Jia Sidao - As Feng Menglong Describes Him
(Gong Li and Chow Yun-fat in Curse of the Golden Flower, a mediocre film about bad rulers of a Chinese kingdom in 930 CE who are decadent & incompotent. Reminds me of Jia Sidao…)
In Part 1, the Sage describes Jia Sidao’s background, his father, his mother, and his dissolute life after both his father and uncle died in 1237.
In Part 2, the Sage gave a summary of Sidao’s actual history.
In this essay, the Sage describes how Feng Menglong told the story of Jia Sidao’s life. Note that Feng’s retelling of Sidao’s life is highly biased against Jia Sidao.
Jia Sidao arrives in Hongzhou, the Capital of the Song Dynasty, and proceeds to waste his time getting drunk and seeing prostitutes. After a month he meets a Daoist monk on the street who predicts Sidao will soon gain great wealth. The monk then helps Sidao by telling him how he can meet a captain of the Palace Guard who is a dedicated servant of the Huangdi’s favorite consort, Jia Yuhua. This was the opportunity Sidao was hoping for.
Sidao meets with the captain, proves he is Jia Yuhua’s adopted brother, and the next day he is able to meet with his cousin and day after that, he meets the Huangdi (Emperor) of China. Sidao is both charming and funny around the ruler of the nation and the two men quickly become friends. The Huangdi appoints Sidao to a sinecure in his government: Director of the Sacred Fields. The job comes with: a mansion, ten women of the court as wives, 3,000 taels of gold (worth 30,000 taels of silver), and 100,000 taels of silver for household expenses!
Comment: The job of maintaining the sacred fields was an important part of a yearly ceremony in which the Huangdi plowed the earth, using a sacred white cow, and then planted some seeds to mark the beginning of planting season. This ceremony takes place soon after the Spring Festival is completed. The Spring festival is now better known as Chinese Lunar New Year.
Also, the sum of money here is huge. The common working man made 12 taels of silver a year, though wages were higher in Hongzhou in the Song Dynasty. When Sidao was Chancellor he ordered the spending of 4 million taels of silver to repair the walls of a city which was likely to be attacked. Being given 100,000 taels of silver, a mansion, and ten wives from the palace is like being given 200 million dollars in today’s world.
Jia Sidao gave a gift of 100 taels of gold to a shop keeper who had loaned him a fine set of clothes but the shopkeeper did not dare to keep the money and instead he returned it with some gifts and congratulations for having won the favor of the Huangdi.
Comment: one never reads of this behavior in European stories. The idea that if a powerful man gives you a gift as a reward but you can’t accept it - this seems very odd to a European.
Sidao often met with the Huangdi and enjoyed life to the fullest. He often took friends on excursions out on the West Lake, hiring the top courtesans of the city to accompany him. Sometimes his parties were so large that he hired several boats and they traveled side by side. Small boats were constantly ferrying fresh food and wine to Sidao’s luxury cruise ship.
Sidao then asked the Huangdi for a military appointment and he was given command of the army on the south-west border, facing the state of Da Li. With his new official status, Sidao sent men to find his mother, Hu-shi. She was found, still married to the stone mason who had married her 20 years earlier. Sidao didn’t like the stone mason and arranged for him to be killed. From then on, Sidao’s mother, Hu-shi accompanied her son. By pure luck, Sidao’s border region was peaceful and after six years, Sidao returned to the capital and was promoted.
Comment: the Kingdom of Da Li was conquered by a Mongol army under Kublai in 1253. It’s no surprise that they didn’t attack the Song when they were being raided and attacked by Mongol armies.
Back in the capital, Sidao paid children to sing a song which he composed. Then news of the song was brought to the Huangdi’s attention. When asked what the song meant, Sidao explained: The songs which the children sing are taught by the demi-god of the Mars star, who comes to Earth in the guise of a child. The demi-god does this to reveal the future but his lyrics must be analyzed carefully to understand Heaven’s intent.
The meaning of the song which Sidao laid out for the Huangdi implicated one of Sidao’s political rivals at the court, a chief minister named Wu Qian. Convinced by Sidao’s artful plot, the Huangdi fired Wu Qian from his post as Chancellor. Sidao made sure Wu Qian, never returned by having false charges of corruption levied against Wu Qian, causing Wu Qian to commit suicide. Most men in the government learned to praise Jia Sidao, fearful of his ability to destroy anyone’s career.
Sidao was sent with a large army to fight the Mongols on the western border. He tried to negotiate a peace treaty with the Mongol general, Kublai, but a few days later, Mongke Khan died and Kublai withdrew his army back to north to fight for the throne. Sidao had his aides write up a false report explaining that the Mongols had fled at his approach. The Mongol emissary who had been negotiating the peace treaty was secretly imprisoned and not released for the next 15 years, so as to conceal Sidao’s secret negotiations.
Comment: While it would seem perfectly reasonable to negotiate an end to a war, for the Chinese this was almost always seen as treasonous behavior. The Chinese regarded almost every attack on their state as an unforgivable sin - a crime against the Son of Heaven - a breach of Heaven’s will. The idea that every attack on China is a crime against God’s will (Tian is God) is related to the problem the Chinese have in making alliances with other nations. China (in the eyes of the Chinese) is the superior nation in the world. China is the Middle Kingdom in the sense that it is mid-way between the Earth and Heaven. Thus for any official to negotiate with an attacking enemy is treason. Only the Huangdi is allowed to offer peace to an invader and many times in history when the Huangdi suggests such a course of action, his own ministers refuse to go along.
Note: there is absolutely no evidence that Jia Sidao ever negotiated with the Mongols. Feng is repeating an oft-repeated story which is probably not true.
When Sidao returned to the capital in 1260, everyone praised him. On his birthday, thousands of poems were sent to his estate and Sidao enjoyed reading them and grading them for their skill in praising him. People in the capital started to memorize the best poems that glorified the new Right Chancellor of the Song.
One day, Sidao heard one of his lesser wives cooing over a young man who came to present his poem to the Chancellor. Sidao overheard the woman’s remark and said, If you wish to marry the young man, I will make him send you a betrothal letter! Although the young woman begged for forgiveness, he had her head cut off and then shown to his other wives saying: One of you said a young scholars that came to this house was handsome. I have already accepted a request for her marriage. See for yourself.
Comment: When you are the Right Chancellor, you can kill anyone in your household without any consequences: wives, children, servants - your power is nearly unlimited. Feng asserts that that Jia Sidao was already corrupt before he gained great power. Certainly his great power made him a monster.
Sidao tried to reform land ownership by limiting the maximum amount of land owned by a single individual. His policy involved placing limits on the amount of land one could own based on one’s rank in the government. Feng writes: The plan made sense given that so much land was owned by a very small number of enormously wealthy people. However, when fame-seeking villains - like Jia Sidao - propose policies which seem good, unseen evil is being spread.
Comment: This is a profound observation by Feng Menglong. Evil people can’t carry out good plans and it is a mistake to believe otherwise. All government actions rely on people of good will trying their best to make their country a better place. Any laws, any plans can be twisted to bad ends. Jia Sidao promoted sycophants and corrupt men while demoting, exiling, and even killing men who cared about truth and honesty. Jia Sidao could not implement good policies because the men working for him were self-interested and they mimicked Sidao’s corrupt sensibilities.
To be sure, the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands is a major problem for every nation that the Sonoma Sage has studied. In Song China, as elsewhere, the rich got richer, and the poor got poorer as time passed. If Sidao really cared about the problem he would have given up his rich estates, he would have donated much of his lands to poor peasants, and his plan would have centered around selling good farmland at very low costs to poor but hard-working farmers. Instead, Sidao’s new law resulted in unjust confiscation of “excess land” by evil government officials who applied the law selectively. With all this “excess land” coming into government hands, it was very easy for well-connected officials to exploit the new land policy and become even richer than before.
It’s no wonder the new land policy provoked anger and discontent throughout Song territory. It actually made the problem of concentration of land ownership worse because it was implemented by scoundrels who funneled money up the chain so Jia Sidao and his cronies became richer while the politically unconnected became poorer.
Feng continues his narrative, listing several other government policies Jia Sidao initiated which had the effect of making his cronies more powerful and removing good and patriotic men from government posts. He says that Sidao’s palace built on Ge Hill had towers, terraces, gardens, pavilions, and artwork which rivaled the splendor of the Huangdi’s own palace. Sidao built a new hall on his estate which had a statute of himself in the middle.
Comment: In Chinese culture, statues of men or women are only found in temples. The Chinese liked paintings and most well-to-do families would have portraits of their ancestors in the room with the ancestral spirit shrines. But statues of men or women are almost never seen. That Sidao had a statue made of himself is an act of incredible egoism.
The Lizong Huangdi died in 1264 and he was succeeded by his nephew, Duzong of Song. Sidao had arranged for Duzong to be the crown prince and the new Huangdi showed his gratitude by keeping Jia Sidao in his position as the only Chancellor of his government.
One day, the uninvolved Huangdi (Emperor) said to Sidao: I heard from one of my palace women that the city of Xiangyang has been under siege by Mongol soldiers for more than a year. What is being done?
Sidao replied: That’s not true. If there really was any danger to one of your great cities, I would lead an army to the north and destroy the barbarian invaders.
The next day, Sidao used his spies inside the palace to find out identity of the woman who had revealed the news about the war and had her murdered by poison.
Comment: In 1267 the powerful ruler of the Mongol Empire, Kublai Khan, began his war on the Song Dynasty by laying siege to the city of Xiangyang. The siege was part of a complex and large scale military operation. It defies belief to think that Duzong of Song didn’t know about the war as soon as it began. The siege lasted for six years. After the neighboring city of Fancheng was conquered, its entire population was massacred. Xiangyang finally surrendered in 1273.
Duzong of Song died suddenly in 1274 at the age of 34. He was succeeded by a four year old boy, so the real power was in the hands of his mother who was skeptical of Jia Sidao’s abilities.
With the Mongols eating up more and more Song territory, Jia Sidao led a large army out of the capital in early 1275. The army had incapable leaders (all having been appointed by Jia Sidao) and it disintegrated in its first battle with the Mongol army near Lake Poyang.
Finally, and way too late, rivals of Sidao convinced the Queen Mother to remove Jia Sidao from office and once he was fired, the floodgates were opened. Memos came from hundreds of officials charging Sidao with crimes. With Sidao’s fall, many of his allies in the government were ruined, some committed suicide, while others fled the capital. Sidao’s estates were seized, and he was banished to the south.
Feng describes Jia Sidao’s journey of humiliation and degradation with unmitigated glee. He says that Sidao started out with 10 carts filled with gold and silver and more than 100 maids and servants. At each temple they passed, the officer in charge of escorting Sidao - a man named Zheng Huchen - forced Sidao to give generous donations. Within two weeks, only three carts were left and only 10 servants remained, along with Sidao’s two sons. Everyone else had abandoned Sidao, certain that he would soon be dead.
Finally, at the town of Zhenghou only Sidao and his two sons were left. The magistrate of Zhenghou asked Zheng Huchen: Why haven’t you killed this miserable traitor already?
Huchen replied: I wanted to see him suffer before he died. An honorable death was too good for him.
Thinking he had gone far enough, the following day, at Mumian Temple, Zheng Huchen used a mace to beat Jia Sidao to death, along with both his sons.
Feng concludes by saying that Sidao’s huge mansion on Ge Hill was left unclaimed and unattended. As the months passed, the walls were broken and all that was left was a looted ruin. People wrote sad poems on the walls of the once-grand buildings.
Comment: The Song government surrendered Hongzhou to the Mongol army in early 1276. Although the city was not destroyed, the Imperial palace was torn down and the city lost its importance.
Feng Menglong wrote very little about the great men of the Ming Dynasty, though he was part of the Ming and finally joined its government, in its final years. Feng also wrote almost nothing about the Yuan Dynasty (proclaimed just before the fall of the Song in 1274). Thus, this story about Jia Sidao is the most modern history Feng attempted to write.
It is obvious that Feng hates Jia Sidao with a passion. But the truth is, Jia Sidao was not substantially worse than most other senior government officials in the last 100 years of the Song Dynasty. For example, the Song Chancellor Qin Hui ordered the execution of the heroic general Yue Fei in 1143, this after Yue Fei’s inspired leadership had saved the Song from utter destruction at the hands of the Jin army.
Feng himself places Jia Sidao in the company of several other evil Song ministers: Han Touzhou, Shi Miyuan, and Qin Hui.
What Feng does not do is attempt to explain why evil ministers were able to take power in the Song government, nor does he compare the Song government to the Ming government, though the Sage is confident that he knew what the differences were. The Sage will write about this topic at some point in the future.
The Sage guesses that Feng saw a similar rot in the government of his own age; meaning the early 1600s. The Sage thinks that Feng’s hate for Jia Sidao stems - in part - from his own dismay and disgust at the way the Ming government seemed to be heading down the exact same path.
The Sonoma Sage must confess that he feels similar emotions today, in the year 2023, as it seems every month some new example of feckless, corrupt, and evil behavior by US government officials comes to light.
Yes, the Sonoma Sage has found something of a troubled kindred spirit in Feng Menglong.
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