The Limitations of Cultural Capital on Call

The Southern Study must have been a place of mystery to those in the capital who were aware of it. It was a space in the Forbidden City where the emperor spent time—likely afternoons, as mornings were spent in audience with political advisers and administrators. A creation of the 1670s, it had little institutional precedent. Though imperial Chinese history made provision for tutors for heirs apparent, there was no model for a specialized apparatus to teach adult emperors. Like many of the most interesting institutional innovations of the Qing, it was a pragmatic response to circumstances.

The first reference to what would become the Southern Study occurred in the autumn of 1677. Shortly after returning from his summer trip to Mongolia, the emperor addresses courtiers:

I occasionally want to practice calligraphy, but among those who surround me there are none who are learned and skilled calligraphers. When I discuss texts there are none who can answer my questions. Let us select two members of the Hanlin Academy who are learned and skilled in calligraphy and who can regularly be at my side and explain the meaning of texts. However, as they are likely to have other duties and to live outside of the Forbidden City, when I summon them, it will be difficult for them to respond. Let us provide them with a house inside the Forbidden City. After a few years, we can evaluate and see whether this arrangement is a good one. Now let us select one or two men who are good calligraphers, like Gao Shiqi, and invite them to the inner city. Let the Manchu and Chinese counselors collectively deliberate and memorialize on this matter.²

It would appear that the emperor had in mind a rather small, informal arrangement, explicitly temporary, that would provide him with the talent he needed when he was called upon to refer to texts or pick up the calligrapher’s brush. Gao Shiqi was meant from the beginning to be one of the emperor’s literary advisers. In view of Gao’s poverty, what the emperor proposed may have been meant to create a rationale for providing him a house near the emperor. But assisting Gao cannot have been the only aim. The need to have literary assistance readily available was a product of new demands on the emperor’s time. As a young man, much of the emperor’s time had been spent in education and ritual activities. With the Rebellion of Three Feudatories, an increasing part of the imperial day had to be devoted to military dispatches, and he had less time to ponder educational matters. When he needed help, he needed it quickly, hence the need for cultural capital on call.

Following the emperor’s direction, Grand Secretary Mingju ordered officials in the Hanlin Academy to select several scholars in good health to assist the emperor, and five names were put forward.³ A month later, Mingju recommended Zhang Ying (1638–1708) an expositor in the Hanlin Academy, to serve the emperor, holding the fourth rank, upper grade.⁴ Mingju continued, “For calligraphy, one person should be enough. Let Gao Shiqi serve and be given the sixth-rank, upper-grade post of an academician in the Grand Secretariat. Let the Imperial Household Department arrange houses for them to live in.”⁵ The ranks assigned here suggested some of the anomalous nature of the institution. Rank inhered in the office in imperial China rather than in the person: all who performed the same function held the same rank, and an individual who did not hold office did not have a rank. However, Zhang Ying and Gao Shiqi performed the same task but held different ranks. Also anomalous was the place of the Southern Study in the Qing state. As institutional history was a specialty of Chinese scholars, most organs of government were surrounded with regulations. But there were few such rules for the Southern Study. Confirming the recommendations made to him, the emperor urged Gao and Zhang Ying to be careful in their efforts and to “refrain from interfering in any outside activity.” Since both were “educated men,” the emperor continued, these instructions should be clear, but they should be observed strictly.⁶

It was a short step, at least in the Chinese imagination, from assisting the emperor in literary studies to producing standard texts of the classics to guide study throughout the empire. As more activity took place in the Southern Study, it became necessary to add new scholars to the institution, and the office formally acquired an archive, the Southern Study Record (Nanshufang jizhu). Like the Diaries of Action and Repose, the Record was a dated account of activities in the Southern Study that recorded dialogues of the emperor and scholars. Zhu Jinfu (n.d.), an archivist with the National Palace Museum (Beijing), has provided a useful account of the institution and its activities based on this source.⁷ He finds that at least thirty-six scholars were assigned to the study during the Kangxi reign, and they produced twenty-three sponsored publications. Many of the thirty-six individuals were assigned to serve only part-time or for a single project; unlike Gao and Zhang, they were not provided housing.

Zhu Jinfu takes some pains to establish that those in the Southern Study did not draft political documents in the study, although they may have had responsibility for drafting them in concurrent appointments they held elsewhere in the government. Politics, however, could not be completely banned from the study, nor could the emperor’s moments of scholarly leisure be completely walled off from his political preoccupations. On March 3, 1681, the Record notes that the emperor summoned Zhang Ying and recited from memory the explanation of the Great Strength (Da Zhuang) hexagram, #34 from the Book of Changes (Yijing). This text was read as a meditation on power and how it should be used. Great strength was interpreted as the strength of the great, and the dominant message was that the great needed to use their power with constancy and rectitude. But there were also dangers associated with great strength; the text speaks of a ram who “butts his head against the hedge and finds that it can neither retreat or advance.”⁸

At the moment when he recited the Book of Changes text, the emperor was confronted with a choice involving the application of strength. In late February, shortly after the New Year, the general in charge of Kangxi’s armies in the far south had reported that he was ready to begin marching into Yunnan in pursuit of the last remnant of Wu Sangui’s forces. There were reasons to be cautious, however. The campaign had been a long one, and the court received a report in early March that troops in Sichuan needed rest before they could be redeployed. At about the same time, the court received an urgent message that the troops in the south needed provisions, and the emperor ordered the governor-general of Huguang to dispatch grain to the south.⁹ Orders were given to advance into Yunnan, but the emperor was worried. He questioned Zhang Ying in the Southern Study: Would the Qing army get stuck in Yunnan, with rebel forces to its rear and front, like a ram that had butted its horns into a hedge and could neither advance nor retreat?

Zhang Ying responded, “The force of the bandit armies is spent; the lands they held are lost. It is difficult for them to maneuver. Relying on the authority of Heaven, victory will be as easy as “crushing weeds and smashing rotten wood. The news that [the enemies] have been cleared away will come on the appointed day.” Zhang assured the emperor that as long as he relied on the right heavenly principles in applying strength, and applied it with constancy and rectitude, he need not worry about the outcome. In fact, Qing armies did succeed in Yunnan, though the march to the capital city of Yunnanfu took almost a year of cautious advance. Interpreting this passage, Zhu Jinfu claims that Zhang Ying was doing nothing more than providing an exegesis to the monarch, but it is hard to imagine that Kangxi was not, at some level, asking whether the advance into Yunnan was wise, and Zhang was answering that it was.¹⁰

If the emperor was asking for advice, might he also have been testing the waters, trying to assess literati opinion to make sure the leaders of Chinese society were still with him as he prosecuted a long and costly war in the southwest? Remarkably, in view of his care to assert that those in the Southern Study did not carry out political tasks, Zhu Jinfu entertains the possibility that the emperor used them as spies. He offers as an example the well-known case of Wang Hongxu being asked to report by secret memorial on conditions in the south.¹¹ Zhu also cites the instance, mentioned above, in which the emperor asked Gao Shiqi if Yu Chenglong’s description of Mingju’s corruption was accurate. The emperor almost certainly sought political intelligence.

Begun as a temporary expedient to provide the emperor with the expertise he needed to deal with matters of Chinese culture, the Southern Study evolved as it became a permanent institution.¹² Although it never had formal political functions, scholars served as informal advisers to the monarch on issues that concerned the monarch and had cultural implications. Service in the study must have seemed like a high-wire act; scholars were in the most extraordinary position, but a slight misjudgment brought disaster. Some were able to keep their balance better than others.

Advisers of the Southern Study

Although the Southern Study was a place of some mystery where the dangerous boundary between advising and influencing the emperor was easily crossed, Guo Xiu did not impeach all who worked there; he only impeached three. Of these, Gao Shiqi was the most egregiously guilty, the instigator of corrupt activities and the principal beneficiary. Wang Hongxu played an organizational role, collecting money, overseeing real property, and interacting with civil officials. Chen Yuanlong had a sort of guilt by association. Particularly rich biographical accounts are extant for all three figures.

Guo Xiu’s Impeachment

Each of Guo’s impeachments had a different tone. The impeachment of Jin Fu was a terse statement of a view widely held. The impeachment of Mingju took a legalistic tone, likely necessary in view of the prominence of the target. The accusation of scholars of the Southern Study was the only one that seemed to reveal affect: accusing degree holders like himself, Guo strained to contain his anger and disgust. Guo’s frustration with the scholars of the Southern Study was evident in his turns of phrase—his amazement that educated men could possibly engage in the sort of behavior he described—and his recommendation that at least one of his targets be executed.³⁷

Guo introduced his claims with a contrast between a tireless emperor who worked only for the public good and corrupt literati that worked only for their own ends:

The emperor rises before dawn and labors until he is weary and worn, exerting his finest effort in government. He himself decides on the employment of people for his administration, never involving assistants or so-called deputies to [use his power]. When a faction has been established for private ends, using [the emperor’s] name for its own gain as the Junior Household Administrator of the Heir Apparent Gao Shiqi and Censor of the Left Wang Hongxu have done.… Their guilt deserves execution. Words can barely express all the evil that they do, but I shall try to describe it in brief compass.³⁸

None of Guo Xiu’s other impeachments recommend execution; they rather point to the actions condemned and allow the emperor to decide on punishments. Recommending execution increased the rhetorical force of the document. Guo Xiu was likely aware that Gao Shiqi was a favorite of the emperor’s, as Gao seemed to have made no secret of his relationship to the monarch. Did Guo Xiu recommend execution to emphasize the damage Gao was doing to the reputation of the monarch? Did he actually expect that the Kangxi emperor would order his favorite executed? There can be no final answer to these questions, but the recommendation of execution provides the structure of the memorial; it is divided into four sections, each focused on a different reason why Gao Shiqi deserved execution.

The first of the four sections argues that Gao deserved execution because he accepted a prestigious appointment and rewarded the monarch with immoral behavior. Gao was vulnerable as he did not have a degree, and thus lacked the moral training that passing an examination would have demonstrated. But Guo had to be careful. Guo did say that Gao’s background was not the usual one: “Gao Shiqi was born in very humble circumstances and wandered to the capital knocking on office doors to seek a living. Because his calligraphy was very accomplished, the emperor, ignoring rules of seniority, promoted him to the Hanlin Academy.” No censure was implied in the claim that the emperor had set aside rules of seniority in appointing Gao; Guo Xiu described his own promotion to censor in these terms. But, Guo argues, Gao Shiqi was promoted for quite specific purposes: “[Gao] serves in the Southern Study, carrying out imperial orders. The role should be limited to reading texts and not involve access to political affairs.” Gao’s lack of qualifications should have limited his actions. In fact, he stood out among those in the Southern Study precisely for his flouting of the rules. “Among the officials at court and in the provinces, there are none who do not know his name. More than one person has served in the Southern Study, but the names of others who serve there are not known; why is it that Gao Shiqi’s name alone is so widely known for evil and corruption? This is the first reason why Gao’s guilt is worthy of execution.”³⁹

If Gao was the principal culprit, he was not the only one, as Guo made clear in the second reason he offered that the guilt of Gao and Wang Hongxu merited execution: they had formed a faction. “Over time, [Gao] has acquired many henchmen; they have formed a faction. He has united with Wang Hongxu; they are sworn confederates. [Gao] and the censor He Kai act like brothers. [Gao] and the Hanlin [official] Chen Yuanlong are uncle and nephew, and [Gao’s] daughter is married to Wang Hongxu’s older brother Wang Xuling” (1642–1725).⁴⁰ Guo asserts that familial or quasi-familial bonds underlay corrupt practice in the Southern Study. The charge that Gao and Chen Yuanlong were uncle and nephew likely referred to Chen’s habit of referring to Gao as his cousin, which was probably more of an in-joke than a statement of putative relationship. Guo Xiu himself had not spent time in the Southern Study and was likely making his claim based on reported practices, which he may not fully have understood. This was the only evidence presented against Chen in the memorial, and except for the concluding sentences of the document, Chen was not among those Gao described as worthy of execution.

According to Guo, the group had established a systematic practice of extortion: “For those who are not a part of the faction, there is also a standing practice [of payment], which is called peace money [ping’an qian]. For those who are willing to give him bribes, Gao provides long service, brilliantly turning circumstances in their favor, and people refer to [Gao’s services] as ‘the path’ [menlu zhen]. Gao is so intent on his greed that he has no doubt about his actions and declares that ‘mine is the true path.’”⁴¹ The expression menlu literally means a “path through the door,” but it is used to describe those who have a way, a knack for getting perhaps illicit things done. Gao, Wang, and Chen were so successful that they could brag about the success and craftiness of their efforts.

Guo writes of Gao and Wang: “All governors-general, governors, lieutenant governors, provincial judges, circuit intendants, prefects, and magistrates and senior and junior officials at court, all sit down one by one with Wang Hongxu and others, who beguile them in all ways. Those who have ambitions to high office bribe them with thousands and tens of thousands.” Careful reading of Wang Hongxu’s biography suggests that Wang and Gao may not have had time to form an association of the sort Gao described. Wang was appointed to the Southern Study during the first lunar month of 1685. In spring of that year, Wang Hongxu served as chief examiner for the jinshi examination. During the third lunar month of the following year, Wang received word that his birth mother had died, and he requested and was granted leave to return to Jiangnan for mourning.⁴² In the following year, Wang’s adoptive mother died, again requiring him to return home. In 1688, he signaled his readiness to return to office by greeting the emperor’s carriage as it passed through Jiangnan on the emperor’s second southern tour. Guo’s impeachment was submitted in the fall of 1688.

In view of Wang’s many commitments it was unlikely—though surely not impossible—that Guo and Wang had built the sort of systematic corrupt machine that Guo alleged. However, it seems very likely that Wang was involved in corruption. A protégé of Mingju, whose epitaph he wrote, Wang was likely involved in many of the favorite’s activities. The type of corrupt activity that Guo alleged Gao and Wang committed was quite similar to the sale of office that Mingju engaged in with his henchman Yu Guozhu. Gao’s sale of office may have been a continuation of Mingju’s enterprise after the favorite fell from power. The Qianlong emperor, for one, was convinced that Wang was corrupt and ordered that Guo’s accusation be included in Wang’s biography.⁴³

The third reason Gao Shiqi deserved execution was his ostentatious display of recently acquired wealth. Accusations of corruption usually did not detail the uses the accused made of their ill-gotten gains. Gao Shiqi’s rise from poverty to wealth was so striking, and so widely commented on, that Guo Xiu included some detail in his impeachment: “The villain⁴⁴ Yu Ziyi [n.d.] has acted without restraint in the capital for many years. Fearing only that his deeds would become known, he hid himself in Tianjin, Zhili, and Luokou, Shandong. He gave Shiqi a sixty-room house with a tiled roof near Hufang Qiao worth eight thousand in gold, requesting that [Shiqi] take care of his problems.”⁴⁵ Hufang Qiao was located to the southwest of the Liulichang antique market in the Chinese part of the city.

In the eighteenth century, corrupt officials often sought to acquire art objects and jade as marks of their wealth.⁴⁶ Either because it was a different time or because of his personal poverty, Gao Shiqi seems to have focused instead on acquiring income-earning property or businesses. According to Guo Xiu, in addition to the house at Hufang Qiao, Gao had acquired a string of houses on Dou Street outside of Shuncheng Gate, for which He Kai collected the rent.⁴⁷ Gao and Wang Hongxu had also jointly acquired a series of businesses in southeast China worth nearly a million liang. Gao had acquired productive agricultural lands in Pinghu County in Zhejiang and an estate planted in fruit trees near Hangzhou. When a poor scholar who sold calligraphy in the streets acquires such wealth, Guo argued, one had to ask where it had come from. It was either taken from the state treasury or stolen from the people. Either way, the censor asserted, Gao must be counted a “worm in the state” and a “thief of the people.”

The fourth reason why Gao deserved execution involved his continuing pursuit of illicit ends after he had been reprimanded for corruption. At the time Guo memorialized, Gao Shiqi had in fact been retired from office as a result of his involvement in the Zhang Qian / Zu Zeshen case. Without questioning the emperor’s judgment, Guo was at some pains to point out that Gao was guilty of more than the corruption for which he had already been charged: “With his sage understanding, the emperor is aware of Gao’s guilt, but because the task of reviewing manuscripts in the Southern Study is not finished, he has ordered that [Gao] be relieved of office while he continued his tasks [in the Southern Study], an instance of great imperial grace. In the most extreme case, Gao and Wang do not think of reforming themselves but continue their evils ceaselessly.⁴⁸

Not only had Gao and Wang continued to engage in corruption after Gao was impeached but, according to Guo, both were particularly active during the Kangxi emperor’s second southern tour. This took place during the spring of 1689, just before Guo submitted his impeachment. Although the emperor had given strict orders at the beginning of tours to limit expenditures and the burdens they might impose on the local population, inevitably a great deal of money changed hands. Guo Xiu argued that some of this money went to Gao and Wang. Even though Gao had been technically relieved of office, and Wang was completing his mourning obligations while on home leave, they had engaged in corruption during the tour: “When the emperor was on his southern tour, he strictly prohibited [members of his entourage from] soliciting bribes and determined to punish violators through military law. However, Wang Hongxu and Gao Shiqi, not fearing death, sought business with district and local officials in Huai’an and Yangzhou, resulting in the illicit payment of ten thousand liang to [Gao] Shiqi. If it was like this in Huai’an and Yangzhou, who knows how much money was extorted elsewhere!”⁴⁹ Their brazen conduct on the second southern tour constituted the fourth reason why Gao deserved execution.

In a final peroration, Guo forcefully expressed his personal anger that men of his own class would engage in corrupt behavior:

Even more shocking, Wang Hongxu and Chen Yuanlong are products of the examination system! They are assumed to be preeminently men of virtue among the literati. But they have no respect for the criticism of the pure, and they have become infamous without any sense of shame. Moreover, as toadying officials, there is nothing they will not do: what others have not dared to do, they willingly undertake without guilt. Scheming after wealth even as they do harm to our moral tradition, do they not constitute a blemish on [the reputation of] those who serve at court? Gao Shiqi, Chen Yuanlong, and Wang Hongxu have the nature of wolves, the hearts of snakes, and the form of treacherous turtles. Those who fear the powerful do not dare speak of them; those who receive their favors are pressed and do not desire to speak of them. If I dared not speak, I would have repaid imperial grace with great guilt. So, not fearing others’ resentment, I look to the emperor to dismiss and banish them, to make clear the laws of the state; the people’s hearts will rejoice, and all under heaven will be benefited.⁵⁰

It is impossible to know how the emperor felt about this passionate denunciation of three of his closest collaborators. Shortly after receiving the memorial, he duly ordered Gao, Wang, Chen, He Kai, and Wang Hongxu’s brother Wang Xuling dismissed from office, offering no further comments on the affair. There were no reforms to the Southern Study, which existed as a central government institution until the end of the dynasty.

Scholars, Grandees, and Moralists

Historians have praised the formation of the Southern Study as a particularly striking example of the Kangxi emperor’s commitment to Chinese principles in his administration of the Qing state. The praise in fact began with one of the early appointees to the study, Xu Qianxue, who wrote that the emperor “summons to the palace many eminent gentlemen from various regions, and diligently do they come, afraid to be late. Gao Shiqi was the first to be favored for his culture and learning.… Daily is he consulted in the heart of the Forbidden City.” Quoting this, Harry Miller terms the Southern Study “a masterpiece of co-optation.”⁵¹

Guo’s memorial and the new information that has become available with Zhu Jinfu’s publication quoting the Southern Study Record demonstrate that although classics were explained and allusions explicated in the Southern Study, a lot more went on as well. As the emperor interacted with representatives of the great families of the empire, strategies were evaluated and appointments considered. The study proved to be a space, and possibly the only space, where the emperor could associate easily with representatives of the Chinese elite, including the uncredentialed Gao Shiqi, whose company the monarch seemed genuinely to enjoy. It also proved to be a site where staff could pursue their own ends—personal, political, and pecuniary.

This pursuit of private ends proved especially aggravating to Guo Xiu and led him to impeach degree holders like himself. Guo’s first two impeachments were directed at officials who from the historical standpoint were irregular officials, Manchu and Chinese martial bannermen. Although Guo’s examples of corruption were likely true, they represented examples of irregular officials functioning in unusual ways. Southern Study appointees were serving in traditional roles as advisers to the monarch, albeit in a new institution. The censor’s mission compelled Guo to point out corruption wherever he saw it, including among those who possessed the same qualification he held.

Viewed in another way, Guo’s impeachment pointed out the range of commitments found among those who held the same credentials, read the same texts, and took the same exams. Gao, Wang, and Chen were a calligrapher, a poet, and an encyclopedist. Preserving text and practice under a foreign emperor was their purpose, evidently one that allowed them to feel comfortable recommending people and policies to the monarch and accepting the gifts that came as a result. For Wang and Chen, whose relatives and ancestors served throughout the Ming and early Qing, corruption may have been business as usual.⁵² Gao was new to the world, but poverty impelled and opportunity tempted him to make the best of his situation. Guo, on the other hand, was a moralist, firm in his convictions and confidently aware of his role. For him, the integrity of the state was the ultimate goal.