I just finished reading Jonathan Spence’s most recent book, Return to Dragon Mountain and want to note down a few ideas it brought to mind.

     A few years ago I so much enjoyed Spence’s God’s Chinese Son I resolved to read every new book he publishes.  This current book, which tells the story of Zhang Dai, a talented writer and member of a prominent family in Shaoxing during the turn of the Ming and Qing dynasties (generally the early to mid seventeenth century), may not be as captivating a narrative as God’s Chinese Son (which had the advantage of the rip roaring story of the Taipings), nor as insightful, in terms of thickly describing the power of the imperial state, as his Treason by the Book, but it is revealing in its own way.

     Alan, over at Frog in a Well, mentions the most common criticism of Spence’s work: it is not really academic, at least not in the sense of self-consciously and directly engaging certain debates and theoretical controversies among academic historians.  And that’s true for this volume.  It is a quiet book, telling a story about a man with a supple mind and a flowing brush who finds himself, for the first half of his life, in a position of social and economic advantage but who then has to contend with a change of government that shatters his social ties, his cultural accomplishments and his family.  There is a certain narrative tension in that transition, but Spence does not over-dramatize it. 

     Nor does Spence make Zhang Dai into a representative man, symbolizing something larger than himself.  He is quite happy to remain at the level of the particular, describing Zhang’s life as a single life, with its own curiosities and banalities.  Zhang is "typical" only in the sense of moving with and through elite strata of society.  To that degree, I suppose, it is a window into the world of the privileged in late Ming China.

     But I was struck by something: just how un-Confucian Zhang and his family were.  This is not something Spence says or argues, and perhaps he would completely disagree with this interpretation, but it is something that came off the pages at me.

     Of course, Zhang and his family, especially the male members of his family were all very well versed in the Confucian classics.  They all studied and most passed various levels of the examination system.  Indeed, his great grandfather had the best exam in the country the year he sat for the national test in Beijing!

      But Confucianism, or perhaps I should say Confucian ethics, requires more than knowledge, even deep knowledge, of the texts.  It demands daily performance of Humanity; it requires consistent and unbending adherence to Duty and Ritual.  It is, in other words, hard out there for a Confucian – the moral standards are very stringent.

     And it is in this way, the actual living of Confucian ideals, that Zhang and his family, as recounted by Spence, fall short.  I point this out in all humility – I would never say that I, personally, have done better on this score; I am not a good Confucian.  But Zhang and his people might be taken, by some of us now at a long historical remove, as Confucian "gentlemen," and it is that misperception I would push against. 

     Two things, at least, bring me to this conclusion.  First, as is evident in the first chapter especially, Zhang and company are absorbed in self-indulgent pursuits: painstakingly searching for the perfect cup of tea; collecting art and antiques; building pleasure palaces stocked with sublime foods and comely concubines.  It is all about sensual pleasure and frivolous diversion.  Now, I am all for sensual pleasure and frivolous diversion but, I dare say, Confucius was not.  What happened to the "bent arm for a pillow" – that is, the Confucian ascetic sensibility that was so honorably exemplified by the Master’s favorite adept: Yen Hui? 

     Confucius was not a complete prude.  He would have enjoyed a good meal and some arresting music on the qin.  But the hedonism of the Zhangs would seem to go too far in Confucian terms.  The pursuit of pleasure was, for them, primary to the production and reproduction of Humanity.  Or, at least, that is what I saw in the picture Spence painted.

      Secondly, the whole bureaucratic system seems to have contradicted a consistent application of Confucian family values.  When they gained posts in other provinces, the male Zhangs would, it appears, leave their wives and children in Shaoxing .   I don’t know how common such a practice was, but it would seem, on the face of it, to undermine the cultivation of one’s closest loving relationships, the foundation of Confucian ethics, the root of Humanity. 

     It could be argued that by taking up posts in far away places, these men were earning the money that would support their families back home in better circumstances than any local job might provide.  That is true.  But my reading of the Analects suggests that material comfort should not trump personal connection.  Better to be close and poor than remote and rich.

      Thus, while Zhang Dai did demonstrate an admirable filiality in writing generously about his male forebears, he, and most of his family, did not live Confucianism in a manner that Confucius himself would likely have respected.

      I’m willing to push the implications of this interpretation to the country as a whole.  Chinese society was always driven by cultural norms and social practices that contradicted a strict application of Confucian standards.  "Chinese culture" has always been larger and more diverse than "Confucianism."  Indeed, Confucianism might best be understood as a critique of Chinese culture, it has always been something external to actually existing Chinese social practices, an external standpoint of critique. 

     If that is true, it is something we should keep in mind as we encounter contemporary reconstructions of "traditional China" and "Confucianism."

     That, at any rate, is what Spence’s wonderful new book brought to my mind…