In this passage from a commentary on the Zuozhuan, the Southern Song Neo-Confucian Lü Zuqian (1137-1181) reinterprets the story of Xin You’s prophecy (see source 1.2) in ethnocentric moralist terms, reading the adoption of barbarian customs as merely a visible symptom of a Chinese heart’s invisible descent into moral barbarism. Lü argues, perhaps building on Cheng Yi’s theory of history (see source 3.5), that all barbarian migrations or incursions into the Central Lands are a result of barbarians being attracted in by barbaric (i.e., immoral) hearts already existing among the Chinese.

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Things [that are alike] attract one another faster than wind and rain. There are Hua people who live in a barbarian (Yi) land, like [the Zhou ancestor] Lord Liu bringing good governance to Bin.¹ As a Hua person, he drew Hua [people] to him, and as quickly as turning on one’s heels, kings Wen and Wu arose and founded a kingdom. There are barbarian people who live in the Hua lands, like the [Later] Jin emperor (Shi Jingtang, r. 936-942) who sent tribute [to the Kitan Liao empire].² As a barbarian, he drew barbarians to himself, and as quickly as turning on one’s heels, there came captivity under the Yelü [ruling clan of Liao].³ From this we know that those who reside among the barbarians but are Hua will surely change a barbarian [land] into a Hua [land], while those who reside among the Hua but are barbarians will surely change a Hua [land] into a barbarian [land]. When things attract one another, it is always because they are of the same kind.

As soon as Xin You saw someone making a sacrifice with his hair untied, he predicted a hundred years in advance that [the Yi and Luo rivers] would become [a land] of the Rong. As he had predicted, [the states of] Qin and Jin did resettle the [Rong of] Luhun there, but there is a good reason for this. It is hearts (xin)⁴ alone that can harmonize with one another a hundred generations apart; it is qi alone that can form a connection between things a hundred li apart. The people of the Yi and Luo rivers dwelt in the Central Lands of the Hua, the land of civilizing teachings and ritual institutions, yet they made sacrifices with their hair untied. They had already directed their thoughts to distant lands and impassable deserts and beyond. Therefore, when their hearts were resonating with [Rong] hearts and their qi was stirring [Rong] qi, how could the resettlement of the [Rong of] Luhun not have ensued? When there is a marsh, rainwater will naturally flow into it; when there is odorous mutton, mole crickets and ants will naturally swarm to it; when one follows the customs of barbarians, barbarians will naturally come. It was not any other method that enabled Xin You to predict this a hundred years in advance.

Yet I believe [Xin You] did not go far enough when he said, “Within a hundred years, this probably will be a land of the Rong!” Good and evil are not fixed positions, and “Hua” and “barbarian” are not fixed identities (literally “names”). As soon as one abandons ritual propriety and moral duty, one becomes a barbarian as quickly as turning on one’s heels. At the moment when [the people of the Yi and Luo rivers] were making sacrifices in the wilderness with their hair untied, they most certainly were already Rong. What need was there to wait for a hundred years before they could become Rong? Before the [Rong of] Luhun were resettled [along the Yi and Luo Rivers], [the people of that area] were barbarians in their hearts; after the [Rong of] Luhun were resettled, [the people of the Yi and Luo Rivers] also became barbarians in physical form. People wrongly take the resettlement of the [Rong of] Luhun by [the states of] Qin and Jin to be the beginning of [barbarians] bringing disorder to the Hua, not knowing that the [people of the] Yi and Luo rivers had been Rong for a long time by then—what need was there for them to dress in felt and fur, live in yurts, and babble in a foreign tongue before they could be called Rong? Nineteen years spent digging up marmots [for food] and herding sheep on the shores of Lake Baikal did not change Su Wu’s Han [identity] in the slightest; Li Chengqian never left the Tang imperial palace, but he was already a pure Türk.⁵ There is nothing under heaven more frightening than the barbarians in our hearts; barbarians from remote lands only come second to that.

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1. Lord Liu (Gongliu) was a legendary ancestor of the Zhou kings who moved the Zhou people to Bin, an area situated among the Rong and Di peoples, during the waning years of the Xia dynasty. ↩︎
2. Shi Jingtang had Turkic ancestry as a member of the Shatuo people, but his surname may indicate descent from Sogdians who joined the Shatuo. ↩︎
3. In fact, it was his son Shi Chonggui (r. 942-947) who was taken prisoner by an invading Liao army in 947, after deciding to stop paying tribute to the Liao emperor. ↩︎
4. In Chinese thought, the heart is the seat of both the emotions and moral reasoning; xin is thus often translated as “mind-heart” or “heart-mind” (see also source 3.2). ↩︎
5. Su Wu (140–60 BCE) was a Western Han envoy to the Xiongnu who was held captive for nineteen years at Lake Baikal for refusing to serve the Xiongnu ruler. According to Song-period sources, Tang emperor Taizong’s first heir apparent Li Chengqian (ca. 619–645) enthusiastically emulated the culture of the Türks and dreamed of living on the steppe. He was stripped of his position and sent into exile in 643 after being accused of plotting to overthrow Taizong. ↩︎