Wang Chong (ca. 27-97 CE) was descended from Chinese colonists who had migrated from southern Hebei to Shangyu (modern Shaoxing) in the lower Yangzi region during the Western Han. He was an exceptionally original, independent, and objective thinker whose humble origins and argumentative personality prevented him from rising in Han officialdom.

An autodidact who acquired his immense knowledge by reading voraciously in booksellers’ street stalls, Wang remained a local teacher and functionary until late in life, when a friend recommended him to Emperor Zhang (r. 75-88) for a position as a court scholar. Wang turned down the opportunity, citing poor health, and died in obscurity in his family home. His masterwork Lunheng is a collection of iconoclastic essays on a wide range of subjects, including astronomy, cosmology, ghosts, history, and the Confucian classics. It remained unknown for decades until discovered in the 180s by the minister Cai Yong (133-192 CE). Thereafter, it attained popularity as a kind of handbook for intellectual debates among the elite.

The excerpts translated below reflect Wang Chong’s impatience with Confucian scholars who glorified the age of the sage-kings and the Western Zhou dynasty while denigrating Han imperial expansion. In Wang’s opinion, the Han had achieved something great and unprecedented by conquering and civilizing “barbarians” on its frontiers and attracting tribute from peoples even further beyond. However, his criticism of the Confucians’ pro-Zhou bias ignores the fact that many of them glorified the smaller domains of the sage-kings and the Zhou precisely because they disagreed with the notion that conquering barbarians in order to civilize them was the proper business of a Chinese ruler, let alone a measure of his greatness and sageliness.

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From the chapter “Xuan Han” (Glorifying the Han)

Under the Zhou dynasty, Yuechang presented a white pheasant as tribute.¹ Now the Xiongnu, Shanshan, and the Ailao present cattle and horses as tribute.² The “subcelestial realm” (tianxia) of the Zhou only spanned a radius of five thousand li, while the Han dynasty has expanded to govern lands beyond the Zhou’s outermost zone of submission.³ Cattle and horses are worth more than white pheasants, and gaining territories close by is inferior to receiving tribute from far away. The Rong and Di of ancient times are now part of the Central Lands; the naked people of antiquity now wear court robes; those who went bare-headed in antiquity now wear ceremonial caps; those who went barefoot in antiquity now wear thick-soled shoes. [The Han] has turned rocky landscapes into fertile fields, wicked and violent peoples into good subjects, treacherous mountains into level ground, and recalcitrant barbarians into registered commoners. If this is not an age of great peace, then what is?

From the chapter “Hui Guo” (Exalting Our Dynasty)

When King Wu [of Zhou] rose up against King Zhou [of Shang], the barbarians (Yi) of Yong and Shu aided him in the Battle of Muye. In the time of King Cheng [of Zhou], Yuechang presented a pheasant as tribute and the Wo people paid a tribute of wild turmeric.⁴ When [the Zhou] declined under King You (781-771 BCE) and King Li (877-841 BCE), the Rong and Di invaded, and King Ping (770-720 BCE) fled east to escape from danger.

When the Han dynasty rose, the barbarians of the four quarters all paid tribute. In the first year of the Yuanshi era (1 CE) of Emperor Ping (r. 1 BCE-6 CE), an embassy from Yuechang arrived, its language requiring multiple rounds of indirect translation, and presented a tribute of one white pheasant and two black pheasants. Even one as worthy as King Cheng, assisted by the Duke of Zhou, received only one pheasant from Yuechang, while Emperor Ping received three. Later, in the fourth year (4 CE), Qiang people from the frontier beyond Jincheng commandery… offered up their fish-producing and salt-producing land and expressed their desire to come under Han rule. Thus we came into possession of the stone chamber of the Queen Mother of the West, and the land was incorporated as Xihai commandery.⁵

In the time of the Zhou, the Rong and Di attacked the king, whereas in the Han, they submitted and offered up their prime land. The land of the Queen Mother of the West lies at the furthest ends of the earth, yet it has become Han territory. Whose moral charisma was greater? Whose territory was larger? Today, the Ailao and Shanshan have submitted to our moral charisma. The Xiongnu occasionally raid us, but when we dispatch armies to repel and punish them, we take captives in the thousands and tens of thousands.

Yu of the Xia dynasty entered the country of Wu naked, while Taibo, claiming to be out gathering herbs, [went south and] cut his hair and tattooed his body.⁶ Wu was in the outermost zone of submission under Yao and Shun, and Yue was located among the Nine Yi. They wore woolen clothing and tied their hair up in coils, but today they wear the Xia clothing of robes and shoes.⁷ In Zhou times, the people of Ba, Shu, Yuexi, Yulin, Rinan, Liaodong, and Lelang commanderies left their hair untied or tied it up in mallet-shaped buns.⁸ Today, they wear [Han-style] leather caps. In Zhou times, their languages had to go through multiple rounds of indirect translation to be intelligible to us. Today, they recite the Odes and Documents.

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1. On the story of Yuechang’s tribute, see source 2.4, note 3. ↩︎
2. Shanshan (also known as Krorän or Loulan) was a kingdom at the eastern end of the Tarim Basin. The Ailao people were located in southwestern Yunnan. The Ailao began paying tribute to the Eastern Han in 51 CE and were incorporated into the Han empire as two counties in 69 CE. They rebelled against Han rule in 76 CE and were brutally suppressed; for details, see source 5.2. ↩︎
3. On the zones of submission, see source 2.2. ↩︎
4. This claim about the Wo (conventionally identified as the people of Japan) paying a tribute of wild turmeric to King Cheng appears twice in the Lunheng but is unattested in other sources. ↩︎
5. Wang Chong’s argument interprets the pheasants received by Emperor Ping and the cession of Qiang land as evidence of the Han’s moral charisma. However, Ban Gu’s Hanshu account of these events reads them as political theater staged by the regent Wang Mang (who had allegedly bribed the Yuechang and Qiang) to burnish his prestige, elicit comparisons to the Duke of Zhou, and lay the groundwork for his usurpation of the throne. Jincheng commandery was based in the area corresponding to modern Lanzhou, Gansu province, while the new Xihai commandery was in northeastern Qinghai province. The Hanshu treatise on geography mentions a “stone chamber of the Queen Mother of the West” in the area corresponding to Xihai, along with salt pans and an “Immortal’s Sea” (presumably Lake Qinghai). This suggests that Wang Mang’s propaganda included claims that the stone chamber had been discovered in the newly incorporated Qiang lands. ↩︎
6. Wang Chong conflates two different legends here, since Yu was said to have gone to the country of naked people (see source 1.7), while Taibo was said to have founded the state of Wu. ↩︎
7. Wang Chong is, of course, speaking of his own home region here and taking pride in the civilizing role played by Han colonists like his ancestors. On the zones of submission, see source 2.2. ↩︎
8. Yuexi (or Yuesui) was based at modern Xichang in southwestern Sichuan. Yulin was based at modern Guiping, Guangxi. Rinan was located in modern central Vietnam. Liaodong was located on the Liaodong peninsula in modern Liaoning. Lelang was located in modern North Korea, centered on the Pyongyang area. ↩︎