The Mandate of Shu
Tenth century Sichuanese frivolity sends a message to 21st century Berkeley.
The mountains and rivers of Shu constitute a land of great blessings. It has long been fit to serve emperors and princes as capital. Many are the sages and worthies of preceding generations who for the sake of posterity established control over its hills and waters and breached its impasses with arteries of communications.
(This endorsement, in the form of a prophecy uttered by a local immortal at the site of the Heavenly Master diocese Houcheng, was conveyed to the polity of Shu by a guard officer named Huang Qi, who counted among Du Guangting’s liturgical patrons and was probably his immediate informant.)
Franciscus Verellen “Shu as a Hallowed Land: Du Guangting's Record of Marvels”
Between the fall of the Tang dynasty (907 A.D) and the rise of the Song, (960 A.D), two kingdoms known to posterity as Former and Latter Shu flourished in the region of China we know today as Sichuan. A pair of strong rulers with a deep appreciation of the arts, (for the Former Shu: Wang Jian; for the Latter Shu: Meng Chang), attracted a wealth of literati talent from all over China to the regional capital of Chengdu.
The interregnum between the Tang and the Song is generally considered to be a period of disorder and tumult, but in tenth century Shu, men and women who loved art and music were having a moment. A unique literary culture emerged, devoted primarily to celebrating (or bemoaning) the highs and lows of romantic love. The general flavor of the era was captured by a collection of poems commissioned by Meng Chang and anthologized under the name Among the Flowers (Huajian ji).
As Anna Shields describes it in Crafting a Collection: The Cultural Contexts and Poetic Practice of the Huajian ji:
Although traditional historians have generally dismissed Shu culture as decadent and hedonistic, a closer evaluation of the range of artistic activity in Shu—which included instrumental music, songs, and painting, as well as orthodox types of literary composition—suggests something more complex… they point to a cultural vitality, and a level of engagement in cultural pursuits, that was seen in only one other tenth- century kingdom, the Southern Tang.
[The] Shu rulers and officials were a miscellaneous group: in these biographies, we find refugees from the Central Plain, peasant-class military men, local elites, Daoist and Buddhist court priests and monks, actors, painters, and others seeking a way up in the world. The culture that grew out of these miscellaneous and self-fashioned Shu courts seems to have been similarly multifarious.
Hedonism, cultural multifariousness, complex vitality – these are all things of which The Cleaver and the Butterfly not only approves but that also obviously apply to the intrinsic nature of Sichuan food. We have seen, time and again, how Sichuan’s unique geography – a fecund plain isolated from the rest of “China” by forbidding mountains and ferocious rivers – not only made Sichuan attractive to immigrants fleeing chaos elsewhere, but also fostered distinct outbursts of cultural specificity.
I’ve written before about Du Guangting, “the man with the curly beard,” a Daoist priest and pioneering writer of wuxia who devoted himself to the task of legitimating the sacred ruling authority of Wang Jian, the founder of Former Shu. Upon revisiting Francisco Verellen’s exploration of Du’s Record of Marvels I was newly struck by the phrase “Mandate of Shu.” The mandate of heaven, of course, is the traditional legitimation of the Chinese emperor’s right to rule. The mandate of Shu seemed to me a bit more specific, and tempting.
What, exactly, is the mandate of Shu? While reading Shields’ marvelous book I have been unable to resist connecting the dots between her description of tenth century Shu, a place where the royal court loved nothing more than feasting together while spontaneously composing poetry to the tune of popular songs, to other incarnations of Sichuan that have graced the pages of this newsletter:
I think of the ancient Han dynasty Sichuan whose art modern scholars considered “more spontaneous and more alive” than elsewhere in China. I recall the immigration influx after the fall of the Ming that that brought in peasants from every other Chinese province, along with their varied cooking techniques and favored ingredients, which, when mashed together, birthed modern Sichuan cuisine. I think of the ancient traditions, so deeply rooted in Sichuan, of Daoist spirituality. I think of free-flowing rivers, of the mysteries of Sanxingdui, of music and dancing and food.
Long story short: I want to believe that there is some essential magic to the geography and history of Sichuan that makes for a good party. And I want to join that party. I want to celebrate.
And as it just so happens, I have reason to celebrate. Over the weekend, The Cleaver and the Butterfly smashed through the 1000 subscriber mark.
One consequence of this happy day is that I have been invoking the spirit of the kingdoms of Former and Latter Shu by spontaneously composing poetry to the tune of Beyonce and Billie Eilish and Chappell Roan. As a friend of my daughter’s observed at a Sichuan dinner party last week, “pop music is having a moment right now.” I feel resonances from tenth century Sichuan in my dining room in the spring of 2024. These are not the kinds of signals I ignore.
But there is another, more practical consequence of breaking the 1000 subscriber metric. About two years ago I started experiencing steady subscriber growth that made it appear that reaching 1000 was inevitable. So I made a promise to myself: When I finally reached that mark, I would take it as a portent that I should be approaching my whole project more seriously. That may seem like a backwards way of approaching things, but it made a weird kind of sense to me. If could get to 1000 subscribers by following only where my own curiosity and creative impulses led me, then that would be real. Another signal to pay attention to.
As of right now I have 1035 subscribers, 70 of whom amazingly and generously pay for the privilege, even though I have to yet to put any of my offerings behind the paywall. I’ve known from the start that I would love nothing more than to make writing this newsletter my full-time occupation. But I have long dismissed this goal as economically unfeasible, and in fact, the lack of substantive posts in the last two months has been a direct result of my being forced to divert my attention to work that pays the bills.
It will not be easy, and is probably impossible, to turn the eccentricity that is The Cleaver and the Butterfly into a paying concern. But it’s high time to be more aggressive in steering in that direction.
So here is what’s going to happen. My so-called “substantive” posts, the ones that require a lot of research and time to produce, will remain free. Above all else, I still want my work to be read! But I’ve noticed, oddly, that some of the posts that require the least time to produce, like the “cool footnotes” I started publishing about six months ago, seem to get more engagement than the big pieces. So I’m going to try an experiment. After today, the cool footnotes are going behind the paywall. If you want my quick thoughts on the promiscuity of rice, or on how Caroline Polachek’s pop music intersects with the grand narrative of Qing dynasty history, you will need to be a paying subscriber.
I am curious to see what happens! But no matter what, tt has been an exhilarating journey over the last five years, from The Road to Shu is Hard to the Mandate of Shu, and I intend to continue on this path.
Coming up soon: another soybean installment featuring the “Strong-Willed Pig” that miraculously survived the devastating Sichuan earthquake of 2008 and a look at Tom Mullaney’s brand new book The Chinese Computer.
So worth it. Count me in!❤️