Frederic Wakeman: The Moral Dilemmas of Ming Loyalists
Wu Weiye, who resigned from his post as Chancellor of the National Academy [1] and had most of his property confiscated following the Jiangnan Examination Case of 1657, once composed verses for the famous courtesan Chen Yuanyuan, for whom Wu Sangui reportedly betrayed the Ming Dynasty:
Have you not seen the Guanwa Pavilion where they first stayed, The beauty of the Yue maiden remains an endless gaze. Dust rises on the Fragrant Path as birds cry alone, The lady gone from the Lintel Gallery, the moss grows green in vain. The shifting scales and keys bring ten thousand miles of sorrow.
Wu Weiye ultimately surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, and was thus consumed by a profound sense of guilt that cast a shadow over his nostalgia:
Old friends were high-spirited, many with extraordinary integrity, Yet for those years I wavered incessantly, Stealing a living among the weeds. Moxa cauterizes the brow and melons spray the nose, Today it is hard to say a final farewell. Suffering returns early, fold upon fold. To cast off wife and children is no easy task, In the end, it’s worth not a penny—what more is there to say? In the affairs of the human world, How many things are ever complete?
As if to seek atonement, Wu Weiye wrote many poems to commemorate loyalists who died for the state. He also developed an interest in Buddhism and, in his final years, studied Buddhist doctrine alongside the monk Hongchu, the teacher of Qian Qianyi. Yet even after settling into a new home on the estate of a wealthy friend, he spent most of his time with poetic companions such as Peng Shidu, Wu Hancha, and Chen Qinian—the "Three Talents of Jiangzuo." Outwardly, he appeared carefree: "The Ben Garden is shaded with flowers and trees, possessing the charms of forests and springs; there he drank and chanted poetry with scholar-friends from all directions, forgetting his fatigue all day long." But his heart was filled with melancholy, a mood seemingly connected to his failure to choose suicide when the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself in 1644. In 1671, on his deathbed, Wu Weiye called for brush and paper and wrote:
In my life’s encounters, everything has been anxiety and danger. Not a moment passed without experiencing hardship; not a circumstance arose without tasting bitterness. I am truly the world’s most miserable man. After my death, shroud me in monk’s robes and bury me near Lingyan at Mount Dengwei. Before the grave set a round stone inscribed: 'Tomb of the Poet Wu Meicun.' Build no ancestral hall, and beg no man for an epitaph.
He was sixty-three years old.
In Wu Weiye’s view, the fall of the Ming Dynasty was a recurrence of an ancient and romantic primordial pattern: seductive courtesans caused statesmen to forget their duties, thereby leading to the ruin of the state. Consequently, the grief over a fallen nation would stimulate interest in poetry and enhance its aesthetic beauty. As Zhuo Erkhan, the 17th-century editor of Poetry of Four Hundred Ming Loyalist Recluses, remarked: "When the heavenly pace shifts and changes [2], the talent Heaven bestows is conversely most abundant."
Literati whose poetic talents did not equal Wu Weiye's often turned to writing history. This served both to commemorate the events of 1644 and to bury that period of history. Huang Zongxi once wrote: "I observe the present age; regardless of who they are, all love to speak of writing history." At that time, this generation of Ming loyalists felt an intense sense of shame regarding their own history; using 1644 as a boundary, they divided their lives into two starkly different stages. Some, such as the famous figure painter Chen Hongshou (1599–1652), changed their names after the fall of the Ming, reflecting a tragic consciousness of their past—what Chen called "the lateness of regret" (huichi).
Others, like the historian Zhang Dai, fundamentally altered their way of life. Zhang Dai was a descendant of a prominent Shaoxing family known for its philanthropy; his great-grandfather was the zhuangyuan (top-ranking scholar) of 1571. Before 1644, he had been composed and intoxicated by the pleasures of handsome boy-servants, lovely maidservants, theater, music, fireworks, fine clothing, gourmet food, and famous teas. When the Qing army conquered Zhejiang while he was serving in the minor court of the Prince of Lu, Zhu Yihai, he abandoned all these pleasures. He left his family’s mountain villas, his own study, and his rare antiques to retreat into the mountains and compile his famous work on Ming history, the Shikui Cangshu (The Book of the Stone Chest). At that time, he wrote:
Tao’an [Zhang Dai’s pseudonym] saw his state ruined and home lost, with nowhere to stay. With disheveled hair he entered the mountains, a startled wild man... Thinking of how I grew up in the luxury of the Wang and Xie families [3], I now suffer this retribution. The bamboo hat replaces the cap, the basket replaces the heel—hostility toward hairpins and shoes. The monk’s robe replaces the fur, the hemp replaces the fine linen—hostility toward light and warm clothes. Bean leaves replace meat, coarse grain replaces fine rice—hostility toward sweet flavors.
Whether or not one took practical action to reform—a remorse clearly provoked by guilt over the fall of the Ming—all those loyal to the Ming ceased seeking official advancement and changed their lives accordingly. As Huang Zongxi inscribed on his own portrait: "First confined as a partisan, then branded a wandering knight, finally filed among the Confucian forest. His character has undergone three transformations to reach today; was it the times that made it so? Or did the man himself possess a distant heart?"
Scholarship was naturally a way out for these "remnant subjects" (yimin) of the fallen Ming. "Most are filled with heroic brilliance," Zhuo Erkhan wrote, "but being unable to manifest it in action, they had no choice but to entrust it to words. Moreover, having renounced worldly affairs, they naturally devoted their full strength to scholarship."
Scholarship forced these survivors of the anti-Qing movement to adopt an air of detachment, while history—their history—demanded an objective record. Incidentally, this is why the Kangxi Emperor’s decision in 1679 to hold the special "Broad Learning and Great Erudition" (boxue hongru) examination, and subsequently invite the successful candidates to participate in compiling the official History of the Ming, was an extremely important gesture of welcome toward these Ming loyalists. Although many could not openly participate in the compilation, they could at least submit their writings on late Ming history through friends who had accepted Kangxi’s invitation. Through this method of compiling the History of the Ming, their own historical existence was validated in a way that no other form of recognition could achieve. Consequently, all Ming loyalists and those Han officials who had surrendered to the Qing developed a shared stake in the preservation of Confucian rule.
In the final stage of their historical reflection, the Ming loyalists also weakened a strong sense of moral ambiguity and relativism. As Huang Zongxi pointed out, the greatest impulse of Ming loyalty arose from the moral and spiritual heroism of the Donglin movement [4]. Yet in the brutal power struggles of the late Ming, the Donglin movement also triggered an intense factionalism that played as great a role as any other factor in the dynasty's decline. These fierce factional struggles continued during the Southern Ming period, leading to splits first in the Nanjing court of the Prince of Fu and then among the followers of the Prince of Gui. In short, the Ming loyalists' pursuit of distant moral goals led to immediate political chaos. Furthermore, while they continued to strongly oppose serving as officials in the Qing, they could observe that their Han compatriots, who were fulfilling their mission as scholar-officials through cooperation with the Manchus, were gradually achieving concrete successes. The latter were actually implementing the fiscal, legal, and economic reforms that the late Ming scholar-officials had wished to carry out but failed to achieve. What, then, was the ultimate good they adhered to? Was it the defiance of the Qing court as Ming loyalists, or the ultimately empty and powerless gesture of refusing to serve the Qing? Those Han officials who surrendered did so after the end of the massive peasant wars of the 1630s and 40s, discarding heroic illusions to fulfill the urgent task of imperial reconstruction. Would history thus judge them more highly?
These questions were not merely moral perplexities; they also prompted thinkers like Wang Fuzhi to gain a deeper understanding of the complexity of historical agency than their predecessors. Wang Fuzhi’s distinct historical cyclicalism placed various institutions within their own specific series of historical development. On one hand, this meant that old-style archaism was intellectually untenable: one could not restore the "well-field system" [5] in the imperial era when feudalism was already obsolete. On the other hand, Wang Fuzhi’s historical relativism indeed removed the tragic sense from the rise and fall of dynasties. What he saw was not a conflict between institutions and their eras (as Huang Zongxi often believed), nor did he naively view it as a permanent conflict between moral government and tyrants; rather, he pointed out that various political systems were perfectly suited to the specific historical stages in which they were formed. In Wang Fuzhi’s philosophy of history, this concept contained a certain evolutionary element: from primitive society, through ages of barbarism, into feudal society, and finally into an era of high civilization. But regarding the more interesting intellectual currents of his time—currents prevalent when the generation of former Ming loyalists was studying—the most illuminating was his functionalism. If institutions are adapted to their times, then any social phenomenon is merely an expression or characteristic of its era. In short, moral concepts are not abstract, trans-historical, or transcendental concepts. Instead, morality and moral critique must depend on a profound and comprehensive investigation of the necessary connections between figures and events within a specific period. In his commentary on Sima Guang’s 11th-century historiographical masterpiece, Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance (Zizhi Tongjian), Wang Fuzhi said:
What is meant by "comprehensive" (tōng)? The Way of the ruler is within it, the state’s affairs are within it, the people’s sentiments are within it, frontier defense is within it, the duty of the minister is within it, the integrity of the official is within it, the scholar's conduct to avoid disgrace is within it, and the preservation of correctness in learning without deviation is within it. Though one be trapped in poverty and solitude, one can use it to cultivate oneself, to instruct others, and to know the Way and find joy. Therefore it is called "comprehensive."
Thus, Wang Fuzhi firmly believed that generalities are hidden within a multitude of specific connections. Every connection has its own requirements and operates according to its own rules.
Wang Fuzhi’s historical relativism was exceptionally sophisticated, but his "theory of connections"—his opposition to separating single, abstract moral categories from the connections they described—was not unique. In the first few decades after the fall of the Ming, all serious moralists were forced to find ways to respond to this massive cultural trauma. Certain Confucian schools had their own spiritual lives and likely linked the authors of the early 17th century closely with the philosophers of the late 17th century. But these were connections within the most basic levels of moral philosophy. The surface level was deeply severed during the transition between the Ming and Qing, and this rupture itself was the boundary between the two dynasties and the war of conquest. To answer those shocking historical events, many Confucian scholars broke away from the transcendental idealism of the "School of Principle" (lixue) or the "School of Mind" (xinxue). For example, the philosopher Hui Dong (1697–1758) described the Neo-Confucian li (principle) simply as the interaction between supernatural forces of expansion (manifested as "good" or "benevolence") and contraction (manifested as "evil" or "righteousness"). In this way, Zhu Xi’s li—the rational relationship within the universe—was closely integrated with matter, and spiritual values were understood as relationships between things.
Wang Yangming’s concept of innate "primordial knowledge" (liangzhi) also lost its persuasiveness. In the eyes of many Confucian scholars, the decline of social mores in the late Ming was primarily attributable to Wang Yangming’s illusion—that all people, regardless of their level of scholarship or moral cultivation, possessed sufficient moral control to form their own moral authority. Consequently, the outcry against subjective idealism grew more intense. Although philosophers such as Huang Zongxi, Li Yong (1627–1705), and Sun Qifeng (1585–1675) made many efforts to reconcile the contradictions between Wang Yangming and his critics—while preserving the best elements of the theory of primordial knowledge and the Cheng-Zhu theory of "the investigation of things to extend knowledge"—the general intellectual tide against Wang could not be reversed. In fact, it even overwhelmed the subtle functionalism of Wang Fuzhi and the later Hui Dong. When a new scholasticism (largely opposed to all epistemology) captured the attention of the so-called "Evidential Research" (puxue) and "Han Learning" schools, the moralists returned to the puritanical Neo-Confucianism of the Song Dynasty.
As the Cheng-Zhu school was revived in the early Qing and received direct support from emperors like Kangxi, the values of that school, which had been debated due to the events of 1644, were once again manifest. Thus, as a remedy for moral relativism, both opponents and supporters of the Qing dynasty attempted to restore absolute duties and responsibilities such as loyalty and filial piety. Any inner doubts that Ming loyalists might have harbored were cast aside as their own history was gradually utilized and venerated by the Qing rulers.
This utilization did not happen overnight. The Qing rulers had to endure an intense ambivalence toward Ming loyalists, particularly those with anti-Manchu sentiments. As steadfast supporters of the Southern Ming government—which until 1662 still possessed an emperor and an army attempting to recover the Central Plains—these Ming loyalists were regarded as Qing rebels. However, as paragons of abstract virtue capable of serving any government that met Confucian aspirations, these men's moral contributions deserved commendation. The Qing emperors and their Han ministers held an attitude of praise for the concept of loyalty in a general sense. While "loyalty" was expressed as steadfast devotion to the reigning Son of Heaven, and the Qing monarchs admired such political constancy, their Confucian scholar-bureaucrats also realized that this absolute loyalty should be further abstracted into support for the current dynasty's Mandate of Heaven. Loyalists who died for the Ming were praised as early as the Shunzhi period, and their reputation continued to rise throughout the Qing. The Kangxi Emperor also praised these loyalists, but it was the Qianlong Emperor more than a century later who truly granted them the highest honors of the Confucian scholar; interestingly, he did so primarily out of anger toward the long-deceased Han defector Qian Qianyi.
However, by the time the Ming loyalists received such concrete accolades, the spirit of their sacrifice for the Ming had long been forgotten. Only after Neo-Confucian loyalty ceased to belong exclusively to the Ming cause and began to be linked to the fate of the Qing could the Qing government advocate this virtue without ambivalence, thereby completing its own transformation from an alien military regime into a legitimate monarch holding the "Mandate of Heaven" to rule the world. This process—in which loyalty to the Qing gradually overwhelmed loyalty to the Ming—was finally completed during the "Revolt of the Three Feudatories" in 1673.