Welcome to my first lecture, which is titled The True Face of Hero. You might wonder at the beginning, what do I mean by the true face of hero? What kinda face is it? I have here in mind basically The traditional Chinese hero, or the hero as portrayed in the famous [FOREIGN], or in English, the record of the grand historian. In ancient China there were countless heroes, not only kings, lords, warriors, but also assassins, killers and all types of heroes and that tradition of course has not received adequate attention except in popular literature and culture. If you compare this with the Western tradition I'm sure everybody has heard about Homer. Whose two famous epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, in fact have become the stuff that movies are made of. Let's take Achilles from the Iliad. He is a warrior with tremendous powers. Who faces death with no fear. And eventually of course, he is killed after a fierce battle with his enemy Hector. That is the heroic prototype in the Western tradition. Glorified throughout the ages, ever since Homer delivered his epics, either orally or in writing later on. In China, when you talk about a Chinese tradition, I think the usual beginning is Confucius, or the Confucian tradition. People probably have heard of the Analects or Mencius, the Book of Mean, or the Doctrine of Mean, etc., etc. China is known as a very civilized world. A world of culture and elegance. It is as if to suggest that China does not have a heroic tradition. I'm using this lecture to debate that point by saying that, in fact, even before or ever since the time of Confucius, there was a parallel tradition of military heroes or warriors, who have been celebrated in countless history books. Perhaps the paragon of heroes can be found in a text I'm talking about today, namely The biography of Xiang Yu. Some will translate this word [FOREIGN] as the basic Annals of Xiang Yu. I will explain that later on. Xiang Yu is probably the most famous ancient Chinese hero, who has been glorified throughout ages. Not, probably, in elite Confucian literature, per se, but more in folk tales, legends, operas, and, later on, popular media such as contemporary movies. Now, why the song? Let's begin from the very beginning. I want to introduce you to this very famous text, The Biography of Xiang Yu. Who is the grand historian of China? Grand historian of course is an official title. Referring to the leading authoritative historian of the dynasty. Or in fact, the historian of the dynasty. The official historian. That position in the early Han period was occupied by this man called Sima Qian. His father, Sima Tan, was also the grand historian, and father passed on the burden and duty to the son. Sima Qian, unlike his father, had a rather checkered and troubled life because in one political incident involving his close friend, General Li Ling. Sima Qian spoke up for his friend and got himself punished. The punishment was very severe, he was castrated. You know, in China, a man who is castrated cannot perpetuate his family line. It is the depths of humiliation. Yet Sima Qian in his personal narrative for this magnum opus openly says that he wants to live, not because he fears death but because he wants to bequeath to posterity this book. This major book, that he wants to justify himself and his vision of ancient China history. So, in a sense, we're really talking about something like the progenitor of Chinese historiography. Of course, there were quite a few other annals before Sima Qian. But the model set up by Sima Qian's grand [FOREIGN] was the model to follow. In fact, all 24 official dynasties followed basically Sima Qian's model. So I cannot emphasize more the significance and perennial value of Sima Qian's famous history book. The book, of course, is organized in four categories. The first category is called heredity houses referring to sort of family chronicles of the various noble families. In pre-Han period there are 30 chapters or 30 portraits of [FOREIGN] houses all together. The second is called Basic Annals. Or I would translate as, royal biographies, mainly the biographies of royal founders of each dynasty or each important, centralized reign. Now, one question that immediately arises is that after all Xiang Yu lasted only something like five years in that chaotic period as a unifier. He was certainly by no means an emperor. His enemy Liu Bang in fact became the founding emperor of the Han dynasty. Why is Xiang Yu put into the category of the basic annals of the royal houses? Well, that begs the question, which, I will try to answer later on. Thirdly, perhaps the largest question of [FOREIGN] is called a biographies All together something like 70 biographies. Ranging from all kinds of people, from warriors, soldiers, all the way to chesters, thieves, assassins. And really a gallery of portraits, Tour de Force if you like from Simajin. Most Chinese readers such as myself usually will read a biographies first before we venture into some of the other categories. And then there are a couple of minor categories which are reserved probably for specialists. They are all together 130 chapters. It's really a magna opus. If you want to count the words in terms of Chinese characters there are 400,000 Chinese characters, which, of course, comprise several volumes. But of course we are using only the English translation. I'm using a very famous translation by the Columbia University historian and scholar, Burton Watson. The book is still available. I think there are several volumes of this. I'm using volume one. Simply called Records of the Grand Historian. Watson's translation is not entirely complete, although the biography of [FOREIGN] is complete. It's a very interesting and accurate translation, although I may take issue on some minor points when we get into the details of the text. I'm also using a very good book. A scarlet study of [FOREIGN] itself with particular emphasis, in fact, on the tradition of heroism. This book is called The Cloudy Mirror Tension and Conflict in the Writings of Sima Zhen by Stephen Durrant. I strongly recommend these two books for those readers who have no background, who want to know something about this text. Now before going into the text itself, let me a say a word or two about the vision behind Sumai Chan's book. He is a compiler, official compiler of historical records. At the same time, one could say that he is a single author. The notion of authorship is a very modern, Western one. Namely the progenitor of a text. In China, many texts are compiled. There are many authors. Some of the authors are known. And yet, the unique feature of Sima Qian's [FOREIGN] is that every word somehow can be attributed to Sima Qian himself. So he either wrote these words himself, or he compiled them and reorganized them into his historical corpus. So in essence, we can talk about the vision. The vision from this writing. And that vision is spelled out very clearly in two small, short texts. One is his own self narrative or preface to the book. And the other is using a letter to his good friend [FOREIGN]. If we combine both texts, you can see that he has a very, very personalized view of writing this book, of the reasons why he writes this book. And that comes from a sense of frustration, in fact, indignation. He's frustrated, that is to say that the kind of vision that he stands for, that he wants to perpetuate, if be clouded. And that is a vision that he tries to trace back to Confucius. So his own model is Confucius' book, The Spring and Autumn Annals. Which is supposedly compiled and edited by Confucius, and not rich in word for word by Confucius himself. Yet it was held up every since Confucius times as the model of historical writing. It is writing with a moral essence, that is to say you write history you wanted to convey a certain set of principles about the age, about the people you're writing about. Even about the kindom, kingdoms, yeah. The problem with Su Ma Chien, or the problem that Su Ma Chien faces is that somehow he feels that his way of writing history has not been really paid attention to, and that's one of the reasons why he wanted to write this history, to set the historical record straight, for instance. But straight in what sense? In his sense of a certain Confucian orthodoxy, although he does not use the word orthodoxy as yet. [FOREIGN] later on did. The other thing has something to do probably with the Chinese notion of immortality. Almost everybody knows that. There are three grey things that a man, that a hero, or an intellectual must do. In terms of importance. The first one is to establish virtue. And the second to establish deed. And thirdly to establish worth. Worth meaning writing. Chinese culture is probably one of the earliest cultures in the world. In which the written word counts a great deal. So Sema Chen really attaches tremendous importance to the power of the word. He says that in Confucius time the words of Confucius were not adhered to, and that's why the Empire was in chaos. If they all read Confucius' words carefully and obeyed his words, then everything would be all right. What about early Heian period? The period in which Semichan himself lived in. Same thing, only on the intellectual scale. There are many, many schools of thought and the emperor was trying to decide on one school as the imperial orthodoxy. Nominally, the early Confucianism school was chosen. But in fact there was a great deal of contention. Semichans' lord was the Empress Wudi, literally means the warrior emperor. He was a very ambitious man. He was, in fact, the first Hun emperor to expand his territory to the West. And Wudi's obsession was to somehow establish legitimacy. His own legitimacy as the son of heaven. So he openly raised the questions for all these scholars, especially Confucian scholars. Namely, what is the proper relationship between the realms of heaven and men? In other words, what is role near? How do you legitimize the emperorship, the high court in terms of the heavenly mandate? He was obsessed with it. But somehow, he doesn't feel confident. At the same time, he also wants to establish his legitimacy in terms of chronology. That is to say that he is the true descendant of the, sort of the good royal line, if you like. Not the bad line, such as the early Chin emperor who was a tyrant. He wants to establish the good line of kingship. All the way from the Cho dynasty to his own. So, these two big questions became objects or subjects for discussion for everybody, especially Confucian scholars. Wu Di was never satisfied with the answers. So in a way Suma Chen's first two principles of writing this grand book was to answer that is to answer his Emperor's request in his own way. But the most important reason behind his own writing, of course, was the third one. That is to say to establish his own words. So in addition to answering the Emperor's questions, he wants to establish his own words, or the collection of his own history, in order to justify his way of looking at Chinese history. So that way is Sima Qian's way, and that is a very important and daring posture. Because what if the Emperor doesn't like it? Would the Emperor consider this to be not orthodoxy, but heterodoxy? He will be imprisoned. Of course he was castrated, not for this reason. Because he was just writing the Shiji. In a he was castrated. So we look in shame in order to complete this magnus opus. So with this quaint design, it will be very efficient to see how Suma Chen sort of a organized the whole copus. This really begs the further question as to how do you write a grand history for official purposes. We now suddenly, or if you like, if you're a western reader, you may suddenly think about well, what about ancient Greek historians. To be sure, there were Herodotus, Thucydides who lived a couple centuries before Suma Chen, as in the fourth or fifth centuries BC. Both wrote histories, both histories were celebrated throughout ages, and both, in a way, tried to write histories in an objective way but they are different. Not with a kind of a scope that you will find in a Shiji. I just described the four or five categories of writing that Suma Chen used to organize the mass of diverse materials. But he want to find, or to find this one single aspect of Suma Chen's obsession in this grand vision. I will contend that it is heroism, his view of heroism, as his way of answering the Confucian call for sagehood. After Confucius death, Suma Chen argued, there was but after there was nobody that deserved to be called sage. But there were many warriors, right. So in early period in this period of intellectual Confucian, Suma Chen was trying to establish your kind of heroic way, his Confucian vision of history. So that is solved involved some kind of mixture, namely the Confucian tradition and non-Confucian tradition all combined into one corpus. So once scholar, Steven in fact argues that the narrative of the Shiji and the design of the Shiji or the official material design of the Shiji in fact, are in contradiction. That is to say somehow Suma Chen cannot control his own text. He get carried away when he like somebody, even if he criticize this hero, he gets carried away. So this is why the biography of really deserves repeated reading because every time you read it, you'll find something new, something different.
