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Introduction

“The young should not read The Water Margin, and the old should not read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.”

The power of literature in the tradition of the “Four Great Novels” of China, is such that this popular axiom acts as a warning about the nexus of fiction and politics in the Chinese tradition.9 Not only does this axiom warn against the nature of the plots and contents of two of these novels, but in doing so it also serves to illustrate the way that these novels have mirrored and at times, shaped the very course of Chinese history itself. In the Confucian society of China, the themes contained in these great novels—of loyalty, righteousness, and brotherhood, were a dangerous source of inspiration and example. Drawing upon those fundamental threads of Confucian values, for the old, the intrigues of strategy, politics, and war in Romance of the Three Kingdoms are a dangerous source of inspiration for those who seek glory when they should be better wisely governing the state. To the young, the gravity of those fundamental Confucian values, mixed with the heady tales of heroes, acts of justice and revenge against corrupt officials, The Water Margin could only teach the most dangerous of the Confucian values—the right to rebellion.

The Water Margin (Shuihu Zhuan) was first published as a novel ca.1368 CE, at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. Compiled from a variety of plot lines from oral storytelling and Yuan Dynasty dramas, The Water Margin is based on the historical bandit, Song Jiang and his followers who were active during the reign of the Huizong Emperor (1100–1126 CE) during the Song Dynasty. Edited and reconceived as a vernacular novel amidst the chaos of the final years of the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, The Water Margin was published in a period marked by grinding poverty and suffering for the peasant population, of lawlessness and disorder of a society and government in disarray, and of large scale peasant uprisings against the Mongol occupation of the Yuan. Like the historical Song Jiang, The Water Margin follows the fortunes and adventures of the bandits of Liangshan Marsh, set in the final years of the Northern Song period in the reign of the Huizong Emperor, shortly before the loss of northern China to the invading Jurchens. The 108 bandit leaders are a disparate group originating from every level of society, ranging from minor officials of the Imperial civil service, the scholarly gentry, and Imperial army officers to assorted Taoist and Buddhists clerics, policemen, inn keepers, and soldiers. Despite their different origins, they are united as upright and virtuous Confucians, driven to become outlaws or refugees from a harsh, unjust society and the corrupt officials of the Song government. Beloved by ordinary people and feared by officials, the bandits sally forth from the marshes surrounding their base at Mount Liang (Liangshan), to restore justice and order to the land. Robbing from the rich and the corrupt and redistributing to the poor and the virtuous, the bandits of Liangshan Marsh act in the name of loyalty to the Emperor of the Song, whom they believe to be shielded to the injustices of his corrupt officials and the suffering of his subjects.

The Water Margin, like many of the vernacular novels of this new literary form of the Ming Dynasty shares a common thread of embellishing and further mythologizing known or acknowledged historical events, mixing historiography with fiction, folk tales, and popular legend. Most importantly these historical novels, particularly The Water Margin, are framed within the context of the Confucian moral order, so that like the equally loved Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo Yanyi) our heroes, formed out of a band of sworn brothers, are the epitome of Confucian virtue, fighting against the evil and the unvirtuous. For the readers of Ming China, the themes of loyalty, righteousness, fidelity, and benevolence were the very fabric of the ethical values of the Confucian socio-political order. Much more than a simple story of righteous rebellion and virtuous bandits, The Water Margin is essentially a story about the expression of Confucian virtues. Despite the brutality and the violence on the surface of the story, the inherent values of Confucianism lend gravity and meaning to the story that remains one of the most beloved of the Four Classic Novels of Chinese literature some 650 years after its first publication. Even today, despite the best efforts of the radicalism of the Chinese intellectual revolutions of the 20th Century, these themes still ring at the core of the Chinese system of values.

At its core, the Confucian socio-political order is an ethical system based on a framework of reciprocal moral obligations and the observance of core values, based on the foundation works of Confucius (551–479 BCE) and Mencius (372–289 BCE). By the time of the Song Dynasty, through a syncretic adsorption of metaphysical concepts derived from Buddhism, Taoism, and folk beliefs, Confucianism had developed into an all encompassing ethical and moral system which emphasized social order and the role of the individual as a part of a greater social and cosmological whole. The individual’s role in the Confucian system was however, critical to the greater social whole and the Confucian system was based on an internalized individual self-regulation, rather than a system of external regulation such as a binding legal system. In the Confucian socio-political system, the individual was required to cultivate and regulate “the self,” ethically and morally through the observation of the virtues of benevolence, righteousness, propriety (eg ritual or etiquette), loyalty, wisdom, trust, and filial piety. The Confucian socio-political system was grounded in the Five Cardinal Relations, that is the key relationships between the ruler and minister; father and son; husband and wife; brother and brother; friend and friend. Socio-political order could only be brought about by the act of the individual actively cultivating these cardinal virtues and acting ethically and morally within the framework of the Five Cardinal Relations. Therefore through self-regulation, in accordance with Confucian values, socio-political order would radiate and diffuse outwards into the complex web of interpersonal relationships of society. It would begin with self-regulation then extend into the family and then outwards still between members of society, through the rigid strata of society between the ordinary people and the scholarly civil service (who were selected by merit on their knowledge and interpretation of the Confucian canon) and ultimately through to the Emperor himself. It was a system of socio-political order that was not only based upon the family, but moreover, it was a social-political system that was an extension of the family. This was not however, a one way flow of obligation. Harmony in society could only be obtained by the mutual and correct conduct of reciprocal obligations by all members of society. As in a family, the Emperor and the ruling elite of the Confucian scholars were expected to demonstrate, instruct, and exemplify Confucian virtue. Indeed above all others, the Emperor and his ministers were expected to be the paragons of Confucian virtue and behavior.

In a socio-political order based on the web of mutual expectations and reciprocal obligations, the political implications of this system are quite clear. While society was obliged to demonstrate loyalty and maintain a subservient, filial position to higher authority as in a familial structure, just as critically, there was an expectation that the Emperor and his ministers would rule in accordance with the Confucian virtues of benevolence, righteousness, wisdom, propriety and trustworthiness. In the Confucian socio-political order, the failure or the absence of ethical and moral example from the Emperor and ministers resulted in a systemic discord throughout society, leading to a breakdown of not only ethical and moral values, but of ethical and moral behavior, leading to civil and social disorder. It was in effect, a loss of the Mandate of Heaven.

The concept of the “Mandate of Heaven” is one of the oldest of political concepts and it was developed during the Shang (1600–1046 BCE) and the Zhou Dynasties (1045–256 BCE). The Mandate of Heaven was the legitimization theory of rule which determined that political legitimacy of the King (and later Emperor) was derived from the approval of “Heaven.” Accordingly, the King, or the “Son of Heaven” (Tian Zi), was charged by Heaven to rule “All Under Heaven” (Tianxia) and to care for the people. Conversely, if this socio-political contract was not fulfilled; if the King did not rule wisely or care for the people, Heaven would indicate the loss of the Mandate of Heaven through signs and portents such as natural disasters (such disasters as floods from neglected levee banks, famine from failed crops and the absence of famine relief, may be interpreted in the modern day as the results of the neglect of public infrastructure and administration). Just as importantly the loss of the Mandate of Heaven would also be demonstrated by the loss of the approval and support for the King from the ordinary people. It was Mencius, the “second sage” of Confucianism, who consolidated much of the pre-Confucian and early Confucian thought and articulated the concept of the Mandate of Heaven in Confucian terms which would persist to the present day. In articulating the Mandate of Heaven in Confucian terms “Heaven sees as the people see, Heaven hears as the people hear,”10 Mencius entrenched the concept of “the right to rebellion” within the Confucian socio-political framework. Therefore, the failure or the absence of Confucian virtues from the King or the Emperor would ultimately lead to socio-political chaos, with a systemic failure of society and order. Consequently these human indications, along with the signs and portents directly from Heaven itself, would point to the loss of the Mandate of Heaven, and signal the right of the people to rebel and install a new leader chosen by the people and approved by Heaven.

It is here in this reciprocity of the Confucian socio-political order and the loss of the Mandate of Heaven that lies at the core of The Water Margin story. In The Water Margin we see the breadth of these Confucian virtues laid out for our heroes to display, and the lack of those virtues in our villains and wider Song society. Just as the villainous ministers, corrupt officials and the cruel and uncaring society demonstrate the loss of Confucian virtue, The Water Margin portrays the bandits of Liangshan Marsh as rebels within the Confucian political framework. The Liangshan bandits are loyal, virtuous, righteous and benevolent rebels, committing their crimes and sometimes atrocities against the unjust (and paradoxically, many innocent bystanders) in the name of loyalty to the Song Emperor and the Song state. Similarly, there also the bandits who commit crimes of astonishing barbarity and brutality in the name of Confucian virtues such as filial piety, loyalty, and righteousness against adulterous women and their lovers and against those who have exploited or harmed the innocent. Their acts of violence, their atrocities, and even acts of sadism are carried out on the unjust and unvirtuous as acts of virtue, righteousness, and loyalty in themselves, without any sense of contradiction.

While the Liangshan heroes serve to illustrate uncompromising expressions of Confucian virtue, the fates of the victims of their “crimes of virtue” serve to illustrate the consequences of when even the most virtuous behaviors are taken to the extreme. The most obvious examples of this form of “extremist Confucian virtue” are clearly found in the fates of the adulterous women, Yan Poxi, Pan Qiaoyun, and Madame Lu. Each are not only murdered in the name of Confucian virtue, but they are also subjected to the most barbarous and brutal of treatment, including disembowelment and dismemberment (and in one instance, being literally torn apart by bare hands). Likewise, the inherent barbarism of extremist Confucian virtue can also be found in the form of officially state sanctioned punishment. The associated stories of the corrupt and unvirtuous, while serving a purpose of highlighting the Confucian virtue of the heroes, also provide a glimpse of the drudgery and misery of life in a society of a dynasty in decline.11 We see women such as Yan Poxi forced by poverty to act as mistresses for rich men, while other people such as Old Jin and his daughter are mercilessly exploited by bullies such as the Butcher Zheng.12 In the notionally virtuous Confucian state with a meritocratic civil service, we find the unvirtuous promoted to the highest offices in the state, such as Prime Minister Cai Jing, while the worthless are likewise promoted to high office through flattery and patronage, such as the idler Gao Qiu, whose only skill is his ability to impress the Crown Prince (and later Emperor) at football.13 We find that a lack of virtue is systemic throughout the corrupt state and government, with almost every level of senior and minor civil servants, ranging from ministers and magistrates to policemen and prison guards open to bribery, corruption, calculated brutality, and negligence to duty and to the law.

The portrayal of the most strident of the rebels among the Liangshan Marsh bandits as the most upright of Confucian characters is juxtaposed against the corruption of officials, the abuse of power, sexual infidelity, and moral decay. In doing so, we are reminded of the consequences of the collapse of reciprocal expression of loyalty, fidelity, and benevolence from the state. Therefore when we view the characters and the storyline in The Water Margin through the context of rigid Confucian values, we begin to appreciate the “virtue” in some of the seeming “unvirtuous” heroes. In Song Jiang, the eventual head of the Liangshan bandits, we have a clear model of Confucian virtue. A clerk of a county magistrate’s court (and therefore a genuine Confucian archetype), Song Jiang is renowned throughout the land for his filial piety, benevolence, compassion, and generosity; he is the help of the poor and the helpless. Even after he accidentally kills his greedy mistress (whom he keeps out of compassion for her poverty) and is forced into banditry to escape corrupt officials, Song Jiang yearns for Imperial amnesty and a chance to resume his Imperial service. Similarly, the clearly virtuous heroes such as Lu Junyi, Lin Chong, Wu Song, and Dai Zong also become outlaws when they become the unfortunate victims of corrupt officials or commit crimes in the name of Confucian virtue against the unvirtuous or the corrupt. In contrast to these exemplars of virtue, it is sometimes harder to see the virtue in the vulgar, hard drinking, hard swearing, and hard fighting characters of Lu Da (Zhishen) and Li Kui. However, underneath the surface we do see their virtue shining through, despite their rough and sometime brutal personae. While they may be rough and ready soldiers, they are undoubtedly loyal and righteous—Lu Da is a help of the helpless, and Li Kui really does love his mother.

Commentary and editorship of Jin Shengtan

The authorship of The Water Margin is normally ascribed to Shi Naian (ca. 1296–1372 CE), though there has been substantial debate as to its true authorship. Some commentators consider Shi Naian as a non de plume of Luo Guanzhong (ca. 1315–1400 CE), the author of Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo Yanyi), while yet other commentators consider The Water Margin to be a collaborative effort between Shi Naian and Luo Guanzhong.14 Throughout the Ming Dynasty, The Water Margin was further edited and commented upon by various editors until it reached its most definitive form in the 120 Chapter version edited by Li Zhi ca.1592.15 In the two hundred and fifty odd years until 1641, the story of the Liangshan Marsh bandits followed the adventures of the heroes becoming outlaws, rebelling against the corruption of local officials and then being amnestied and pardoned before entering the service of the Imperial government.

However, in 1641, Jin Shengtan published the penultimate evolution of The Water Margin by excising the final fifty chapters of the text where the Liangshan bandits gain their pardon and enter into the Imperial service. Jin Shengtan’s 70 Chapter version, complete with his extensive commentaries and interpretations, provided the most conceptually and literally unified version of the story to date. By its very nature as a collection of historiography, oral stories, and folk tales, the previous versions of The Water Margin lacked a degree of intellectual and literary cohesion. In his editing and commentary, Jin Shengtan consolidated The Water Margin and produced a version which not only illustrated the notion of Confucian virtue among the bandits, but also very clearly condemned banditry and rebellion. In Jin’s version, despite the expressions of Confucian virtue and the dreams of an Imperial pardon by bandit leaders such as Song Jiang or the “big talk” of the likes of Li Kui of overthrowing the Song Emperor and establishing a new dynasty, the ultimate fate of the bandits is very clear. In Jin’s revision of The Water Margin text and his extensive commentaries, there is only one fate for outlaws.

In Jin Shengtan’s preface to his edition, Jin not only condemns the bandits as a group, but also condemns the work of prior authors and editors for stressing the virtues of loyalty and righteousness in the conduct of the bandits.16 Jin Shengtan’s editing of the story went as far as even composing the closing scene that unambiguously stamps his “authorship” onto the 70 Chapter version. In this final scene, bandit leader Lu Junyi, on the very night of the banquet celebrating the destruction of the corrupt local officials that would otherwise conclude the novel, dreams of the execution of the bandit leaders. As he looks up just before his execution he sees a sign which states “Universal peace throughout the kingdom.” Jin Shengtan’s message is crystal clear. With shocking abruptness, the reader—enthralled with the story and expecting more from the triumphant and vindicated bandits, such as the long awaited Imperial pardon or the appointments to Imperial service by a grateful Emperor—is confronted with a stark moral lesson.17 Despite the portrayal of the worthy band as righteous and virtuous heroes, there are in fact, no amnesties or pardons for outlaws, bandits, and rebels.

While Jin Shengtan evidently sympathized with the misfortunes of some of the bandits and even admired them as individuals, Jin’s sympathy for the individual characters is weighted against his unambiguous condemnation of outlawlessness and banditry.18 This is the key to understanding the oscillation between Jin’s ambivalence and sympathy, which is so apparent in his treatment of The Water Margin that it survives even the most stringent reworking of J.H. Jackson’s translation. In Jackson’s translation of The Water Margin we can still read Jin’s working of the story, such as his undermining of Song Jiang’s values of loyalty and justice at every turn, by contrasting it with expressions of callousness and barbarism, both on the deserving and the innocent.

In understanding the nature of the drastic editing and revision of Jin Shengtan’s Water Margin story, we need to consider the time in which Jin was working on this text and the nature of the man himself. Jin Shengtan’s 70 Chapter version was published in 1641, which was the version first translated in English by Pearl Buck as All Men Are Brothers (1933) and the basis of this translation, The Water Margin by J.H. Jackson (1937).19 At the time of the publication of Jin’s 70 Chapter version in 1641, the once great Ming Dynasty was in its terminal years. In 1630, Li Zicheng of Yanan in northern Shaanxi province (which features early in The Water Margin and again prominently in later Chinese history), led a peasant uprising against corrupt local officials, against a backdrop of a terrible famine. Raising a large army, Li Zicheng’s peasant rebellion ravaged a large part of northern China, while the Ming armies, underpaid and suffering from poor morale, in addition to the simultaneous problem of facing the invading Manchus in the northeast, were unable to suppress the rebellion. In 1644 Li Zicheng’s armies entered the Ming capital of Beijing without opposition, where the last Ming Emperor, Chongzhen hanged himself. In the same period, Zhang Xianzhong led an uprising against the Ming which ravaged southwestern Sichuan province and left it devastated for decades to come. Against the background of the social chaos and disorder accompanying the fall of the Ming Dynasty, it is little wonder that Jin Shengtan professed such ambivalence against the bandits of The Water Margin.

Born in 1610 in a poor family of the scholarly gentry class, Jin Shengtan received an education at a village school, rather than by a private tutor. As was normal in pre-modern China, Jin Shengtan received an education in the Confucian classics, in part directly from his father, a scholar, which naturally provided him with the necessary knowledge of Confucianism to enable him to ultimately pass his county level xiucai degree in the Imperial examination system. Why he did not pursue or achieve an advanced level degree at the provincial or Imperial Court level is unknown, but there are perhaps clues to this in his ultimate choice of a literary career. Unlike other scholars, Jin eschewed the Confucian classics, having been bored with them since childhood and preferring to delve into the vulgar realm of popular vernacular novels, armed in part with an appreciation of Buddhist and Taoist literary works, which he read as a child during periods of illness from school.20 Having obtained his xiucai degree in his late teens or early twenties, it may well be that Jin preferred not to continue the typical process of a further ten or fifteen years of scholarship necessary for success in the advanced degrees of the Imperial examination system. There is no reliable evidence of Jin having ever held public office, the goal of Confucian scholars, even at the county level to which he was qualified.21 Far from abandoning scholarship per se, it was in this time that Jin began his literary career, beginning work on The Water Margin which had enthralled him since the age of eleven. Additionally, it is also noted that Jin turned his vast knowledge of orthodox Confucian classics, as well as his extensive knowledge of historiography, popular literature, Buddhism, and Taoism against noted public lecturers, hectoring and ridiculing them to the delight of gathered crowds.22

The fall of the Ming in 1644 when he was in his mid-thirties and at the prime of his life, prompted Jin like many other Ming loyalist intellectuals, to reject public office under the new Qing Dynasty established by the conquering Manchus.23 How Jin supported his family in his rejection of public life is not known, although it has been supposed that he passed his time in intimate conversation with friends and writing in solitude, much like Shi Naian did, as related in the preface to the 70 Chapter version. This preface, presented as having been written by Shi Naian, was in fact composed by Jin himself. Therefore it is reasonable to expect that there may be some element of an autobiography in it. What is known is that while Jin may have rejected public office, unlike the “Shi Naian” of his fake preface, he certainly did not reject an intellectual interest in politics. From his humble, but satisfying household by the river depicted in the Water Margin preface, Jin Shengtan continued to turn his intellect to his literary work. In 1660, at the urging of his son, Jin began work on his analysis of the works of China’s greatest poet, the definitive Confucian scholar, Du Fu of the Tang Dynasty. It was to be Jin’s final and uncompleted work.

In 1661, perhaps inspired by his core Confucian principles or by Du Fu’s example of a diligent Confucian scholar willing to admonish the Emperor at the risk of his own life, Jin became involved in an episode of civil unrest which was to cost him his life.24 Jin Shengtan joined over a hundred scholars in protest over the excesses of the new Suzhou magistrate, who had imposed harsh penalties for late payment of taxes and who had been selling taxed grain for personal profit. Taking advantage of a gathering of all of Jiangsu province’s officials to mourn the passing of the Shunzhi Emperor, the scholars marched onto the home of the Prefect of Suzhou where the officials were gathered, collecting a over a thousand supporters along the way, demanding the resignation of the magistrate. Jin escaped the arrest of the leaders of the protest, after which the magistrate confessed that he had taken his unjust and illegal actions only to fund the gifts demanded of him by the provincial governor. To cover his own complicity the provincial governor reworded the magistrate’s confession to justify the actions in the name of military exigencies and, at the same time, sent a memorial to the new Kangxi Emperor denouncing the protest as a deliberate show of disrespect to the late Emperor. The response from the Imperial Court was savage. The Qing had been shaken by an invasion force of Ming loyalists (some twenty years after founding the Qing Dynasty) under Zheng Chenggong also known as Koxinga who had occupied Taiwan. Having driven back the invasion force and sensitive to outbreaks of disorder and disloyalty, the Kangxi Emperor ordered special envoys to deal with this case. This time, Jin Shengtan did not escape the retribution of the officials. Arrested, beaten, and tortured, Jin and 17 other leaders of the protests, along with 103 traitors connected to the Koxinga invasion were found guilty of treason. Jin’s property was confiscated and his family exiled. Writing home, Jin reflected on how he had come to this predicament unintentionally, and spoke of the only reprieve being an amnesty, though he knew that none would be forthcoming. Jin, along with the other “traitors” were decapitated by being “blown from the guns.”25 With a perfect irony which could not have possibly escaped him, Jin Shengtan the virtuous Confucian scholar, like his literary counterparts, fell foul of the excesses of corrupt officials, and was executed for doing what he knew to be right.

The Water Margin and the “Red Bandits”

The web of crossover from history to fiction to history is a pattern that becomes clearly visible once we recognize and become accustomed to the continuum between Chinese historical fiction and Chinese history. Chinese intellectual tradition has always “taken history as a mirror as a guide to the present” and indeed the great historiography of Chinese history by Sima Guang (1019–1086 CE) was titled The Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government (Zizhi Tongjian, 1084 CE). The sense of historical consciousness is so deeply ingrained in the Chinese cultural system, that it has always influenced the nature of popular culture, as even a superficial glance at contemporary Chinese film, literature, and stage will attest. Early Ming vernacular novels were no exception, and together historical fiction and historiography have guided political and historical commentary since that time.26

The power of The Water Margin and its theme of righteous bandit rebellion has resonated through the course of Chinese history, from its first publication some time around the beginning of the Ming Dynasty through to the modern day. In that time The Water Margin has long been an allegorical tool of historical and political commentary. Amidst the chaos of the final years of the fall of the Ming, an Imperial Edict was issued in 1641 by the last Emperor of the Ming, Chongzhen banning The Water Margin a mere three years before the final collapse of the dynasty.27 Despite official attempts, such as an Imperial Edict issued by the Jiaqing Emperor prohibiting the book, its printing, and distribution, The Water Margin was never wholly suppressed throughout the succeeding Qing Dynasty.28 In time, as is the tradition of dynastic cycles in Chinese history, another peasant rebellion, another band of outlaws rose against the dissatisfaction with everyday life, against the corruption and ineptitude of local officials, and challenged the dynasty itself. Just as Li Zicheng’s (1606–1645) peasant rebellion against the Ming marked the beginning of the fall of the dynasty, the massive Taiping Rebellion under its leader Hong Xiuquan (1814–1864), almost succeeding in toppling the Qing Dynasty, marking the beginning of its eventual fall. By the time of the final collapse of the Qing in 1911 and the subsequent chaos of Republican China, The Water Margin had developed a life of its own, adding further analogy and allegory to fuel the mythology of The Water Margin and its role in Chinese history. However, history had not quite finished with it.

The Water Margin featured amongst the influential works read by a young well to do Hunan peasant boy named Mao Zedong in the final years of the Qing Dynasty. Mao later revealed to Edgar Snow in Red Star Over China (1937):

“I knew the Classics, but disliked them. What I enjoyed were the romances of old China, and especially stories of rebellions. I read the Yue Fei Zhuan (The Yue Fei Chronicles), Shui Hu Zhuan (The Water Margin), Fan Tang (Revolt Against the Tang Dynasty), San Guo (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), and Xi You (Journey to the West, aka Monkey), while still very young, and despite the vigilance of my old teacher, who hated these outlawed books and called them wicked. I used to read them in school, covering them up with a Classic when the teacher walked past. So also did most of my schoolmates. We learned many of the stories almost by heart, and discussed and re-discussed them many times. We knew more of them than the old men of the village, who also loved them and used to exchange stories with us. I believe that perhaps I was much influenced by such books, read at an impressionable age.”29

As the young Mao grew to adulthood, he fell into the radical intellectual revolution of the New Culture Movement following the establishment of the Republic in 1912 and later the May Fourth Movement of 1919. With his eclectic blend of peasant roots, traditional literature, and modern scholarship, Mao Zedong became one of the founding members of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 and went to work alongside its Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) colleagues training and organizing a peasant response to the Chinese revolution. Mao recognized like no other Chinese revolutionary, the potential of the mass of China’s peasantry as a revolutionary force. Initially as a part of the Sun Yatsen’s Kuomintang regime in southern Guangdong province, Mao directed the Kuomintang Peasant Movement Training Institute in the Kuomintang capital of Guangzhou (Canton). In August 1927, during the Kuomintang’s march north on the Northern Expedition to reunify China under its new leader Chiang Kai-shek, the Kuomintang turned against its Communist allies. As the vast majority of Communists were being slaughtered in the urban centers of China, Mao Zedong led a Communist peasant rebellion in Hunan, known as the Autumn Harvest Uprising. Like Communist resistance throughout China, Mao’s peasant rebels were outnumbered and outgunned. Badly mauled and forced to retreat from their base in Hunan, Mao regrouped his forces with the surviving forces of Zhu De in the Jinggang Mountains of Jiangxi province, to form the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army.

In the struggle of Mao and Zhu’s Red Army against the Kuomintang government during the Chinese Civil War, the analogy of The Water Margin with reality could not have been more apparent. It was as if The Water Margin was being yet again re-enacted, as the nascent Red Army collected various survivors of the Chinese Communist Party, dubbed “bandits” by Chiang Kai-shek, in the hills of Jiangxi. There at the Jiangxi Soviet, the Communists began regrouping the army and the Party, and re-establishing its revolutionary movement amongst the peasantry. From Jiangxi, surrounded and outnumbered, the Red Army along with several other surviving Communist forces broke out of their encirclement in 1934 and began the year long fighting retreat of the Long March. Covering the most extreme environments of southern, western, and northern China, the Long March meandered its way through rugged mountains and ravines, over snow capped high mountains at the edge of the Himalayas, over vast endless grasslands and swamps of hostile Tibetan homelands, and into the inhospitable deserts of the northwest. Fighting over much of the way, and suffering from battle casualties, desertions, and deaths through starvation and the absence of medical care, this government on the march began with some 80,000 men. When the survivors limped into Yanan in Shaanxi province in 1935, they numbered some 8,000 men. It was an incredible feat and a triumph of human endurance and like Valley Forge in 1778 or Gallipoli in 1915, it was to become the centerpiece of the foundation myth of a new nation.

Undoubtedly, Mao Zedong carried a copy of The Water Margin with him on the epic 12,500 km fighting retreat.30 Certainly in Pearl Buck’s introduction to her 1933 translation All Men Are Brothers, she noted that, “Today, the newest and most extreme party in China, the Communists, has taken the “Shui Hu Chuan” and issued an edition with a preface by a leading Communist, who calls it the first Communist literature of China, as suitable to this day as the day it was written.”31 During the Long March, Mao Zedong gradually rose to prominence amongst the Communist leaders. While composing some of his most important writings on revolution and warfare, Mao liberally quoted from The Water Margin.32 Indeed at the time, Mao was accused by his opponents in the Central Committee of behaving like the Water Margin bandits.33 The analogy with The Water Margin is complete, with final destination of the Red Army being the barren and remote region of Yanan, the place of exile of Wang Jin in The Water Margin, and the birth place of the Ming bandit leader, Li Zicheng.

At the base in Yanan, isolated and far from the Kuomintang government, the Communist Party further reconsolidated its strength with the support of the impoverished northern peasantry, drawn to the virtuous and liberating Red Army. The Red Army was built into a potent revolutionary force driven by the promise of a utopian “New China.” Like Song Jiang and his bandits of the 120 chapter version of The Water Margin, the “red bandits” gained a degree of amnesty in the truce and the tenuous united front with the Kuomintang against the Japanese invasion from 1936–1945. Unlike their literary predecessors however, Mao Zedong and his “red bandits” did not yearn for an Imperial pardon. Indeed, until the forced (and temporary) united front, the Kuomintang government had rather favored complete extermination of the “red bandits” over any form of amnesty.34 By 1946 with the war with Japan concluded, the civil war broke out again in earnest. Despite the superiority of its American Lend Lease equipment obtained ostensibly to fight the Japanese, the war was a disaster for the Kuomintang. Unable to manage spiraling inflation, unable to rebuild an economy crippled by twenty years of civil war and the war with Japan, represented by brutal and uncaring government officials, faced with massive government corruption at the highest levels and conscript soldiers who were simply unwilling to fight, the Kuomintang lost the Mandate of Heaven.

On the other side, the Communists possessed their carefully renamed People’s Liberation Army, a force of peasant soldiers ideologically motivated with a personal stake in the revolution. It was trained to treat the ordinary people with the care and respect that they would have shown their own families, in a way that ordinary people had never experienced before in wartime. In contrast to the Kuomintang government’s ineptitude and inability to deal with pressing social problems, the Communists restored law and order in their “liberated territories,” taught the peasants how to read and write, redistributed food and land, and engaged the peasants in the revolutionary process. From the force of 8,000 ragged survivors of the Long March in 1935, the People’s Liberation Army swelled to some 4 million men by 1949, as peasants flocked to the revolutionary cause, and again like the Liangshan bandits, prisoners of war or defectors were either paroled or welcomed with open arms. Ultimately in October 1949, this peasant rebellion marched into the former Qing capital of Beijing. There, at the Tiananmen Gate of the Forbidden City of the Ming and Qing Emperors, Mao Zedong like so many peasant leaders of so many peasant uprisings before, proclaimed himself “emperor” and founder of a new “dynasty,” ushering in the People’s Republic of China.

Even with the triumph of the Communist revolution, history had not finished with The Water Margin. In 1975, in the final gasps of the Cultural Revolution, when so much of the “old culture” of the traditional arts had been destroyed, The Water Margin was surprisingly revived and republished under the guidance of the radical leftist “Gang of Four” led by Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing. This 100 Chapter version was published despite years of criticism of “old literature,” complete with an introductory comment from Mao himself stating that “the guiding principle is that this is about rebelling against corrupt officials, not rebelling against the Emperor.”35 In what was to be the final year of the Cultural Revolution, the resonance of The Water Margin was again unmistakeable. For indeed, the darkest days of the Cultural Revolution in 1966–1969 had overthrown and all but destroyed “the government officials” of the Chinese Communist Party bureaucracy. The ranks of the Party, from the highest office in the land down, had been ruthlessly purged by Mao’s new generation of young revolutionaries, the radical “Red Guards.” Few of the veterans of the revolutionary struggle survived, as high office offered little protection, and those who did survive, did so only under the protection of “the emperor” himself, Mao Zedong. Promoted as “material for teaching by negative example,” The Water Margin, as a work of historical fiction was once again used as an allegorical teaching aid and as a “mirror to the present” to enable people to identify “capitulationists in their own day and age.”36

The Water Margin was used by the Gang of Four to head a campaign against the lesson of Song Jiang’s “capitulation” to the “Confucian” and “feudal landlord classes,” in the seeking of amnesty and Imperial pardon. In the Byzantine environment behind the power struggle between the radical left of the Gang of Four and the moderates rallying behind the ailing Premier Zhou Enlai and Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping, this period of revival of The Water Margin underscored a rapidly shifting yet uncertain future. The “emperor” Mao Zedong was, by this time, ailing himself and entering into the final year of his life. With the looming prospect of a titanic power struggle following Mao’s eventual death, the already waning influence of the Gang of Four radicals suggested a very real possibility of their being completely sidelined from power, as well as an abandonment of the hard won Maoist radicalism and a shift towards a more moderate social and economic system. In this climate, the Gang of Four, which still held influence over national cultural policy, used this “capitulationist” theme as a clear allegorical criticism of Zhou Enlai, the upright Confucian hero of the Chinese revolution, beloved of the people and their primary obstacle to power upon Mao’s death. Also targeted was Deng Xiaoping, Zhou’s heir apparent and the pragmatic economic planner who had been previously purged as a “reactionary” and “capitalist roader” and recently rehabilitated and reinstated.37

In 1976, the most senior of the surviving veteran revolutionaries, the heroes of the earliest days of the Communist Party, Zhou Enlai, the “Prime Minister,” Zhu De, the “Marshal” and Mao Zedong the “Emperor” all died (in April, July, and September respectively). Echoes of allegorical criticism of Song Jiang’s “capitulation” were still heard in the purge of Deng Xiaoping, orchestrated by the Gang of Four following Zhou Enlai’s death in April 1976.38 However, Jiang Qing and the Gang of Four’s political aspirations came to naught as they were quickly arrested following Mao’s death by his successor Hua Guofeng, with the backing (or prompting) of the senior Generals of the People’s Liberation Army and the surviving elder revolutionary leaders. In the end, The Water Margin turned full circle. The classic that inspired Mao Zedong’s brilliant revolutionary and military works of the Long March and civil war became the absurd “final chapter of Maoist political culture” and the last gasp of Maoism itself.39

Can The Water Margin still be used as a mirror to the present?

At the time of writing, China is about to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic on October 1st 1949. It has been 60 years since Mao Zedong and his “bandit army” marched into Beijing and founded a new dynasty. After all this time, is The Water Margin still relevant as a work of fiction that inspires, guides, and shapes history?

In Chinese terms of 4000 years of recorded history, of Twenty-four Dynasties and two Republics, 60 years is nothing. 60 years merely marks the end of one complete cycle of the 60 year Chinese calendar of the Heaven Branches and the Earthly Stems. In China, dynasties can last for hundreds of years. As the Chinese nation celebrates in 2009, the Chinese government faces numerous critical, but familiar challenges. It must maintain equality in the share of the wealth of China’s massive free market economy. It must face the eternal challenge of corruption and of self-serving public officials. It must face the challenge of rising unemployment, especially amongst its highly educated young graduates. It must also face the social challenges of a large migrant population of perhaps some 230 million from the interior of the country that flock to work in the booming cities of the southern and eastern provinces and their factories and construction sites. It must face the challenge of providing equitable health care for a population of over 1.3 billion. It must deal with the challenge of providing clean air, water, and food for this enormous population. It must deal with the challenges of a population with a skewed sex ratio that currently stands at 1.2:1 boys to girls. This means that for every 10 million women, there will be 12 million men, for whom 2 million may not have a chance of a wife or family.

What may be the result of an inability to successfully manage these challenges? Perhaps we can take history as a mirror to guide the present, and consider the traditional response of hungry, angry, and poverty stricken unmarried men. Perhaps we only have to turn to history, and the historical fiction of The Water Margin to find out.

Footnote

9 The “Four Great Novels” include Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin, Journey to the West, and The Dream of the Red Chamber.

10 Mencius 5A:5 in Wing-Tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. 4th ed. (Princeton University Press, Princeton 1969). p78.

11 Shelley Hsueh-lun Chang, History and Legend. Ideas and Images in the Ming Historical Novels. (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1990), p136.

12 Ibid.

13 John Ching-yu Wang, Chin Sheng-t’an (Twayne Publishers Inc, NY 1972). p61.

14 See Irwin Op.cit, pp43-51.

15 Ibid, p82.

16 Wang, Op.cit, p62.

17 After Irwin, Op. cit, p90.

18 Wang, Op. cit, p60.

19 Buck Op. cit and Jackson Op.cit.

20 Wang, Op.cit, p24-26.

21 Irwin, Op.cit, p87.

22 Wang Op.cit p29.

23 Ibid, p32.

24 Ibid p34.

25 After “Kumiao Jilue” (“A Brief Record of the Lamenting in the Temple”), T’ung-shih (Bitter History) Commercial Press, Shanghai 1912, in Wang, Op. cit, pp34-36.

26 For a full description of this concept, see Shelley Hsueh-lun Chang, History and Legend: Ideas and Images in the Ming Historical Novels. (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1990).

27 David L. Rolston, Traditional Chinese Fiction and Fiction Commentary: Reading and Writing Between the Lines. (Stanford University Press, Stanford 1997), p104.

28 Buck (1968) Op.cit, p.vi.

29 Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China. First Revised and Enlarged Edition, (Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth. 1972), p156.

30 John Fitzgerald, “Continuity Within Discontinuity The Case of Water Margin Mythology,” Modern China, Vol. 12 No. 3, July 1986, p381.

31 Buck (1968) Op.cit, p.ix.

32 Mao Zedong, “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War,” December 1936, Selected Works Vol I (Foreign Languages Press, Beijing 1961), p211 and “On Contradiction” August 1937, Ibid, p324.

33 Fitzgerald Op.cit, p381.

34 Ibid.

35 Shi Naian and Luo Guanzhong, Shuihu Zhuan. Vol 1. (Renmin Wenhuaxue Chubanshe, Beijing 1975) Water Margin. Vol 1. (People’s Cultural Studies Publishing House, Beijing, 1975), p.1.

36 Fitzgerald, Op.cit, p.376.

37 See Fitzgerald, Op.cit. pp.365-367.

38 Fitzgerald Op.cit. p364.

39 Dai Jinhua, “Rewriting the Red Classics,” in Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture: Cannibalizations of the Canon, Carlos Rojas and Eileen Cheng-yin Chow (eds) (Routledge, Abingdon. 2009) p160.