The Way of the Barbarians: Redrawing Ethnic Boundaries in Tang and Song China by Shao-yun Yang

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Way of the Barbarians: Redrawing Ethnic Boundaries in Tang and Song China by Shao-yun Yang Jonathan Karam Skaff Shao-yun Yang. The Way of the Barbarians: Redrawing Ethnic Boundaries in Tang and Song China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019. Pp. 242. $30 (paper); $99 (hardcover). ISBN 978-0295746036 Shao-yun Yang investigates intellectual shifts in "premodern Chinese attitudes regarding ethnocultural identity and difference" that occurred in the late Tang and Northern Song periods (3). He believes that previous studies of this topic have been influenced by the modern nationalistic assumption that foreign threats naturally encourage "a stronger emphasis on ethnic solidarity and greater hostility toward ethnocultural others" (4). Yang's goal is to explain attitudes of late Tang and Northern Song scholars toward foreigners in terms that more closely correspond to premodern Chinese conceptions. The introduction and the first two chapters explore the thought of the influential Tang scholar-official, Han Yu 韓愈 (768–824) who famously was the leader of the Guwen 古文 (Ancient-Style Prose) literary movement that reacted against the florid parallel prose of the Six Dynasties and early Tang. Philosophically, Han Yu's well-known essay, "Tracing the Way to Its Source" (Yuandao 原道), advocated for a Confucian/Classicist (Ru 儒) revival of "The Way of the Sages" (Shengren zhi Dao 聖人之道), which he believed to have been declining since the time of Mencius. One putative cause of degeneration was the "barbaric" foreign religion of Buddhism. Yang agrees with other scholars, such as Charles Hartman, that Han Yu's ideas about religion and identity should not be described as xenophobic or nativistic because Han opposed not only Buddhism, but also Daoism. Han Yu's attack on the religions radically challenged Tang imperial ideology that drew upon Classicism, Daoism, and Buddhism for legitimacy. However, in contrast to Hartman and others who interpret "Tracing the Way to Its Source" as advocating to restore Confucian "cultural orthodoxy," Yang has coined a neologism, "ethnicized orthodoxy," to describe Han's views. The book's introduction argues that the term "ethnicized" is better suited than "cultural" to describe Han Yu's proposed orthodoxy because premodern Chinese (Hua 華 or Xia 夏) lacked a concept analogous to "culture" defined as "shared values, beliefs, and practices" (11). In addition, "ethnicized" better conveys the radicalism of Han Yu's rhetorical strategy to depict "alternative philosophical and religious traditions as un-Chinese and barbaric. … According to such rhetoric there was fundamentally no such thing as a Chinese Buddhist or even a Chinese Daoist" (16). This was "an ideology-centered [End Page 354] interpretation of Chineseness" (4–5) that "ethnicized … the boundaries of Classicist orthodoxy" (15). Ethnicized orthodoxy was not an identity, but rather was a rhetorical device meant to shame opponents in intellectual debates by "denying their Chineseness" (56). However, in Chapter 2, Yang seemingly contradicts his own argument by disagreeing with scholars, such as Peter Bol, who "see Han Yu as imputing a barbaric essence to Daoism" (53). Yang contends that Han Yu's language is ambiguous about whether Daoism is as barbaric as Buddhism or merely inferior to Classicism. Instead, Chapter 4 credits the Northern Song "Guwen radical," Liu Kai 柳開 (947–1000)—who considered Han Yu and himself to be the final two sages transmitting the true Way—as the first to impute barbarism unequivocally to both Daoism and Buddhism. If Han Yu was only Liu Kai's inspiration to ethnicize the Way of the Sages, then perhaps another label Yang uses to characterize Han's thought, "ideological exclusivity," more aptly represents the ideas of both scholars (43, 222). Yang argues that late Tang scholars developed another discourse of "ethnocentric moralism" that eventually superseded ethnicized orthodoxy and became mainstream during the Northern Song. In coining this second neologism, Yang selects the modern concept of "ethnocentrism"—defined as the "subjective belief that one's (sic) own people and their ways are superior to all others" (14)—because of its close correspondence to premodern Chinese attitudes. "Moralism" more conventionally refers to the propensity of Classicists to judge people according adherence to ritual propriety (li 禮) and moral duty (yi 義). Yang locates the origins of this discourse in late Tang essays, including Cheng Yan's 程晏 (fl. 895–904) "Call to...