“CHINA” IN MING OFFICIAL WORLDVIEW AND STATE POLICIES

The fallacy of the “monolithic Han China/China” during the Ming is evinced forcefully in the values and policies of the Ming ruling elite regarding China and “barbarian” domains in the empire and non-Han agencies in preserving their non-Chinese identities. In Chinese history, the phrase “Zhongguo” appeared as early as the mid-eleventh century BCE, in the early Zhou Dynasty (1046?–256 BCE).Footnote ³³ Since then, the concept had developed into a variety of meanings, including the capital city, the royal domain, the Central Plains, political regimes, and ethnocultural space.Footnote ³⁴ During Ming times, the ruling elite also made enormous efforts to create boundary lines for their Han ruling house, especially the definition and demarcation of “China.” In the early Ming, for example, during the process of overthrowing the Mongol regime, the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang proclaimed his representation of “the people of China” and his mission to “expel barbarians and restore Zhonghua” (quzhu dalu huifu Zhonghua 驅逐韃虜恢復中華), and to make the Chinese people live in peace as Chinese persons (Zhongguo zhi min tian biming Zhongguo zhi ren yi anzhi 中國之民天必命中國之人以安之).Footnote ³⁵ As a critical concept in political discourse, “China” provided the ruling elite with a profound source of legitimacy, and became a rallying force for engaging in sociocultural reforms and forming a new imperial identity.Footnote ³⁶ But what did the Ming mean by “China”?

Throughout the dynasty, the Ming government used the term “China” differently for two different audiences: foreign countries, and domestic groups (discussed below). Addressing foreign countries in diplomatic documents, the Ming court often “instructed” them to serve “China.”Footnote ³⁷ When present-day scholars assume a monolithic cultural identity of the Ming and equate the Ming Empire to China, they tend to base their assumptions on such uses of the term.Footnote ³⁸ Nevertheless, although the Ming seemed to have envisioned “China” equivalent to the Ming government/Empire in those diplomatic communications, in actuality what they asserted was a China as a “civilized” place of the Han people and values as distinct from “barbarians,” rather than their country.

Let us take some official exchanges between the Ming court and Japanese authorities as an example.

In the second year of the Hongwu reign (1369), Zhu Yuanzhang had an imperial letter delivered to the king of Japan:

The next year, because Japanese pirate harassments continued, Zhu Yuanzhang again sent an imperial proclamation to Kanekana to instruct him of “Chinese” power and virtue:Footnote ⁴⁰

Facing the blame of failing to serve as a loyal vassal, Kanekana responded:

The Ming envoy refuted this: “The Son of Heaven of our Great Ming is sacred with civil virtue and military power! He cannot be compared to the Mongols!” Footnote ⁴²

In 1381, when reprimanded again by the Ming court, the Japanese authorities replied with a more resolute “Letter to the Hongwu Empire [sic] of the Great Ming” (Zhi Da Ming Hongwu diguo shu 致大明洪武帝國書):

These passages are quoted at length because they illustrate some shared understandings between the Ming and foreign governments about “China.” First, “China” was a common and loose name for a civilization rather than a proper name for a country. It was exchangeable with other names such as “Zhonghua,” “Zhongxia,” “Huaxia,” “zhongtu,” and “Zhongyuan” (as seen, for examples, in the phrases of the “ruler of Zhongguo,” the “emperor of Zhongxia” and “the sovereign of Zhonghua”). The proper name that specifically indicated the country was the “Great Ming” (as the Ming envoy declared). All these were shared in the Ming and Japanese communications. Second, “China” was a general cultural and historical heritage rather than the newly founded Ming Empire. To the Ming, China had existed since antiquity, and been held by the Han people until the Song dynasty. By recovering it from foreign invaders, the Ming only inherited it from previous generations (rather than creating it). For the Japanese, they had “admired China” prior to the Mongol conquest, and they also viewed the Mongols as the “barbarians” who illegitimately seized China. They urged the Ming to continue the Chinese virtues and benevolence that had been handed down from the sage kings in ancient times. Third, “China” was a space rather than the Ming political regime or state. People could hold or lose it, enter or get expelled from it. Political regimes such as dynasties rose and fell, got created and destroyed, but China as a space was always there, waiting to get seized, occupied, reformed, and redefined. Fourth, this space was ethnocultural in nature. The Ming had the right to reclaim it simply because the ruling house and the residents were Han and they upheld a cultural mission to cleanse the Mongol “barbarian pollution” so as to purify this Han society. And finally, “China” and outsiders constituted a hierarchical relationship, one between lord and vassal, civilization and barbarism, and center and periphery. One can sense a set of meanings of China in these communications. Often when the Ming court communicated with foreign countries using the “China” discourse, they did not use the term to designate the Ming state or Empire; instead, they only pointed to an ethnocultural space that was transmitted from ancient sage kings against “barbarians,” and was or should be held by the Han inhabitants. While this “ethnocultural China” was mostly articulated from the Ming perspective, it was often shared by Ming's foreign counterparts, at least in some of their official communications.

Indeed, China's neighbors, especially the so-called Confucian countries of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, not only dealt with (accepted, resisted, or negotiated) the Chinese claims of cultural centrality and superiority, but also employed the discourse of “China” and “Hua-yi distinction” to construct their own world order. Prior to the twentieth-century, these countries intended to view themselves as “China” as well, and structured and practiced their relations with other regions accordingly. In Japan, as early as 740, the official Fujiwara no Hirotsugu 藤原広嗣 at the Nara court memorialized the emperor, arguing for the differentiation of Japan's own “civilized China” (Zhongguo 中國) and the “barbarian” Emishi/Ezo 蝦夷 in the north and Hayato 隼人 in the west.Footnote ⁴⁴ In some other early Japanese historical texts, such as Chronicles of Japan, Continued (Shoku Nihongi, 續日本紀, 797),Footnote ⁴⁵ Later Chronicle of Japan (Nihon Koki, 日本後記, 840),Footnote ⁴⁶ and Collected Commentaries of the Statutes (Ryo no shuge 令集解, late ninth century),Footnote ⁴⁷ the terms China 中國, Huaxia 華夏, Zhongzhou 中州 and Hua 華 are often used to designate the centrality of Japanese authority against surrounding “barbarians,” facilitating the formation of the ideology and institution of emperorship. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in the wake of the Ming-Qing transition in China, the Japanese scholarly elite maintained that the Manchu Qing regime destroyed Chinese civilization on the mainland; it was Japan that took the status of China and continued the civilization.Footnote ⁴⁸ Viewing Japan as “Hua” and emphasizing the “Hua-yi distinction” were still the official mentality in the Meiji era (1868–1912). In 1871, when Japan and the Qing governments negotiated the Sino-Japanese Friendship and Trade Treaty (Zhong-Ri xiuhao tiaogui 中日修好條規 in Chinese, or Nisshin shukō jōki 日清修好條規 in Japanese), the Japanese caused a controversy: they insisted that the Qing government use “Qing” instead of “China” in the treaty title. They argued that “China referred to a ‘self’ [central] country versus [“barbarian”] frontiers and remote regions” (Zhongguo xi dui jibang bianjiang huangfu eryan 中國系對己邦邊疆荒服而言); after the Manchus replaced the Ming, “China” was dead in China, so only “Qing” could be used in the title! As a result, while “China” was used in the Chinese version of the treaty, “Da Qing” appeared in its Japanese version.Footnote ⁴⁹

Korea's Choson dynasty (1392–1910) also witnessed a development of the conviction that China was a civilization and that Korea could obtain that status as well. At the court of King Seongjong 成宗 (1457–95; r. 1469–94), which was profoundly influenced and transformed by Chinese customs, Korea was called the “Small China” (Sojunghua 小中華),.Footnote ⁵⁰ When the Qing replaced the Ming, the Korean scholars also believed that China had died on the mainland. In other words, after the “barbarian” Manchus’ regime destroyed civilization, the place where the former Ming occupied ceased to be Chunghwa, and the Qing dynasty did not belong to Chunghwa anymore. To the Korean cultural elite, Chunghwa in essence meant civilization, and every place could become “China” as long as it absorbed the Confucian traditions. It was Korea, therefore, that continued the Chinese cultural values and practices and thus inherited status of China.Footnote ⁵¹

After becoming independent in the tenth century, Vietnam also strongly valued the concepts of “China” (Trung Qu 中國) and the “Hoa-di 華夷 distinction.” In the Vietnamese version of “Sinocentrism,” “China” and “Hoa” both referred to Vietnam, and di, their neighboring regions. In Vietnamese history, the self-appellation of “China” can be traced at least back to 1300, when Emperor Anh Tông 英宗 (1276–1320; r. 1293–1314) of the Trần 陳 dynasty (1235–1400) urged his generals to fight against “barbarians” (yi) for “China.” After Vietnam regained independence from the Ming occupation (1407–27), its self-identification as China became stronger. According to the Complete Book of the Historical Records of Đại Việt (Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư, or Daietsu shiki zensho 大越史記全書, 1479–1697) and other historical records, the Later Le 後黎 dynasty's court (1428–1788) repeatedly lauded its Chinese centrality and values and denounced outer “barbarians,” be they the Ming in the north, Champa 占城 in the south, or Ailao 哀牢 in the west.Footnote ⁵² During Vietnam's last dynasty, the Nguyen 阮 dynasty (1802–1945), its founder Nguyen Phuc Anh 阮福暎 (1762–1820; r. 1802–20 as the Gia Long emperor), not only called Vietnam “China” (Trung Quố), but emphasized “Han-barbarian distinction” (Hán di hữu hạn 漢夷有限), calling the Vietnamese “Han people” (“Hán nhân” 漢人) and Han Chinese “the Qing people” (Thanh nhân 清人).Footnote ⁵³ In so doing, as Alexander Woodside puts it, “[t]he conventional Chinese term for China thus became, in Vietnamese hands, an abstraction devoid of any geographic reference. It changed into a phrase capable of being used to refer to any kingdom, founded upon the principles of the Chinese classics, which felt itself surrounded by unread barbarians.”Footnote ⁵⁴ In fact, the meaning of the term China did not really change in the Vietnamese context. Even in Chinese history, the name in essence referred to a central cultural place, which could be claimed by different regimes over time (as seen in consecutive “Chinese” dynasties) and space (as claimed simultaneously by the Song and Liao dynastiesFootnote ⁵⁵ ). When the Vietnamese believed that their culture was “more authentic than the northern Chinese, especially after the Mongol conquest and also when the Manchu Qing dynasty ruled China,”Footnote ⁵⁶ they readily took over the banner of “China” for their own cause.Footnote ⁵⁷

That China and the Ming were not identical is evinced more forcefully and clearly in the second kind of audience for the term, i.e. the domestic “barbarian lands” within the Ming Empire. To the Ming government, mainly because of cultural and demographical features, the non-Han “barbarians” and their territories did not belong to China, the cultural center of the realm. Indeed, when addressing its own subjects, the Ming court used “China” only to differentiate regions of Han people and non-Han “barbarians” and to exclude the latter from the Chinese domain. The late Ming official Liu Zhang 劉漳 (dates unknown), in his memorial to the imperial court, theorized China’s position in the Ming empire with a body metaphor: The imperial court was the vitals; China, the body; and frontiers, the four limbs. To pacify the realm, all the three sectors should be invigorated.Footnote ⁵⁸ Differing from the frontier regions where most non-Han ethnic groups resided, China served as an essential protective screen for the court.

Let us again look at some specific cases where “China” and “barbarians” were treated differently within the Ming Empire.

Guangdong: In the mid- and late Ming, four non-Han communities living in the mountains in Qinzhou 欽州 not only practiced “barbarian customs” (yifeng 夷風) and rejected Han law (Hanfa 漢法), but revolted against the Ming and joined Annam during the Xuande reign (1426–35). The Ming did not recover the region into the “domain” (bantu 版圖) until 1542, more than one hundred years after the loss of the territory. In order to stabilize the area, in 1610, the former Minister of War Dai Yao 戴燿 (1542–1628) suggested that aboriginal offices be established so that local people would control themselves. By doing this, Dai hoped, the court would prevent “evil persons of China” (Zhongguo jianmin 中國奸民, i.e., Han criminals) from seeking to serve as tribal heads to stir up trouble.Footnote ⁵⁹ To Dai, clearly, non-Han communities were separated from China.

Guangxi: In 1527, when the imperial court deliberated on filling the post of Regional Commander of Liangguang,Footnote ⁶⁰ the Grand Secretary Yang Yiqing 楊一清 (1454–1530) emphasized that the position should be granted to a high-ranking and prestigious official; otherwise, the rebellious “barbarians along the borders” (bianyi 邊夷) in Tianzhou and Sien would not take China seriously.Footnote ⁶¹ Yang pointed to the confrontation between China and non-Han areas.

Sichuan: In 1586, the Ming central government rewarded Vice Surveillance Commissioner of Sichuan Zhou Jiamo 周嘉謨 (1546–1629) for his achievements in suppressing the “barbarian” revolts in Baicao, Songpan, and Maozhou. The Ministry of War further instructed the Sichuan government to incorporate the “surrendered barbarians” into the Ming's jurisdiction (banji 版籍) but not to accept their tributes because the essence of China’s rule over “external barbarians” (waiyi 外夷) lay in the subjugation of their wills rather than the acquisition of their goods.Footnote ⁶² Here, entering the Ming's jurisdiction would not automatically change the “barbarian” nature of the locale, which remained “external” to China.

Yunnan: In 1582, Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng 張居正 (1525–82) memorialized the throne, opposing the levy of gold in Yunnan in part because Yunnan had not entered the “domain” until the Ming dynasty and the “barbarian Lolo” (Yiluo 夷猓) had no history of paying taxes in cash or in kind; the levy might cause them—especially those in Longchuan and Mubang—to rebel, which would in turn make China waste financial resources to pacify the areas.Footnote ⁶³ To Zhang, entering the “domain” of the Ming Empire did not necessarily mean becoming part of China.

Guizhou: In the early Ming, when the Commissioner of the Guizhou Pacification Office, Aicui 靄翠, petitioned the court to send Han troops to attack other local aboriginal forces, Zhu Yuanzhang declined: “How could China’s troops be used as tools of revenge among ‘external barbarians’ (waiyi 外夷) [i.e. the “barbarians” outside China]?!”Footnote ⁶⁴ The emperor clearly treated the non-Han groups inside the empire as “outside”/non-Chinese forces.

The government's different treatment of China and “barbarian” areas in the empire is most vividly evinced in the stance and policies of the imperial court in handling the Azhe 阿哲 patriclan in Guizhou.Footnote ⁶⁵ The Azhe clan had ruled over northwest Guizhou for centuries. In the early Ming, they accepted both the title of Pacification Commissioner of Guizhou and the Chinese surname of “An” 安 bestowed by the Hongwu emperor.Footnote ⁶⁶ From 1570–77, the fourteenth Pacification Commissioner, An Guoheng 安國亨, killed a former leader's son; the victim's brother An Zhi 安智 then accused Guoheng of rebellion before the imperial court. The court responded by sending a military expedition against An Guoheng. The Grand Secretary Gao Gong 高拱 (1512–78), however, did not see it a wise idea for the court to intervene directly. His basic standpoint was that the homicide committed by Guoheng was “a mutual killing among barbarians,” which was different from the act inside China. Since these “barbarians” were “not our kind” (fei wo zulei 非我族類), although Guoheng committed a crime, sending out troops to fight was not the right way of “driving out the barbarians and bringing peace to China.” After all, Gao asserted, the disorder between the Ans was “their family matter” (bi zhi jiashi 彼之家事), which differed from “rebellion.” So Gao strongly opposed “expending the financial resources and employing the manpower of China’s people to exterminate the aboriginal barbarians who engaged in mutual killing but dared not to offend us.” Eventually, despite the loss of some troops, the Ming court pardoned Guoheng on the condition that he compensate the government for grain and properly settle with the victim's mother and brother.Footnote ⁶⁷

Some twenty years later, in 1599, after An Guoheng's son Jiangchen 疆臣 inherited the title of Pacification Commissioner, the new leader was again accused by the Ming authorities of murdering his rival tribesman An Ding 安定. Song Xingzu 宋興祖, the Regional Inspector for Guizhou, found the prosecution equally ill-grounded. For one thing, Jiangchen had been loyal to China. More importantly, the crime committed among the “barbarians” had nothing to do with China. Therefore, Song urged, the case should not be judged by Han law (Hanfa), and the prisoners should be released, so that the local people would not be agitated.Footnote ⁶⁸

By that time, Yang Yinglong 楊應龍 (d. 1600), the Miao leader at Bozhou 播州, Sichuan, was launching serious military attacks against the Ming forces. The Ming court then pardoned Jiangchen so that he could “render meritorious service” by fighting Yang. Guo Zizhang 郭子章 (1543–1618), the Grand Coordinator of Guizhou, even promised Jiangchen that his former land that had been seized by Yang would be returned after Yang was suppressed. And Guo did keep his promise, allowing Jiangchen to “separate the land” (lietu 裂土) and “recover his former territory” (fanduo qi gudi 反奪其故地). Guo's rationale was again to make non-Han groups outside China attack each other: “It is a normal state for aboriginal leaders to kill each other in revenge; and it is beneficial to China if barbarians attack each other. When the barbarians in Sichuan attack Guizhou, if [the Han government in] Guizhou then fights Sichuan for the barbarians in Guizhou, it is to exhaust China for the benefit of barbarians.” After heated debates at the imperial court, the Ming eventually not only allowed Jiangchen to keep the land, but also raised his official rank.Footnote ⁶⁹ The unfolding of these stories in Guizhou illustrates the Ming official vision of the empire: it differentiated China from the “barbarian” regions, which often led to the adoption of pragmatic and even hands-off measures towards the “barbarian” peoples.

The Ming government consolidated this worldview with political and sociocultural mechanisms on the southwestern borderlands. First, continuing the Yuan legacy, the Ming adopted the “aboriginal office” (tusi 土司) system in governing aboriginal peoples outside China.Footnote ⁷⁰ A part of the “loose-rein” (jimi 羈縻) policy of the Ming court,Footnote ⁷¹ this system incorporated the unassimilated “barbarians” into the Chinese empire by granting tribal chiefs official titles and leaving them with considerable authority over their local people. The Ming court, meanwhile, stationed military forces to maintain order and resist aggressions, and demanded tribute and taxes from local peoples.Footnote ⁷² In addition, the Ming established an elaborate “tributary system” (chaogong 朝貢). Only regimes outside China were “required” to pay tribute to the Ming court. In the process—at least in the ideal Ming order—the tributary entities would present various materials and acknowledge the superiority of the Ming court (representing China); whereas the Ming court would then return gifts and confer relevant titles and positions on their chiefs. The institution identified aboriginal offices inside the Ming with foreign countries (fanguo ji siyi tuguan 番國及四夷土官)—these “outsiders” in turn defined where and what China was.Footnote ⁷³ Furthermore, in the Ming official literary practice, the words of “man 蠻” and “yi 夷” (lit. barbarians) were only used for non-Chinese peoples. People of China, no matter how “evil” or “ugly” the state perceived them as being, would not be considered “barbarians.” Indeed, as attested in the aforementioned memorial by Zhou Hongmo, although bandits caused unrest and refugees were likely to make troubles in the Han domain, they were still “Chinese” rather than “barbarian” problems. The location of the events defined the nature of their crimes.Footnote ⁷⁴ These values and institutions strengthened the perceived differences between China and other parts of the Ming realm.

In short, the perusal of the use of “China” in Ming documents addressed to both types of audience (China vs. foreign countries, mostly in diplomatic documents, and China vs. “barbarian” areas within the Ming Empire) indicates that the Ming imperial court saw China as a Han domain in contrast to non-Han “barbarians” and their cultures.Footnote ⁷⁵ At the center of the world, China represented the cosmic yang force, and “barbarians,” the yin.Footnote ⁷⁶ China was conceptualized and institutionalized solely against “barbarians,” be they foreign or domestic. In other words, “China” was different not only from foreign countries but also from regions inhabited by non-Han peoples under the Ming government. Spatially, therefore, China only constituted part of the Ming Empire, although it was deemed as the core part. Not only were foreigners excluded from it, but the non-Han socioethnic groups within the empire had no space in it either. Within the Ming empire, China (or Zhonghua, Zhongxia, or Zhongtu) and “barbarians” are separate entities, which stood against each other. Getting incorporated into the empire politically would not automatically guarantee “barbarians’” membership of China. According to this scheme, the Ming ruling elite envisioned a world as three interrelated yet distinctive domains: China, the central dominion at the center; inner “barbarian” areas, the regions around China where most of the non-Han ethnosocial groups within the empire resided; and foreign lands. And for each domain, the Ming designed different agendas: to purify Chinese people after the Mongol rule, to transform inner “barbarians,” and to guard against foreigners.Footnote ⁷⁷ This view of “China” was shared and used by China's neighboring countries that were under heavy Chinese influence: Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. According to their worldview, the Chinese regimes’ status as representatives of “China” changed from time to time: these regimes (be they Ming or Qing or any other) could be called China if they upheld the Confucian values and practices; otherwise, they turned into “barbarians.” Meanwhile, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam would each view themselves as “China” too. They could either be paired with Chinese regimes, both as representatives of “China” (albeit occasionally they might accept a lesser status); or they saw themselves as the sole agent of “China” after, in their view, the Chinese regime lost its “civilized” nature. These non-Chinese countries, in other words, also upheld a “Sinocentric” worldview. They used it, on the one hand, to deal with the discourse and claims of Chinese regimes, and on the other, constructed their own—they were the civilized “China” in the “Sino-barbarian” world order. Among the four “Confucian countries,” therefore, a common conviction developed: “China” and “hua/hwa/hoa people” were cultural concepts; political regimes could keep or lose them; and any regime might claim them, all of which depended on the values and practices that were established and maintained.

“CHINA” AS AN ETHNOCULTURAL SPACE OF THE HAN

If the Ming imperial court saw “China” as a space standing opposite to the “barbarians” (yi), both foreign and domestic, what differentiated the two (or, what constituted the basis of “China”)? And where was “China” located? It is my contention that it was the Han 漢ethnicity (i.e. the special cultural traits carried by a particular group of people in a given space) that served as the foundation of Ming “China.” In other words, “China” was an ethnocultural space of the Han: it was Han land, which the Han people inhabited, and where Han values and norms were produced, practiced, and preserved. At this point, before we move on to the specifics of the Han-China relationship and spatiality of “China” in the Ming, it should be necessary and useful to narrate a brief account of the Ming perception of “Han,” although the scope and length of this essay prevent detailed study.

In the Ming construction of its worldview and imperial order, the concept and discourse of “Han” played a critical role. After all, the dynastic building involved the central question of—in the imperial discourse—whose country it fought for and whose interest it ought to serve. At the outset, the dynastic founder Zhu Yuanzhang made clear the purpose of his uprising: he embarked on the mission to “recover our old country of the Han people and unify Zhongxia” (fu wo Hanren guguo tongyi Zhongxia 復我漢人故國統一中夏).Footnote ⁷⁸ He thus declared an unequivocal connection between the Han, China, and the imperial domain.

The Han, or Hanren, referred to a very diverse ethnosocial group of people, deriving its name from the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220CE). While it is difficult to speak to its definite origins, components, and the time when it became an “ethnic group” or “nationality” (minzu 民族), scholars tend to believe that its identity formation can be traced back to at least over four thousand years ago, when this people might have acquired the name “Xia” 夏 (lit. the grandeur of ceremonies) or “Hua” 華 (lit. the beauty of clothes and ornaments), which later were combined as Huaxia. Living in the middle and lower regions of the Yellow River drainage basin, these societies expanded to include a variety of peoples and underwent tremendous transformations. Several historical periods witnessed their critical development. In the Zhou dynasty and Warring States period (1046–221 BCE), the so-called one hundred schools of thought flourished, which not only established the country's intellectual foundation, but also laid out the blueprint for institutions and rituals and the principles of “inner-outer domains” and the “Hua-barbarian distinction.” During the Han dynasty, a number of achievements, including the long-lasting ruling house, effective government institutions, powerful imperial expansion, making Confucianism an orthodox and state ideology, and constructing the Confucian classics, all contributed to the major transformation of the group identity, such as the name “Han” and fundamental values and practices. In the period of disunity (220–589 CE), “Han” became the self-appellation of the diverse group; the group was further integrated with other ethnosocial groups, particularly the so-called Hu 胡 barbarians in the north and various Man 蠻 barbarians in the south; and non-Han cultures—particularly Buddhism—were absorbed as part of Han civilization. By the Tang (618–906) and Song (960–1279) eras, the concept of “Han” as an ethnosocial group with “superior” cultural traits had been firmly established in official discourse. Even during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), when the imperial course divided the subjects into northern “Hanren” 漢人 and southern “Nanren” 南人 (southerner, or “Manzi” 蠻子, “barbarians”) according to political history, the imperial court tended to view them as the same “ethnic” group in terms of language and customs.Footnote ⁷⁹

The Ming was another critical time period for the formation of the “Han” ethnicity after overthrowing the alien Mongol regime. In the early Ming, the imperial court already explicitly and purposefully defined the “Han” as a special category of people. The founder Zhu Yuanzhang's proclamation of his mission to recover the Han people's old country from the Mongols both defined the nature of the empire and signified the ethnic category of the “Han.” The imperial court viewed and treated “Hanren” as a special “kind” (zhonglei 種類) that differed from various “barbarians” (named, in Chinese, “fan” 番, “yidi” 夷狄, “man”蠻, or “hulu” 胡虜, etc.). Along the western borderlands, civilians were divided into fan 番 and Han 漢.Footnote ⁸⁰ If fanren stole Hanren’s property, they could be pardoned on the basis of “ignorance” of the law.Footnote ⁸¹ In the northwest and north, Hanren were often attacked and captured by “da bandits” (dazei 達賊) or “hu barbarians” (hulu 胡虜).Footnote ⁸² In the southwest, when the “Miao” peoples rebelled, the Han and tu and da troops would form combined forces to suppress the unrest.Footnote ⁸³ In the northeast, Hanren and Jurchen (Nüzhi 女直) criminals tended to flee to Korea and thus presented some threats to the Ming order.Footnote ⁸⁴ And in less peripheral areas, such as Zhejiang, Hanren were often bribed by the “surrendered hu ” (guifu huren 归附胡人) to fraudulently take provisions and funds.Footnote ⁸⁵ Across the empire, therefore, “Hanren” and other ethno-social groups were perceived as different kinds of subjects.

In the eyes of the Ming ruling elite, what differentiated Han and others was a set of fundamental cultural traits. Han people spoke a unique language—“Han language” (Hanyu 漢語), which was considered to be a major carrier of the Han civilization and superior to and more beautiful than the “barbarian” languages such as “fanyu” 番語.Footnote ⁸⁶ While “barbarians” could grasp the Han language, they would only employ it as a practical tool rather than an ethnic status marker.Footnote ⁸⁷ Han people carried their own surnames (Hanxing 漢姓); bestowing Han surnames to non-Han peoples became a display of imperial grace.Footnote ⁸⁸ The Han cherished “civilized” values and practices, particularly the Han “ritual and law” (lifa 禮法)Footnote ⁸⁹ and life style (e.g., agricultural farming [shuyi 樹藝] of the Han vs. animal husbandry [xumu 畜牧] of the “hu barbarians”)Footnote ⁹⁰ . The Han also upheld a spatial concept: the territory where the Han people lived and Han values were institutionalized and practiced became known as “Han domain” (Handi 漢地) against the non-Han areas such as the “fan barbarian domain” (fandi 番地).Footnote ⁹¹ Over time, some elements might change (such as the scope of the “Han domain”), but the “Han” as an ethnic group were considered to cherish these essential cultural traits.

In the Ming, the “Han” was not just a perception; it was fully institutionalized as well. In law, the Han people would be subject to “Han law” (Hanfa); whereas the non-Han, to either special imperial regulations or their own “aboriginal regulations” (“tusu shili” 土俗事例) (see below). In government agencies, officials were categorized into “Han officials” (“Hanguan” 漢官) and “aboriginal officials” (tuguan 土官).Footnote ⁹² In military, the personnel were organized into Han and non-Han troops (such as “Hanjun” 漢軍, “tubing” 土兵, “fanjun” 番軍, and “dajun” 達軍).Footnote ⁹³ In religion, the imperial government divided religious personnel and facilities into Han and “fan” officials, prefectural Buddhist registries (senggang si 僧綱司) and monasteries.Footnote ⁹⁴

All in all, the Ming perceived and created the “Han” with particular cultural, spatial, and institutional meanings. This was the time period, as Mark Elliott argues, that witnessed the important development of the unified ethnonym “Han.” By including Southerners and excluding those who were perceived to be not sufficiently acculturated (such as Mongols, Semu, Jurchens, and Khitans), the Ming established “a general identification” between the Ming realm, the central kingdom (Zhongguo, or China), Chinese people (Zhongguo ren 中國人), and Han people (Hanren 漢人).Footnote ⁹⁵ To be sure, “Han” was a historical construct, with its cultural, demographical and geographical components constantly changing; and the Ming did not give it a strict definition. Nevertheless, all their renderings and institutions pointed to a special ethnic group, with “superior” values, languages, customs, and institutions in a particular “central” space. Han existed and carried meanings only because the existence of its counterparts: the “barbarians” in different forms and from different places. In other words, the presence of and interaction with the “barbarians” became an essential precondition for the formation of the Han ethnicity.

The Ming closely tied “Han” to its concept of “China,” making the former the ethno-cultural foundation of the latter. Essentially, then, three crucial elements defined China: Han people, Han culture, and Han land. First, it must be a place where the Han people inhabited. It belonged to the Han, who could not be confused with “barbarians.” To emphasize the Han-“barbarian” distinction, the well-known early Ming Confucian scholar Fang Xiaoru 方孝孺 (1357–1402) at the Jianwen emperor's court (1377–?; r. 1398–1402) articulated very harsh views on “barbarians”:

As the masters and owners of China, therefore, the Han could not be lumped together and confused with “barbarians.”

The demographical landscape of Guizhou province displayed the separation of Han and non-Han and the connection between the Han and China. Guizhou was the last province to be established in 1413 under the Yongle emperor, Zhu Di 朱棣 (1360–1424; r. 1402–24). In the main, it functioned to secure the pathways between Yunnan and China. Throughout the dynasty, most parts of Guizhou were home to non-Han peoples; the Han immigrants (civilians and military personnel and their families) by and large lived in the military facilities of guards and battalions (weisuo 衛所), especially along the pathway between Pingxi 平溪 in the east and Puan 普安 in the west, the corridor that connected Huguang and Yunnan. Even in the late Ming, scholar-officials still saw the sharp division between Han/Chinese and “barbarians.” Wang Shixing 王士性 (1547–98), for instance, mapped Guizhou through the China-“barbarian” perspective: the province was mostly occupied by “Miao barbarians,” leaving merely one narrow path connecting China and Yunnan. In this place, Chinese persons could be administered (and protected) only by military garrisons and battalions; the civil offices could deal only with the various “Miao barbarians.”Footnote ⁹⁷ Guo Zizhang 郭子章 (1543–1618), who dealt intensively with the minorities on the southwestern frontiers, also argued that in Guizhou, there was only a narrow corridor connecting China and Yunnan; almost all the province was inhabited by the “Miao barbarians.”Footnote ⁹⁸ The area of the province that could be called “China” was so small that Guo saw it a daunting task for the province to disseminate Chinese virtues,Footnote ⁹⁹ and thus proposed a gradual strategy to achieve the goal of “ruling the barbarians at the four directions with the governance of China” (yi Zhongguo zhi zhi dai siyi 以中國之治待四夷).Footnote ¹⁰⁰ He believed that China and Guizhou were so different that they could not be treated with the same rules: “If all [the Miao barbarians] were governed with Han law, they would definitely be frightened and thus cause disorder. When dogs bark and sheep butt, how can only the dogs and sheep be to blame?”Footnote ¹⁰¹ More than two hundred years into the Ming dynasty, the ruling elite still sensed powerful alien non-Han cultural and social forces.

The second defining factor for China was the set of values, norms, and practices of the Han people. On many occasions, the Ming ruling elite emphasized the significance and specific components of Chinese culture. In the very first year of the dynasty (1368), claiming that the former Mongol Yuan dynasty “replaced all Chinese institutions with barbarian customs” (xiyi husu bianyi Zhongguo zhi zhi 悉以胡俗變易中國之制), Zhu Yuanzhang decreed to prohibit the one-hundred-year-long “barbarian” practices such as dress style, hair style, naming, and language, and to restore the Chinese ones.Footnote ¹⁰² In addition to purifying Han culture, the dynastic founder also urged transforming non-Han peoples with Chinese customs, the policy of “transforming the barbarians with Xia (culture)” (yi Xia bian yi 以夏變夷). In 1382, for example, when the aboriginal official named Zhe'e 者額 from Puding 普定, Sichuan, came to pay court audience, Zhu Yuanzhang instructed him:

To Zhu Yuanzhang, apparently, although those non-Han peoples had become the subjects of the Ming ruling house, they had not been turned into real Chinese, and their domains had not become real China. The Chinese (Han) cultural education should serve as a key measure to lead them to the successful transformation. Later on, Zhe'e and some other aboriginal officials did send their children to the imperial capital Nanjing to study Chinese culture.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Fang Xiaoru, although disagreeing with many aspects of Zhu Yuanzhang's governmental philosophy,Footnote ¹⁰⁵ defined China in “culturalist” terms just like the dynastic founder:

Such a view was further echoed by many other officials such as the mid-Ming Investigating Censor Yu Shousui 虞守隨 at the Wuzong emperor's court (1491–1521; r. 1505–21): “The reason that China is China is that it has the customs of propriety and righteousness and the beauty of clothing and various institutions” (Gai Zhongguo zhi suoyi wei Zhongguo zhe, yi you liyi zhi feng yiguan wenwu zhi mei ye 蓋中國之所以為中國者以有禮儀之風衣冠文物之美也).Footnote ¹⁰⁷

In short, the Ming ruling elite envisioned a China where Han people lived and that embraced a system of Han values, institutions, and practices, including “sages’ teachings,” socio-moral principles, written characters, Han language, law, rituals, music, medicine, clothing and ornaments, and tea. China and Han culture could not be separated. With such cultural development, the Ming perceived, China would differ from “barbarian territories” whose inhabitants—like “birds and beasts”—could only practice inhuman customs.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

In the Ming scheme, “China” had a third component: the place (of the Han people). Where was Ming “China”? The first spatial hint derived from the Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang. In his denunciation of the Mongol regime, he proclaimed the “inner-outer” distinction of “China” and “barbarians” based on the age-old tradition: “Since antiquity, when rulers governed all under Heaven, China was located inside to control the barbarians, and the barbarians lived outside to serve China.”Footnote ¹⁰⁹ But still, where was the “inside” and where were its boundaries against the “outside”? In the Ming geopolitical discourse, the ruling elite often used two phrases to describe China’s relations with others: “entering China” (ru Zhongguo 入中國) and “having no communications with China” (butong Zhongguo 不通中國). The former term further described two scenarios: the first is that non-Han “barbarian” peoples came to China from all directions—the Mongols from the north and northwest, the “fan”番 from the west, the Koreans from the northeast, Japanese and Liuqiu people 琉球 from the east, Vietnamese from the south, and “western Huihui” (xiyang Huihui 西洋回回) from Siam in the southwest. The other is concerned with some geographical features such as the Yellow River that originated in the far west and then “entered China”Footnote ¹¹⁰ and the “three major mountain systems” (sanda ganlong 三大幹龍).Footnote ¹¹¹ The second phrase has to do with the non-Han places having no contacts with China, be they “foreign” entities such as the Netherlands, the Hanthawaddy Pegu Kingdom (Ch. Da gula 大古剌; 1287–1539) in the southern part of present-day Myanmar, the former tributary domain of Laos (Laowo 老挝), or the “domestic” region of Guizhou. Both renderings indicate a strong sense of spatial China: a physical place where outsiders entered.

Where was China, then? The Ming offered several lines of narrative about its scope and boundaries, albeit they were often vague. At the founding of the dynasty, the Ming court envisioned a space that could be called the “old territory of China” (Zhongguo jiujiang 中國舊疆), and Zhu Yuanzhang saw his mission to “recover” the territory and thus become the “ruler of China” (Zhongguo zhu 中國主). The dynastic founder did not proclaim his accomplishment of the mission until his troops defeated the Mongols in the north eight months into his new reign. Only then did he declare that his “China” also covered Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Beiping in the north and Huguang (Huxiang 湖湘 and Hanmian 漢沔 areas) in the west, in addition to southern and eastern regions of the country.Footnote ¹¹² At first, Zhu Yuanzhang did not view Ming Sheng's 明昇 (1356–91; r. 1366–71) Great Xia (Da Xia 大夏) dynasty as part of China. In his early communications with Ming Sheng, Zhu Yuanzhang treated the Great Xia as a separate and independent state (guo 國), and Ming Sheng its ruler.Footnote ¹¹³ When some Ming officials advised Zhu Yuanzhang to conquer the Great Xia with force, Zhu Yuanzhang was concerned that there was no “just cause” (ming 名).Footnote ¹¹⁴ Even when Zhu Yuanzhang finally dispatched his troops to attack the Great Xia, his prayer to gods only listed the provocations by Ming Sheng's evil officials as an excuse; the discourse of “China” was not utilized.Footnote ¹¹⁵ It was not until three months after the military expedition when Zhu Yuanzhang still had not received a report of victory, he—while sending military reinforcements—started using the “China” concept to invoke the gods’ blessings. But he did not claim that Ba-Shu 巴蜀 (Sichuan) was part of the “old territory of China”—like the region “illegitimately occupied” by the Mongols; instead, he just stated that western Shu was “originally under the rule of China” (ben Zhongguo zhi suotong 本中國之所統), and made this only a secondary reason for destroying the Great Xia, next to the charge that Ming Sheng's evil officials had taken the young ruler hostage in order to exercise power and advance their own interests without authority.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Only after Ming Sheng surrendered did the Ming court add Ba-Shu to the list of regions that were part of “old territory of China.”Footnote ¹¹⁷

After seizing the Great Xia in Sichuan, the Ming turned its attention to Yunnan, which was under the rule of the Mongol Prince of Liang, Basalamarmi (Ch. Bazalawaermi 巴匝剌瓦爾密, d. 1382). In this case, in contrast to the Great Xia, from the beginning to the end the Ming never identified Yunnan as part of the “old territory of China.” The Ming defined Yunnan as a home to “various southwest barbarians” (xinan zhuyi 西南諸夷). They saw it as place that had never “communicated” (tong 通) with China until the Han dynasty, when the imperial court appointed certain officials to some local areas. Since the Han dynasty, according to the Ming court, Yunnan had submitted to and been affiliated with (fushu 服屬) China; but its relationship with the Chinese government was no more than one of “accepting the status of vassal and paying tribute” (chengchen chaogong 稱臣朝貢), like any other foreign or domestic “barbarian” entities.Footnote ¹¹⁸ By the 1370s, therefore, the Ming just urged Basalamarmi to do the same, allowing him to maintain his independent political status.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Meanwhile, interestingly enough, the Ming proposed to the Duan 段 family at Dali the same tributary relationship. In his proclamation to Dali, Zhu Yuanzhang stated that he had already recovered the old country of his Han people and unified Zhongxia. All the “barbarian countries of the four directions” had submitted themselves to the Ming court and paid tribute—except for Dali, Zhu stated. If Dali would accept vassal status and send envoys to pay tribute to the Ming court, Zhu Yuanzhang promised to confer the title of “King of the Dali State” (Dali guowang 大理國王) together with seals and a title certificate to the Duan family, as had been done during the Tang and Song dynasties. Otherwise, Zhu threatened, the Ming would send punitive expeditions to destroy the local power.Footnote ¹²⁰ Apparently, this was similar to the discourse with which the Ming addressed the rulers of neighboring foreign countries such as Annam, Korea, and Japan. It simply treated the political regimes in Yunnan as a foreign entity, not even part of the Ming realm let alone “China.” In the Ming founder's geopolitical landscape, Yunnan—either before or after the conquest—had never been part of the “old territory of China.”

When Basalamarni and the Duan family refused, tensions heightened. Eventually, Yunnan was captured by the Ming in 1381 (just as the early Ming threatened to do against Japan, and did act towards North Vietnam from 1407–28 when it established the Chochin Provincial Administration Commission [Jiaozhi chengxuan buzheng shhisi 交趾承宣布政使司]). Let us look at the Ming justification:

Here, the critical issue was Yunnan's contempt and humiliation towards the Ming. The Ming court did not blame Yunnan for occupying China’s territory; instead, they put Yunnan parallel to (or, outside of) China (called Zhonghua in this case). The military expedition, therefore, served as a punishment of Basalamarmi's refusal to accept the status of tributary state.

The above two cases reveal important messages about Ming China. The first case displays the fluidity of China. In the Ming worldview, Sichuan changed from an independent “state” to part of the “old territory of China.” The Yunnan case indicates that the Ming did not treat this “barbarian” region as a component of China, even after it was annexed into the Ming empire. In “provincial terms,” then, the “old territory of China” discourse depicts a changing and blurred picture of the Chinese space.

Meanwhile, the Ming also attempted to draw some clearer boundary lines for China. Comparatively, they had indicated a more straightforward picture in the north than in the south. Following ancient records, the late Ming scholar-official Chen Quanzhi's 陳全之 (1512–80) stated that, in the north, the northwesternmost point of China was located at Lintao 臨洮, a strategic point south of Lanzhou; the northeasternmost point at Liaodong 遼東; and in between Daixian 代縣 in Shanxi and Yuzhou 蔚州 west of Taihang 太行Mountain formed the northern border—“the land of China would not go beyond this” (Zhongguo zhi di buchu ciwai 中國之地不出此外).Footnote ¹²² Generally speaking, then, the boundary line separating China and the “barbarians” in the north stretched along the defensive Nine Border Commands (jiubian 九邊 or jiuzhen 九鎮) together with the Great Wall, or the ecological belt of mountains, deserts, and steppe that roughly separated sedentary agriculture and pastoral nomadism.

The northern boundary line for Ming “China” was also shared by the Mongols. This was evinced in the “treaty proposal” offered by the Mongol prince Anda 俺答 (or Altan-qa-yan).Footnote ¹²³ In 1547, when Anda requested tribute trade with his southern neighbor, he proposed to the Ming court:

This passage reveals critical messages about China-Mongol relations. An entity against “barbarians,” China set up the northern border from Liaodong to Gan-Liang, along the Great Wall. When Mongols dealt with China, they were communicating with the Han, its ethnic core. And China and Mongols represented different ways of life, sedentary agriculture and animal husbandry. This short proposal, therefore, pointed to some critical elements of China and its “others.” Although the Ming Jiajing court did not accept this as a state policy, they shared with the Mongol regime an understanding of the essence of China and spatial concept.

The Ming northwestern boundary for China is partly supported by their perception about where Yellow River “enters China” (ru Zhongguo 入中國). In fact, Ming records point to different locations of the Yellow River's entrance to China, including Jishishan 積石山Mountain (i.e., Animaqing 阿尼瑪卿, or “a myes rma chen” in Tibetan) in Xifan 西番(present-day southeast Qinghai),Footnote ¹²⁵ Lanzhou 蘭州 (or Lanxian 蘭縣) of Shaanxi,Footnote ¹²⁶ and Datong Prefecture 大同Footnote ¹²⁷ and Daning 大寧Footnote ¹²⁸ of Shanxi. Jishishan Mountain, according to various myths, was the starting point of Da Yu's “taming of the floods” (Da Yu zhishui 大禹治水). From there, it is said, the Yellow River entered Yongzhou 雍州, one of the “Nine Domains” (jiuzhou 九州) of ancient China.Footnote ¹²⁹ Lanzhou was located at the eastern end of the Hexi 河西 Corridor connecting to the Western Regions and the western end of the Loess Plateau which nourished the ancient Chinese civilization, and thus essentially “standing between the Rong ‘barbarians’ and Xia Chinese” (jie Rong Xia zhijian 介戎夏之間).Footnote ¹³⁰ And Datong and Daning stood out because they were viewed as the returning points after the Yellow River flowed “beyond the frontiers” for more than 2,000 li 里. Although the Ming saw different points for the Yellow River's entrance in to China, they held a common criterion for choosing those entrances: they were the points of demarcation that separated China and “barbarians.” The mid-Ming scholar-official Qiu Jun 丘濬 (1421–95) summed it up: “The Yellow River originates at Xingsuhai 星宿海, and flows east to enter China. It stretches for more than ten thousand li, with nine turns. It absorbs thousands of waterways of Hua and barbarians (he Hua yi zhi shui 合華夷之水) and runs into the sea.”Footnote ¹³¹ The Yellow River, that is to say, was not just a Chinese river; it ran through the territories of both China and “barbarians.” The Yellow River discourse, therefore, supports the Ming perception of China's northern boundary line.

The Ming military presence and tributary arrangement in the northwest (mostly present-day Gansu and Qinghai and part of Tibet) enriched the concept of the “Chinese domain” from an outside perspective. Since its founding, in order to control and stabilize the northwestern regions, the Ming court had established, though occasionally and loosely, a number of “guards and battalions” (weisuo) by either sending its own forces or accepting local submissions. Generally speaking, four types of arrangements were made in the Shaanxi Branch Regional Military Commission 陝西行都指揮使司 and Xifan 西番: First, “regular” guards and battalions (such as Xining 西寧 Guard and Gui'de 歸德 Independent Battalion, which were manned by military personnel from the “inner domains” of the empire; Second, the “loosely reined” guards and battalions (such as Duogan 朵甘 [Tib. mdo khams] Reginal Military Commission, and the so-called “seven guards west of the [Jiayuguan] Pass” (guanxi qiwei 關西七衛) of Anding 安定, Aduan 阿端, Quxian 曲先, Hanwei 罕衛, Shazhou 沙洲, Chijin Menggu 赤斤蒙古, and Hami 哈密,Footnote ¹³² where aboriginal officials governed their own forces with their own rules; third, “theocratic” temple regimes such as Qutan Si 瞿曇寺 and Honghua Si 弘化寺, which served as regional government agencies; and fourth, “tribal” (zu 族) organizations such as the Chen 陳 family slightly north of Xining (at present-day Huzhu 互助 county, Qinghai) and Zhao 趙 family slightly east of Xining (at present-day Ledu 樂都 county, Qinghai), who governed their tribespeople with titles granted by the Ming court.Footnote ¹³³ All located west and southwest (outside) of Lanzhou, the so-called “entrance to China,” these units were all excluded from the “Chinese domain.”

Indeed, the above institutions had various connections with the Ming; their exclusion from “China” attested to the Ming perception of the nature and scope of the ethnocultural “China” and political “Ming Empire.” Specifically, at least four kinds of relationships emerged between these frontier units and the Ming dynasty. The first has to do with the Han guards in the Shaanxi Branch Regional Military Commission. Centered at Ganzhou 甘州 Guard (present-day Zhangye 張掖, Gansu), the Shaanxi Branch Regional Military Commission was established to sever the connections between the Mongols and Tibetans, and controlled the corridor west of the Yellow River.Footnote ¹³⁴ Under the jurisdiction of Gansu Command (one of the Nine Border Commands in the north) and protected by the Great Wall from Lanzhou to Jiayuguan Pass, this region had been viewed as an important part of the Ming Empire.Footnote ¹³⁵ Stretching from Lanzhou all the way westward to Suzhou 肅州 Guard, it governed twelve guards and two independent battalions. Of these units, at least several of them were manned and governed by Han people, including the aforementioned Xining Guard, Gui'de Battalion, and Chen family aboriginal office.Footnote ¹³⁶ In addition, in the Shaanxi Branch Commission, many guards were governed collectively by both Han and non-Han officers. According to a record of the Wanli reign (1573–1620), for example, at Zhuanglang 莊浪 Guard, there were fifty-nine Han officers and twenty-six aboriginal officers, many of whom held hereditary positions.Footnote ¹³⁷ Indeed, a basic institution in those borderland guards was “collective governance of aboriginal and circulating officials” (tuliu canshe zhi 土流參設制), with circulating officials being Han people.Footnote ¹³⁸ A second type of relationship had to do with Han people in the guards of Xifan, including the so-called seven guards west of the Jiayuguan Pass. To be sure, guards in Xifan were by and large controlled by non-Han personnel. But Han people did provide certain services.Footnote ¹³⁹ At Hami Guard, for example, Han officials served as administrator (zhangshi 長史) and moral mentor (jishan 紀善) to guide and advise the Mongol leader, the Prince of Loyalty and Obedience (Zhongshun wang 忠順王).Footnote ¹⁴⁰

The third kind of relationship existed between non-Han guards and the Ming court. Most of the guards established by the Ming in the Shaanxi Branch Regional Military Commission and Xifan were filled by non-Han peoples. In the early Ming, for instance, the bulk of the defensive forces at Gansu, Zhuanglang, and Liangzhou 凉州guards consisted of Mongol soldiers who had surrendered to the Ming regime.Footnote ¹⁴¹ And the people who governed the guards in Xifan were predominantly Mongols, Tibetans, Huihui, and Uyghurs.Footnote ¹⁴² And the fourth kind of relationship was concerned with non-Han peoples in Xifan copying Han culture. Huozhou 火州 provided a case in point. The former state of Gaochang 高昌, Huozhou was located about 15 kilometers east of present-day Turpan. Because of its intensive contact with China in the past, Huozhou witnessed comprehensive adoption of Han culture:

This account presents the adoption of a whole package of Han cultures by a “barbarian” people, especially the commonly viewed “key” elements of written language, Confucian studies and values, customs of dress, marriage, and funeral, and government institutions. Even the physical appearance leaned towards—in modern terms—the “East Asian” category rather than the “Inner Asian” type.

From outside Lanzhou—the entrance to China—these four types of relationships attested to the space of “China” and its relevance to the “Ming.” The non-Han communities (third category) did not belong to China whether they lived inside or outside the Ming empire. Inside the Ming (Shaanxi Branch Regional Military Commission), their culture would be best described as “claiming to possess the Hua customs” (haoyou huafeng 號有華風);Footnote ¹⁴⁴ outside the Ming (in Xifan), as “foreign barbarians” (waiyi 外夷) they led a radically different life, “living in yurts, rulers and ministers being friends, and having no written languages in governance,”Footnote ¹⁴⁵ which was clearly non-Chinese. Even those who seemed to have fully adopted the culture of Huaxia (fourth category) were still excluded from the Chinese sphere.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ With regard to the Han communities and personnel west of Lanzhou (first and second categories), their ethnicity (physical and cultural features) was not able to transform their places into China, even though they lived in and worked for the Ming Empire.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ All these confirmed the Ming conviction that “China” essentially referred to “Han land” (Handi 漢地), which was a different entity from the “Ming” realm.

If we say China’s northern borders were relatively straightforward, its boundaries on west and southwest borderlands seemed more blurred, winding and zigzagging. Mention has been made that in Guizhou, throughout the Ming, “China” referred only to a couple of corridors that connected Yunnan hinterland and where Han people (civilians and soldiers) lived. In Sichuan, in 1547, the Ming general He Qing 何卿 built a wooden “border wall” (bianqiang 邊牆) over one thousand li along the waterways of Minjiang 岷江 and Fujiang 涪江. Its purpose was precisely to protect “China,” a “narrow lane” connecting Weizhou 威州, Maozhou 茂州, Songpan 松潘, Zhangla 章臘, Xiaohe 小河, and Longan 龍安 to prevent the danger of the invasions and harassments by the “barbarian cavalries.”Footnote ¹⁴⁸ There, China became a thin strip “penetrating into the barbarian domain” (shenru fanjing 深入番境).Footnote ¹⁴⁹ Indeed, in the eyes of the Ming court, Songpan—located at the very center of the Sichuan border wall—was “an isolated city protruding into the extremely remote region” and depending on the one thin line of communication for its supplies. As a matter of fact, the city was so difficult to defend against the “barbarian” attacks that several times the Ming founder wanted to abandon it. Although the Ming held on to it because of its strategic value, their military presence could do nothing but pacify the “barbarian masses” by allowing their own chieftains to govern based on their own customs.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ The wooden boards flanking the narrow riverways, it turned out, became the boundary lines for China. At any rate, unlike its relatively “straightforward” northern boundary lines, “China” on the west and southwest borderlands was demarcated by different kinds of mechanisms: parallel “lines” for a thin strip or a wider belt (corridor), or “circles” for large areas or small pockets. Their presence would be sporadic, and their locations among various “barbarian” peoples “a domain within domains.”

In the Ming, of course, “China” and “Chinese” were historical categories. For one thing, Chinese (territory) and “barbarian (lands)” could transform into each other. It is true that the Ming emphasized the distinction of Chinese and “barbarians,” but on the other hand, they held the Confucian view that Chinese culture could potentially become “barbarian,” and “when ‘barbarians’ come to China they will become Chinese” (yi er ruyu Zhongguo ze Zhongguo zhi 夷而入於中國則中國之).Footnote ¹⁵¹ For the former, the Ming ruling elite was acutely aware of the radical changes of the “Chinese” culture under the Mongols’ rule; and when they endeavored to “recover the old territory of China,” they aimed to eliminate the “barbarian” cultural pollution as well as to re-take the Chinese domain. In fact, the “barbarian” transformation of the Han under the Ming was an ongoing process. For instance, a Chinese lady named Zhao Tianxi 趙天錫 traveled to Guangxi and became the concubine of the aboriginal subprefect of Sicheng. She poisoned the subprefect and his principal wife and succeeded to the position of aboriginal subprefect according to the “barbarian law” (yifa 夷法). The Ming scholar Shen Defu 沈德符 (1578–1642) found this a most surprising story: a “Chinese person left [China] to serve as aboriginal official,” thus becoming a “barbarian transformed from Xia 夏!”Footnote ¹⁵² In the Ming worldview, a Han could become a “barbarian” and give up his/her membership in China if this person chose to join a “barbarian” community and adopt their way of life (but Han would never become “barbarian” if they stayed within Han places no matter how “evil” they might be!).

At the same time, “barbarian” places and persons could become Chinese when they were conquered by the Han and adopted Chinese values and cultural practices. This could happen in two ways. First, the migrants of the Han people (civil and military) could change the local ethnic landscape. Located at one of the entrances into Yunnan, for example, the Pijie Guard 畢節衛 was viewed as a “communications center of Huaxia” (Huaxia yaochong 華夏要衝)—“Those who came to defend this place are all the people of Zhongzhou (Zhongzhou ren 中州人). Their rituals of capping, marriage, funeral, and sacrifice can be distinct from the local customs.”Footnote ¹⁵³ During Ming times, some 360,000, 430,000, and 100,000 people migrated into Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi respectively. They brought with them Han cultural values, institutions, lifestyles, and agricultural technology.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ The arrival of the Han planted the seeds of China.

Second, because of the government's efforts and Han migrants’ influence, some local non-Han territories and peoples gradually transformed into Chinese. This was most vividly evinced in the imperial measure of gaitu guiliu 改土歸流 (changing the posts held by aboriginal officials into those for court-appointed circulating bureaucrats). In 1413, for example, taking advantage of the internecine fighting between the Sizhou 思州 and Sinan 思南 Pacification Commissions, the Yongle court abolished these two powerful aboriginal offices, and divided their domains into prefectures and subprefectures, which started the transformation of Guizhou into part of the “inner domain” (neidi 內地).Footnote ¹⁵⁵ In 1601, for another example, after suppressing Yang Yinglong's rebellion, the Ming Wanli court divided Yang's former domain into Zunyi 遵義 and Pingyue 平越 tribal offices (junmin fu 軍民府).Footnote ¹⁵⁶ In these new institutions, the Ming not only appointed circulating bureaucrats, but also introduced the Han ways of life and established Confucian schools. To be sure, even after the so-called gaitu guiliu, most non-Han peoples still practiced their own cultures, and their places would not be readily accepted as China by the Ming. But the Ming saw it an important step towards making them Chinese.

In addition to the fluidic nature of the “China” and “barbarian” categories, their demarcation line was by no means clearly-cut either, featuring an overlapping status. For one thing, surrounded by and interacting with non-Han communities, the Han settlers were liable to catch “barbarian” customs. In Guizhou, for example, the military personnel in the guards basically migrated from the “central plains” (zhongyuan 中原), and were expected to “transform the [local] barbarians with [the customs of] Xia,” just as Jizi 箕子, the uncle of the last Shang King, “transformed the Korean customs with propriety and righteousness.” Nevertheless, those “ignorant” migrants tended to be changed by the “barbarians.”Footnote ¹⁵⁷ In Anzhuang 安莊 Guard, for a specific example, the military stronghold was surrounded by a variety of “barbarians,” who practiced “vulgar” customs, wore “weird” clothes, and spoke “bizarre” languages. Even though they lived close to the guardsmen (weiren 衛人), they refused to change their customs lightly. Those guardsmen in the garrison were all “Chinese persons” (Zhongguo zhi ren 中國之人). After they had been stationed there to defend the border regions for so long, they themselves picked up the “barbarian” practices and developed a ferocious disposition. It was only after Confucian education institutions were established that they started to return to their simple and honest nature, and their clothes, caps, rituals, and music appeared “refined” (binbin ran 彬彬然).Footnote ¹⁵⁸ Here, we see the Han forces’ struggle in battling against “barbarian” practices.

Meanwhile, the non-Han peoples also made their own changes, gradually adopting Han customs. At Dixie 疊溪 Battalion in west Sichuan, for example, by the mid-fifteenth century, according to the Ming record, the “barbarians had a rough nature and an intrepid disposition and were not familiar with [the Confucian classics of] Book of Odes and Book of Documents.” Particularly, those who were farther from the battalion station did not know the “Han language,” wore clothes made of goat skin and wool, and cremated corpses instead of using coffins in funerals. Those who were close to the military center, however, because of more ethnocultural interactions, “were gradually influenced by the imperial majesty and transformation, customs, and dresses.”Footnote ¹⁵⁹ In Zhenning 鎮寧subprefecture of southwest Guizhou, for another example, by the mid-fifteenth century, the “barbarians” and Han civilians mixed together and practiced their different customs.Footnote ¹⁶⁰ By the mid-sixteenth century, the cultural division still existed: the migrants from Sicheng 泗城 subprefecture of Guangxi practiced land cultivation; whereas the “barbarian” hunters still lived a life of “eating birds and animals raw.” Nevertheless, under the gradual influence of the “Chinese customs” (Huafeng 華風), the non-Han people had slightly changed their “bad” (lou 陋) habits in marriage.Footnote ¹⁶¹ Towards the end of the sixteenth century, while the “barbarians” still practiced “different customs” and were even still “eating birds and animals raw, with the passing of time, they changed more: they devoted themselves to study and agricultural production, and considerably followed Han rituals (pozun Hanli 頗遵漢禮).”Footnote ¹⁶²

The ambiguity and blurredness of the boundaries between China and non-Chinese domains is best illustrated in the territories that underwent the reform of gaitu guiliu. The defining nature of China lay in its Han culture as opposed to the “barbarian” customs. Gaitu guiliu, while politically aiming to expand Han imperial rule by restricting native non-Han forces, functioned to transform non-Han spheres into Chinese domains in ethnoscultural terms. After replacing the hereditary aboriginal officials with “circulating officials,” however, in a great number of areas under the imperial government, non-Chinese cultures were still dominant throughout the Ming. This occurred at several administrative levels. At the provincial level, although Yunnan—an “extraterritorial barbarian land” (jiaowai yidi 徼外夷地) in antiquity—was changed into an imperial administrative unit headed by a commissioner for “undertaking the promulgation of imperial orders and disseminating government policies” (chengxuan buzheng 承宣布政) and guarded by the successive “Marquis of Pacifying the West” (Pingxi hou 平西侯) of the Mu 沐 family, it was never considered part of China in the Ming. Even by the mid-fifteenth century, when the Ming court compiled the general gazetteer of the empire, they saw only “barbarian kinds and their customs” in Yunnan prefecture, the political center of the province.Footnote ¹⁶³ Guizhou started the transformation of becoming part of the “interior domain” (neidi) in 1413 when it was established as a province. But throughout the dynasty, Guizhou's “Chinese territory” was mainly limited to the Han population spots along the two major transportation routes. In the province, although the Sizhou and Sinan Pacification Offices had been converted to imperially appointed offices, their “barbarian customs remained the same” (yifeng pibian 夷風丕變), including the practices of carving wood for contracts, making divinations with chicken or tiles in curing diseases, invoking ghosts to eliminate disasters, and speaking different languages; only a small number of “Han people” (Hanmin 漢民) advocated a simple lifestyle, with their institutions of “marriage, rituals, clothes, and foods being mostly similar with those in the ‘middle domains’ (Zhongzhou 中州).”Footnote ¹⁶⁴ In the Guizhou Pacification Office (Guizhou xuanwei shisi 貴州宣慰使司), similarly, the gazetteer described mainly “the various kinds of barbarians practicing different kinds of customs,” although among them “Confucian teachings gradually began to take hold; their rituals of capping, marriage, funeral, and sacrifice tended to follow China (xiaomu Zhongguo 效慕中國); and occasionally some were interested in learning the Book of Odes and Book of Documents and thus passed the civil service examinations and served as officials.”Footnote ¹⁶⁵ The predominant values and cultural practices in Yunnan and Guizhou were still non-Han by nature, and such places, by and large, were not viewed as part of China in spite of their status as two of the fifteen “regular” provincial/metropolitan units of the Ming Empire.

Below the provincial level, although the provincial administration was in the hands of the Han and the province was considered Chinese, some areas were still not incorporated into China even after they had gone through gaitu guiliu. The Bozhou Pacification Office (xuanweishi si 宣慰使司) and the Zunyi Tribal Office (junminfu 軍民府) in southern Sichuan were cases in point. Bozhou was home to many non-Han peoples.Footnote ¹⁶⁶ In the early Ming, the Sichuan area was generally accepted as part of the “old territory of China,” and Bozhou under the Yang family submitted to the imperial domain (bantu). Subsequently, Han cultural influence increased both in Sichuan in general and Bozhou in particular, as non-Han peoples adopted Han names and customs.Footnote ¹⁶⁷ Bozhou, however, had always been viewed as a “barbarian land” (manyi zhi di 蠻夷之地) by the Ming.Footnote ¹⁶⁸ Even towards the end of the sixteenth century, only a sociocultural elite of the region practiced customs that were similar to those of China; its “barbarian land” still saw the prevalence of non-Han cultures, including the hair style of chuiji 椎髻 (mallet-shaped topknot), dress style of pizhan 披毡 (covered by felt), livelihood of hunting and lumbering, marriage rituals of presenting gifts of bronze utensils, felt knife, and bow and arrow, and “banquet music” of playing bronze drums and gongs and horizontal flutes.Footnote ¹⁶⁹ In 1600, the last Bozhou leader, Yang Yinglong, was defeated in his armed rebellion and executed, and the next year, Bozhou was abolished and its territory was divided into two prefectures under the gaitu guiliu reform: Zunyi (Sichuan) and Pingyue (Guizhou).Footnote ¹⁷⁰ A purpose of the reform was to “transform the barbarian customs” (yibian yisu 以變夷俗),Footnote ¹⁷¹ and the local society did change towards Han customs:

Nevertheless, the geopolitical reform did not alter the perceived ethnocultural identity of the region. At Zunyi, generally speaking, “from the Han through the Ming [dynasties] the customs of the prefecture had descended to be barbarian.” Even after the pacification of 1600, since the place was neighboring the “barbarian” Shuixi 水西 in Guizhou, its “barbarian” nature did not change. Even those “prominent families” (zuxing 族姓) who migrated from the Bayu 巴渝 (present-day Chongqing 重慶) areas and settled down at Zunyi “were gradually contaminated with the customs of arrogance and coercion (xiaoqi 囂欺).” The social customs of Zunyi, at best, could be viewed as “admiring hua customs” (mu huafeng 仰慕華風), “becoming the same as the Han customs” (tong Hansu 同漢俗), and “being the same as the middle land” (yu zhongtu tong 與中土同).Footnote ¹⁷³ In other words, it was still a cultural alien that was trying to copy the Chinese essence; no matter how closely it imitated China, it was still considered an outsider.

Let us look at the four subunits under Zunyi prefecture. After gaitu guiliu, in addition to Zunyi district of the prefectural seat, Zunyi prefecture governed Tongzi 桐梓 district and Zhen'an 真安 subprefecture (which in turn controlled the districts of Suiyang 綏陽 and Renhuai 仁懷). Among these four units, in terms of the transformation of “barbarian” cultures, only Suiyang had a good record: people embraced honesty and simplicity, and advocated Confucian values of propriety and righteousness; “barbarian customs were completely eliminated” (yisu xichu 夷俗悉除). In the other three units, more or less, “barbarian customs” still prevailed:

Tongzi: Because of its proximity to Qijiang 綦江 district to its north, Tongzi “was close to the transformation of China” (jin Zhongguo zhi hua 近中國之化). Although the people “admire Hua customs,” they performed different practices in spiritual worship, marriage, funeral, and other social activities.

Zhenzhou (renamed as Zheng'an 正安 in the Qing): The “simple and honest” people were devoted to the livelihood of “cultivation,” which was “roughly” (dalue 大略) similar to the Han customs. But the “aborigines” (turen 土人) “have not completely changed their old customs”—they took the fifteenth day of the first month as the beginning of the year, and practiced their own rituals of god worship and food consumption.

Renhuai: There were four kinds of people, who were all “wild and fierce.” Being bellicose, they “devoted themselves to robbery and homicide.” They still engaged in “slash-and-burn farming, but were not good at silk-textile-weaving and silkworm-breeding. They seldom used medicine when ill but depended on witchcraft. They concluded marriages (between the same families) in generations, and played music in funerals.”Footnote ¹⁷⁴

The discourse on the “barbarian” practices in Zunyi prefecture after gaitu guiliu demonstrates that while some people and places adopted Chinese customs, Zunyi was viewed as being outside the Chinese domain. Although Sichuan had generally become part of China in the early Ming and Zunyi had been particularly placed under the direct imperial governance by the turn of the seventeenth century, this prefecture by and large remained an ethnocultural “barbarian land” throughout the dynasty. The direct political administration of the Ming court over Zunyi did not make it part of China.

What made the tu-liu relationship more complicated was that from time to time the circulating and aboriginal offices often replaced each other back and forth. In Guangxi, for example, sixteen aboriginal offices were reformed into circulating offices, but a dozen of them were restored at least once back to aboriginal governance. Some of them, such as Yangli 養利 and Zuo 左 subprefectures, changed back and forth several times. Some, like Li 利 subprefecture, never changed back to the “circulating” system. Ironically, in Guangxi, although gaitu guiliu had already started in the early years of the dynasty, the number of aboriginal offices increased rather than decreased towards the late Ming.Footnote ¹⁷⁵ The repeated restoration of aboriginal offices on the borderlands indicates an ongoing process of transformation (towards either Han or non-Han identities) on the Ming borderlands. When an aboriginal office was changed into a circulating one, it would not be assumed to have become a Chinese domain. Its status could be viewed as ambiguous, and it certainly had the possibility of changing back.

All the above paragraphs on China’s spatial boundaries on the west and southwest borderlands indicate that there were no clear-cut, definite, and everlasting demarcation lines to separate China and “barbarians.” The Chinese and non-Chinese domains appeared in different forms and shapes. They had the potential to become transformed into each other and did repeatedly change back and forth on occasion. And in many locations, the Chinese and non-Chinese elements overlapped each other. On the other hand, however, the Ming upheld a strong conviction that China—within the Ming Empire—represented the cultural core that defined the nature and identity of the dynasty.

To sum up this section, one finds that the Ming envisioned a China with Han ethnicity as its essence: it was an ethnocultural space of Han people and Han culture. To be sure, over time the “Huaxia/Han” absorbed a variety of peoples and essentially became an umbrella category, and by Ming times “pure” Han hardly existed. Similarly, “Han culture” also embraced a very wide spectrum of values and practices that constantly changed (say, to include Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, among a great many others), and one can readily make the case for “Han cultural diversity.” Nevertheless, in Ming official discourse, “Han” ethnicity served as a touchstone of “Chineseness” throughout the dynasty. As an ethnocultural space, China did entail a spatial dimension. Indeed, the Ming spoke of a Chinese territory with certain boundaries, albeit the lines were often broken, vague, blurred, and changing. Its east side was bounded by the oceans. Its north was roughly bordered along the ecological borderlands marked by the Nine Border Commands and the Great Wall. The boundary lines in other directions appeared more complicated. There, China excluded not only the lands outside the Ming realm such as Sifan 西番 and Burma 緬甸 (by the late Ming), but also those non-Han communities inside the Ming empire. Under the Ming political jurisdiction on the borderlands, China took several shapes—in metaphorical terms. It could be a “dot,” an isolated force protruding into an alien society; a “line,” a series of Han communities (military or civilian) penetrating into a larger alien region, to be flanked by non-Han societies; or an “area,” a relatively larger Han community surrounded by non-Han forces. The “barbarian lands,” meanwhile, took similar shapes in relations to China. In political and cultural discourse, the Ming upheld the traditional “inner-outer” distinction between China and “barbarians”: the former occupied and ruled at the inner center of civilization, and the latter looked up to China from the outer peripheries of the realm. As a matter of fact, the “inner-outer” positions of China and “barbarians” on the Ming borderlands had always been relational and situational. That is, peripheral areas could be either “inner” or “outer,” depending on their sociopolitical environment. Metaphorically, the landscape was like a piece of Swiss cheese—if we view the Ming empire as the cheese, both China and “barbarian lands” could be cheese holes on the borderlands, making a setting of “‘barbarians’ and civilians living together” (yimin zaju 夷民雜居)Footnote ¹⁷⁶ or “interlocking like dog teeth” (quanya xiangcan 犬牙相參).Footnote ¹⁷⁷ To be sure, the Ming ruling elite maintained strongly the China-“barbarian” division based on Han ethnicity, and the boundaries and scopes of these territories changed constantly and the Chinese and “barbarians” could transform into each other, but such a general pattern remained throughout Ming times.

“CHINA” AND “MING” IN MING CULTURAL CONSTRUCTS

The China-“barbarian” distinction and the difference between China and the Ming Empire can be also seen in Ming cultural products. Let us examine several genres of literature: law, map, and documentary style.

THE “MIAO TERRITORY”: A “LAND BEYOND THE PALE OF CIVILIZATION” OUTSIDE CHINA

The Ming worldview of a “China-barbarian” distinction is vividly illustrated in their perception and treatment of the “Miao territories” (Miaojiang 苗疆). The term “Miao,” as rendered by outsiders,Footnote ²¹¹ has been given different meanings by present-day scholars in, ranging from an objective description of their lifestyle (agriculture relating to “sprout”), to derogatory connotations (e.g., “barbarians”), and to a simple phonetic transcription of Miao self-appellations (e.g., “Hmong,” “Mong,” and “Hmu”).Footnote ²¹² Although many people trace them back to the Jiuli 九黎 tribes headed by the legendary figure Chi You 蚩尤 and their descendants San Miao 三苗 in North ChinaFootnote ²¹³ or the Maoren 髦人peopleFootnote ²¹⁴ during prehistoric times, it might be possible that “Miao” did not become a label for certain particular groups until after the Tang-Song transition in the tenth century.Footnote ²¹⁵ The Miao were historical peoples; they did not carry a single identity through China's long history. Over time, the name was used to designate different social groups. In the Ming, it was often perceived as a category that included a wide range of peoples such as Lolo 羅羅 and Gelao 仡佬.Footnote ²¹⁶ By the mid-Ming dynasty, after centuries of warfare and migration, most of the Miao lived in the southwestern areas of the empire, especially Huguang, Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan.Footnote ²¹⁷ One such Miao area was located at west Huguang, east Guizhou, and southeast Sichuan (see map, Figure 1). Centered at Wuzhaisi 五寨司, the “Miao territory” stretched to the north at Yongshun 永順 and Baojing 保靖, northeast at Yuanling 沅陵, east at Luxi 瀘溪, southeast at Chenxi 辰溪, and south at Mayang 麻陽 in Huguang, southwest at Tongren 銅仁 (including the chief's offices of Pingtou zhuke 平頭著可, Zhiguzhai 治古寨, and Dayi 答意 of the Ming, all in the present-day Songtao Autonomous County of Miao Nationality) and west at Wuluo 烏羅 in Guizhou, and northwest to the Youyang 酉陽 pacification office, and the chief's offices of Shiyedong 石耶洞, Pingchadong 平茶洞, and Yimeidong 邑梅洞 in Sichuan, with a total circumference of over 800 li.Footnote ²¹⁸ It was mostly surrounded by the Youxi 酉溪 River on the north, the Yuanshui 沅水 River on the east, the Chenshui 辰水 River on the south, and the Wujiang 烏江 River and Fanjingshan 梵淨山 Mountain on the west, situated roughly at 108″47′~110”22′E and 27″42′~28″45′N. Its estimated population ranged from 100,000 to 150,000.Footnote ²¹⁹

FIGURE 1 The Miao Territory and Laershan Platform in the Ming context. The Ming place names (in darker font) are accompanied with their present-day names (in lighter font). Adapted from Tan Qixiang 譚其驤, ed., Zhongguo lishi ditu ji 中國歷史地圖集, vol. 7, pp. 8–81. Assisted by Jin Xue 金雪.

In this Miao territory, “a single society”Footnote ²²⁰ with distinctive ethnic characteristics developed. Donald Sutton suggests that by the eighteenth century, the Miao in west Hunan had coalesced into an ethnic group through the interactions with Han and other migrants and the Qing government.Footnote ²²¹ I would argue further that at least by about 1500, the Miao in this territory had developed a cohesive and distinct culture. The local Miao, using the autonym “Khoxiong” 果雄, “Ghexiong” 仡雄, or “Xiong” 雄, shared a common language (which is now known as Xiangxi dialect of the Miao-Yao or Hmong-Mien language family) and considered it an essential marker for their group identity. As Sutton points out, by the late Ming the ancestors of the Miao had occupied the territory for centuries as their homeland.Footnote ²²² Mary Rack, while questioning the clear “Miao” identity, still acknowledges that by the fifteenth century, the term “Miao” “was used to denote the people sharing particular cultural and linguistic features” in west Hunan.Footnote ²²³ Indeed, among the Miao in the three provincial borderlands, “there were no obvious differences in their disposition and customs (xingqing fengsu 性情風俗),”Footnote ²²⁴ and their way of life such as foods, clothes, and houses was “utterly different from the Han people” (yu Hanmin jiongbie 與漢民迥異).Footnote ²²⁵ They gained their livelihood in their own place and in their own ways, and maintained their own sociopolitical institutions free from the control of imperial governments.Footnote ²²⁶

For the Ming ruling elite, this “Miao territory” represented a land “beyond the pale of civilization” (huawai 化外), i.e. outside and different from China.Footnote ²²⁷ Indeed, in official discourse, the Miao territory exemplified the “uncivilized domain” outside China. The prefect of Chenzhou 辰州 Qu Ruji 瞿汝稷 (1548–1610) articulated that within the Miao territory, even the “cooked Miao” who adopted Han law could not be considered part of China, but only ruled by China by means of the loose-rein mechanism.Footnote ²²⁸ Some of Qu's colleagues at the imperial court straightforwardly proposed that the “raw Miao” in the mountains should not be treated according to Han law.Footnote ²²⁹ The Education Intendant of Guizhou Xie Dongshan 謝東山 (dates unknown) saw the handling of the Miao at Tongren (the Guizhou section of the Miao territory) as a confrontation between China and “barbarians.”Footnote ²³⁰ The Supervising Secretary of the Office of Scrutiny of War Song Yihan 宋一韓 advocated that against the rebellious Miao, the Ming should mobilize forces and launch deadly strikes, which, he hoped, would “shake the power of China” (zhen Zhongguo zhi wei 振中國之威).Footnote ²³¹ Cai Fuyi 蔡復一, the Administration Vice Commissioner of Huguang concurrently in charge of the Chenyuan Military Defense Circuit of Chenyuan (Chen-Yuan bingbei dao 辰沅兵備道), specifically created a border wall to divide the “evil Miao” (Miaonie 苗孽) and “Hua-Han 華漢,” and to contain the Miao encroachment.Footnote ²³² Wu Guoshi 吳國仕, who headed the Chenyuan Military Defense Circuit from 1615 to 1617, also saw fundamental differences that separated the “Miao domain” (Miaojie 苗界) and Han “inner domain” (neidi), whose residents were labeled, respectively, as “Miao ghosts” (Miaogui 苗鬼) and “Han people” (Hanmin). If some Han people entered the Miao territory but were unable to come out, Wu urged them to behave like “good people in the land beyond the pale of civilization” (huawai liangmin 化外良民), i.e. not assisting the Miao to attack the Ming borders.Footnote ²³³ Indeed, in the Ming, “borderland” by nature testified to the Ming's perception of “Otherness.” The late Ming scholar-official Wu Guofu explicitly pointed out that “the dynasty established borderlands (bianjiao 邊徼) because outside the borders are all ‘barbarians’ (yi di qiang rong 夷狄羌戎) who are not our kind (feiwo zulei 非我族類)”; and the “barbarians have been troubling China since ancient times.”Footnote ²³⁴

Particularly, Tian Rucheng 田汝成 (1500–1563?), the Ming scholar-official who managed ethnic minority affairs in the southern and southwestern frontiers, presented a typical Han official view of the Miao cultural traits. Tian once served as the Vice Commissioner of the Military Defense Circuit of Sishi and opened his office at Tongren.Footnote ²³⁵ He elaborately articulated the Miao-China distinction in part based on his experience at the Guizhou section of the Miao territory. According to him, the Miao “barbarians,” who mostly lived in the mountainous areas, had given names but no surnames. Being crafty, deceptive, and cruel by nature, they did not have any sense of propriety and ethical principles: they looked like humans when they were happy and turned into beasts when they were upset. Indeed, they did look like beasts when they traveled in the mountains and climbed the cliffs. Their language sounded strange and often required repeated translations. Their foods combined miscellaneous weeds and rotten meat, giving off an unbearable stink. They developed a strange calendar: without knowing the Han calendar, they took winter as the beginning of the year. They were very fond of divination with chicken bones, and good at making gu 蠱 poison. They depended solely on ghosts in curing illness, without resorting to medicines. When young men and women dated, in the practice known as “moon dance” (tiaoyue 跳月, or dancing in the moonlight), they acted promiscuously and contacted each other directly with “lewd words.” At funerals, they did not wear mourning garments, and did not care whether or not the corpses should be buried. In terms of dispute resolution, revenge was very popular. A trivial matter could lead to homicide, and the victim's family would mobilize the whole clan for revenge. The mutual resentment and killing could last a long time, as expressed in their adage: “The hatred of the Miao families could not stop until after nine generations.” In legal procedure, without a ruler and written language, the Miao did not rely on government offices and their cases were not tried with the dynastic law codes. They would only choose an upright and eloquent person as the “judge” (hangtou 行頭) to handle the cases. All of these, to Tian, differed from and were inferior to the Han values and practices in China.

Unlike Han people (Hanren), Tian concluded, the Miao failed to develop moral and reasonable institutions. Knowing no Han language (Hanyu), they could not have access to the societal principles and systems handed down by the sage kings of China, including benevolence, righteousness, propriety, music, and the administration of justice. Traveling with demons and monsters and living with jackals and wolves, no wonder they could engage only in “ugly and disgusting customs.” To Tian, therefore, this land and culture could by no means belong to China (or han Xia 函夏, zhongtu 中土). He only hoped that after one hundred generations, the cultural values and practices of China would cover and transform this “barbarian” territory.Footnote ²³⁶ In the eyes of the Ming ruling elite, apparently, the Miao constituted a collective Other in opposition to China and Han culture.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Throughout Ming times, the ruling elite perceived and defined China as an “ethnocultural space” that Han people inhabited and where Han values and customs were upheld and practiced. While the “Ming” was created as the political title for the ruling dynasty, denoting the geopolitical scope of the empire (“all under Heaven”),Footnote ²³⁷ “China” was used only to indicate a “civilized” place as distinct from “barbarians,” be they foreign or domestic. Three sets of elements defined Ming China: The Han people, Han culture, and Han space. In addition to nature and connotations, the Ming and China also differed in scope. In the Ming imperial landscape, China was not a unified “area;” instead, it could exist as a “line” or a “dot,” surrounded by “barbarian” territories on the borderlands. For the Ming imperial court, it was only their “dream” to transform the non-Chinese societies with Han culture and thus make China identical to the Ming realm.

The “Miao territory” exemplified a non-Chinese domain in the Ming empire. Neither the Miao nor the Ming saw the territory as part of China. To the Miao, the mountainous region became their homeland, the sacred space they inherited from their ancestors and the sociopolitical domain where they practiced autonomous institutions and customs. To the Ming, the territory ostensibly signified a “barbarian land” outside China. While they occasionally endeavored to control and transform it, they failed in their mission to turn it into part of China. When they could not endure the Miao attacks, the best plan they could come up with was to construct a physical earthen border wall to separate the “Miao territory” from China. The “Miao territory” witnessed to a fragmented political landscape in a diverse empire.

The “Miao territory” also represented an ethnic space. In the greater Miao areas, to be sure, ethnic identity was in flux. On the one hand, the Ming court endeavored to transform non-Han values and practices, and on the other, a number of Han became Miao.Footnote ²³⁸ The name “Miao” itself was an “umbrella category” that embraced very diverse ethnosocial groups in the Ming. The Miao territory, however, stood for a relatively homogenous ethnic domain. The “Khoxiong” people in the region developed their distinct cultural values and practices. They consciously viewed themselves as different from the Han; and the Han and other outsiders saw them as an ethno-cultural Other. I would therefore contend that Miao ethnicity did develop in this region by at least 1500. And the formation of Miao ethnicity was a result of historical processes to which various ethnosocial groups made contributions. Norma Diamond defines the Miao during the Ming and Qing “as a Chinese category,” emphasizing a product of civilizing projects by outside forces.Footnote ²³⁹ I see two problems in Diamond's thesis. The first is concerned with the opposition of the Miao—“Chinese.” Diamond fails to clarify who the “Chinese” were. It seems to have excluded Miao; but does it include both the Han and Manchus—the main official forces that shaped the Miao identity during the Ming and Qing? The second and more serious problem has to do with her emphasis on the outsiders’ role in making the Miao's identity. It is true that the name “Miao” was given by the Han and continued by the Manchus and then consolidated by the Han again in the twentieth century, but the essential traits of the Miao ethnicity in this area were primarily created by the Miao themselves, albeit they did not develop a written language. The Miao gained their ethnic group consciousness through economic, cultural, political, and military conflicts with the outsiders.

I now end the essay by reiterating the significance of Ming experience in understanding the diverse imperium in Chinese history. In the existing literature on the changes of “China,” scholars tend to pay more attention to the Mongol Yuan and Manchu Qing, overlooking or mispresenting the Ming Empire in between. They either presume a homogenous “Han” country—as a “monolithic Other” to deploy in scholarly inquiries on the diverse Yuan or Qing—or confuse it with the different entities of “China” and “Ming.” This essay demonstrates that “China” as an ethnocultural space of the Han underwent noteworthy historical development. It incorporated earlier tradition with new circumstances in which a Han ruling house overthrew the alien Mongol regime but constantly faced threats and challenges from both domestic and foreign non-Han forces. “China” as a Han space occupied by a particularly “superior” group with “civilized” cultural development and commonly shared history reached its peak in Chinese history during the Ming. The values, discourses, and institutions on Han-based “China” not only legitimized and consolidated the Ming ruling house, but also provided a driving force and rallying cry in the early course of the Republican revolution led by Sun Yat-sen.Footnote ²⁴⁰ The Ming, in Edward Farmer's words, gives “modern China an indelible identity that [has] persisted into the twentieth century and elements of which to this day continue to assert themselves as contributions to contemporary Chinese nationalism.”Footnote ²⁴¹ The non-Han regions and peoples, even after submitting to Ming political rule, would not automatically “qualify” to be China or Chinese. The ethnocultural diversity of the Ming appeared to be a “precursor of” rather than “contrast to” of the Qing, which differed only in scope rather than in nature. By critiquing the misperception of a monolithic Ming entity and confusion of the ethnocultural China with the political Ming, this study supports the general thesis about “Zhongguo as a changing symbol”Footnote ²⁴² in the “New Qing History” with Ming evidence and extends inquiries about “China/China” into contemporary times.