“Confucius” is the Latinized form of Kong fuzi or Kongzi (Master Kong), the term of respect used for Kong Qiu (551-479 BCE) by followers of his teachings. A minor aristocrat from the state of Lu, he served briefly as Minister of Justice (sikou) but then lost confidence in his lord and began traveling through other states, hoping to gain employment under a ruler willing to put his ideals into practice. His disciples, reportedly numbering seventy, accompanied him on this occasionally perilous and ultimately unsuccessful venture. After Confucius’s death, the surviving disciples acquired disciples of their own and developed his teachings into a distinct school of political philosophy and ethics, known as Ru 儒. The Ru tradition is commonly called “Confucianism” by Western scholars, but other alternatives, such as “Classicism” and “Ruism,” have been proposed.

Confucius’s heroes were the ancient (and probably mythical) sage-kings Yao and Shun, the first Zhou rulers King Wen and King Wu, and King Wu’s younger brother the Duke of Zhou. He believed the key to restoring order to his politically and socially turbulent world was reviving these sages’ values through the study of the early Zhou classics and the proper practice of Zhou ritual. His ideal government was one in which the ruler’s legitimate authority was exerted through a kind of irresistibly magnetic moral authority or charisma (de 德), not coercive force or law, while his ministers were “noble men” (junzi 君子) whose nobility came not from birth but from character. The true noble man was selflessly loyal and devoted to his ruler and filial to his parents, but he had a moral duty to admonish them privately if they were wrong. He was respectful to his social superiors and elders, trustworthy to his friends and peers, and humane and generous to his social inferiors. The ideal society was thus bound together by a web of hierarchical but harmonious and reciprocal relationships, regulated by rules of ritual propriety (li 禮) and moral duty (yi 義).

Statements attributed to Confucius are found in a number of early Chinese texts, but the largest concentration of them is in the Lunyu, commonly translated into English as Analects. The Analects was traditionally believed to have been compiled by his disciples after his death, but its textual history is more complex and controversial and its influence before the first century BCE appears to have been limited. The first written commentaries were produced under the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 CE), whose emperors elevated the Ru tradition to the status of state ideology and canonized Confucius as a sage. The Analects contains very few statements relevant to the Yi, Di, Rong, and Man peoples, of which some are only tangentially related to questions of ethnic identity and difference. Nonetheless, interpretations of these statements eventually assumed an outsize influence on Chinese ethnic discourse due to the authority ascribed to Confucius. Both ethnocentric and non-ethnocentric positions could be attributed to “the Sage” based on his recorded words, but his actual attitude toward the “barbarians” must remain a mystery to us.

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Analects 3.5    The Master said: “The barbarians (Yi-Di) have rulers but are still inferior to (buru 不如) the Xia states (zhu Xia) that do not.”

• Commentary by Zheng Xuan (127-200): Because these were times of decline and disorder, Confucius said this in order to rectify people’s hearts.
• Commentary by Sun Chuo (314-371): The Xia states at times do not have rulers, but the Way is not completely lost, whereas among barbarians the strongest man is king, their principles being the same as those of animals.
• Commentary by Huang Kan (488-545): This makes it clear that Confucius favored the Central Lands and saw the barbarians as inferior.
• Commentary by Xing Bing (932-1010): This passage means that the Central Lands are rich in ritual propriety and moral duty, while the barbarians lack them…. [Confucius] says that even though the barbarians have rulers and leaders, they do not have ritual propriety and moral duty. On the other hand, even though the Central Lands occasionally go without a ruler, such as during the joint regency of the Dukes of Zhou and Shao, ritual propriety and moral duty are not abandoned.¹ That is why [Confucius] said, “The barbarians have rulers but are still inferior to Chinese states that do not.”
• Commentary by Cheng Yi (1033-1107): This is Confucius saying that his was an age of great disorder, when insubordination toward rulers (literally “not having rulers”) was at an extreme. It is like saying, “Even the barbarians still have rulers, unlike the Chinese states that do not.” … Even the barbarians had rulers, unlike the usurpation and disorder in the Chinese states, which no longer observed the proper distinctions between superiors and inferiors.

Analects 4.10     The Master said: “The noble man (junzi) has no prejudices for or against anything in the world. He simply aligns himself with moral duty (yi).”

Analects 9.14     The Master wanted to go and live among the Yi peoples.² Someone said: “They are benighted (lou 陋).³ Why would you do that?” The Master said: “How could there be benightedness if a noble man (junzi) lives there?”

• Comment by Wang Chong (27-ca. 100 CE)⁴: Confucius was aggrieved that the Way was not practiced in the Central Lands and that his aspirations could not be realized. Hence, he wanted to go and live among the Yi peoples. Someone criticized this, saying: “The barbarians (Yi-Di) are ignorant, benighted, and have no ritual propriety (li) and moral duty (yi). Why would you do that?” Confucius said: “How could there be benightedness if a noble man lives there?” By this he meant that if a noble man lives there and teaches them his Way, how could they remain benighted? But I would question this with the following: Why in the first place did Confucius want to go and live among the Yi? Because the Way was not being practiced in the Central Lands, that is why. If it could not be practiced in the Central Lands, how could it be practiced among the barbarians? “The barbarians have rulers but are still inferior to (buruo) Xia states that do not.”⁵ This means that it is difficult to govern the barbarians but easy to govern the Xia states. Besides, when Confucius said, “How could there be benightedness if a noble man lives there”, did he mean that he would preserve his moral integrity [among the Yi] by following the way of the noble man, or that he would teach [the Yi] the way of the noble man? If the former, then he could do that in the Central Lands too, so why go to the barbarians? If the latter, how could the barbarians be teachable? When Yu went to the country of naked people, he stripped naked when he entered and put his clothes back on when he left, because the practice of wearing clothes did not exist among the barbarians.⁶ If Yu could not teach the naked people to wear clothes, how could Confucius turn the Yi into noble men?
• Commentary by Ma Rong (79-166): If a noble man lived there, [the Yi] would all be transformed [by him].
• Commentary by Sun Chuo: The Yi were benighted because they did not have ritual propriety and moral duty. If a noble man lived there and transformed them, then they would be freed from benightedness.
• Commentary by Huang Kan: If a sage lived there, he would transform the Yi into Xia of the Central Lands (Zhong Xia).
• Commentary by Xing Bing: This passage speaks of Confucius deploring the lack of enlightened rulers in the Central Lands…. Confucius, seeing that there were no enlightened rulers in his time, therefore wanted to live among the eastern Yi…. Someone said to Confucius, “The eastern Yi are isolated and benighted, without ritual propriety; how could you live with them?” … Confucius responded to that person by saying that if a noble man lived there, they would all be transformed and caused to practice ritual propriety and moral duty. Hence his question, “How could they [then] be benighted?”

Analects 13.19   Fan Chi asked about humaneness (ren 仁). The Master said: “Be courteous in private life, reverent in public life, and sincere in your relations with others. Even if you go among the barbarians (Yi-Di), you cannot abandon this.”

• Commentary by Bao Xian (7 BCE-65 CE): Even when going to the lands of the barbarians, where this no ritual propriety and moral duty, one must not abandon these virtues and stop practicing them.
• Commentary by Fan Zuyu (1041-1098): Rectifying one’s mind and being sincere in one’s intentions is the basis of the Way. Even though barbarian countries do not have ritual propriety and moral duty, one cannot leave the Way for even an instant [when going there].
• Commentary by Zhu Xi (1130-1200): [You] can only succeed if [you practice moral self-cultivation] without ceasing; if you cease, this [state of] mind (xin 心) will die. [When you are] in the Central Lands, this is the principle (daoli 道理), and [when you are] among the barbarians, the same principle still applies…. Now, when people are living the Central Lands, with enough to eat and warm clothes to wear, and have not gone among the barbarians, even then they forget [these moral virtues] and do not know that they cannot be abandoned. How much more so when they go to the barbarians, who will threaten them with knives and swords? How could they not then abandon these [virtues]?

Analects 14.17   Zigong said: “Guan Zhong was an inhumane man, was he not? After Lord Huan [of Qi] killed Gongzi Jiu, he chose not to commit suicide and even served as Lord Huan’s chief minister.”⁷ The Master said: “Guan Zhong, as Lord Huan’s chancellor, achieved hegemony over the lords and set the world in order. To this very day, the people are reaping the benefits of his deeds. But for Guan Zhong, we would now be wearing our hair loose and folding our robes to the left [like barbarians].⁸ Would you rather that he had shown his loyalty by hanging himself in a ditch like a mere commoner, without anyone ever knowing?”

• Commentary by Ma Rong: If there were no Guan Zhong, rulers would have stopped behaving like rulers and ministers would have stopped behaving like ministers. Everyone would be a barbarian (Yi-Di).⁹
• Commentary by Wang Bi (226-249): At that time, the Rong and Di were invading from either side and had destroyed the states of Xing and Wei. Guan Zhong repelled the Rong and Di and kept them at bay. To the south, he brought the Chu army to submission.¹⁰ To the north, he attacked the Mountain Rong.¹¹ The Central Lands thus remained secure. That is why [Confucius] said that [the people] were reaping the benefits of [Guan Zhong’s] deeds.
• Commentary by Huang Kan: “Wearing our hair loose” means not tying it up. “Folding our robes to the left” means that the front of our robes is folded from right to left. Confucius was saying that if there were no Guan Zhong, then we would now also be barbarians (Yi-Di) and would therefore be wearing our hair loose and folding our robes to the left.

Analects 15.6     Zizhang asked about good conduct (xing 行). The Master said, “Speak with loyalty and good faith and conduct yourself (xing)with commitment and respect. Then even in the countries of the barbarians (Man-Mo) you will be able to journey on (xing). If you speak without loyalty and good faith and conduct yourself without commitment and respect, how can you get around (xing)safely even in your own village? Have these words in front of your eyes whenever you are standing; have them carved on the yoke of your chariot. Only then can you move ahead (xing).”¹² Zizhang wrote these words on his belt.

Analects 15.39   The Master said: “When it comes to teaching (jiao 教), there are no distinctions (lei 類).”

• Commentary by Ma Rong: This means that people should be taught wherever they are, regardless of distinctions based on status (zhonglei 種類).¹³
• Commentary by Huang Kan: People are divided into superior and inferior classes, but all should receive teaching; we should not deny teaching to anyone whose status (zhonglei) is common or base. If he is taught, then he will become good, as originally there were no status distinctions (lei).

Analects 17.2     The Master said: “People are similar by nature; it is habit that makes them diverge from one another.”

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1. As an example of a period when the Chinese had no ruler, Xing Bing cites the so-called Gonghe regency (841–828 BCE), which began after Western Zhou subjects drove the highly unpopular King Li (d. 828 BCE) out of the capital and ended upon the king’s death in exile. Xing follows the Shiji (see source 1.8) interpretation of “Gonghe” as a joint regency by the Dukes of Zhou and Shao, but most historians now accept the alternative Bamboo Annals (Zhushu jinian) interpretation of this period as a sole regency by He, the Liege (bo) of Gong. ↩︎
2. More literally, “among the nine kinds of Yi.” Later Chinese commentators and historians produced different lists of the nine kinds, some including (anachronistically) peoples of Manchuria, Korea, and Japan, but in the original context, “nine kinds of Yi” may just have been an expression connoting a plurality of Yi groups in an area corresponding to Shandong and Jiangsu. ↩︎
3. Other translations have rendered lou as “rude,” “crude,” or “uncouth.” However, these words merely convey a sense of lacking cultural sophistication, whereas lou conveys a sense of ignorance about proper moral norms. The passage thus concerns not a cultural but a moral difference between the Yi and the Xia. ↩︎
4. Wang Chong (see source 2.6) was an unusually skeptical and iconoclastic thinker willing to question any conventional wisdom, including that found in the Confucian classics. The passage quoted here is not from a commentary to the Analects (Wang is not known to have written one) but from his masterwork, the Lunheng (Balanced Discourses). ↩︎
5. Wang quotes Analects 3.5 but with buru replaced by the synonymous buruo. ↩︎
6. In Chinese lore, Yu was a sage-king who succeeded Shun after quelling a great flood. The story of him traveling to the country of naked people is of uncertain origin but is also found in an earlier Han text, the Huainanzi (see source 1.7). ↩︎
7. Guan Zhong was originally an advisor to Gongzi Jiu, Lord Huan’s rival for succession to the lordship of Qi. In 685 BCE, Lord Huan pressured Jiu’s protector, the Lord of Lu, into executing him. Guan Zhong was then sent from Lu to Qi and chose to serve Lord Huan. Jiu’s other advisor, Shao Hu, committed suicide out of loyalty to Jiu. ↩︎
8. Chinese one-piece robes typically folded and fastened on the right, except in the case of robes worn by the dead during funerary rites. In contrast, “barbarian” peoples were believed to fold their robes to the left. On Guan Zhong’s role in building a multi-state coalition against Di invaders, see source 1.2. ↩︎
9. Ma Rong speaks of a political and moral degeneration to the level of barbarism. As Wang Bi’s commentary shows, it is more likely that Confucius was referring to the fate of conquest and acculturation by barbarians, specifically the Di peoples. Lord Huan and Guan Zhong purportedly averted this through a series of military campaigns to aid Zhou states under attack by the Di. ↩︎
10. In 656 BCE, Guan Zhong aided Lord Huan of Qi in forming a multi-state coalition to counter Chu’s attacks on the state of Zheng. The campaign resulted in a peace covenant between Qi and Chu at Shaoling (see source 1.5). ↩︎
11. The Mountain Rong (shanrong) lived in the Yan Mountains of northern Hebei and were distinct from the other peoples labeled as Rong, who were located in Shaanxi and Gansu. In 664 BCE, Lord Huan of Qi led a multi-state coalition in defeating a Mountain Rong attack on the northern state of Yan and then counterattacking several Mountain Rong states. ↩︎
12. Confucius is playing on multiple meanings of the word xing, one of which is a long-distance journey. The Shiji (see source 1.8) biography of Confucius claims that this conversation took place when Confucius and his disciples were trapped by hostile forces in a border region between the states of Chen and Cai. ↩︎
13. The phrase zhonglei was also used to refer to ethnic groups or sub-ethnic clan or “tribal” groupings by late Han times, but Ma Rong uses it with reference to inherited social status, as does Huang Kan. ↩︎