Week Four

 


[H 97m] As summarized by the emperor himself, the Qin model regulating the interactions between emperor and prime minister (PM) requires that the PM accept all responsibility for bad decisions and to credit the emperor as the responsible agent for good ones (96b, 5th full para.). Wang explicitly identifies what is wrong with such a model:  the emperor will never become aware of his faults (97t, sent. 5). This passage may be significant because it underscores the importance of the relationship between an emperor and his PM without questioning the central position of the emperor. The relationship between a PM and an emperor has already been introduced as a politically unstable:  if the PM does his job well, there will be a point when there is nothing more that the emperor might give him as a reward (95b). The emperor might then suspect that the PM would use his popularity with the people (garnered from his advocacy on their behalf) to foment a rebellion (ibid). Xiao He (XH) chose to allay the emperor’s fears by fostering a reputation for corruption (96t). At first, this decision seems to have the desired result. The emperor’s mind is put at rest; in fact, he is delighted to hear the people’s complaints against XH (ibid). But the emperor’s mind rests for only a short time, and XH seems to have jeopardized his ability to advocate for the people. When he does so, requesting the conversion of parkland into farmland, the emperor again imagines that XH does so in order to curry the people’s favor (his fear of rebellion returns) by picking the emperor’s pockets (96m). Is there a better way to manage the political instability engendered by a good prime minister? Wang (and not XH) provides the positive example; his actions effect XH’s pardon (97m). With the example of Wang, the minister’s responsibility is not to put the emperor’s mind at rest but to remonstrate, help the emperor to see his mistakes so that he can correct them (97t). The true source of political instability is not as XH’s retainer suggests (identified above); it is when an emperor no longer has the desire to be corrected and his ministers fail to correct.   

 

[H 117m-119t]The gossiping about Chen Ping (CP) starts when the king promotes CP to colonel, etc. (119t).  Hearing the grumbling from other military leaders, the emperor “heap[ed on] further honors“ (H119t).  The gossiping escalates as the grumblers spin information from CP’s biography that SQ has already shared with his readers. CP’s “good looks” are spun into “jeweled decorations on a hat” (118t); changes of employment are spun into cowardice/careerism (118tm); charity received becomes bribes (118m). Even after Wei Wuzhi insists that the juicier bits of gossip are irrelevant in gauging CP’s leadership ability (118mb), the king still feels compelled to confront CP himself about his frequent employment changes (118b). CP shares the reason for his departures:  his first and second employers would not take advice or use their advisors effectively (119t). This reason for leaving nicely corresponds to CP’s reason for coming to KH:  KH has the reputation of knowing how to use men (ibid). Perhaps, the internal consistency of CP’s explanation addresses KH’s concern regarding CP’s fickleness; KH may have appreciated that he reputedly knew how to use men. The decisive point seems to be when CP begs to leave again with nothing. After this request, KH rewards CP with even more things that could make envious gossipers grumble (119t).  However, “the other generals dared say no more against him” (119t). Why aren’t the grumblers even more gossipy? Had CP’s interview with the king accomplished something the gossipers could not spin negatively, or is it that CP is now their supervisor (119tm)?  SQ may be pointing us in an additional direction. Right before the story of the gossiping generals, SQ relates how CP avoids an encounter with a murderous boatman by helping the boatman row the boat, stripping off his own clothes, and showing that he had no concealed gold (H117m). If the boatman’s story and the grumbling generals’ story are connected in SQ’s narrative, who is playing the part of the boatman in the latter story, the king and/or the gossiping generals? And why does he leave us to ask and answer that question? 


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