This seems to be a simple question, but it contains the game competition between the two dynasties in the Central Plains. One is the Song Dynasty, which is full of the sense of "etiquette collapses", and the other is the Liao Dynasty, which is full of national self-confidence. The confrontation between the north and the south, each with its own thoughts, whoever comes out on top first and is invincible will be able to dominate the conclusion of "Huayi". Sadly, both sides seem to have forgotten the original ideal of "great unification" and are instead immersed in the illusion of self-exaltation. Was it because the scholars and doctors of the Song Dynasty thought too highly of themselves, or was the "Chinese" consciousness of the Liao Dynasty a little too much? Or is there a deeper reason in between? Let's find out.
The origin of the "Chinese" consciousness of the Liao Dynasty
The Northern Song Dynasty and the Liao Dynasty engaged in a protracted cultural battle, the roots of which can be traced back to the prosperity of the Liao Dynasty. At that time, the Khitan people gradually accepted the concept of Confucianism, setting off a wave of "respecting Confucius and respecting Confucianism". The Khitan people built a large number of state and county schools and academies, and spared no effort to promote Han culture and education. In addition, the imperial examination system continued in the Liao Dynasty, which won a good opportunity for the Han people to be promoted to the eunuchs.
As Han culture became more and more popular in the Liao Dynasty, more and more Chinese classics were introduced by the Liao people and studied one by one. Outstanding Han scholars such as Li Jingde, Ouyang Xiu and others were also recruited by the Liao court. In this situation, the Han culture gradually merged with the local culture, giving birth to a unique "Qihan culture".
The Khitans originally regarded the Central Plains Dynasty as a foreign power, but after the integration of Han culture, their concept changed radically. They began to accept the Confucian concept of "great unification" and "Yixia hierarchy", and awakened the "Chinese consciousness". This was not only conducive to the unification of all ethnic groups, but also greatly enhanced the Khitan people's sense of identity with the Liao regime.
As a result, the Liao court took a series of measures to consolidate its rule. In terms of agriculture, vigorously reclaimed land and absorbed a large number of Han immigrants; Culturally, the slogan of "Hanqi Family" was put forward to call for ethnic integration. More crucially, the Liao court adopted a "north-south side-by-side" approach in its foreign relations with the Northern Song Dynasty, in an attempt to gain a position on an equal footing with the Central Plains regime.
In short, with the help of Confucianism and Han culture, the ruling class of the Liao Dynasty succeeded in awakening the "Chinese consciousness" and gradually established the concept of "self-centeredness". They no longer regarded the Khitan Dynasty as a kind of "Tibetan state", but raised it to the level of "Chinese orthodoxy". This change of concept not only injected a strong spiritual impetus into the dynasty, but also made the Liao people realize that the struggle with the Northern Song Dynasty had risen to a new height.
The dilemma faced by the Song Dynasty
For the Northern Song Dynasty, after the loss of the sixteen states of Yanyun, the government and the opposition were hit hard. During the reign of Taizong, he once longed for the grand plan of "unifying the world", but now he can only bury it deep in his heart. The idea of conquering the Liao Dynasty by force also drifted away in successive years of defeat.
The Battle of the Goryeo River and the victory at Qigou Pass directly shook the confidence of the Northern Song Dynasty in foreign expeditions. The Song army suffered heavy casualties in two battles and suffered heavy losses. Taizong's court had no choice but to temporarily abandon its attempt to recover Yanyun by force and instead seek a way to live in peace with Liao.
Since then, the government and the opposition have gradually had the feeling of "looking at plums to quench their thirst". It is difficult for the scholar class to look back on the former "dream of the world", so they can only secretly hang on to themselves. Ouyang Xiu, a famous writer in the Song Dynasty, expressed infinite melancholy about the current situation at that time in his poems: "In the middle of the night, the palace words are desolate, and the clouds are secretly in harmony with the sheng gongqi. The wind blows away the snow on the willow edge, and the red mansion presses the pear blossom branches. ＂
The Song court, which was powerless to take care of itself, had no choice but to bow to the Liao Dynasty. During the Taizong period, the two dynasties reached an agreement through the "Lanyuan Alliance", and the Northern Song Dynasty was required to pay tribute to the Liao Dynasty every year. In the Zhenzong period, the name of the year's coin was repeatedly downgraded to "Nagong". Undoubtedly, the status of "Chinese orthodoxy" in the Song Dynasty, which existed in name only, was already in the eyes of the Liao people.
Not only lost the important town of Yanyun, but also repeatedly ate all the closed door soup in the hands of the Liao, and the prestige of the Song family was greatly swept away in the Central Plains. Even so, the Northern Song Dynasty did not recognize the thief as his father and accepted the Liao Dynasty's "waiyi" identity. On the contrary, they are still deeply rooted in the concept of "Yixia hierarchy" and claim to be the legitimate descendants of China.
This was especially true of the literati and writers of the time. Unable to do anything, they had no choice but to denigrate the Liao people in poetry and ink, in order to vent their long-standing helplessness and loss. When Ouyang Xiu praised the Song general Li Gang, he claimed that the Liao people had "bad habits and wolves", which was not enough to compare with the Central Plains civilization.
It can be said that under the double blow of external defeat and internal decline, the Northern Song Dynasty established a strong self-defense mentality. In order to maintain their old dignity and status, they did not hesitate to paralyze themselves with the way of thinking of "valuing China and ignoring Yidi". However, under the attack of the powerful Liao Dynasty, such a "pretending to be stupid" approach could not completely resolve the anxiety and sense of threat in the hearts of the Song people.
New initiatives of the Khitan Dynasty
Faced with the stalemate between the north and the south, the Liao Dynasty was by no means willing to be just a "small frontier country". They actively adopted a series of measures to seek breakthroughs in the political, economic, and cultural fields, in order to compete with the Song Dynasty.
The agrarian economy was the center of gravity of the Liao dynasty's rule. The Liao court vigorously built water conservancy and encouraged private reclamation. The barren land, the Liao people tried their best to reclaim it; The original farmland is focused on breeding. In order to maintain agricultural production, the Liao court also set up a special management body called "Agricultural and Mulberry Supervisors". After several generations of hard work, the Liao Dynasty finally had an army of agricultural labor, laying a solid foundation for food self-sufficiency.
At the same time, the Liao Dynasty also spared no effort in ethnic integration. The ruling class put forward the slogan of "Han Qi family", calling on the Khitan and Han people to love each other, in order to form a high degree of cohesion within the regime. Although the process of national integration of the Liao Dynasty has not yet been perfected, it has at least laid the national foundation for future unification.
In terms of foreign policy, the Liao Dynasty was on par with the Song Dynasty everywhere. Compared with the parallel use of the "three era names" during the Song Zhenzong period, it reflects the Liao people's "neither humble nor arrogant" attitude. Some scholars have pointed out that the era name given by the Liao court to Liao Shenzong is "The Imperial Calendar of the Great Khitan Emperor", which can be seen from the juxtaposition with the "Qing Calendar" of the Song calendar.
In addition, the Liao people also tried to establish their prestige in the field of culture. They not only built a ladder to carry on the past and took the lead in revitalizing Confucianism in the northeast, but also generously took in a group of celebrities who fled the Song Dynasty. This practice of the Liao Dynasty not only cultivated its own talent reserve, but also laid the foundation for competing with the Song Dynasty for cultural orthodoxy in the future.
In general, the Liao Dynasty sought to compete with the Song Dynasty everywhere in the process of facing the Northern Song Dynasty, and tried to achieve an equal status between the north and the south. They spared no effort in agriculture, ethnic integration, the era name system, cultural construction, etc., hoping to eventually compete with the Song Dynasty and occupy a favorable situation in the battle for orthodox status.
Song Chen's various evaluations of the Liao Dynasty
In the face of the rapid development of the Liao Dynasty in the military, political, economic and other fields, the Northern Song Dynasty and the opposition were by no means willing to admit defeat easily. They tried their best to uphold the so-called "Chinese orthodoxy" and slandered the Liao people in a vain attempt to assert their cultural superiority.
The monarchs and ministers of the Northern Song Dynasty often degraded the Liao people to titles such as "captivity", "Di" and "Yi", so as to degrade them to the fullest. For example, in his travelogue, the envoy Han Derang repeatedly referred to the Liao realm as the "captive realm" and the Liaojun Holy Sect as the "captive master". Similar terms can be seen everywhere in the writings of literati such as Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi.
The Song people even denied and discriminated against all the customs and habits of Liao. For example, in the book "Customs in Captivity", the way of burying the remains of the Liao people is denounced as "the burial of pigs". The Southern Song Dynasty literati Zhou Qufei even referred to Liao as "wolf and sheep offal" in "Lingwai Dai Answer". It can be seen that the scholars at that time did not understand the ethnic customs of the Liao people at all, and there was great prejudice.
What's more, the Song people turned a blind eye to Liao's policy of ethnic integration. They deliberately ignored the fact that the Liao Dynasty was trying to implement the concept of the "Han Qi family" and insisted on treating the Liao as a "foreign dynasty". In this regard, Ouyang Xiu claimed when he criticized the Liao Shengzong: "The teaching of the saints is not preached in Dongyi. ＂
Some literati in the Northern Song Dynasty realized that their own force could not compete with that of the Liao Dynasty, so they took aim at the cultural field. Without exception, they regard their own cultural values as supreme and despise and belittle Liao culture.
If there is indeed some vulgarity in Liao culture, then the Song people's attack on this is inevitably too narrow and arbitrary. In fact, after several generations of efforts, the Liao Dynasty has absorbed the essence of Confucian culture and tried to integrate and innovate with the local culture. However, the Song people knew all about this, or deliberately turned a blind eye.
In other words, the actions of the literati of the Song Dynasty were more out of a narrow cultural prejudice. They could not treat the Khitan people, who were also descendants of Chinese civilization, equally, so the denial and discrimination of Liao culture became inevitable.
The collision of two ideologies
In the protracted cultural contest between the Northern Song Dynasty and the Liao, both sides were actually prisoners of the "Chinese consciousness" mindset. They proceeded from their own standpoints, made arbitrary extrapolations and subjective assumptions, and finally fell into the quagmire of a "dispute between falsehoods".
The Song dynasty regarded itself as the heir to Chinese civilization, and thus defined "China" as an innate cultural superiority. They not only questioned the Liao people, but also regarded Liao as "Dongyi" in terms of cultural identity. As Ouyang Xiu said in "Wutai Poems", "Although the Khitan is a big country, it is not China." This narrow national concept has become so deeply ingrained that it is simply not possible to treat the cultural achievements of the Liao Dynasty equally.
In contrast, the "Chinese consciousness" of the Liao people is more inclusive. They focused on cultural integration and strengthened their legitimacy by introducing systems such as Confucianism and imperial examinations. At the same time, however, the Liao inevitably fell into the misunderstanding of the one-sided "Sinocentrism" theory, believing that they could compete with the Song and compete for legitimacy with the help of this approach.
In fact, measures such as the era name system, the modulation of rents, and enlightenment, although they enhanced the formal legitimacy of the Liao Dynasty to a certain extent, were only expedient measures in the end. Blindly imitating the Han people did not fundamentally change the ethnic affiliation of the Liao people, and naturally they could not completely obtain the supremacy of "orthodoxy".
It is precisely because both sides are obsessed with this that they have fallen into a quagmire when discussing the connotation of "China". The Song people rested on their laurels and believed that "China" was the cultural orthodox inheritance; The Liao, on the other hand, regarded "China" as a form of political legitimacy and attempted to gain legitimacy through legal means.
The two sides have a long history of divergent views, which in turn will lead to a series of controversies and polemics. However, it is not difficult to see that whether it is the Song Dynasty or the Liao Dynasty, what they are arguing about is only the appearance, but they do not have the consciousness to dig deep into the connotation of "China". This has led to a cultural clash between the two sides, which is ultimately a false struggle for the dominance of the "Chinese consciousness".
end
In general, the essence of the Song-Liao controversy was actually the collision of two different ideologies. On the one hand, it is the deep-rooted consciousness of the Celestial Empire and the sense of distress of "etiquette collapse and happiness" in the Song Dynasty, and on the other hand, the consciousness of the Liao people to pursue orthodoxy born from the introduction of Confucianism. It is precisely because of the misplaced perception of the "Chinese consciousness" itself on both sides that this protracted and inextricable cultural debate has arisen.