The Talent of Shu: Qiao Zhou and the Intellectual World of Early Medieval Sichuan (review)

In 211, during the troubled times at the end of Later Han, Liu Zhang, the warlord governor of western Yi province, invited the soldier of fortune Liu Bei to help him deal with the theocratic rebel Zhang Lu in Hanzhong and the more distant threat posed by Cao Cao, master of north China. Liu Bei claimed distant kinship with his patron, but he turned against him little more than a year later, and in 214 he captured Chengdu, the capital of the territory, and took over power. In 219 Liu Bei seized Hanzhong and styled himself a king. When Emperor Xian of Han was deposed in the following year, Liu Bei claimed the imperial position for himself.

Liu Bei’s military success in the west, however, was overshadowed by the defeat of his general Guan Yu in Jing province on the middle Yangzi at the hands of a rival warlord, Sun Quan. The loss was confirmed by the catastrophic failure of a revenge expedition in 222, and the former territory of Han was now divided between three rival states: Cao Pi, now emperor of Wei, in the north; Sun Quan of Wu on the middle and lower Yangzi; and Liu Bei in the west. Though the rulers of Shu-Han, notably Liu Bei’s great minister Zhuge Liang, sought many times to expand their territory north across the Qin Ling ranges, they gained no permanent success. The smallest of the Three Kingdoms, Shu-Han was restricted to the region of present-day Sichuan until its final conquest by Wei in 263.

The true history of this comparatively minor state, however, has been overlain by centuries of romantic fiction, culminating in the celebrated novel Sanguo yanyi in which Liu Bei is praised for his loyalty, Guan Yu for his bravery, and Zhuge Liang for wisdom, strategic skill, and even magical powers. Some critics question the exaggeration, but such emphasis on these heroes of the romantic tradition, nonetheless, obscures the achievements of other people of that time and place who may be equally worthy of attention.

Farmer is concerned with the scholar and official Qiao Zhou (ca. 200–270), whose life and career were almost contemporaneous with the state of Shu-Han, but who survived to hold an appointment under the Jin dynasty that succeeded Wei. The work seeks to restore some balance and perspective, for the attention paid to Zhuge Liang — who was rather a political patron of scholars than a scholar himself — has led to a general belief that few other thinkers or writers in Shu-Han were worthy of note.

Men from Yi province, however, had been well known in the past for literary skills and philosophy. During the second century b.c. Sima Xiangru was recognized for his splendid rhapsodies; the philosopher Yang Xiong, who also composed literary works, was a major intellectual figure of the late first century b.c. and early first century a.d. whose influence extended through Later Han; and the Yang family of Guanghan maintained a notable intellectual tradition.

Farmer pays considerable attention to Qiao Zhou’s contemporaries in Shu-Han, whose biographies are presented in chapter 44 of the Sanguo zhi of Chen Shou, himself a student of Qiao Zhou. A feature of their work was the emphasis on prophecy — manifestation of the will of heaven through signs and portents — and some local scholars played a role at court by this means. Many other men of the region, however, kept their distance from the government of Liu Bei and his son Liu Shan, while positions in the bureaucracy itself were generally held by men from outside — such as Zhuge Liang, who came originally from Langye on the coast, far to the east — and who had joined Liu Bei during his earlier wanderings.

Qiao...