For information on the Zhoushu, see source 2.10.

The passage below is from the ethnographic chapters of the Zhoushu and concerns peoples known to the Chinese as Lao 獠, a name probably derived from *k(ə)ra:w, the word for “human being” in early Austro-Asiatic languages. Although the label Lao was later also applied to peoples of the Guangxi-Guangdong frontier, the original referents were inhabitants of the mountains of southwestern Shaanxi and western Sichuan. When, in 551-553, the Western Wei state expanded south by conquering Hanzhong and Sichuan, it began attempting to subdue the Lao communities, a project continued by its successor the Northern Zhou (557-581).

Noteworthy aspects of this description of the Lao include the pervasiveness of violence and slavery in Lao society, the complex mixture of exploitation, oppression, resistance, co-optation, and acculturation in their relations with the imperial state, and the historian’s contemptuous attitude toward their way of life, which he likens to a state of ignorant animality.

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The Lao are probably an offshoot (biezhong 別種) of the southern Man. They live along rivers and in caverns in every area between Hanzhong and Qiong-Zuo.¹ By custom, they mostly do not use surnames or names. When they have sons and daughters, they just call them by the order of birth. For example, some men are called Amo and Aduan, and some women are called Ayi and Adeng, and these are all terms for the order of birth in their language.² When happy, they congregate together; when angry, they kill one another and will even turn their swords on their own fathers, sons, and brothers. They kidnap and sell one another, not sparing their own kin. When one being sold cries out and refuses to submit, and flees and hides, they point out the hiding place to the buyer and pursue and capture the victim, as if hunting down a fugitive criminal. Upon recapturing the victim, they bind him up, and as long as he has been bound, he accepts his lot of slavery and no longer dares claim to be free. By custom, they fear ghosts and gods and are especially given to strange rites and shamans. When they have sold off all their brothers, wives, and children, they will even sell themselves to pay for offerings to their gods. They usually elect one of their chiefs as king, but their kings are unable to exert control over a great distance.³

From the lower Yangzi region and the Central Provinces (the North China Plain) to Ba-Shu (Sichuan), most of [the Lao] rely on inaccessible terrain and have not submitted to imperial rule. After Taizu (Yuwen Tai, 505-556) conquered the Liang (Hanzhong) and Yi (Sichuan) regions, he ordered that they be gently induced to submit wherever they lived.⁴ Those who live mixed with Hua subjects generally pay taxes and serve corvée. However, they are violent and rebellious by nature and are easily provoked to unrest. Every year, orders are issued to prefectures and garrisons near their homes to send troops to attack them, capturing some to be used as slaves. This is called “suppressing the Lao” (yao Lao 壓獠). Later, when merchants pass through the area, they buy up the slaves as goods. Thus, many families, from the officials down to commoners, own Lao slaves.

In the third year of [Western] Wei Emperor Gong (556), the Mulong (Wooden Cage) Lao of Lingzhou (Renshou county, Sichuan) rebelled. An edict was issued ordering Marshal Lu Teng to attack and defeat them. He captured and killed fifteen thousand. In the second year of the Baoding era (562), the Lao of Tieshan (the Iron Mountains) rebelled and raided and cut off the [Nei]jiang road.⁵ Lu Teng again attacked them and captured three of their forts. He took three thousand prisoners and received the surrender of thirty-thousand settlements of their kind. Details can be found in Lu Teng’s biography.⁶

In the third year of the Tianhe era (568), the Hengling Lao of Liangzhou (Hanzhong) rebelled, and Zhao Wenbiao, the Chief Clerk to the Regional Military Supervisor [of Liangzhou], led an attack on them. When the army advanced to Bazhou (Bazhong, Sichuan), Wenbiao wanted to lead the troops in a direct attack. His staff officers said, “These Lao have held out for a long time and their forces are very strong. In punitive expeditions against them, we always attack from all four sides to divide their strength. If we now attack directly without any flanking movements, we fear that they will combine all their forces against us, making victory impossible to achieve.”

Wenbiao said, “Since we could not overcome them in the past, we should now adopt a different approach. If we attack them from all four sides, then the Lao will have no escape route and will naturally all fight to the death. If we attack via one route only, then we can display our might and our generosity at the same time, while sending envoys to reason with them. Those who persist in evildoing will be attacked, while those who return to goodness (i.e., surrender) will be treated well. With such a clear difference in treatment for the good and the evil, it will be easy to manage them. One should always be flexible when circumstances change; why stick blindly to past precedent?” Wenbiao then conveyed this plan to the whole army.

At that time, there was a Cooked Lao in the army who was well-acquainted with many of the Hengling Lao and therefore reported the plan to them.⁷ The Hengling Lao gathered to discuss the situation, and when they were still undecided on their response, Wenbiao’s army had already arrived in their territory. There were two roads in the Lao area: one that was relatively level, and one that was extremely mountainous. Before long, several of the Raw Lao chiefs came to see Wenbiao and said, “We fear that the imperial army is unfamiliar with our mountains and rivers, and so are volunteering to serve you as guides.” Wenbiao told them, “This road is broad and level, so I do not need guides. I would like you to go back and mollify your young men.” He then sent them away. Wenbiao told his troops, “A Lao chief once told me that if I take the broad road, there will surely be an ambush. If I take the mountainous road, I can catch them by surprise, and the Lao forces will disperse on their own accord.” He therefore led his army to advance via the mountainous road, repairing any part of it that was impassable. Having scaled the heights, they looked down and saw the Lao troops lying in ambush. The Lao strategy having been foiled, they scrambled to take their wives and children and retreat to inaccessible high ground. Wenbiao stationed his army at the foot of Mount Dapeng and engaged in negotiations; the Lao then came to surrender one after another. Wenbiao treated them all generously, and although he still levied taxes on them, none dared to resist. Later, Wenbiao was appointed prefect of Pengzhou and had great success in maintaining peaceful relations with the Lao.⁸

At the beginning of the Jiande era (572), Li Hui was Regional Military Supervisor of Liangzhou, and the Lao groups all submitted to him as well.⁹ However, their clans and chiefdoms (zhonglei 種類) have proliferated and spread widely, holding out on cliffs and in gullies, crossing forests and inaccessible terrain as though walking on level ground. Even though we have repeatedly sent armies against them, it is impossible to conquer them all. Moreover, they are ignorant by nature, being no different from animals. Among all the barbarians (Yi), they are the hardest to win over using moral suasion.

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1. Qiong-Zuo (an abbreviation of “Qiongdu and Zuodu”) was a region of Sichuan corresponding to Hanyuan county and Xichang. The area extending from Hanzhong to Qiong-Zuo consisted of the mountains to the north, west, and southwest of the Sichuan Basin. ↩︎
2. The received text reads Adi 阿第 not Adeng 阿等 but several later sources read Adeng, suggesting a scribal error during transmission of the Zhoushu. ↩︎
3. The Beishi (History of the Northern Dynasties), a slightly later work, duplicates much of this description of the Lao, but adds numerous interesting details or claims. These include:
   a. The Lao live in stilt houses under trees, called ganlan 幹闌, which vary in size depending on the size of the household.
   b. They practice hereditary succession for chiefs, “like the noble clans (guizu) of the Central Lands.”
   c. Every Lao king has a drum and a horn, which he allows his followers to use.
   d. They like killing each other and so do not dare to travel far from home, for fear of being waylaid and killed.
   e. They can dive to the bottom of rivers with knives to spear fish.
   f. They can drink with their noses while chewing food with their mouths (this trope about southern indigenous peoples goes back to the Han period; see source 2.4).
   g. They bury their dead in coffins placed in the ground vertically.
   h. If a son kills his father, he goes into hiding and finds a dog to use as compensation, after which he no longer bears any blame.
   i. When they kill someone over a grudge, they eat his body.
   j. When their children are enslaved, they wail for them once and then cease to miss them.
   k. They use spears and shields as weapons but do not practice archery.
   l. They use bamboo to make reed instruments.
   m. They make thin cloth dyed in bright colors.
   n. They use one large dog as payment for one slave.
   o. When they kill a man who has a full beard, they remove his facial skin, mount it on bamboo, and dry it. They call this a ghost (gui 鬼) and make offerings to it to pray for blessings, with drumming and dancing as part of the ritual. ↩︎
4. Yuwen Tai was the powerful regent of the Western Wei state (535-557) whose sons founded Northern Zhou after his death. In 551-553, taking advantage of a civil war in the southern Liang dynasty, the Western Wei invaded the Liang and conquered Hanzhong and Sichuan. ↩︎
5. Tieshan was an iron-producing mountainous area between Leshan, Zigong, and Neijiang, Sichuan. The text reads “Jiang (river) road,” which is ambiguous, but Lu Teng’s Zhoushu biography reads “Neijiang road,” indicating a transportation route running through Neijiang and probably connecting Chengdu with the Yangzi River. ↩︎
6. Lu Teng (d. 578) was a high-ranking Western Wei/Northern Zhou general with the titles of Great General of Swift Cavalry (驃騎大將軍 piaoqi da jiangjun) and Marshal (kaifu yitong sansi 開府儀同三司). His Zhoushu biography contains the following descriptions of his cunning tactics:
   
   “The Mulong (Wooden Cage) Lao of Lingzhou relied on inaccessible terrain to engage in brutal violence, frequently coming out to raid and pillage. An edict was issued ordering Lu Teng to attack them. The Lao had built a fort in the mountains that was impossible to take by storm. Lu Teng therefore held performances of music and acrobatics beneath the walls of the fort, making a show of having no desire for battle. As he had predicted, the bandits put down their weapons, and some even brought their wives and children onto the ramparts to watch the performances. Lu Teng, knowing they were now unprepared, secretly ordered his troops to move in at once. The bandits panicked and did not know how to respond. He then unleashed the troops to attack and routed them, beheading ten thousand and capturing five thousand….”
   
   “That year (562) , the Lao of Tieshan (the Iron Mountains) raided and cut off the Neijiang road, such that envoys and couriers could not get through. Lu Teng led his army to attack them. He was about to reach Tieshan but engaged in a feigned withdrawal. The bandits did not recognize his deception and thus let down their guard. Lu Teng then launched a surprise attack and they collapsed in a rout. In one day, he captured three of their forts, beheaded their chiefs, took three thousand prisoners, and received the surrender of thirty-thousand households.”
   
   Like Liu Yuanjing and Shen Qingzhi (see source 5.4), Lu Teng evidently recognized that the best way to overcome the indigenous peoples’ advantage in terrain was to break their morale using surprise and deception. Lacking a centralized command system, they did not have the means to adapt quickly to a sudden change in tactics without losing cohesion and discipline. However, Lu Teng was not above using more brutal methods to break indigenous morale. In 566, he was placed in overall command of an expedition to suppress a large rebel coalition of Man that had seized the Yangzi gorges at Xinzhou (Fengjie, Chongqing) and constructed a dense network of mountain forts. Through a combination of relentless campaigning and wily strategy (including inducing the defection of rebel chiefs through bribery), Lu defeated the Man and overran their forts. He then beheaded more than ten thousand Man, including the rebel leaders and their sons, and piled up their bodies into a mound beside one of the forts, which gradually became a grisly massive heap of skeletons. The Zhoushu account notes: “Later, whenever the Man-Dan 蠻蜑 saw it, they would burst into wailing and tears. From then on, the wolfish savagery of their hearts came to an end.” ↩︎
7. From the early medieval period onward, imperial Chinese frontier officials often divided frontier peoples into Raw (sheng 生) and Cooked (shu 熟) categories. The Raw communities were entirely independent from imperial rule, while the Cooked had submitted in some form, such as paying taxes or tribute to the imperial state. ↩︎
8. Pengzhou was a new prefecture created in 569 to govern the Lao of Mount Dapeng, with its capital at modern Yingshan county, Sichuan. ↩︎
9. Li Hui was one of the highest-ranking generals in the Northern Zhou army. His Zhoushu biography states, “At that time, the Raw Lao of Quzhou (Qu county, Sichuan) and Pengzhou had engaged in violent raiding for years on end. When Li Hui arrived in the prefecture (Liangzhou), he conciliated them peacefully, and they all came to submit.” ↩︎