Jia Sidao - His Early Life
A Story by Feng Menglong - Part 1
(Jia Sidao and his cousin from the not-historically-accurate TV series: Marco Polo)
See Part 2 - The Real History of Jia Sidao
See Part 3 - Jia’s Career as told by Feng Menglong
This story, from Feng’s first collection, is titled Zheng Huchen Seeks Revenge in Mumian Temple.Translated by Yang & Yang and found in their book Stories Old & New (2000).
This story retells the background and life of the infamous Song Dynasty minister Jia Sidao. Jia Sidao is ranked alongside a few other terrible ministers in Chinese history who made such a mess of things that their names are like curses.
Why Feng choose to write a biography of Jia Sidao is mystery, after all, no educated man in Feng’s time would not know the basic story. Perhaps Feng felt that Jia Sidao’s life story was important for men of his era to remember. Sadly, only 24 years after this book was published, the Ming Dynasty collapsed - in part due to terrible mistakes made by senior ministers in the Ming government.
Jia Sidao is one of the most important men in all of Chinese history and the Sonoma Sage thinks his life is very interesting for a number of pressing reasons. As a result this essay is divided into several parts.
Introduction
Feng’s narrative, over 30 pages long, looks at Jia Sidao’s life not as an official history, but instead as incidents which reveal the man’s character. The point Feng is making is that Jia Sidao is a tragic hero. He had elements of greatness. Much like Alcibiades of Athens, Sidao had talent and even a measure of genius. Tragically, Sidao’s formidable abilities were in service to a badly flawed man who didn’t use his great powers to accomplish anything useful. To be clear: nearly everything Sidao tried to do made life worse for everyone else in Song Dynasty China.
The reader must know that Sidao didn’t just make a mess of the government when he was in power, he actually destroyed important elements of Chinese civilization. Sidao set in motion events which would result in the deaths of millions of people across most of East Asia. Due to Sidao’s mistakes, the Mongols conquered all of China and then they used Chinese wealth and Chinese soldiers to wreck havoc both inside what had been Song territory, and in other nations of East Asia such as Japan, Vietnam, Burma, and Java.
Although the Mongols ruled China for less than 100 years (1276 to 1362), and the Ming did regain control in 1368, many Chinese scholars view the Ming as inferior to the Song. In a real sense, experts in Chinese culture believe that China never fully recovered from the fall of the Song Dynasty and Jia Sidao is the key man behind the collapse of the Song government.
Jia Sidao wasn’t a weak man, nor was he stupid, and he was certainly not lazy. No, he was energetic, he had a mind like a steel trap, and he had the charm to win the friendship of two Haungdi (Emperors) in succession, as well as many hundreds of powerful men in the Song government. And yet, nearly all his decisions were bad decisions. Sidao is like a combination of Ludendorff1 and Obama - almost everything he worked on when he came to power turned into la merde.
Jia’s Family Background
Feng spends a great deal of effort describing Jia Sidao’s father and mother. The lives of these two unimportant people offers insight into the life of ordinary Chinese in year 1200.
Sidao’s father, Jia She, was a scholar official who did not pass the Imperial Exam but instead seems to have moved into the mid-ranks of the Song government via successful service as an expert in military logistics. Around the age of 35 Jia She was well established as capable government official, but not one destined for high office. Jia She was married a woman named Tang-shi (almost certainly the daughter of a scholar-official) and she ruled his household with an iron fist. As Feng puts is: Jia She was terribly hen-pecked. Tang-shi had not given birth to any sons and so Jia She felt he needed a second wife who would produce a son to continue his family line.
While traveling back to the capital for his next assignment, he met a beautiful but poor married woman who served him lunch when he stopped at her house.
Comment: In those days, a traveler could stop at a farmer’s house and ask for food and water. The traveler would be expected to pay for this. This happened in Europe and America as well, at least before the the 1850s.
Jia She learned that the woman’s husband was dissatisfied with her (she didn’t want to work outside the house and he didn’t make enough money to support her - or so he said). Jia She told the couple that he needed a 2nd wife and he would be willing to pay money for the woman. The peasant farmer said: Drop all shame for a day and you can have a full belly for three days. They agreed upon a price: 40 taels of silver.
Comment: Considering that the woman had nothing other than youth and beauty, 40 taels of silver appears to be a reasonable price. As we will see, a few years later, her value drops to zero.
Jia She and his new 2nd Wife, named Hu-shi, lived together in the capital for six months while he waited for the Ministry of Personal to determin his next job posting.
Comment: in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were far more scholar-officials than jobs so it became commonplace to bribe the staff in the Ministry of Personnel to speed up one’s placement because government officials without postings were paid very little money. In the Song Dynasty, there was less of a mis-match and people just waited in the capital for their next job.
With his new job in hand, Jia She returned to his home to collect his prime wife and servants because he was going to be the Number 2 man supervising a wealthy county. His prime wife, Tang-shi, learned about Hu-shi, who was pregnant, and she was not happy! Tang-shi understood that this new woman, if she gave birth to son, would have superior status in the house - after Jia She died. Consequently, Tang-shi made life miserable for Hu-shi, who as a mere peasant woman, lacked the social status to complain about her treatment.
Jia She lacked the ability to control his prime wife. As Feng puts it: Choked with fury, there was nothing Jia She could do. One day he confided to the county supervisor about his troubles at home. His boss said: Send your 2nd wife to my house. She will be taken care of until the baby is born. The two men came up with a scheme to fool Tang-shi into sending Hu-shi away and the scheme was successful. Tang-shi was pleased as she thought that she had gotten rid of her husband’s 2nd wife.
Comment: People think of Imperial China as an ultra-patriarchal society in which men ran everything and women had no power. This story, from 800 years ago, shows that women were so powerful that they could push their husband around, treat their husband’s 2nd wife like a servant and there was nothing their husband could do about it. Here we have two mid-ranking government officials inventing a scheme to keep a young pregnant woman safe when - legally - Jia She had the authority to demand his wife treat his new 2nd wife with respect and dignity. Hen-pecked doesn’t seem to capture the extent of the power dynamic we see here. Is it a surprise that such weak-willed government officials were defeated by the Mongols?
Safely in the County Supervisor’s home, Hu-shi gave birth to a son, the future Jia Sidao. However, when Tang-shi learned that Hu-shi had given birth to a son, she demanded that Jia She divorce Hu-shi and marry her off to some other man before she would allow the infant into her house. Jia She feared that even if he did this, Tang-shi would arrange to have the baby boy killed through some means. So Jia She placed his son with his older brother’s family.
Jia She’s older brother Jia Ru also had no sons but he did have a daughter who was likely to be selected as a girl of the Palace of the Huangdi (Emperor). Jia Ru gladly accepted Jia She’s son and took care of him, giving him the best education. Note: Jia Ru’s daughter, named Jia Yuhua, was brought into the Palace and she later became the favorite consort of the Huangdi. People are often confused about the exact relationship between Jia Sidao and Jia Yuhua, they were cousins - not siblings.
Tang-shi’s anger was not assuaged by this measure and so Jia She divorced Hu-shi and arranged for her to be married to a stone mason - with no money changing hands. Although Hu-shi was bitterly sad at losing contact with her infant son and being divorced by Jia Shi, she could do nothing to prevent these events from occurring. Again, she was a low status woman with apparently no power or agency.
By the age of seven, Jia Sidao could read a line of text once and repeat it back flawlessly. By the age of 15 Jia Sidao had read all of the classics and all of the commentaries and he could write essays as fast as he could move his brush. But then - tragedy struck. In short order his father’s prime wife Tang-shi died, then his father died, and then his uncle & adopted father Jia Ru died. Within a year, Jia Sidao was very rich orphan.
Comment: these deaths occured around the year 1230. Given that the Jia family were near the top of Chinese society, these sudden deaths suggest a plague swept through China at this time. The most terrible plague in world history - called the Black Plague in Europe - started in Kyrgyzstan in 1337. That plague devastated China in the 1340s before it arrived in Europe in 1348. The Sage thinks it is likely that an earlier plague afflicted China in 1230. To bolster this guess, all four sons of Huangdi Lizong died young and his eventual successor - Duzong of Song - was a younger nephew.
The newly rich, newly orphaned Jia Sidao - after performing the necessary funerals - abandoned his studies and spent his inheritance wildly on gambling, horse-racing, cockfighting, drinking, and spending nights with various courtesans. After two years, he was nearly bankrupt. However, he learned something valuable: his cousin Jia Yuhua, had become the favorite of the Huangdi, Lizong of Song. Jia Sidao gathered his remaining money and headed to the capital to see what he could make of this connection.
Note: the translators Yang & Yang, in a footnote, state that in China it was said that there were nine women’s professions : Buddhist nun, Taoist priestess, fortune-teller, dealer in human traffic (prostitute?), matchmaker, witch, brothel manager, doctor, and midwife. This is a fascinating list, especially compared to the jobs that women filled in Europe at the same time: shepherdess, milk-maid, bar maid, seamstress, leather-decorator, musician, etc. The Sage has never read any story about a Chinese woman who acted as a fortune teller, though he is sure Yang & Yang are correct.
For more of Jia Sidao’s life, see:
Erich Ludendorff’s decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare and to send Lenin back to Russia in 1917 were - in the Sage’s opinion - the greatest mistakes a capable government official made in the 20th century. President Obama was personally charming but almost none of his decisions were good for the USA.