The Way of the Warrior in Early Medieval China, Examined through the "Northern Yuefu"

Abstract

Despite the notion of the noble savage, war has pervaded human life for a very long time. And it has existed within all major societies including, of course, China. But having accepted the strong tendency of men to kill each other, it is useful to give thought to the differences between societies. Who has been doing the fighting? How have war and the fighting man been viewed and portrayed? And who has written the books in which these portrayals have been presented? Violence and violent domination have flourished as themes in China’s popular fora—the romance novel, the kungfu movie. But the Chinese literary elite, particularly in the last thousand years, has tended to downplay, mask, or caricaturize these central elements of human life and human nature. In this very preliminary study I focus on China’s Northern Dynasties, when war and the warrior were, by some at least, more openly exalted. Although military traditions in China stretch back to the Bronze Age, the starting point for this study will be the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220) which, building on the Qin, established a new model of empire and of army. The military traditions of Han