The Zhoushu was commissioned by the Tang imperial court as an official history of the Northern Zhou (557-581 CE), one of the dynasties that ruled in north China during the Period of Division in 317-589 CE. Although Linghu Defen (583-666) is named as the chief editor, the prefaces and concluding discourses to the biographies and accounts (liezhuan) are credited to the assistant editor Cen Wenben (595-645). The passages below, which bookend a chapter on foreign countries, reflect the influence and amplification of Eastern Han anti-expansionist discourses on Heaven-ordained boundaries to the civilized world and the qi-determined moral inferiority of barbarians. Their author’s underlying agenda was to warn the ambitious Tang emperor Taizong (r. 626-649) against repeating the recent mistakes of Sui Emperor Yang (r. 604-618), whose futile invasions of the Goguryeo kingdom had stretched the Sui empire’s resources beyond breaking point and led to its collapse in a wave of rebellions, out of which the Tang empire arose.

The question of whether to conquer Goguryeo remained a matter of intense debate at the early Tang court, as irredentist voices insisted on the recovery of former Han territory in the Liaodong peninsula and north Korea, which Goguryeo had captured in the fourth and fifth centuries. The irredentists made no headway with Taizong’s cautious father Gaozu (r. 618-626). But they finally won out in the 640s as Taizong, now confident that he was a far superior ruler to Emperor Yang, launched a series of expansionist campaigns in Central Asia and personally commanded a massive invasion of Goguryeo. Cen Wenben himself died from stress and overwork in 645 while supervising the logistics for Taizong’s Goguryeo campaign, which bogged down in the mountains of Liaodong despite initial success and ultimately ended in a humiliating retreat (for details, see this interactive map).

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From the Preface to “Account of Foreign Lands”

The [First] Emperor of Qin ruled the subcelestial realm by force and recklessly used military power against distant lands; Han Emperor Wu, with his great strength in soldiers and horses, indulged himself in conquering faraway places. By the time the Xiongnu retreated, [these two emperors’] own realms were drained of their wealth; by the time the celestial horses [of Ferghana] arrived [at the Han court], [Emperor Wu’s] own people were exhausted and impoverished.¹ 

From this we know that the Wild Goose Sea² and the White Dragon Dunes³ are the means by which Heaven has cut the barbarians (Yi) off from the Xia, and that the fiery regions [of the south] and the northern desert are the means by which Earth has set boundaries between those inside and those outside.  How much more so in the case of [a ruler whose] time was not that of the Qin and Han, but whose ambitions exceeded those of the First Emperor and Emperor Wu?⁴ He sought achievements in going against the Way of Heaven, expending all the people’s strength in indulging his desires. Hence the disaster of his empire’s collapse came in less time than it takes to turn on one’s heels.

Thus when the sage-kings set down their teachings, they regarded the Xia states as those inside and the barbarians (Yi-Di) as those outside, and when the wise men of the past handed down their models, they praised the establishment of moral authority and denigrated territorial expansion. Even when Yu’s travels extended into the east and west, he did not cross the sea and the Flowing Sands.⁵  Even when the regulations of the [Zhou] kings extended from north to south, it excluded the cave-dwelling [Di] and the pigeon-toed [Man].⁶ Is this not the Way that runs through remote antiquity, a truth whose validity has endured for a hundred ages?

From the Concluding Discourse to “Account of Foreign Lands”

All human beings are formed in the image of heaven and earth and receive their intelligence from a combination of yin and yang [qi]. Their foolishness and wisdom are based on the natural order, and their hardness and softness are tied to the water and the soil. Therefore, those lands where rain and dew are plentiful and the winds circulate freely, that are crisscrossed by the nine rivers⁷ and bounded by the five great mountains—these are called the Xia lands (zhu Xia).  From the people born in these lands come humaneness and moral duty.

The Dark Valley, the Yi of the seacoast, Guzhu, and [the land] where doors face northwards [toward the sun]—these are separated from us by the red border [in the south], the purple wall [in the north], the cerulean sea [in the east], and the joined rivers [in the west], and are called the remote lands.⁸  In people affected by the qi of such lands, a malevolent character is formed.

As for the nine kinds of Yi and eight kinds of Di, their clans and divisions have proliferated in great number, and the seven kinds of Rong and six kinds of Man fill up our frontiers.⁹ Although their customs vary from place to place and their desires are different, when it comes to being greedy and insatiable, cruel and fond of rebellion, defiant when strong and submissive when weak, the principle [that defines them] is one and the same. Heaven must have decreed this to be so!

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1. This refers to two Western Han military expeditions against the distant Central Asian kingdom of Ferghana (Dayuan) in 104 and 102 BCE, occasioned by Ferghana’s refusal to sell its prized “celestial horses” to the Han. The first expedition was a dismal failure that lost 80-90% of its men in the desert and failed to reach the Ferghana capital. The second expedition captured the capital, installed a new pro-Han king, and took “several tens” of fine horses. But the Han still lost about 50,000 troops and 29,000 military horses in the process. ↩︎
2. A Chinese name for Lake Baikal. ↩︎
3. See source 2.5. ↩︎
4. A reference to Sui Emperor Yang. ↩︎
5. See source 2.2. ↩︎
6. See source 1.6. ↩︎
7. A name for various branches of the Yellow River on the North China Plain. ↩︎
8. According to the “Yaodian” (Canon of Yao) chapter of the Documents, the Sunrise Valley—where the Yi of the seacoast dwelt—and the Dark Valley were locations where Yao stationed officials to observe the rising and setting of the sun respectively. The Huainanzi claims that the sun literally rises out of the Sunrise Valley and descends into the Dark Valley, making these the eastern and western boundaries of that part of the world that was lit by the sun. The early Han dictionary Erya identifies the land of Guzhu and the land where doors face northwards toward the sun (beihu) as the northern and southern limits of the world. According to the encyclopedia Gujin zhu (Commentary on Ancient and Modern Things) by Cui Bao (fl. 290–306 CE), the red border was thus named because red was the color cosmologically associated with the south, while the purple wall was the Qin-Han Great Wall, reputed to have been built from purplish soil. According to the Hanshu chapter on the Western Regions, the joined rivers were two branches of a river that surrounded the capital city of the Jushi kingdom in the Turpan Basin, hence its name “the City of the Joined Rivers” (jiaohe cheng). The ruins of the city still stand today and are indeed located on a narrow, leaf-shaped plateau between two branches of a river. ↩︎
9. This division of the barbarians into thirty kinds is taken from the Erya dictionary, which calls them “[the people of] the four seas” (si hai). ↩︎