Xu Jie, all the other inhabitants of West Park began at once to pack up their books and other belongings and make preparations to vacate. Zhang Juzheng, at the time tutor to the heir apparent, came by and warned Gao that he shouldn’t bolt so soon. Gao stopped short. But it was too late; he’d been observed. On these grounds, the impeachment was laid. Gao Gong was not loyal to his ruler! The impeachment failed. Xie Jie drafted a reply, merely noting that the bill had been received. Jiajing never recuperated enough to read and act on the matter himself. But Gao Gong suspected that Xu Jie was the hidden hand behind the impeachment and hated him all the more. Actually, Hu Yingjia had complicated motives of his own for attacking Gao Gong; and he would remain in his position and soon create a significant dilemma for Xu Jie with respect to how much freedom of speech to allow the kedao to exercise. 20 Gao Gong’s opposition notwithstanding, Xu Jie as chief grand secretary in effect ruled China during Jiajing’s final years, from his replacing Yan Song in 1562 down to the emperor’s death on January 23, 1567, and for a while more under Longqing. Ruling China as chief grand secretary required that Xu Jie, like Yan Song before him, guide, manage, and manipulate the supreme authority, the emperor, as the ultimate source of all legitimate decision-making power. Jiajing was emotionally needy, always starved for reassurance, respect, and affection, and Xu Jie was adept at provoking his anger when he had to, but more often at nudging him into a disposition to listen to and acquiesce in what he had to say.

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Thus, in two exchanges Xu had with Jiajing on July 20, 1563, about the reason for chronic shortfalls in cloth deliveries, Xu persuaded him that the officials responsible had no desire to defy and scoff at the ruler (as Yan Song might have suggested). No, they were trapped by the prevailing corruption: they needed the income from the stolen cloth to pay the routine bribes their superiors demanded for any kind of favor. Jiajing thought about that, and now he agreed that it must be widespread official corruption (something he and Yan Song had long ignored) that was depleting the state’s resources and harming the people. So why, he asked, didn’t the minister of personnel do something about it? Xu Jie explained that ultimately, it was indeed the responsibility of high officials to lead (changshuai) in an effort like this; that the then minister of personnel Yan Na was eager to purge government of all such malefactors; but that unsupported, he could only stir up anger and slander if he tried. Only a strongly worded edict from Jiajing, one whose authority and force Yan Na could lean on, would do the trick. 21 This is one concrete example of why Xu, as a matter of principle, always insisted on the indispensable role of autocratic power. On December 2, 1563, the ruler queried Xu Jie about several flawed appointment recommendations Yan Na had sent up. Why, asked Jiajing, was Yan Na relying so heavily on formal credentials (zige)? Xu explained that the problem was that Yan was afraid to break with long-established procedure solely on the basis of his own authority. Again, he must have the backing of an imperial proclamation. Gratuitously, Xu went on to confess that he’d once felt that same fear. Now things were a little different. There were two things that he had long wanted to say, but his was a lonely voice among a large crowd of officials of contrary opinion, and it would have taken, he said, an act of blind courage to speak up. He asked Jiajing to reflect on the fact that the ruler’s authority was not being respected, that merit assessments were askew, delinquent tax deliveries were ignored, bribes were passed secretly by night, with such sanctions as were imposed falling exclusively on lonely and isolated men. Everyone ignored the ruler’s authority (zhuquan). The second thing he’d long wanted to talk about was the crying need to repair the “national right” (guo shi)—in other words, to conduct a truly revolutionary reform of the national mind-set. What did that mean? Well, there was quite a long list of perversions infecting the nation’s high elites. Empty verbiage and clever artifice passed as talent.

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Sincerity and honesty were seen as awkwardness. Men looked on respectfulness and caution as signs of timidity. Diligence they saw as grub work. Camp following was the preferred path to power and influence; complacent blather was the hallmark of a fine self-presentation. It was laudable generosity to protect evil and treacherous men. Protest was equated to troublemaking. Making broad strategy for the realm was to engage in overwrought calculation; regard for the people’s welfare was so much irrelevant chatter. Follow the law and rule impartially? That, they said, was out of line and oppressive. “These two matters,” concluded Xu, “ruin government in peaceful times, and even more in an age of crisis. Those elites have no intention to help you restore peace and security. You must make clear rewards and punishments, support the worthy, and give the unworthy something to fear. I tremble as I say this to you.” This was Xu’s description of Yan Song’s legacy. It was also the outline of a program for national renewal. Jiajing thought it might entail a major purge of guilty officials. Officialdom, he said, didn’t dare act that way in the time of Taizu and Yongle, the founders of the Ming, and he thought it would not be going too far to mandate an end to all such unrestrained willfulness. Xu Jie agreed. But he counseled that the way to proceed was to forget past transgressions and just focus on future compliance. Corruption must henceforth be punished without mercy, just as the law code specifies. Fear will bring about the hoped-for reformation of men’s minds. 22 As the years wore on, Jiajing’s emotional fragility and his morbid fears of illness and death showed no signs of alleviation. It was Xu Jie’s job, on top of everything else, to steer him through these crises. In June 1562, angry and despondent over having to dismiss Yan Song and sad for the loss of his presence at the Daoist rites, he told Xu Jie he was thinking of abdicating and devoting all his time to his religion and the search for health and longevity. Of course, Xu Jie and the other inhabitants of West Park all objected to the emperor’s proposal. Well then, retorted Jiajing, you challenge me vehemently on the grounds of supreme right (da yi), but human emotion (renqing) is also widely respected in the realm, so you must heed my orders and take part in the Daoist rituals. 23 A puzzling statement, but the subtext of it was the

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existence of a widespread hope among the officials that with Yan Song gone, Jiajing’s West Park Daoist church would collapse and disappear. Hardly anyone, Xu Jie included, liked this Daoism. Jiajing, cleverly if petulantly, forced them to accept it. The Ming codes, legal or ritual, made no provision for how to conduct an abdication, so if Jiajing really did resign, he might well have caused the Ming state to come unglued. That was 1562, and Jiajing was showing Xu Jie and everyone else that while wounded, he was still master of the situation. Two years later, however, Jiajing was still depressed over the loss of Yan Song, anxious that he was aging and death approaching, and concerned also about the presence of a ghost in the palace. Eunuchs placed a peach by his bed and told him when he found it that it had dropped from Heaven. That cheered up the ruler, and he ordered a five-day Daoist ritual to celebrate. Another peach appeared. A “jade” rabbit, sent in from the provinces as tribute, produced two little ones. A white deer, also sent up, produced two fawns. Court officials and qingci writers offered up paeans of wonderment and praise. 24 A year later, on May 25, 1565, Jiajing told Xu Jie that he was thinking of abdicating again—not as a threat this time, but out of melancholia. He said a “black miasma” (hei fen) hung about, such as might hang about someone terminally ill. Xu replied that he doubted a demon was at work, that there was no Ming precedent for an abdication, and that instances of abdication from earlier history had not gone well. If done, it would not be much different from appointing a proxy emperor. Xu took this moment to dare remind Jiajing yet again that he needed to install his son as heir apparent to the throne. Jiajing hated to think about that, and for years he had put off the step. He did nothing now. 25 By November 1562, Jiajing having set in motion a nationwide search for Daoist medicinal books and Daoist adepts in the healing arts, some thousand tracts were sent up, and a few adepts were given housing in Beijing. 26 From his exile back home in Jiangxi, Yan Song eagerly submitted manuals showing how to summon cranes and the like, and he (or perhaps his son) arranged for the charm maker Lan Tianyu to bring his amulets to Beijing for the emperor’s use. 27 By June 1565, the ruler’s search had attracted to Beijing a large number of adepts, some of them perhaps sincere, but many of them charlatans. Not totally credulous, even Jiajing had his suspicions. The adept Lan Tianyu and others had brought in one Hu Dashun as an

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expert to help in the use of the planchette in contacting the gods. Jiajing wondered whether Hu was trustworthy. A hundred schemers, he said, were troubling his palace. Was someone directing them all from behind the scenes? Xu’s reply was that not only Hu Dashun but the whole lot of them were “shiftless small men.” Their minds were malignant. But Xu was careful not to overdo his condemnation. He wasn’t sure of the validity of the responses gotten from the planchette. The main need was to restore peace and quiet to the palace, but there was no guarantee that hiring Hu Dashun would bring that about. The next day, June 14, Jiajing told Xu Jie that he suspected Lan Tianyu was a fraud. At first, Lan said his medicine contained mercury. Then he switched and said it was white lead. Also, there were submitted suspect books of remedies, including something called The Gold Book of a Myriad Lifetimes. It appeared, too, that Lan had forged an imperial pass in order to get Hu Dashun admitted to West Park. If Lan weren’t prosecuted, wouldn’t it just encourage more frauds? Also, the ruler wondered whether it was a man wrongfully executed in 1542 whose ghost was haunting the palace. Xu Jie replied to all this. He noted that it was the hated Yan Shifan who sent Lan Tianyu to Beijing (that, surely, was in itself enough to condemn him). Xu didn’t profess to know why he called mercury white lead, but everyone knew mercury is poisonous (that, surely, was why he renamed it: he hoped to poison the emperor with it!). But forging an imperial directive was, no question about it, a serious crime and must be prosecuted at once. As to the ghost in the palace, Xu reminded Jiajing that it surely wasn’t a demon, because Jiajing was ruler of heaven, earth, and all the gods, and no demon would dare such a thing. It could well be the shade of someone wrongfully killed, however; but Xu said that was an inner palace matter, and he wasn’t in residence in 1542 and didn’t know who the wronged person might be. 28 A year later, both Lan Tianyu and Hu Dashun were executed. 29 Then, at some point in the fall of 1565, a bombshell of a memorial landed on the ruler’s desk. It so rattled Jiajing that not until February 20, 1566, could he bring himself to respond to it. Then he ordered the writer of it put in prison and tortured until he revealed who had paid him to commit such an outrage. The writer of this famous memorial was Hai Rui (1513–1587), whose brave gesture was turned by Wu Han into a sensational and politically

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controversial drama in the early 1960s. Hai Rui was in most respects a living embodiment of what Xu Jie hoped to achieve with his post–Yan Song reforms: a fighter against corruption; a holder of second-class “credentials,” a courageous and innovative operative: a man chafing to speak his mind. Hai Rui held only the provincial juren degree. He defied powerful people, such as Hu Zongxian and Yan Mouqing. He carried out difficult local tax reforms, always with the aim of benefiting the poor and unprotected. In 1564, he had risen to the middling post of bureau secretary in the Ministry of Revenue. His memorial had little to do with revenue. It was a scathing assault on Jiajing’s whole lifestyle and mode of rule. The best lines were remarkable for their brazenness. You the emperor, wrote Hai, are a poor father for the way you treat your son. You’re a poor ruler for mistreating your subjects on flimsy or suspect grounds. You are a poor husband for abandoning the Forbidden City for West Park. Your officials are corrupt, your generals weak. While crushing taxes exhaust the people, the officials take part in Daoist rites and write paeans on lucky omens. The Ministry of Works struggles to build palaces for you, while the Ministry of Revenue sends out men to scour the realm for incense and jade. No one says anything about this to you. You seek eternal life through Daoism, but no ruler from the past is still alive today. Even your Daoist teacher Tao Zongwen is dead. He couldn’t survive, so are your techniques superior to his? 30 Hai Rui expected death for this effrontery, and he let it be known that he’d prepared a coffin ahead of time. Jiajing could scarcely bring himself to read this attack, which in full form was actually a plea to the emperor to change his whole approach to life and governance. That was asking too much. On November 6, a distraught ruler wrote the grand secretaries: “People hate it that I don’t reform my rule, as is evident in what this creature has written here.” (An interlinear note in Xu Jie’s collected works identifies “this creature” as Hai Rui.) “He speaks the truth, but I’m a sick man and I can’t do as I did thirty years ago. I don’t dare forget Heaven’s favor, and what I must do now is abdicate. I ask the grand secretaries to draft a statement to that effect.” Xu Jie replied on the grand secretaries’ behalf. They would not dare draft such a statement. Hai Rui’s rant was crazy, and the ruler should ignore it.

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That same day, Jiajing insisted again that he had to resign, that he was too sick and weak to rule anymore. Again, Xu answered on behalf of all the grand secretaries that “this creature” was simply trying to win fame for himself at the emperor’s expense and that Jiajing should in reply just make a grand show of his forgiving magnanimity. No. Now Jiajing said he wanted to retire to a palace in Nanjing. Again, Xu Jie insisted that such a move could never be agreed to, that the Grand Secretariat could not dare hear of such a move. 31 Meanwhile, for three months, Hai Rui was left in the dark, guessing his fate. Then he was arrested, imprisoned, and tortured. No evidence of a plot emerged. The Ministry of Justice recommended that he be sentenced to strangulation on the analogy of the punishment due a son who curses his father. There the matter lingered. The recommendation was never acted upon. When Jiajing died, Hai Rui was released, pardoned, and returned to official life. 32 Hai Rui’s memorial made no political sense. Xu Jie had already swung Jiajing around in support of strong generals, honest officials, and tax reform, and the ruler did not need to be scolded to his face. If the memorialist’s hidden aim was to win fame for himself, as Xu Jie suggested it was, then he succeeded. Officials who were sick and under stress could always retire. A sick emperor under stress could not. On March 3, 1566, Jiajing confided to Xu Jie that he desperately wanted to visit his old home, the princely estate where he was born, at Anlu, since renamed Chengtian, in Huguang Province, a good six-hundred-mile journey southwest from Beijing. There had been no improvement in his current illness, now fourteen months long, he said. He wanted to view his parents’ tombs, find medicine, and breathe the air of his birthplace. He could ride a recumbent sedan chair. He’d be gone five months. Xu Jie replied in alarm. The ruler needed rest for his illness, not a long journey. He could easily have medicine sent up from Chengtian to Beijing. Jiajing thought about that and replied four days later that he still intended to go. Xu Jie made a detailed argument against the idea. First, the emperor had made such a trip in 1539, but he needed to consider that his health and strength had since declined. Second, the frontier was quiet in 1539; now, twenty-seven years later, it wasn’t. In 1539, the ruler had made preparations for the military defense of Beijing and the

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frontier before he left, but now, in the face of recurrent border crises, we have weak defenders. And third, the trip would be too expensive for Huguang Province to bear, as it was presently suffering from warfare, floods, and dearth. 33 Xu won the argument; the emperor didn’t go. In a final exchange on the topic of Jiajing’s health, on October 27, 1566, the ruler reported to Xu Jie that he’d gone in heavy rain late at night to an altar in West Park and, on return at around midnight, coughed up three cupfuls of white stuff. At around five to seven in the morning, when it was still raining, he felt sick and had to lie down. Xu replied that, well, yes, the rain and chill did you in, when you were still sick from your earlier condition. Jiajing then said he was relying on Heaven now, but he thought maybe he could recover if he took human milk. Perhaps some other medicine, too. Xu’s reply was not helpful. How could it be? He wasn’t a physician. Health was hard to recoup after one’s middle years, he said, especially if it were already damaged earlier. Human milk might be good, but he didn’t know how to mix it. Heaven must help, but the ruler must exercise caution and care, too. 34 The emperor’s health never improved, and he died three months later. In sum, Xu Jie’s strategy of encouraging Jiajing gradually to forget Yan Song and agree to put his authority behind a new program featuring a revitalized defense, strong measures against corruption, and toleration of a greater freedom of speech was, on the whole, effective. For his part, Xu Jie tolerated Jiajing’s religious demands and other eccentricities. That latter stance was certainly unpopular with officialdom. Few understood the need for it, as Hai Rui’s denunciatory memorial showed. Xu Jie was later asked why he never once ceased to pay such attentive reverence to Jiajing, why he would work all night if he had to, to satisfy immediately any demand the ruler might make. Younger men questioned the need to sustain such a regimen. Surely he overdid it, didn’t he? No, replied Xu; no more would I have dared disobey Heaven or my father than ignore the ruler. Xia Yan was arrogant and contemptuous [toward the ruler], while Yan Song was cautious and serious, but he didn’t use his seriousness effectively, so he certainly had to remain cautious. Of course I know what shamefulness is. The younger men think I gained the ruler’s favor shamefully. But I had to have the ruler’s favor if I hoped to accomplish things on the realm’s behalf. It’s not hard

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to make a name for oneself [by chastising the ruler], but someone has to share responsibility for the realm. 35 Exactly so. As chief grand secretary, Xu Jie continued to concentrate his attention on the frontier, on the coast, on the Grand Canal, and on Jiangnan tax reform. These were the main sources of ongoing trouble. Only this time he had pretty much a free hand, with no more need to maneuver around the dominating presence of Yan Song. Building up and sustaining the northern frontier defenses was still one of Xu’s main concerns, both as a matter of overall strategy (making no concessions or withdrawals) and as a matter of detailed implementation. Strategy was now settled, so it was implementation issues that piled up on the chief grand secretary’s desk. Xu directed many personal letters to officials posted at Xuan-Da and Ji-Liao, the big bases serving as outer defenses for Beijing. He chided, he scolded, he flattered, he cajoled. Intricate problems of recruitment, training, supply, deployment, rewards and promotions, punishments and demotions were never automatic or low-level things beneath the notice of someone as highly placed as Xu Jie. A major frontier crisis erupted in the fall of 1563. (Some of Xu Jie’s discussion with Jiajing about this was taken up in chapter 2.) A fuller account here of what happened provides a way to gauge how far China’s security had improved since Altan’s raid in 1550. Did Xu Jie’s constant pushing on the need to improve defenses have any visible effect? The events of 1563 amounted to something of a debacle, and fingered as the main culprit in it was the supreme commander at Ji-Liao, Yang Xuan, a civil official with experience on the frontier. He had been one of a small group of new appointees under Jiang Dong that was sent to break the siege of the Datong Right Guards in 1558. He was given this new assignment in 1561. Xu Jie’s letter to him (translated in chapter 2) scarcely hides the chief grand secretary’s exasperation at his administrative ineptitude and his whining. The scolding and advice fell on deaf ears. It seems Yang Xuan was neither straightforward nor very intelligent. In 1562, four Ming officers invaded Uriyangkhad territory from their base at Gubeikou. An Uriyangkhad chieftain by the name of Tonghan captured them. Then he visited Yang’s headquarters to arrange a ransom for their release. But Yang arrested him and his party of ten and decided to use them as

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hostages in a plan to coerce peace in the steppes. Tonghan was Sengge Düüreng’s father-in-law. So when Tonghan’s sons tried to arrange a prisoner exchange, Yang decided to release Tonghan but have each of his sons substitute in turn as hostages for their father. This was supposed somehow to deter Sengge Düüreng from making war. Yang boasted of this policy in a memorial to the ruler and was rewarded for it. The plan soon backfired. On November 6, 1563, the forces of Sengge Düüreng and his uncle Badur (Altan Khan’s younger brother) broke through the Great Wall at Qiangziling, about seventy-five miles northeast of Beijing. 36 They had earlier tricked Yang into expecting an attack much farther east, in Liaodong. Minister of War Yang Bo (no relation) warned him it was a ruse and not to fall for it. Yang disbelieved him, unfortunately. Yang Bo, pounding the table in frustration, at once ordered reinforcements in from Xuan-Da to protect the capital. The raiders headed toward Tongzhou, the key junction just east of Beijing. Xu Jie issued orders mobilizing defenses at the nine gates of the outer city. Yang Bo intended to inform Jiajing of the attack, but the ruler was just then deeply engaged in Daoist rituals, so he and Xu Jie agreed not to disturb him and just give orders on their own authority. General Ma Fang rushed his men down from Xuanfu, and soon after, Xuan-Da supreme commander Jiang Dong followed with his forces. Jiajing learned of the attack only when he saw light from fires that had been set some distance off. “This is 1550 all over again!” he is said to have exclaimed. He canceled the rituals and ordered Yang Xuan to engage the raiders at Tongzhou. Two Ming commanders were killed there. The raiders looted Shunyi and Sanhe Counties, respectively ten and twenty-five miles northeast of Beijing. Then they conveyed their loot to their temporary camp at Pinggu County, fifty miles northeast. Yang Xuan appears to have completely lost his bearings. He rushed forces to Tongzhou. He claimed he’d beaten the raiders there and had driven them away, killing many. He asked for rewards for his commanders and troops. Jiajing doubted his claim, and Xu Jie confirmed that Yang’s report was false. Actually, he was beaten at Tongzhou, and then he hadn’t driven anyone away; the raiders of their own accord hauled their plunder northeast, and Yang’s men simply followed them, inflicting no harm. 37 A spy reported that Tonghan and his sons, Yang’s hostages, had brought on the big raid.

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After eight days inside China, the raiders returned to the steppes via Gubeikou, where Ming forces intercepted them and inflicted some heavy damage upon them. A furious Jiajing arrested and executed the hapless Yang Xuan plus several other failed commanders. Yang’s wife and children were sent into exile to the southwestern frontier. Xu Jie made no effort to save any of them. He ventured to explain to the ruler how such mediocre talents ever got appointed to such sensitive positions. “In appointing men,” he said, we must consider their talent, not just their credentials. Military commanders especially must be resourceful, brave, and battle hardened. Some may be coarse and freewheeling, like Ma Fang and Hu Zhen; both rose from the ranks, are totally illiterate, but they can kill raiders. In recent years, however, the ministry [of War] promoted men on the basis of credentials, while the fu’an [grand coordinators and regional inspectors] recommended flatterers and go-getters, and ignored brave and honest men, and the ministry went along with that. 38

Jiajing was also angry with Yang Bo for not interrupting the rituals and informing him at once about the raid. Xu Jie argued that Yang Bo was too valuable to cast away summarily on that ground, and Jiajing relented. 39 So, then, the question: Was northern China better defended in 1563 than it was in 1550? Northern China was still vulnerable to deep raids (recall another such in April 1559), but there seems no doubt that the Ming was better at containing them. Beijing now had an outer defense wall. The Great Wall as well as other important places were better fortified, too. This time there was no mass panic and no flight of desperate refugees into interior Beijing. The recruitment, supply, and deployment of troops were better organized, with little of the breakdown and rushed improvisation visible in 1550. Xu Jie and Yang Bo were better crisis managers than Yan Song and Qiu Luan had been in 1550. Xu Jie and Jiajing were both on the job and very busy. Xu reported to Jiajing up-to-the-minute details of what was going on out on the battlefields. He also thought China’s defenses still needed much work. 40 Still, China was better defended, and Xu Jie’s persistent efforts in this direction account for a good deal of the positive difference.

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From 1564 down to the end of the Jiajing reign in 1566, Xu Jie and the ruler continued their frequent and intense discussions of how to keep improving security in northern China. 41 Xu’s ongoing letters to the frontier officials were taken up in chapter 2. In fundamental respects, however, the frontier remained penetrable. Only the agreement of 1571 with Altan Khan, reached after Xu’s retirement, could ease that deficiency. While the northern frontiers still gave cause for worry, the Wokou trouble along the coast was sliding southward, away from Nan Zhili and Zhejiang, to Fujian and Guangdong. After 1559, the coastal raiders ceased their wrecking of China’s richest tax base. Although Fujian and Guangdong Provinces were over a thousand miles distant from Beijing, Xu Jie and Jiajing kept fairly close tabs on developments there; and Xu Jie, as ever, peppered the high officials who were directing the antibandit operations with numerous letters of advice. Su-Song (Suzhou and Songjiang Prefectures in Nan Zhili) still had to maintain their defenses, however, so as to ensure that the raiders never come back. Xu Jie also continued to pay close attention to military readjustment, agricultural reconstruction, and taxation reform in Songjiang. Only at Songjiang did Xu normally address letters to officials as low in the hierarchy as prefects and county magistrates. His knowledge of the details of local issues continued to be formidable. Songjiang was converting more and more of its tax and service burden to silver payments (thanks to China’s deepening engagement with the world economy and the resulting silver inflow, which Xu Jie seems never to have acknowledged), but Beijing still had its requirement for annual rice shipments in kind. Songjiang taxpayers, instead of growing this rice, found it more and more expedient to buy Jiangxi rice on the market and ship that up the Grand Canal to feed Beijing. The Grand Canal demanded constant upkeep and repair, nowhere more so than where it intercepted the unpredictable Yellow River, with its precipitous rises and drops in water flow. The chief grand secretary had, among his many fields of expertise, some understanding of hydraulic engineering, and he brought that to bear on a big transport breakdown in the fall of 1565.

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On September 11, Jiajing handed Xu Jie a memorial from the Ministry of Works, reporting that the Yellow River had flooded at the adjoining prefectures of Xuzhou and Peizhou, straddling Nan Zhili and Shandong Provinces some four hundred miles south of Beijing. Thirty miles of canal were washed out. Two-thirds of the annual fleet of grain boats had made it through safely ahead of the flood, but one-third was stopped, and the boats that got through would not be able to return south for next year’s convoy. Something had to be done quickly. The ministry asked that the Ministry of Personnel appoint a special chief engineer to take complete charge of restoring the canal service. Jiajing consulted Xu Jie. 42 Xu agreed that immediate repairs were needed. To Jiajing’s question as to the cause of the breakdown, Xu answered: The Yellow River water is murky; people in Han times said each shi of water could hold six dou of mud [i.e., the flow was 60 percent mud]. So, where it flows, and the mud drops, the body of the river gets blocked. This year the Yellow River ran high, and the more the water, the more the mud. This is how the river gets blocked, as it is now. This is how it starts. Now it’s blocked for 100 li. I don’t know if the old bed can be restored, or if a new bed has to be dug. The high official we send out will have to decide that; I can’t. 43

Two weeks later, the emperor asked Xu for an update. “I heard the Censor-in-chief Wang Ting just arrived from Huai’an,” answered Xu, so I met him in my office and asked him. He said he arrived at Xuzhou on August 6, where the Yellow River was in flood, and stayed ten days. When the river receded a little it left behind a mud deposit, but while the river itself was blocked, it had spilled over its banks to level ground, and lay about one zhang [about twenty feet] deep. Government and private boats can sail on it. However, the grain boats are heavy, and the fear is they’ll be stranded when the water recedes further. Then when the boats reach the Yellow River bed, they’ll have to await dredging before they can cross it. Wang also said people’s fields, homes, and livestock were lost in the flood between Xuzhou and Peizhou. I told all this to Zhu Heng [the project director] when he left. We agreed we should have people issue grain from the delayed boats and hire laborers at Xu-Pei. This is how to provide relief and at the same time get the river dredged. I think Zhu Heng

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can handle this. But to reopen the riverbed means we have to find where the breaches are. Right now the tops of the levees are underwater, so we don’t know. We’ll have to wait for Zhu Heng’s report before we do know where to dredge and repair. 44

On September 13, the ruler appointed Zhu Heng (1512–1584)—a capable official but one with no experience in Yellow River problems— minister of works and concurrent vice censor in chief, to take overall charge of repairs, with authority over all officials of the four affected provinces. Zhu Heng arrived at the scene; he found the river had flooded far over its banks, the current full of sand, the ground too mucky to stand on, all the side streams obscured, and boats sailing among the treetops. He had no idea how to proceed. So he called upon anyone, local officials or commoners, to submit any plans or ideas they might have. Do we try to restore the river to its previous bed? Or do we dig a different and better one? The Yellow River in Ming times entered the sea south of the Shandong Peninsula, taking any of a number of channels to get there. After consultation and study, Zhu decided not to restore the previous bed but make a new one slightly north, on the site of an older bed. A dispute arose. A subordinate, Pan Jixun (1521–1595), appointed assistant censor in chief for waterways three months later, argued strongly that for technical reasons the riverbed had to be returned to its previous bed. Zhu Heng overrode him, cracked down hard on all dissent, and supervised the work personally. Work proceeded. Then, in March 1566, Pan Jixun’s heated objections plus merchants’ complaints that the new bed was ruining their business led to the court sending down a supervising secretary to verify an impeachment lodged against Zhu Heng. The secretary sided with Zhu. So 194 li (about 70 miles) of new bed were dug, and the stuck grain boats were able at last to resume their trip north to Beijing. That was the whole aim of the repair. But by late June, the river flooded again, as Pan Jixun had predicted it would. These river troubles would continue to plague grain transport for some years to come. 45 Jiajing preferred the quick fix to some more permanent solutions to the flooding problem, and he got it. Early in November 1565, the ruler worried to Xu Jie that the onset of winter would put a stop to dredging and construction. Xu reassured him: we just need to ensure that all the grain boats return south while the water is high, and we still have a

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month before the river freezes to do that. It will be all right if the work is idled until spring. 46 Xu Jie fully backed Zhu Heng in his fight with Pan Jixun. At some point, he wrote him: I got your two letters, but I was too busy to decide on and endorse them. Please forgive. I got your two attachments of the eighteenth. The one written in formal script I reported to the ruler. The other, in running hand, about transferring, deploying, hiring workers and grain haulers, is detailed and appropriate. You’ll have to crack down hard on silver theft and dissent. . . . Your attachment of the nineteenth says you want to dredge the lower course. This is fine, but don’t forget the branch streams. . . . Also you propose to build more long dykes. But first you must dredge. After the dykes are done, you need to dredge the Bian River, as you say. You just need to do things in the correct sequence. Your memorials about relief, transmission, and keeping Commander Fu, I’ve sent to the ministries to discuss. I’ll expedite the endorsements. You can just retain Commander Fu, no need to await an endorsement. 47

On September 28, 1566, after a recurrence of flooding, Jiajing remarked to Xu Jie that, as far as he could tell, Zhu Heng’s efforts were successful enough that a sacrifice of thanks to the gods should be held. Xu agreed, noted that Zhu had suffered heavy criticism, but stated that although the new bed was done, there was still a lot of construction left to do, including dykes and water storage reservoirs. He added that ample rain this year allowed the grain boats to get through, but it still needed to be figured out how to cope with some future drought. Much dredging along the upper and lower reaches also remained to be done. 48 It is not known where Xu Jie got his knowledge of the Yellow River and Grand Canal hydraulics. Somehow he became enough of an expert to participate intelligently in a very complicated, demanding, and controversial undertaking. He also became something of an expert on coinage problems, a vexatious addition to the fiscal expertise he’d developed long before. The difficulty lay in a severe shortage of copper for the minting of new coins, coupled with the replacement of copper by increasing quantities of bulk silver coming into the country from international maritime

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trade. Xu Jie’s was a strong voice favoring closing the official mints and letting the free market determine the value of the remaining copper coins, many of which were now debased or counterfeit. His long and very detailed analysis of the matter he prepared as a response to Jiajing’s queries late in 1564. 49 The moment for a rise in temperature of partisan feeling in the Grand Secretariat and the onset of trouble in the relationship between that body and the throne arrived on January 23, 1567. On that day, attendants carried a terminally sick Jiajing from West Park to the Forbidden City, where, symbolically restored to his proper surroundings, he died, around noon. He was sixty, Xu Jie’s junior by four years. Jiajing’s sole surviving son, Zhu Zaihou, succeeded him as the Longqing emperor. Jiajing had never liked him or his mother, who died in 1554. Longqing suffered from a severe speech impediment and in fact almost never spoke in the company of anyone but his eunuchs. He was very unlike his father. He lacked the forcefulness and desire to rule that Jiajing could show even late in life. He lacked his father’s hot temper and his religiosity. He was more even-tempered than Jiajing and more devoted to life’s pleasures. His relationship to the Grand Secretariat would certainly be different from Jiajing’s. There was a gap of twelve days been Jiajing’s death and Longqing’s formal accession to the dragon throne. In the interim, a final edict, or last will, had first to be composed and issued in Jiajing’s name. Xu Jie worked all day and night to write it. He did not ask the other three grand secretaries—Li Chunfang, Guo Pu, and Gao Gong—to take part. Li didn’t mind, but Guo and Gao did, and their rejection forced a rift of long standing to become an unbridgeable split. Instead of them, Xu invited a favored protégé of his, the forty-twoyear-old Zhang Juzheng, head of the Hanlin Academy, to come in and help him with it. The draft was shown to Longqing. He approved it. The final edict has Jiajing assuming a regretful tone, acknowledging personal responsibility for the abuses committed under his long reign, and offering a complete cancellation of his least popular policies and preferences. It bears translating just what this edict said and how it said it. The edict was one of Xu Jie’s most important statements on national policy (and soon a cause of great controversy). It was designed to elicit a sympathetic response throughout the realm:

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By grace of Heaven, having taken his place in the dynastic sequence, the emperor in his edict states: As an imperial clansman, I assumed the throne, and continuing the ancestral line, ruled for forty-five years. No predecessor ever ruled as long. I have no regrets that I can carry on no longer. I recall with concern the family law of the earlier emperors, and the teachings of my own father, and their insistence on revering Heaven and working in behalf of the common people. But due to my many illnesses, I went too far in seeking longevity, and so I attracted opportunists and villains to conduct mad rites of religion. Yearly I built [altars and temples]. I ceased taking part in the suburban ancestral sacrifice, and stopped discussing affairs with officials at court. In this I violated established procedure, and abandoned my earlier resolve. Recently Heaven awakened me, and I planned to reform my habits, but I suddenly caught a fever, and was unable to mend my faults. For this I feel deep regret and shame. Yet there is hope. I have a worthy successor, the Prince of Yu [the soon-to-be Longqing emperor], who is by natural endowment benevolent and filial, and schooled to a keen intelligence. He will observe the ancestral instructions, and accord with everyone’s feelings. As emperor he will cultivate virtue. He will show restraint in the conduct of my funeral. He will follow the traditional format, allotting twenty-seven days to it, rather than twenty-seven months. The ceremonial robes and utensils will be modest in cost. The commoners will be allowed [during the mourning period] to make music and conduct their marriage ceremonies [as always]. The imperial clansmen will all stay on their estates. All regional officials will stay at their posts. When they receive news of my death, they will conduct three days and nights of weeping. They will send [lower] officials here to present incense on their behalf. Officials in the prefectures, counties, and native administrations needn’t send incense. The suburban rites and my funeral ceremony will follow the ancestral format with appropriate modifications. Dating from the time of my enthronement to the present, all officials who caused offense by speaking out will be recalled to office if they are still alive, or posthumously honored, if dead. Those presently in prison will be released and restored to office. All the Daoist adepts will be prosecuted and punished in accordance with their degree of guilt. All construction of altars, purchases of special items, and other untoward demands that burden the people will cease.

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My son will show filial respect by following and acting upon my resolve. The officials will show their loyalty by their compliance and their constructive criticism. This is my earnest hope. This is my final edict, which I proclaim to all in the realm for their information. 50

This was an effective tour de force by Xu and Zhang. It certainly brought on wide rejoicing. But parts of the edict strained credulity. Did Jiajing really repent on his deathbed? Probably not, but he had been undergoing a gradual change in attitude under Xu Jie’s counseling. Was Longqing as virtuous and intelligent as the edict promised he was? Not really. The statements that created the most happiness were, one, the abolition of West Park and its whole costly Daoist apparatus; and, two, the rehabilitation of everyone, alive or dead, who had ever been prosecuted for speaking out too freely. That amounted to some two hundred or more men involved in the Great Rites protest of 1524 and its followup in the Great Case (over the sectarian Li Fuda) in 1527, plus other victims of the imperial wrath. Hai Rui, his death sentence still pending, was stunned to learn of his release from the Decree Prison and restitution to office in good standing. The edict was issued on January 24, the day following Jiajing’s death. Xu and Zhang had wasted no time preparing it. Scarcely anyone was still around who was present at the last imperial funeral and enthronement in 1521. Few knew how these ceremonies should be conducted. Xu Jie spent time in his early years researching Ming rituals so as to bring himself to Jiajing’s favorable attention, so now it fell to him to program the observances. All agreed that he did this well. 51 The last requirement was to write an enthronement edict for Longqing to promulgate on February 4. This essentially endorsed Jiajing’s final edict but in much greater detail and with relief measures and tax forgiveness added to it. 52 There was a fly in this ointment: Grand Secretary Gao Gong. He was clearly Longqing’s favorite among all the high officials who had tutored him when he was a young prince, and it was his suggestion of “Longqing” (eminent good fortune) as the new reign title that Jiajing’s son preferred to all other proposed names. But Gao and Xu had already clashed before Xu excluded him from any part in the composition of Jiajing’s final edict. Understandably, that raised Gao’s hackles. Then the two clashed over the new ruler’s role. Xu would look to Longqing for

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major decisions on top personnel, just as he had done with Jiajing. Gao Gong thought that a bad idea; Longqing had only been a few days on the job and was too unfamiliar with government (the guoti) to make such decisions. Gao’s judgment on this issue carried the day. The struggle went on. Gao Gong maneuvered to put Xu in a bind. The meddlesome Hu Yingjia struck again. He was now chief supervising secretary of the Office of Scrutiny for Personnel. Minister of Personnel Yang Bo, Xu’s close associate of long standing, had just concluded the periodic merit evaluations. Hu impeached him for removing two speaking officials and for favoring men from his native province of Shanxi. Longqing sent the impeachment to the Grand Secretariat for discussion. Guo Pu thought Hu Yingjia should be removed from office on the grounds of unseemly behavior. Gao Gong backed him. Xu Jie found himself unwillingly forced to draft an imperial directive removing Hu from officialdom. Then, on May 12, the speaking officials, the great majority of whom sided with Hu, broke forth in a storm of protest, impeaching Gao Gong for attacking Hu Yingjia purely out of personal rancor. Gao Gong sent up a memorial of self-defense. Xu endorsed it, having Longqing defend Gao, but in lukewarm phrases and merely demoting Hu to a prefectural post rather than reducing him to commoner status. This was only a minor victory, perhaps even a small loss, for Xu Jie’s policy of protecting controversial speaking officials. At some point in the late spring of 1567, in the midst of this struggle, Xu reportedly tried to convince Gao Gong that he should stop attacking disruptive speaking officials. It was retaliatory and self-defeating. Early offenders would be demoted and sent away. The next wave would be flogged. The next would be exiled to distant garrisons. Then all-out partisan war would follow because protesters like Hai Rui simply could not be forced into silence. 53 Gao wasn’t buying this argument. It was also reported that one day at dinner, Gao directly confronted Xu Jie with these words: “You wrote Daoist prayers for the former emperor. You curried favor with him. He’s only just died, yet now you betray him. And you’ve corralled the speaking officials into driving out the servitors Longqing had when he was a prince. Why?” “The avenue of speech is made up of many mouths,” Xu retorted. “How could I ever gather them all in to attack you?” Gao Gong would soon take up that challenge and corral a few speaking officials of his own. Xu went on to deny that he’d betrayed

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Jiajing. Then he threatened to blackmail Gao Gong: “I am indeed guilty of writing Daoist prayers. But don’t you remember when you were in the Ministry of Rites, Jiajing by secret note asked me about your request to take part in the Daoist rites, and whether he should agree to it. That note still exists!” That silenced Gao Gong for the time being. 54 On June 27 came a big confrontation. It came to a near riot in front of the Meridian Gate, which separates the inner from the outer court. There the speaking officials gathered en masse to scream at one of their number, Censor Qi Kang, who was sending up a memorial of impeachment against Xu Jie. Everyone said Gao Gong was behind this impeachment. The memorial flung charges of treachery, greed, and power grabbing against the chief grand secretary. Xu Jie denied Qi’s more specific charges as absurd; he denied ever having opposed Longqing’s enthronement, and he denied ever having dealt in bribery. He offered to resign. So did Grand Secretary Li Chunfang. There followed a small blizzard of memorials in support of Xu Jie. These ranged from the hotly vituperative to the calmly reasonable. Hai Rui, out of prison and now assistant commissioner of the Court of Judicial Review, reasonably conceded that although Xu Jie had pandered to Jiajing’s Daoist proclivities out of a fear of losing his position if he didn’t, he was still a member of the “good species” and had performed too well as chief grand secretary to be dumped by the likes of Qi Kang and Gao Gong. 55 The emperor asked both Xu and Li to remain in their posts. Qi Kang was demoted two grades and sent away to an outside position. On June 29, Gao Gong feared he could no longer do his job in the face of such heated opposition, and he begged to be allowed to resign on the excuse of illness. Longqing reacted in alarm. “Is master Gao really sick?” he asked his eunuchs. They replied: “Very sick!” So Longqing let him go home with full honors and rich gifts. Early in 1570, after Xu Jie resigned, he would return. 56 A few months later, hounded by the speaking officials for having taken Gao Gong’s side, Grand Secretary Guo Pu also retired on the grounds of illness. He lived another twenty-six years, never returning to government. At some point during all this, Xu Jie conveyed his state of mind in a letter to Liu Ji (1509–1569), vice minister of war, who must have been out in the field at the time.

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I thought early on I was on good terms with Gao Gong, and I never expected he’d treat me this way. Just because I wouldn’t go along with his idea of suppressing the criticism coming up from the Censorate, he wants to get rid of me so he can have free rein. That crazy dog of a biter [Qi Kang] was instructed and incited by him. Demons are dancing and howling in our fair land. It’s regrettable and hateful. . . . I especially regret what happened to Lu Guangzu [1521–1597, a bureau director in the Ministry of Personnel who helped Xu Jie identify deserving talents but was impeached in 1565]. I was out sick at the time, and Gao Gong’s power was such that nobody dared protest. Now that Gao Gong has left [in 1567], public opinion should gradually revive. 57

Gao Gong’s departure represented an impressive, if short-lived, victory for Xu Jie as well as the majority, perhaps, of Ming central officialdom, who had sided with him. Replacing Gao and Guo Pu as grand secretaries were the mild-mannered Chen Yiqin (1511–1586) and the fierce and ambitious Zhang Juzheng. Chen, like Zhang and Gao, had been one of a team of princely tutors toward whom Longqing still retained a personal fondness. 58 Together with Li Chunfang, this fourman group was amenable to Xu’s leadership. After Xu Jie retired in 1568, the unambitious Li Chunfang, by virtue of his seniority, replaced him as chief grand secretary until 1571, when Gao Gong came back from his self-exile and took over—with vengeance in his heart and counterrevolution on his mind. Longqing set in motion a tidal shift in China’s governing order during his short reign, 1567–1572. The prominence of Xu Jie, Gao Gong, and Zhang Juzheng tended to mask the phenomenon, but Longqing and his successor, the Wanli emperor, after he assumed full power in 1582, made increasingly heavy use of palace eunuchs and relied less and less on the grand secretaries. Eunuchs and palace favorites had wielded power during the rule of the Zhengde emperor (1505–1521), but Jiajing changed that and instead leaned on the Grand Secretariat and the civil bureaucracy during his long time on the throne. Eunuchs were scarcely in evidence. It wasn’t that Longqing, given his inexperience and passivity, had a calculated strategy of using eunuchs as a counterweight to civil bureaucracy. The emperor harbored no suspicion of civil officials. He seems to

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have liked all his grand secretaries. But he had some sort of debilitating stutter, and he couldn’t converse with them. Usually he just sat silent. Xu Jie’s published works record in detail a conference with Longqing on October 25, 1567. It took place at the end of the daily lecture on the Confucian classics. Xu Jie reported that the Ministry of War had memorialized that morning that forces led by Sengge Düüreng (actually by Altan Khan) had captured the town of Shizhou, a full two hundred miles southwest of Datong. “Among the eunuchs kneeling alongside,” he related, Teng Xiang spoke up: “The emperor day and night worries about this. You gentlemen need to do something about it.” Xu Jie answered: “The ruler earlier issued several directives and orders to fix defenses, and we took heed. But now the Lu strategy has changed from earlier years. Before, they would just hit one place, so resistance was easy. This year they used two routes and we couldn’t stop them.” The eunuch Wang Ben said: “How many branches of strong troops from nearby areas did you gentlemen send to stop them?” Xu Jie, speaking for the grand secretaries, said: “Right now Liu Tao has deployed east route troops from Jizhou to help at Yongping. Wang Zhigao has sent Xuan-Da troops to help in Shanxi. The center route troops at Huanghuazhen and other locations at Gubeikou have stayed to defend against Sengge. The troops now at Beijing and the imperial tombs are too vital to send elsewhere. Earlier we were ordered to agree to the Ministry of War memorial, and we’ve sent two branches of mobile cavalry from Xuanfu and one branch each of YanSui troops, Baoding troops, and Henan troops, totaling five branches.” The emperor said: “Yes, yes!” [shile, shile]. Wang Ben wanted to say something more, but Longqing frowned at him and stopped him. His order read: “You all discuss how to handle this.” Xu Jie and the other grand secretaries bowed and left. 59

This tableau affords a rare description of Longqing in action. The ruler is concerned that China’s security is under threat, but two eunuchs must speak about this for him. Instead of scolding eunuch Wang Ben, he silences him by frowning at him. He can only manage to enunciate a “Yes, yes!” Several issues emerge from this scene. One has to do with Longqing’s failure to listen carefully, prompting Xu Jie to restate the situa-

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tion in graphic detail. Another has to do with the emerging prominence of palace eunuchs. Later that same day, Longqing asked the grand secretaries to discuss and handle the crisis surrounding the fall of Shizhou. Was he confused? Xu Jie’s answer leaves one wondering. “We already reported this to you,” replied Xu. Perhaps we didn’t speak clearly or exhaustively, so we venture to repeat. You’ve sent down several directives and orders to fix defenses, and you’ve agreed to our request to send officials out to take charge, so your concern is obvious. But this year the Lu have made new plans, not like before. Before, they’d just hit one place, so frontier officials could just gather troops and horses from the various routes and either block their entry or chase them back in a hurry. This year, Tümen [Altan Khan’s kinsman and nominal superior] attacked in the east, so [Ji-Liao supreme commander] Liu Tao rushed forces east to help out there. Altan Khan attacked in the west, so [Xuan-Da supreme commander] Wang Zhigao rushed forces west. Each Lu outfit numbered one hundred thousand. Our forces, divided east and west, couldn’t match them. The Lu chief Sengge Düüreng stays in their base camp, and it’s not clear where he’s headed. These bandits are as violent and deceptive as ever, and they sit close behind the imperial tombs and the capital. If we send out all our troops, then [Sengge] will burst through the undefended sector and create a huge panic. That’s why we don’t dare deploy elsewhere the troops posted at Huanghuazhen and Gubeikou [fifty miles north of Beijing], and why we’ve asked permission to have [Vice Minister of War] Chi Fengxiang replace Liu Tao temporarily, and have Wang Zhigao and Ma Fang stay where they are to defend against any raid by Sengge Düüreng. We’re careful about the defense of the tombs and Beijing; it’s not that we have troops here that we’re not deploying. You’ve already agreed to the Ministry of War’s request to send two branches of cavalry originally under Wang Zhigao, plus one branch each of Yan-Sui, Henan, and Baoding troops, altogether fifteen thousand men, to help out. If they all do their part, they can drive off the raiders. We fear their help may come too late. So we have to prioritize, and put what’s most critical first. We want to send help to Shizhou, but we have to think about the tombs and capital first. It’s for you, the emperor, to check and decide. 60

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This latest raid in fact affected the whole northern frontier. The deep raid into Shanxi that led to the fall of Shizhou had been preceded by an attack, perhaps a feint, on Datong, on October 5. On October 13, three coordinated groups of raiders entered China along a still unwalled frontier and hit Shuozhou, about seventy-five miles southwest of Datong; Piantouguan (Slanting Head Pass), forty miles farther west; and Laoying (Old Camp), a fortified village thirty miles east of Piantouguan. Then they all headed south and hit not just Shizhou but more than a half-dozen counties in the south central part of Shanxi. This was virgin territory for the raiders, ripe for plucking. The slaughter was horrific; Ming defenses here were thin to nonexistent. In a diversionary attack, designed to prevent a shift of Ming troops to Shanxi, the chief Tümen, joined by Uriyangkhad forces, attacked Jizhen territory on October 22. They looted Changli, Leting, Funing, and Lulong Counties, and some horsemen reached as far as the Luan River. These places were all within a 150-mile radius due east of Beijing. Indeed, Ming troops were shifted east to stop this. One unit stayed behind to defend against a possible attack from Shanxi. Troops were put on alert to guard Beijing and the imperial tombs lying to the west. The next day, October 23, a raid into Shaanxi was reported. Ming security was again, as so often in the recent past, put under serious stress. Xu was standing forth, taking charge, and formulating grand strategy for the defense of the realm. He and the other grand secretaries had conferred with Longqing and his eunuchs on the day previous, October 22. The emperor was given a report from Geng Suiqing, grand coordinator of the capital region (Shuntian), that the “bandits” entered the frontier at Luohandong, a fort at the Great Wall just north of Funing County, about 150 miles east of Beijing, and were headed toward Yongping Prefecture, about 25 miles west. The emperor ordered that troops be gathered to block them. Xu Jie objected; he thought that inadequate. “Since we know for sure,” he said, that Altan Khan has attacked Shanxi, that Tümen has attacked Jielingkou [unidentified], while Sengge Düüreng stays behind in the Lu camp, the likelihood is that they’re tricking our frontier forces into rushing east and west, and are preparing a surprise attack in the center. So we’ve drafted orders for Xuan-Da to be ready on their east, and for Jizhen to be ready on their west. Also we’ve sent a branch of capital troops to Changping, northwest of Beijing, to de-

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fend there. Now Tümen has broken through the frontier, but if the troops all move east [to fight him], then Sengge Düüreng will take advantage of that to spring his surprise. We think Beijing and the imperial tombs are vitally important, yet we can’t let Tümen cross the river, and we also have to keep Sengge away, so we propose that you, the emperor, order thusly: “The Lu-bandits have entered the frontier, so you [Geng Suiqing et al.] act at convenience, join Liu Tao [supreme commander at Ji-Liao], and chase, harass, and drive off the bandits; and also post troops at the Luan River [125 miles east of Beijing] and don’t let them cross it; and further guard Huanghuazhen [about 30 miles north of Changping] against any attack from the west. [Generals] Ma Fang and Ji Lian are warned to be alert. Notify the Ministry of War of all this.” 61

Two months went by before Longqing met again with the grand secretaries about the war situation. On December 28, 1567, the emperor, or eunuchs speaking on his behalf, asked about the results of a conference authorized by Longqing and called by Xu Jie on December 10, for the purpose of soliciting everyone’s ideas and plans for the defense of the northern frontier. Thirteen very practical proposals, insightful and detailed, were selected for consideration; all were approved for implementation. 62 “The defensive lapses of recent years,” explained Xu, have come about mainly because the officials continue their old habits, fail to think hard and manage well, and follow the usual regulations rather than adapt to changed conditions. Back in the seventh month [August–September 1567] you asked for candid memorials on topics no one dared raise or do before, so you know about this deficiency. But no one responded adequately to that. So the Lu raided and killed and overran our garrisons east and west. We fear for what will happen if we just keep on this way and don’t plan for the future. The kedao proposals all urged fresh thinking, but we feared those officials were too far from the battlefronts and might obstruct the conduct of war, or might be biased or ignorant. That’s why the ministry proposed having all officials high and low in Beijing, and all the supreme commanders and grand coordinators outside, submit ideas for discussion. We’ve received your authorization to carry them out. So we grand secretaries have prepared copies for the Ministry of War and officials outside, so they’ll know your intentions. They will memorialize in detail what they plan to do. When their memorials ar-

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rive, we’ll convoke a grand assembly of civil and military officials to discuss them, and send the results up for your decision. 63

This was vintage Xu Jie, once again putting his governing philosophy into action. Big problems demanded wide consultation and discussion, freedom to speak out to the best of one’s ability, and a premium on fresh insights and new but realistic ideas. Meanwhile, as further evidence of his determination to command things if he could, Xu sent personal letters of advice to some half-dozen frontier officials, including Liu Tao and Wang Zhigao, in an attempt to help them and save their necks. His efforts fell short; Liu Tao was dismissed and demoted on November 14 and Wang on November 28. They would appear to have been examples of officials stuck in routine and otherwise unable to cope with crisis. The Lu raiders spent two weeks wrecking Shanxi. Then they withdrew of their own accord back into the steppes. Tümen’s attack in the east foundered in dense fog and a disastrous misreading of the topography. The expected attack by Sengge Düüreng in the center never materialized. On November 5, the alert in Beijing was lifted. New thinking prompted Ming counterattacks into the steppes. Early in 1568, Wang Chonggu directed assaults on the raiders’ base in the Ordos area while Li Chengliang and others struck Tümen’s camps in the steppes north of Liaodong. Those actions helped put Ming China in a position of strength and contributed to a situation that made the peace agreement of 1571 with Altan Khan politically possible. During the six-year reign of Longqing, there arose a more serious threat to Xu Jie’s interpretation of the Ming constitution than the opposition put up by Gao Gong. That was the emergence of the palace eunuch corps as a major player in power politics and in the governance of the realm. The eunuchs were invisible no more. Indeed, they made moves to intrude upon China’s military system and change it. Longqing lived the first thirty years of his life modestly and even studiously, as a prince whom his father disdained. Once enthroned, however, the new ruler showed an unexpected delight in pomp and ceremony, public display, and private pleasure seeking, wholly unlike his reclusive and religion-obsessed father. Eunuchs, especially his

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spokesman Teng Xiang, were only too happy to abet his exuberance and ride it to a role in government. On February 26, 1568, Shi Xing, supervising secretary of the Office of Scrutiny for Personnel, sent up a scathing critique of Longqing’s behavior. Longqing, he said, had been a year in power and had given up his tutorials in Confucianism; he was letting memorials pile up unattended to; he was reacting angrily to official critics; he was listening to his eunuchs; and he was indulging in lavish parties featuring music, wine, sex, and stupendous lantern displays. Normally not quick to anger, Longqing responded to this with fury, ordering that Shi be lashed sixty strokes and reduced to the status of commoner. 64 Xu Jie tried, usually without success, to block Longqing’s repeated desires to make short sightseeing tours, to urge him to resume the tutorials, and to show some magnanimity toward his critics. The chief grand secretary conceded that speaking officials sometimes believed rumors and spoke too heatedly, but such offenders should be let off with a light scolding only. 65 An equally serious matter, in Xu’s opinion, was Longqing’s allowing eunuchs, for the first time in many decades, to have a role in military affairs. In October 1567, Xu and the other grand secretaries advised Longqing to withdraw his order assigning eunuchs to supervise the capital training divisions. The speaking officials had objected to it, and the statutes (Da Ming huidian) didn’t provide for it. Longqing (or his eunuchs) made a spoken-language reply: “I ordered eunuchs to sit with the training divisions, and the speaking officials objected, and you all objected too. What’s the idea? Explain your disobedience.” Xu Jie ventured to tell him that Jiajing had abolished the eunuch-run integrated divisions in 1550 because the Ming founder had never set up such units. Since then, the military had improved, and there was no reason to change excellent ancestral military institutions. There were no more integrated divisions for eunuchs to control. To appoint eunuchs, Longqing would have to completely change the statutory order of things. This they didn’t dare agree to, and surely the emperor, too, would hesitate to do it. This was the only idea they had in mind in endorsing the speaking officials’ memorials. 66 For the time being, the argument worked; Longqing backed down. But the eunuchs were soon at it again. On January 24, 1568, Xu Jie endorsed a censor’s complaint that a new eunuch army was being re-

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cruited and trained inside the Forbidden City. Xu asked Longqing to stop this: You select and train these eunuchs because you’re thinking ahead about security in light of the current frontier crisis. But the censor was also thinking ahead, to stop an abuse early on. Jiajing thought of raising such a palace eunuch army in 1551 during a similar crisis, but he backed off. Surely he gave the issue deep thought. Right now, you’ve endorsed salutary military reforms and the frontier crisis has eased, so this palace army isn’t needed. We beg you to accept the censor’s complaint. 67

In the long run, the eunuchs prevailed in their military ambitions. A few months later, in the face of another impeachment and feeling the effects of his advancing years, Xu Jie resigned. After having lived nearly thirty years in Beijing, he returned to his home in Huating. And there he stayed, until death took him in 1583. How should one assess Xu Jie’s record as chief grand secretary? It is good to recall that the position, for all its eminence, was advisory only. Emperors could engage with it or ignore it at will. Jiajing leaned on it. Longqing was lukewarm. The Wanli emperor (r. 1572–1620) had little use for it at all. After Zhang Juzheng’s death in 1582, the Grand Secretariat fell into a chronic state of eclipse and to the end of the Ming in 1644 never fully recovered. So the effectiveness of Xu Jie or any other chief grand secretary was always contingent upon the ruler’s attitude. Their powers were not spelled out in statutory law. Xu Jie understood that perfectly well. Xu was a politician-bureaucrat of surpassing talents. He won Jiajing’s favor, no easy business. For years, he played the political power game with persistence, fortitude, and finesse. Against the Yan family and their followers only did he show partisan venom, but he kept that attitude under wraps until Yan Song’s dismissal. Answering to the needs of the times, his main goal was to enhance national security, not by bargaining with or making concessions to formidable enemies, but by improving the fighting effectiveness of Ming land and naval forces. By the time he became chief grand secretary in 1562, that goal was well on the way to achievement, and thanks to his staying on top of the situation, the northern raids of 1567, the last such of any scale, were beaten back.

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For all his early respect for the Wang Yangming school of Confucian learning and his early enthusiasm for jiangxue (i.e., discussing with others what one has learned about ethics), Xu Jie was no ideologue or sloganeer. Yet his whole pattern of personal behavior while in office seems to read as an unspoken exemplification in administration and in politics of the precept zhi liangzhi, or “extend the good conscience.” One could rule the realm through bribery and corruption (like Yan Song) or through fear (like Zhang Juzheng later), but to extend one’s goodwill and earn the widespread trust and support of one’s colleagues and others can also be an effective technique, and for Xu Jie, it was. In the authoritarian tradition and context of Ming China, Xu Jie was a liberal. He valued other men’s opinions. He consistently tried to protect what one might call freedom of speech, even when that freedom was used recklessly. No snob, he was always eager to assist and promote others, whatever their backgrounds or formal qualifications, if they showed intelligence, enthusiasm, and initiative. It is hard to condemn him for his occasional descent into dirty politics. He was, altogether, in many ways an admirable character as well as an impressive statesman and politician.

NOTES 1. See Kenneth J. Hammond, Pepper Mountain: The Life, Death, and Posthumous Career of Yang Jisheng (London: Routledge, 2007). 2. Xia Xie, Ming tongjian, 4:2429–30. 3. Ibid., 4:2430–31; Ming shi, ch. 308 (biography of Yan Song); Gu Yingtai, Mingshi jishi benmo, ch. 54 (Yan Song in power); Ming shilu, 90:8386–91; Tan Qian, Guo que, 4:3978. 4. Goodrich and Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography (biography of Lin Jun); Xia Xie, Ming tongjian, 4:2462–66; Tan Qian, Guo que, 4:4010; Gu Yingtai, Mingshi jishi benmo, ch. 54; Ming shi, ch. 308. 5. Tan Qian, Guo que, 4:4015. 6. Xia Xie, Ming tongjian, 4:2471–72. 7. Ibid., 4:2471. See also Hu Guiqi, Hu gong xingshi (Siku quanshu cunmu congshu, shibu), 83:501. 8. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:133; Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 3:1953–55 (epitaph for Hong Chaoxuan); Ming shi, ch. 210 (biography of Lin Run). The letter Xu mentions is not in his collected works.

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9. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:381; Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 1:600–602 (epitaph for Yuan Wei). 10. Zhi Dalun, Huang Ming Yongling biannian xinshi (reprint, 2 vols., Taipei: 1970?), 2:600–601. 11. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:382–84. 12. Ibid., 79:403–5. 13. Ibid., 79:407. 14. Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 1:603–4 (epitaph for Yan Na); Ming shi, ch. 224 (biography of Lu Guangzu). 15. Ming shi, ch. 193; Goodrich and Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography (biography of Li Chunfang). 16. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:609. 17. See Goodrich and Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography (biographies of Tung Ssu-chang and Keng Ting-hsiang). 18. Tan Qian, Guo que, 4:2468; Wang Shizhen, Jiajing yilai shoufu zhuan (Ming Qing shiliao huibian, ser. 1), 1:312; Chen Tian, ed., Ming shi jishi (Mingdai zhuanji congkan, Taipei: 1991), 14:416; Zhang Xuan, Xiyuan wenjian lu, in ibid., 118:97–98. Dong is sometimes characterized as “greedy and calculating.” He went home to face down an angry riot of protesters, resentful at the depredations of his very rich household, but in partial expiation he used his immense wealth to fund a range of local charities. He always regretted his failure to become a grand secretary and do what he could to benefit the state. He also felt he’d been done a great wrong. Others agreed. See the epitaph by Shen Shixing, Cixiantang ji (Siku quanshu congmu congshu), 134:596–600. 19. Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 1:620 (Wang Shizhen’s biography of Gao Gong). 20. Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou shanren xugao, 13:3269–73 (account of conduct for Xu Jie); Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 1:613–25, 626 (biography and epitaph of Gao Gong); Xia Xie, Ming tongjian, 4:2485–86; Ming shi, ch. 213 (biography of Gao Gong). 21. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:384–85. 22. Ibid., 79:391–92. 23. Ming shilu, 90:8391; Xia Xie, Ming tongjian, 4:2431. 24. Xia Xie, Ming tongjian, 4:2454. 25. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:407. 26. Xia Xie, Ming tongjian, 4:2438–39. 27. Gu Yingtai, Mingshi jishi benmo, ch. 54 (Yan Song in power). 28. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:408–9. 29. Xia Xie, Ming tongjian, 4:2468. 30. Tan Qian, Guo que, 4:4022. 31. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:412–13.

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32. Tan Qian, Guo que, 4:4022; Ming shilu, 91:8819–25. 33. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:415–16. 34. Ibid., 79:419–20. 35. Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou shanren xugao, 13:6311–12 (account of conduct for Xu Jie). 36. The date comes from Xu Jie’s report of November 12 (Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:388–89). 37. Ibid., 79:387. 38. Ibid., 79:389. 39. Ming shi, ch. 204 (biography of Yang Xuan); Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou shanren xugao, 13:6298–6300; Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 1:591–600 (Wang Shizhen’s biography of Xu Jie); Xia Xie, Ming tongjian, 4:2449–50. 40. Xu’s frequent and detailed replies to Jiajing’s queries in November and December 1563 are in Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:385–93. 41. Ibid., 79:393–417. 42. Ibid., 79:409. 43. Ibid., 79:409–10. 44. Ibid., 79:410. 45. Tan Qian, Guo que, 4:4015, 4023, 4025; Ming shi, ch. 223 (biography of Zhu Heng); Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 4:2117–21 (account of conduct for Zhu Heng); Xia Xie, Ming tongjian, 4:2477–78; Goodrich and Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography (biography of P’an Chi-hsun). 46. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:412. 47. Ibid., 80:132–33. Three relevant memorials are given in Chen Zilong, Huang Ming jingshi wenbian, 18:539–46, but not the attachments Xu refers to. 48. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:417. 49. Ibid., 79:401–2; See also Richard Von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1000–1700 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 104–12. 50. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:439. 51. Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou shanren xugao, 13:6320–21. 52. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:440–45. 53. Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou shanren xugao, 13:6324. 54. Tan Qian, Guo que, 4:4051. 55. Ming shilu, 90:232–34. 56. Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 1:625–32 (epitaph for Gao Gong); Ming shi, ch. 213 (biography of Gao Gong). 57. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:141. 58. Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 1:633–36 (epitaph for Chen Yiqin). 59. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:432–33. 60. Ibid., 79:432–33.

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61. Ibid., 79:432. 62. Tan Qian, Guo que, 4:4072–73; a longer version is in Ming shilu, 92:382–94. 63. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:433–34. 64. Tan Qian, Guo que, 4:4079–80. 65. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:427–28. 66. Ibid., 79:431–32. 67. Ibid., 79:434.

5 BOWING OUT

Xu Jie decided to retire for three main reasons. First, if one compares his exchanges (zoudui) with Jiajing to those he had with Longqing, one can see immediately that the old closeness was gone. Eunuchs were outcompeting him for the emperor’s attention. Second, at sixty-five, he said he was feeling his age. Third, he was under impeachment. On August 11, 1568, the ruler allowed him to resign. The author of the impeachment was Zhang Qi, chief supervising secretary of the Office of Scrutiny for Revenue. He and Xu Jie had an earlier falling out. Zhang Qi, allegedly, accepted a large bribe from a salt merchant who wanted the official regulations amended in his favor. Zhang so petitioned. Xu rejected him. Zhang was unable to return the bribe, and he feared exposure. So he impeached Xu Jie, restating several of the points Qi Kang had made in his unsuccessful impeachment of a year earlier. Xu Jie wrote a long rebuttal, even though he’d already decided to resign. The rebuttal, defensive and in part disingenuous, reads like an apologia for the controversial politics of his term as chief grand secretary. He pleaded guilty for having composed qingci (Daoist prayers) for Jiajing and for having prompted the rebuilding of Jiajing’s burned-down palace. But had he been dishonest and duplicitous in his relationship to Yan Song? Not at all! He always had to defer to Yan, because Yan was older and his position higher. Besides, they often agreed. It wasn’t Xu Jie who impeached and prosecuted Yan Song and his son—it was Censors Zou Yinglong and Lin Run acting in behalf of public opinion; it was 185

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the Embroidered-Uniform Guard and the judicial organs who handled the case according to public law; it was Jiajing himself who made all the final decisions, as his own notes on the documents clearly show. Was he disloyal to Jiajing when, after catering to his faults for so long, he composed that self-critical final edict in the dead emperor’s behalf? Again, no! Xu admitted writing it, but he insisted it reflected Jiajing’s true wish to create a legacy of virtue and lay a helpful foundation for his successor. Xu certainly did not aim to air Jiajing’s failings. In fact, the edict elicited tears of praise for Jiajing from the broad masses of the common people. That proved Xu Jie’s loyalty to his ruler! So he denied he was ever duplicitous or disloyal. The third charge that Xu disputed was that in handling the frontier crisis of 1567, he had shunted Longqing aside and seized total control, favoring his friends. “The realm knew there was a Xu Jie,” read the charge; “It didn’t realize the emperor even existed!” Xu adroitly answered this charge and, in answering it, patiently offered a short course in Ming institutional history, itself of considerable interest. “In ancient times the prime minister had comprehensive control of government,” he explained. Since Song times, military authority was hived off to a Military Affairs Bureau, since which time the prime minister had no more power role in warfare. Then our Ming dynasty abolished the position of prime minister altogether, set up the Six Ministries, and assigned all military matters to the Ministry of War. The job of the grand secretaries is restricted to drafting imperial replies (piaoni), just as the speaking officials’ role is restricted to making proposals. We [the grand secretaries] ask the ruler to have the ministry review and discuss all urgent memorials relating to frontier matters from officials inside and outside. When the War Ministry has replied, we check whether the reply is appropriate, and then ask the ruler to make the decision. Our only job as grand secretaries is to propose imperial replies to important items of business and then issue them. We’re not like the supreme commanders and grand coordinators who are posted on the frontiers and actually handle the defenses. The item relating to the bayising [Altan’s settlements for Chinese defectors in the Ordos] mentioned in Zhang Qi’s impeachment 1 was sent down to the ministry, reviewed, discussed, and then approved for action. Because the ruler had just come to the throne, we drafted ahead of time an edict that included a clause urging all defectors to

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return [to China]. Last winter at a court discussion of frontier defense we announced that, but whether it was implemented or not was up to the frontier officials; we grand secretaries couldn’t do it for them. Zhang Qi would have us grand secretaries actually be present on the frontier! . . . That’s not our job. 2

And on that note, Xu Jie departed Beijing forever. Longqing rejected Zhang Qi’s bill of impeachment. The impeacher was himself impeached for corruption after all, demoted, and then sent for a short time into exile. But even as Xu Jie left government behind, the tentacles of political trouble followed him back home to Huating and nearly crushed both him and his family. Not all that much can be known now about the family of so eminent a figure as Xu. 3 We know his father rose from a humble clerkship to a low-level post in county bureaucracy and died early, in 1524. His mother died in 1540. We know he had a sister, married to a man of the hereditary military. He had two younger brothers; one died young while the other, Xu Zhi (1512–1570), achieved his jinshi degree in 1543 and held a series of midlevel posts. Apparently, he and Xu Jie stayed out of each other’s way. Xu Jie married twice. He never took on concubines. His first wife, née Shen, died in 1530, not long after giving birth to a son, Xu Fan, in 1529. He then married another, née Zhang (1516–1583), daughter of an assistant county magistrate. She bore him two sons, Xu Kun in 1544 and Xu Ying in 1550, and one daughter. One of the children’s marriages was arranged in accordance with the exigencies of power politics: Xu Ying to a daughter of Lu Bing (1510–1560), a West Park favorite and commander of the Embroidered-Uniform Guard. Possibly another marriage, later expunged from the record, was arranged with someone in Yan Song’s family. The other marriages of children and grandchildren, like Xu Jie’s own, were all to families of lower rank. Yan Song used his son Shifan (1513–1565) as an unofficial appointments secretary and aide-de-camp. Xu Jie used his son Xu Fan (1529–1592) as a consultant and amanuensis until, in the wake of the disaster that befell Yan Shifan, he made all his sons leave Beijing and return home to Huating. Then, for a while, he used his friend Yang Yusun (1521–1567) as a consultant and a kind of unofficial gatekeeper. A jinshi degree holder from Huating, Yang was a man after Xu’s own

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heart. He was severely abstemious, decisive, brilliant at Confucian philosophy, and an excellent judge of men. But because of his link to Xu Jie, his home in Beijing soon attracted crowds of officials and others who wanted to see the grand secretary. Yang couldn’t stand that pressure, so he asked for and got an outside appointment, as grand coordinator for Huguang. 4 It is not known who might have preceded or followed Yang Yusun as Xu’s doorkeeper. After Xu Jie accepted Jiajing’s invitation to make his home in West Park in 1549, he could visit his original home in Beijing only with the ruler’s special permission. And it was best not to ask for that very often because that was one sure way to shake the ruler’s trust in one’s total love and loyalty. It appears Xu’s sons lived with their mother and took turns visiting Huating. Every three years, there took place a routine evaluation of all top-level officials. The highest, Xu Jie among them, sent in self-evaluations. Over a span of eighteen years, Xu underwent six of these. Each time, he was given rich gifts and honors, and his sons, as they came of age, all received official sinecures, their ranks raised each time their father was honored. This was the so-called yin, or “protection,” privilege. Xu Fan received his first privilege in 1551, when his father as minister of rites was given the “prestige” title of junior guardian. Xu Fan, the one-time examination cheat, had been a special student in the National University and was made office manager (a supervisor of clerks) in one of the chief military commissions. In 1557 he was honored by an appointment as prefect of Guangnan, in Yunnan Province. But Xu Jie declined this on his son’s behalf. “I have three sons,” he explained: Fan is the eldest, by my deceased wife née Shen, who died in his first year. His health is poor, he lacks experience, and he would be overwhelmed by the demands of such a post. My second son is only fourteen, the youngest eight. Fan is twenty-nine [twenty-eight by Western reckoning], too young to be a prefect, but he can carry out duties in my home, leaving me free to concentrate on my office. Besides, Yunnan is ten thousand li from Beijing, so it takes several months for letters to arrive, and it would be hard for me to bear that, given that my wife [his mother] is dead.

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Xu asked that Fan be kept in Beijing in some lower post. Jiajing agreed and made him an aide in the Seals Office. 5 When in 1562 Xu Jie outfoxed Yan Song and argued successfully that Jiajing’s burned-down palace could be rebuilt, Xu Fan was appointed a bureau secretary in the Ministry of Works for the explicit purpose of assisting in supervising the construction. This might have been a golden opportunity for graft, yet no such charges were ever laid. If Xu Fan stole anything, he got away with it. 6 Imperial gifts, lavishly awarded every three years and on other occasions, would by themselves have made Xu Jie one of the richer men in China. Where would he have spent his wealth? Xu Jie hated luxury. His quarters in West Park were, of course, rent-free. He hosted no parties, kept no concubines, supported no musical troupes, collected no rarities, spent nothing on bribes. His second wife ran their private home in Beijing with the aid of the three sons. She would often stay up until midnight supervising the female bondservants at their weaving. She was a pious Buddhist. She exhorted all the junior males to be humble, study, avoid luxury, and stay away from theater people. So the family wouldn’t have spent much on high-end consumption in Beijing. But according to the last surviving son, Xu Kun (who provided reminiscences for his mother’s epitaph, done long after her death), she was very charitable and gave generously to her own family and to Huating people in need. Travelers bearing food and gifts made for a constant stream between the capital and Huating. Thus, perhaps much of the Xu family wealth percolated southward to Huating in the form of charity and, surely, also funds for private estate building. But Xu Jie was uneasy with this estate building, and just as he was about to retire, he hoped it might be possible never to go back to Huating. In a state of anxiety, he unburdened himself about this to his friend Yang Yusun, now down in Huguang Province. He missed working with Jiajing, he said. Under Longqing, eunuchs had emerged from the shadows and were pressing to acquire military authority, and Xu didn’t think he’d be able to stop them much longer, so he was seriously considering resigning as chief grand secretary. Then he vented his distaste for his and Yang’s native place. “Songjiang people are profligate and untrustworthy, and I can’t have my sons and grandsons live there. I hear fields in Huguang are very cheap and lightly taxed, and the customs are quite simple and honest, but I don’t know which prefecture

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might be best. I wish you would investigate that for me. We might both plan to move there. Please don’t consider this an unrealistic request and ignore it.” Unfortunately, Yang died in 1567, so Xu’s plan to move to Huguang never came off. 7 Somehow, Xu Jie’s sons and their housemen, in spite of their father’s preferences, built a gigantic estate in Huating while their father was preoccupied with national affairs in Beijing. For a long time, Xu was vaguely aware that his sons were up to some questionable activities in Huating. In several letters to regional officials with authority over Songjiang Prefecture, he asked them to investigate and take any necessary remedial action. But it appears none did, perhaps because they were afraid to take the grand secretary at his word. Where would this land have come from? Various fragmentary bits of information suggest that the dynamic behind the land grab may have lain in the sons’ lax supervision of their housemen, bondspeople who managed the absentee estate and who seized fields for their own reasons. Smallholders who were overtaxed might have voluntarily ceded 8 their fields to the Xu family, who enjoyed important tax exemptions, becoming tenants in return. Some land might have been fraudulently ascribed to Xu ownership without the family knowing it, and for the same reason. Local entrepreneurs mortgaged fields to the Xu and invested the payment in the profitable Xu family cloth business. Still, it is puzzling that someone as knowledgeable as Xu Jie was about Songjiang tax-avoidance techniques should have failed to ensure that his own sons and their servants weren’t participants in the very abuses he had condemned for so long. Xu Jie’s political enemies soon jumped on this lapse and nearly destroyed him and his family because of it. In August 1568, Xu Jie departed Beijing replete with imperial gifts: fifty ounces of silver, three thousand guan of “new paper currency” (it’s not clear what the value of that was), plus expensive silks and other goods. Officials and common people jammed the streets in a fond and tearful farewell to a popular figure. The government paid for his trip home, letting him use the official postal facilities and providing him with an escort for his protection. When he arrived in Huating, the state issued him a grain allotment and assigned him personal servants as well. Xu’s successor as chief grand secretary, through seniority, was his long-time ally, Li Chunfang (1511–1584). Li shared his predecessor’s

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values but lacked his talents and energy. Gao Gong easily overbore him. In 1571, Li voluntarily resigned, and Gao Gong, Xu Jie’s old archenemy, took over as chief grand secretary. Things turned bad for Xu. Gao Gong, denied a role by Xu Jie in the formulation of Jiajing’s final edict, took determined steps to rescind it. Gao pointed out that Jiajing’s Minglun dadian, the ruler’s authoritative book on the Great Rites issue, was still valid as the law of the land. Thus all those removed from service for protesting the issue were wrongly rehabilitated by Xu. So Gao returned them all to the dishonor and ignominy he thought they deserved. That, of course, put a dent, both real and symbolic, into Xu Jie’s natural constituency. Then Gao called Qi Kang and Zhang Qi, Xu Jie’s attackers, back into service and good standing. More moves followed. A new rule, authorized on April 2, 1570, at the request of Hu Jia, a young supervising secretary of the Office of Scrutiny for Rites, made it illegal for provincial education intendants to gather disciples and “discuss study” (jiangxue) any longer. This, too, crimped Xu Jie’s constituency. 9 Clearly, however, a new generation was making its presence felt. The Wang Yangming tide, after a half-century at the leading edge of intellectual life in Ming China, was ebbing, and Hu Jia’s memorial echoed a widespread revulsion against the improper ends to which the meetings were being turned—making connections, currying favor, forming partisan cliques (menhu), and such. Gao Gong was more forceful a grand secretary than Xu Jie ever was. He did share Xu’s strong views on national defense and on the need to recruit talents regardless of formal credentials, but he was by nature fierce, suspicious, and vindictive, whereas Xu had been gentler and more trusting. Gao had no use for jiangxue. But he was more a Confucian scholar and theorist than Xu. He sided with the Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy, with special emphasis on qi (material force) rather than xin (heart-mind) and on li (profit, interest, advantage) rather than the various psychologically energizing slogans of the Wang Yangming school. 10 A younger generation of ambitious place seekers rallied around him, happily fed his suspicions, and eagerly aroused his fierce vindictiveness. And Gao wielded more power than Xu or, indeed, any predecessor in the Grand Secretariat, because not only was he the dominant grand secretary from 1569 to 1572, finally becoming chief in 1572, he was also concurrently minister of personnel over the same span of years. Thus, he enjoyed true executive authority in addition to his advisory leverage

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over Longqing. Yet he made Xu Jie, retired from office and no longer a threat to anyone, a main target of his vindictive wrath. Why? Gao suspected that Xu Jie’s resignation was merely tactical, as his own had been in 1567. He thought Xu would likely attempt a comeback, so he acted to make that impossible. Gao’s people went to work on the Xu family’s housemen. They arrested one by the name of Xu Shi, who had been appointed a company commander in the Embroidered-Uniform Guard for his role in exposing White Lotus sectarians in Beijing. They accused him of criminal misconduct. They tried torturing him into accusing Xu Jie himself of agreeing to his indicting innocent people as sectarians. They failed. Xu Shi subsequently died while still in custody. An informal group of hostile officials met with Gao Gong and came up with another plan. Qi Kang and Zhang Qi were part of the group, and so were several top winners of the 1565 jinshi degree, among them one Chen Yide, a native of Huating, no less. Appointed a Hanlin junior compiler, Chen had worked under Xu Jie’s personal supervision compiling the court records of Jiajing’s reign (the Shizong shilu). He did his job well. But he had some sort of falling out with Xu and was demoted and sent out to the provinces. Gao Gong called him back. Chen thus had a motive for joining the anti-Xu group. 11 Some informant told this group that housemen working for Xu Jie’s three corrupt sons had set up some sort of business (surely the cloth business) in a house in a Beijing market, that this business had 30,000 taels of silver on hand, and that this fund was going to be used to pay three palace eunuchs to urge Longqing to call Xu Jie back into office! They also arrested one Sun Kehong, a Huating native and a minor provincial official, and charged his houseman, one Sun Wu, with visiting Xu Jie and acting as a conduit between Huating and the house in the Beijing market. So the house was raided, and the silver, whatever its intended use, confiscated. Gao Gong thought something could also be done at Huating to ruin Xu Jie and block any chance of his return to office. A big corruption trial followed by severe punishments would surely suffice. Such a procedure was duly set in motion. What followed was a scenario layered with irony. They didn’t go after Xu personally. They went after his sons. They needed a special prosecutor. They found one. He was a certain Cai Guoxi, earlier a very well regarded prefect at Suzhou, who had been

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impeached and removed because he used extralegal means to flog a Xu houseman who was engaged in trade in Suzhou and was acting obnoxiously, taking advantage of the high status of the Xu name. Xu’s other housemen resented that treatment of their colleague, and they rioted in indignation when Cai came through Songjiang one day on official business. The prefect had to intervene and break it up. So, like Chen Yide, Cai bore a grudge. (Cai, ironically, was a jiangxue aficionado and a jinshi examinee of Xu’s.) He aired his grievance with Qi Kang, one of Gao Gong’s censorial attack dogs. Qi told Gao of the matter. So in July 1571, Gao restored Cai to officialdom and appointed him vice commissioner of the military circuit of Su-Song and directed him to conduct the prosecution of the Xu family. The specific charges were pressed by Zhang Bo, yet another young jinshi of the class of 1565 and a supervising secretary of the Office of Scrutiny for Revenue. The three Xu sons were arrested and put in prison. Cai then solicited letters from members of the local elite who had derogatory things to say about the Xu. Surprisingly, perhaps, some sons of Xu Jie’s friends responded. One was Yuan Fuzheng, a minor official, litterateur, and Huating native. Another was Mo Shilong, a student and an outstanding artist. Their letters were sent up to Chen Yide in Beijing, who passed them on to Gao Gong. On leaving Huating for an official posting elsewhere, Yuan Fuzheng “extorted” (xie) 500 taels from Xu Jie. That opened a floodgate. Anyone who had ever placed funds with or bribed the sons clamored at the walls of Xu’s house demanding refunds. Rioters burned down the gatehouse. Some claims were fraudulent. Xu paid them all. Plus, he had health problems. And he was mourning the recent deaths of a grandson, two granddaughters, a greatgranddaughter, and his younger brother. He had to flee his home for a while to avoid the rioters. Understandably, he came to feel unbearably distressed by all this. 12 Meanwhile, more trouble had come from a wholly different quarter. For years, Xu Jie had championed tax fairness in Songjiang. He had even toyed earlier with the idea of putting upper limits on the size any landed estate could attain. Then came Hai Rui, calling him, of all people, to account—the same Hai Rui whose neck Xu Jie had saved in Beijing in 1566. Hai Rui was a fiscal reformer with ambitious ideas and a track record of making them work in the face of fierce opposition. He was a man

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after Xu Jie’s own heart, really. His personal letters show that Hai Rui was very fond of Xu Jie. 13 In July 1569, Hai Rui was made grand coordinator at Yingtian (Nanjing), capital of the Southern Metropolitan Province (Nan Zhili), with jurisdiction over ten prefectures, including, of course, Songjiang. One of his main aims was to do something to remedy a serious national revenue loss. Too much taxable farmland had disappeared from the registers and, by one means or another, entered the estates of officials, on duty or retired, with tax privileges. Huge private estates were the result. The problem was especially acute in Huating County. In a detailed statement he made when he left office, Hai described how Huating was the worst example in all of China for its large number of predatory estate-building elites, its huge population of bondservants attached to them, and the depth of the hatred expressed by the few smallholders who were left. Hai had made a personal visit to Huating and found “nearly ten thousand” privileged estates, and on inquiry he was told that this problem had developed over the past twenty years, as the local officials had sided with the privileged elites and rejected the complaints the common people lodged. 14 Hai demanded that these privileged estates be disaggregated, that some large proportion of their acreage be returned to their former owners. Xu Jie returned some. Hai Rui met Xu in Songjiang and afterward wrote him in a friendly way that the family still held far too much and had to disgorge more. 15 He wrote Li Chunfang, now chief grand secretary, “Xu Jie has been sorely hurt by a horde of rascals, but his property is so large it makes one gasp. He’s brought this on himself. Unless he returns over half of it, these vengeful commoners will be unstoppable. There’s no future in being rich and unbenevolent. . . . I want Xu Jie to return more than half of his property, for his own sake, and for the future well being of his descendants.” 16 Thinking it all over later on, Hai Rui wrote that his earlier high regard for Xu Jie plummeted because he was so protective of his family’s holdings, while his respect for Gao Gong rose on account of Gao’s comparative poverty. 17 It was Zhang Juzheng—fourth-ranking grand secretary under Xu Jie (1567–1568), third-ranking under Li Chunfang (1569–1571), secondranking under Gao Gong (1572), and finally chief grand secretary after the Longqing emperor died in July of that year—who helped his old

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mentor, Xu Jie, by working on his behalf from behind the scenes. Zhang was not supportive of Hai Rui’s radical approach to land reform because it was stirring up confusion, tumult, and heated opposition among almost all of the Jiangnan landowning elites. Hai Rui’s removal was easily arranged. A supervising secretary of the Office of Scrutiny for Personnel, one Dai Fengxiang, impeached him. 18 Xu’s son Xu Fan was heard to boast that he and his brothers had gathered 1,000 taels to bribe Dai to do the job. Dai accused Hai Rui, as great a radical reformer as he may have been, of a foolishly wrongheaded fanaticism, provoking too many lawsuits and filling the roads with his agents and many others involved in the tumult he was raising. The Ministry of Personnel agreed that Hai Rui’s ambition outran his talent and shifted him to another post. That was on March 31, 1570. Hai Rui first heard of all this when the Capital Gazette (Di bao) reached him a week later, April 6. He disputed the charges heatedly and in great detail. Then he resigned. 19 So the reform effort collapsed, the pressures to yield acreage eased, and things returned to normal, more or less, for Xu Jie and the other large landholders. Xu Jie wrote in letters to friends that Hai Rui’s reforms, though well intended, had prompted too many evil opportunists to exploit the confusion and horn in on the land redistribution. 20 But for Xu Jie, trouble still remained. It centered on alleged bribe trafficking by his sons. This was, if anything, more serious for the family than the landowning issue. Gao Gong was making a big case of it. Accusations by locals spread like a contagion. Many of Xu Jie’s relatives, friends, and former students were afraid to come to his defense, although a one-time close colleague, Lu Guangzu, came over from nearby Pinghu County and pleaded with the prosecutors on Xu’s behalf. 21 In Beijing, Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng’s replies to Xu’s letters (which are no longer extant) kept his former mentor abreast of things and reassured him of his continuing efforts to protect him. He also wrote Xu’s sons. He urged Hai Rui’s successor to ease up a bit, especially on Xu Jie. He wrote Xu Jie’s brother. He wrote birthday letters to Xu Jie and thanked his sons for their birthday messages and gifts to him. In a letter written in the fall of 1571, he confessed that he couldn’t do much to help, given Gao Gong’s continuing hostility. 22 Then something suddenly changed. The same year, Zhang wrote Cai Guoxi, who was prosecuting the case against Xu Jie’s sons:

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They tell me Xu’s three sons have all been arrested. I also hear the officials there have surmised Gao Gong’s attitude, and dislike Xu, and so are eager to crack down. But this is wrong. The ancients never went after a man’s sons. I find Gao Gong to be enlightened and forgiving; if he’s angry at someone, he’ll back off at a word. What he wrote you he sincerely means, and he won’t do anything extreme out of hand. Xu Jie has permanently retired, he committed no known crime, so arresting his three sons, imprisoning them where they may well get sick and die, makes the court look very bad. Gao Gong wouldn’t like to hear such news. 23

It’s not clear why Gao changed his mind so abruptly. By late in the year 1571, he may have come to understand that Xu was not trying to return to the Grand Secretariat. In any event, he tried to get the proceedings to stop. Sons Xu Fan and Xu Kun had been sentenced to military exile. Xu Ying had been removed from the official register (thus making the Xu estate liable for taxes). Zhang Juzheng wrote Xu Ying, strongly suggesting that henceforth he should act with greater restraint. 24 Gao Gong himself sent letters to the prosecutors urging them to back off. He told Su-Song regional inspector Liu (unidentified): “I see the details of Xu’s case from your letter, but it’s unbearable for Xu in his old age to have his sons treated thus. I want you to give them special pardons. I’ve drafted a reply to your memorial which denies what you want, but I’m sure you’ll understand and forgive me for it.” He wrote Cai Guoxi, informing him of what he’d said to the regional inspector. “I wrote Liu to go easy on Xu, but now I hear you want to arrest him. That’s not what I want. He’s a former grand secretary, his three sons have been indicted, and this all looks very unseemly. I want you to ease up. Yes, he was an enemy of mine, but I’m sincere in changing my mind about him. Occupying the position I do, I have to be impartial. How can I keep pursuing a private vendetta?” Gao wrote three letters to Xu Jie, assuring him that he was no longer seeking revenge, if indeed he ever was. “I couldn’t get along with you in the Grand Secretariat,” he recalled, and I left it in distress [in 1567]. After you resigned, I was called back. They say I want revenge. I don’t, and I’ve informed others of that. But some who resent you want me to wreak secret harm on you.

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Some who resent me want to give me a reputation as a vengeance seeker. Some want merit for backing me, others for backing you. This is wrong. Just recently a regional official memorialized illegalities done by your family. This shouldn’t happen to you. I’ve drafted a reply to that memorial, absolving [everyone]. . . . I won’t use the law to wreak personal revenge. . . . You and I were once enemies . . . and people think I must still harbor hatred. . . . We all need to reconcile for the sake of the dynasty and the official class [jinshen].

Even after Zhang Juzheng forced Gao Gong into retirement in July 1572, the case against the Xu family was still ongoing. From his home back in Henan Province, Gao wrote Regional Inspector Liu’s successor that he wanted the case ended. “The realm knows how Xu treated me in the past, so after I was recalled, people wrongly thought I’d want revenge. And those people stir things up. . . . Though I’ve left office, the Xu Jie matter still drags on. I want you to release them. . . . My only thought is for the good face of the realm (guoti).” At the end, Gao attached a note saying that he was publishing these letters in his collected works so as to set the historical record straight. 25 Zhang Juzheng brought about the end of the case. The three Xu sons were restored to the realm’s good graces—only to resume their predatory estate-building habits. They went after the enormous properties belonging to the family of Xu Ying’s father-in-law, the EmbroideredUniform Guards commander Lu Bing (1510–1560), whose holdings were taxable because he’d been posthumously disgraced. In a letter datable to 1575 or 1576, Zhang replied to Xu Jie about the matter. “Actually the local authorities are using the Lu family case to harm you,” he wrote: Those officials say that when Lu Bing died, he left behind fabulously rich estates, and several in-law families took advantage of the young age of his [two] sons [and five daughters] and divided and seized it. So the officials have indicted the sons in order to force them to get the property back from the in-laws, which will fill the national treasury without having to raise taxes. That’s what they say. If this had gone on, who knows where it would have ended? Fortunately I was able to get the emperor [Wanli] to issue a pardon and release, so Lu Bing’s merit is restored, and the harassment and shame that you’ve suffered are over. 26

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Zhang and Xu Jie exchanged letters right down to Zhang’s death in office in 1582. Zhang considered him a useful and friendly counselor. Xu, for his part, felt free to raise local issues that Zhang had the power to resolve. 27 The personal tie between Xu and Zhang stayed firm to the end, even though Xu was troubled by Zhang’s turn toward a personal dictatorship. To the end of his life, Xu Jie sustained an alert interest in the world, in local tax and flood relief issues, and in national affairs. He maintained a large correspondence with officials both in and out of government, not just with Zhang Juzheng. People sought his advice. No recluse, he entertained many visitors at his home near the west wall of the prefectural city of Songjiang. Whatever the abstemiousness of his personal lifestyle—his preference for simple living, plain foods, and threadbare clothing—Xu Jie was the paterfamilias of a large progeny and general manager of a large family enterprise built by his sons, womenfolk, and housemen, with income from land rents, loans, and cloth manufacture, and he had no intention of abandoning it. He saw to the equitable sharing of its resources among the many Xu kinsmen. He had nineteen grandsons and eight granddaughters as well as numerous cousins and nephews. He was especially proud of his oldest grandchild, Xu Yuanchun, who won his jinshi degree in 1574 but never rose beyond a middling level in Ming bureaucracy. No other grandson did as well. All these grandchildren married mates from modest families. In 1582, on Xu’s eightieth birthday (seventy-ninth, by Western reckoning), Chief Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng arranged for the Wanli emperor to send an official delegation to Huating with personal felicitations, fifty taels of silver, silk goods, and a commendation emphasizing the old man’s services to China: upholding public opinion, cleaning up corruption, easing fiscal pressures on the common people, palliating the coastal and frontier crises, and safely managing Longqing’s accession to the throne. Xu Jie, his three sons, and all but two grandsons formed a welcoming party, lining up in their robes and caps along the edge of a nearby river as the imperial delegation approached Songjiang. Older residents of the city said they had never witnessed anything like this before. They all proceeded to Xu Jie’s hall (probably called the Shijing tang, “Hall of World Ordering,” after which Xu named his published writings), where

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the aged honoree opened and read the messages, respectfully deposited them, and arranged later for their printing. No doubt the delegation was suitably entertained. A grandson, Xu Yuanpu, accompanied the party on its return to Beijing, bearing a message of thanks and words of advice to the Wanli emperor. The grandson was in return appointed a secretariat drafter. At some point, Xu Jie put together the public papers, letters, and other writings he’d done while in government and published these in a collection called (with no nod to modesty) the Shijing tang ji. His sons arranged for one Lu Shusheng (1509–1605), a Huating native, litterateur, and retired colleague, to write a preface for it. This was printed privately. It did not circulate publicly until after Xu’s death. Xu declined, from fear of political repercussions perhaps, to share his writings with the editors of the official Veritable Records (shilu) of the Ming court. In retirement, he authored a continuation, the Shijing tang xuji, which was printed by a grandson in 1608. He also compiled a lineage genealogy, the Xushi zupu. 28 On April 18, 1583, Xu Jie breathed his last. He left instructions that his funeral be a simple one, with no elaborate rites or Daoist priests. When news of his death reached Beijing, court was canceled for a day. An official of the Ministry of Works was sent to manage the burial. Posthumous honors and a posthumous name (Wenzhen, “cultured and incorruptible”) were conferred. 29 So ended a long and productive life. How have the traditional commentators assessed Xu Jie and his place in Ming history? Not as highly as one might expect. Two dimensions of his career tended to trouble the commentators. Some recoiled from his appetite for office and the questionable methods he used to stay in power. Others disliked his sponsorship of jiangxue, the nationwide discussion groups that were supposed to inculcate ethical awakening. Tan Qian (1594–1658), compiler of the Guo que, made no comment of his own, but he quoted Feng Shike, who was a prolific litterateur and a Huating native. Feng was mostly appreciative, but he didn’t touch all the bases. “Though Xu Jie rose early to high office,” he wrote, his reputation was only ordinary until he came into his own after Yan Song’s downfall. He was fortunate to have supporters rally to him, so

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that he could attack all the corruption and make a new beginning. Jiajing dealt harshly with all who displeased him, but Xu won his complete confidence. He couldn’t sustain that under Longqing. Much criticism targeted him, and Gao Gong nearly destroyed him. He couldn’t keep going, and a fine career came to an end. Despite offending many in composing Jiajing’s last will and Lonqing’s accession edict, those were excellently done. No one could have done better. His posthumous name, “Cultured and Incorruptible,” is right on the mark. 30

That is about the strongest endorsement that can be found. The editors of the Ming dynastic history (Ming shi), published in 1736, are ambivalent. “[Xu Jie] acted very much as a prime minister and protected good people,” they wrote. “He did much to improve governance in the Jiajing and Longqing eras. While his methods were sometimes sly, he didn’t lose sight of the big picture.” They add that “he worked reverently and assiduously to win [Jiajing’s] confidence. His capacities were almost limitless. He could be cunning and calculating, but he was more upright than not.” 31 Huang Zongxi (1610–1695), the famous anthologist of Ming Confucianism, assigns Xu Jie to the Southern Metropolitan Province’s Wang Yangming school. That was one of seven provincial Wang schools he created. These were artificial labels of convenience only; there never was a coherent Wang school in the Southern Metropolitan Province. And Xu Jie, as we’ve seen, chose not to be a teacher or a philosopher, and his ties to Wang Yangming’s followers and their ideas, strong in his early years, faded with time. He was certainly a promoter of jiangxue, but as a sponsor, not a participant, and he came to entertain serious doubts about what those meetings were actually accomplishing. Huang Zongxi could only quote comments Xu made on participant papers as evidence of his ever having articulated a philosophy. Of Xu Jie himself, he writes: When he got rid of Yan Song, he surely did the realm a big favor. But when in power, he was simply a clever manipulator. As Hu Juren (1434–1484) said, “in handling matters we don’t use cunning calculations. We simply follow heavenly principle. This is how Confucians go about things.” But [Xu Jie] used the methods of power (bashu) without being aware of it. Confucianists credit him as a knower of

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the Way solely on the basis of his promoting jiangxue. That is the best that can be said of him. 32

And how shall we, an ocean and a continent and four centuries distant from the man and his place and his times, evaluate him? Perhaps he might bear the awkward label “liberal conservative.” “Liberal” because he encouraged consensus and freedom of speech, argued for the rational and productive use of power, demanded the opening of opportunities to all men of drive and talent regardless of their formal qualifications, and insisted on administrative honesty, openness, and fiscal fairness and restraint. “Conservative” because he worked devotedly to make the inherited institutions functional rather than change them; because he was blind to the possibility that China’s stance toward the outside world might change, that its foreign trade and foreign relations might be freed from their traditional restraints; and because, for all his hatred of luxury and corruption, he hesitated to agree to the breakup of large tax-exempt landed estates (including his own) or champion the dissolution of gaping social inequalities in the southeastern China countryside. He was a kind of Gorbachev: releasing dissidents and encouraging open discussion in the interest of preserving an authoritarian system. But as grand secretary and chief grand secretary, he steered Ming China through some very difficult times. His life and activities in many ways helped shape an era. He was an outstanding man and official. He was almost a great one.

NOTES 1. Actually omitted in the abridged version given in the Ming shilu. 2. Ming shilu, 93:595–96. The original rebuttal, a zoudui to Longqing, is in Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:546–47. 3. Information about his family can be found in a continuation of his SJTJ (the Shijing tang xuji) and in the genealogy he compiled. These are exceedingly rare works, which I have not seen. Jiang Decheng, Xu Jie yu Jia-Long zhengzhi, quotes liberally from both sources. 4. Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 4:2761 (biography); Huang Zongxi, Mingru xue’an, ch. 27 (long excerpts from Yang’s philosophical notebooks;

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Huang assigns him to the Wang Yangming school). See also Jiang Decheng, Xu Jie yu Jia-Long zhengzhi, 341. 5. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 79:519, 532–33. 6. Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou shanren xuji, 13:1284–85. 7. Xu Jie, SJTJ, 80:142; Wu Tingxie, Ming dufu nianbiao, 2:534. 8. Jiang Decheng, Xu Jie yu Jia-Long zhengzhi, 365–66. 9. Ming shilu, 94:1075. 10. See Chen Shilong, Mingdai zhongwanqi jiangxue yundong (1522–1626) (Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2005), 111–20; Li Shuzeng, Jin Qing, Sun Yujie, and Ren Jinjian, eds., Zhongguo Mingdai zhexue (Zhengzhou: Henan renmin chubanshe, 2002), 1024–55. Gao’s collected works, the Gao Wenxiang gong ji (Siku quanshu cunmu congshu, ser. 4), vol. 108, contain a great deal of Gao’s Neo-Confucian exegesis. 11. Songjiang fuzhi (1817; reprint, Zhongguo fangzhi congsu: Huazhong difang, Taipei: 1970), vol. 10, part 2, 1193–94 (biography of Chen Yide). 12. Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 1:613–25 (biography of Gao Gong by Wang Shizhen); Jiang Decheng, Xu Jie yu Jia-Long zhengzhi, 367–68, 373. 13. These letters are in Hai Rui, Hai Rui ji, ed. Wu Han (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 2:432, 443–45. 14. Hai Rui, Hai Rui ji, 1:237–38. 15. Ibid., 2:432. 16. Ibid., 1:431. 17. Ibid., 1:227–28. 18. Xia Xie, Ming tongjian, 5:2529–30; Tan Qian, Guo que, 4:4127. 19. Hai Rui, Hai Rui ji, 1:236–41, 2:592; Goodrich and Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography (biography of Hai Rui). 20. Jiang Decheng, Jie yu Jia-Long zhengzhi, 347. 21. Jiao Hong, Guochao xianzheng lu, 2:1068 (biography of Lu Guangzu). 22. Zhang Juzheng, Zhang Juzheng ji, ed. Zhang Shunhui (Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 1987), 2:1129. 23. Ibid., 2:1131. There is a story that Xu Jie sent a confidant by the name of Lü Xu or Lü Guang to Beijing with a letter pleading for mercy to Gao Gong. Lü made a strong impression on the women in Gao’s household, and they in turn convinced Gao that he had to stop the persecution of Xu. See Jiang Decheng, Jie yu Jia-Long zhengzhi, 372, 403n283. 24. Zhang Juzheng, Zhang Juzheng ji, 2:1138. 25. Gao Gong, Gao Wenxiang gong ji, 108:106–8. 26. Zhang Juzheng, Zhang Juzheng ji, 2:1152. 27. In ibid., 2:1101–81. Thirty-one short letters written by Zhang to Xu Jie and his sons are extant. 28. Jiang Decheng, Jie yu Jia-Long zhengzhi, 26–65.

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29. Xu Jie’s life in retirement is detailed in Wang Shizhen’s long account of conduct; see Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou shanren xuji, 13:6350–68. See also Shen Shixing’s epitaph for Xu in Cixian tang ji (Siku quanshu cunmu congshu, ser. 4), 134:471–77. 30. Tan Qian, Guo que, 5:4439. 31. See the remarks at the end of Ming shi, ch. 213. 32. Huang Zongxi, Mingru xue’an, ch. 27.

INDEX

Altan Khan, 24, 41, 42, 68, 164; raid of 1550, 24, 28, 47, 174, 178 Cai Guoxi, 192, 196 Cao Bangfu, letter to, 118 Dai Fengxiang, 195 Daoism, 19, 20, 140, 156. See also Jiajing emperor, West Park Ding Rukui, letters to, 90, 91 Dong Fen, 151, 182n18 eunuchs, 5, 173, 178, 179 Fang Lian, letters to, 99, 113 Feng Bin, letter to, 94 Gao Gong, 152, 170, 172, 191, 196; letter to Xu Jie, 196 Geng Dingxiang, 151 Great Rites controversy, 4, 14, 170, 191 Guo Pu, 152 Hai Rui, 157, 170, 193, 195 He Dong, letter to, 53 He Liangjun, 35 He Qian, 37 Hong Chaoxuan, letters to, 39, 144 Hu Yingjia, 153, 171 Hu Zongxian, 90, 95, 133, 143; letter to, 95

Huating county, 1, 2, 89, 120 Jiajing emperor: death of, 168; emotional state of, 155, 159; final edict, 169; and Grand Secretariat, 146; health of, 160; and palace fire, 140 Jiang Bao, letter to, 38 Jiang Dong, 68, 87n81, 161 jiangxue, 36, 38, 39 Johnston, Alastair Iain, 41 Li Chunfang, 149, 151, 173, 190 Li Wenjin, letter to, 62 Li Youchi, letters to, 57, 58, 59 liangzhi, 31n26, 157 Lin Mouhe, letters to, 53, 61, 78 Liu Ji, letter to, 172 Liu Tao, 70, 175, 178 Longqing emperor, 170, 174, 179 Lu Bing, 21, 45, 52, 79 Lü Guangxun, letters to, 92, 93 Lu Guangzu, 150, 195 Luo Hongxian, 7, 15 Luo Rufang, 37 Ma Fang, 56, 57, 58, 68 Nie Bao, 2, 3, 13, 36, 37; letter to, 102 Ouyang Bijin, letter to, 94 Ouyang De, 3, 7, 11, 18, 29, 36, 37 205

206

Pan Jixun, 166 Pang Weiming, letter to, 112 Peng An, 104; letter to,, 96 Qi Kang, 172, 191, 192 Qiu Luan, 28, 42, 50, 52, 66 ritual reforms, 5, 6, 23 Sengge Düüreng, 57, 68, 78, 161, 175, 178 Shen Xiyi, 136n31; letter to, 119 Sun Jin, letters to, 46 Sun Lianquan, letters to, 97, 98, 100 Tang Shunzhi, 7, 15; letter to, 77 Tao Zhongwen, 37, 140 Tonghan, 161 Tu Dashan, letter to, 102 Tümen, 69, 175, 176 Uriyangkhad (Mongols). See Qiu Luan, Tonghan Waldron, Arthur, 40 Wan Shihe, letter to, 39 Wang Bangrui, letters to, 46, 47 Wang Chonggu, 178; letter to, 83 Wang De, letter to, 48 Wang Hong, 5 Wang Shenzhong, letter to, 38 Wang Yangming, philosophy of, 2, 3, 8, 13, 37, 149, 191 Wang Yu, 57; Letters to, 47, 55, 56, 58 Wang Yuling, letter to, 83 Wang Zhigao, 175, 178; letters to, 63, 64 Wen Yuan, 6, 18, 23 Weng Wanda, 43; letters to, 43, 45 West Park, 19, 21. See also Daoism, Jiajing emperor White Lotus sectarians, 72 Wu Shilai, 79; letter to, 130 Xia Yan, 14, 16, 28, 46 Xie Mingdao, letter to, 101 Xiong Jie, 17; letter to, 52 Xu Fan, 1, 22, 37, 187, 188, 195, 196 Xu Jie: brothers and sister of, 6, 8, 187; children’s marriages, 45; on coinage,

IN D E X

167; daughter-in-law of, 1; death of, 199; as educational intendant, 12, 14; estate of, 190, 193, 198; father of, 2, 4; homes of, 35, 188; housemen of, 192; as minister of rites, 18, 19; mother of, 1, 16; philosophy of, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13; as prefectural judge, 7, 8; and raid of 1550, 26; sons of, 21, 113, 187, 195, 196; as vice minister of personnel, 17; wives of, 1, 4, 6, 187, 189; writings of, 199 Yan Mouqing, 83 Yan Na, 148, 149, 150 Yan Shifan, 35, 79, 139, 141, 142, 151 Yan Song, 21, 23, 25, 35, 67, 74, 79, 118, 139, 141, 143, 185 Yang Bo, 74, 162, 163; letters to, 60, 62 Yang Tinghe, 4 Yang Wei, letter to, 63 Yang Xuan, 68, 161, 163; letters to, 61, 64 Yang Yi, 59; letters to, 115, 122, 127 Yang Yusun, 22, 187; letter to, 189 Yellow River flood, 165 Yu Dayou, letter to, 111 Yuan Wei, 146, 149 Zhan Ruoshui, 8, 37 Zhang Chengxian, letter to, 49 Zhang Fujing, 5, 6, 14, 15 Zhang Jing, letters to, 104, 109 Zhang Juzheng, 69, 153, 168, 173, 194, 197; letter to Xu Jie, 197 Zhang Qi, 185, 187, 191, 192 Zhang Ximing, letter to, 70 Zhang Yanghua, letter to, 106 Zhangjiawan, walling of, 71 Zhao Bingran, letter to, 70 Zhao Shichun,, 16; letters to, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54 Zhao Wenhua, 27, 118, 128 Zhao Zhenji, 26, 27 Zhao Zhushi, letter to, 81 Zhou Chong, letters to, 107, 115 Zhou Rudou, letters to, 110, 111, 116, 117, 118, 120, 121, 128, 130, 131, 132 Zhou Yan, letter to, 94 Zhu Heng, 166, 167 Zhu Tingli, letters to, 78, 81, 82

IN D E X

Zou Shouyi, 7, 15

207

Zou Yinglong, 140