Yang Xiong (53 BCE-18 CE) was a brilliant Ru (Confucian) scholar who served the last emperors of the Western Han and, more controversially, the short-lived regime of Wang Mang (r. 9-23 CE), a Han minister who maneuvered himself onto the throne but was overthrown and killed by rebels five years after Yang Xiong’s death. Yang’s Fayan is a collection of philosophical dialogues on various topics, modeled on the Analects.

The passage translated below reflects the increase in Chinese ethnocentrism since the time of Liu An (see source 1.7) and Sima Qian (see source 1.8), as the Ru tradition gained more influence at the imperial court and began insisting on exclusive, absolute adherence to the standards of ritual found in its classics. Yang Xiong’s interpretation of “the Central States” (Zhongguo) elevates it from an obsolete geopolitical concept (i.e., the former Zhou states located in the North China Plain) to a concept of a civilizational core region within the Han empire, which can be more aptly translated as “the Central Lands.” This effectively constructed a new, distinctly Confucian basis for cultural identity among an expanded Hua-Xia population that included the assimilated descendants of Rong, Di, Man, and Yi.

The translation below is mine but has benefited from Michael Nylan’s complete translation of the Fayan. See Michael Nylan trans., Exemplary Figures/Fayan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013).

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From the chapter “Wendao” (Asking About the Way)

Someone asked, “Of the rites and music in foreign lands, which can be accepted as correct?” I replied, “One judges that by using the Central Lands (Zhongguo 中國) as the standard.”

The questioner asked, “What are the Central Lands?” I replied, “The lands where the five elements of good governance are applied and the seven primary crops cultivated, located at the center of heaven and earth: those are the Central Lands. Is anyone who lives beyond those boundaries truly human?

The sages governed the world by setting boundaries with rites and music. To lack these is to be an animal, and to have different [rites and music] is to be a barbarian (Mo). I have seen the philosophical masters¹ belittling rites and music but have never seen the sages belittling them.”

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1. That is, non-Ru (non-Confucian) thinkers from the Warring States period, such as Mozi, the Legalists, and the authors of the Daodejing and Zhuangzi. ↩︎