Three Kingdoms and Six Dynasties

By the early 3rd century the Han empire existed in name only. Cao Cao (曹操), master of the north since his victory at Guandu in 200, marched south towards the Yangtze in the autumn of 208. Two southern warlords joined forces against him: Sun Quan (孙权) and Liu Bei (刘备). In the winter of 208–209, at Red Cliffs (赤壁), their forces, led by Sun Quan's commander Zhou Yu, defeated a much larger army. The general Huang Gai pretended to surrender and sent fire ships packed with kindling, dry reeds and oil into Cao Cao's fleet; Cao Cao had to retreat north through the marshes. Exactly where the battle was fought is still debated.

Red Cliffs foreshadowed a divide between north and south that would last for centuries. Cao Cao never again had the chance to destroy his southern rivals. In 220 his son Cao Pi (曹丕) received the abdication of the last Han emperor and founded the state of Wei (魏), with its capital at Luoyang. In 221 Liu Bei, who claimed kinship with the imperial family, proclaimed himself emperor of Han at Chengdu: history calls his state Shu (蜀). Sun Quan, at first king of Wu (吴) under Wei overlordship, broke away in 222 and took the title of emperor in 229; his capital was Jianye, today's Nanjing.

This balance held until 263, when Wei, by then run in practice by the Sima clan, conquered Shu. In 265/266 Sima Yan forced the last Wei emperor to abdicate and founded the Jin dynasty (晋), which conquered Wu in 280. The census taken that year counted some 16 million people, against more than 56 million under the Han. The figures are probably too low, since the census was used for taxation and many people stayed off the registers; but war, famine and epidemics had caused a severe fall in population.

The Jin reunification did not last. After a decade of peace, the death of Sima Yan in 290 opened the War of the Eight Princes (291–306), in which princes of the imperial clan fought for control of the developmentally disabled Emperor Hui and laid waste to the north. Peoples from the steppe and the western highlands, some of whom had lived inside China for generations, took advantage of the chaos: the Xiongnu, Xianbei, Di, Jie and Qiang, collectively called the "Five Barbarians" (五胡). In 304 two leaders founded states of their own, the conventional start of the Sixteen Kingdoms (十六国, 304–439). In 311 the Han-Zhao, a state founded by Xiongnu, sacked Luoyang and captured the emperor; in 316 Chang'an fell in turn. That was the end of the Western Jin (西晋).

Much of the northern elite, and many commoners, fled south. A prince of the imperial clan, Sima Rui, re-founded the dynasty at Jiankang, today's Nanjing: the Eastern Jin (东晋, 317–420). The refugees were entered on separate registers, and their descendants formed the southern aristocracy. In the north, kingdoms rose and fell within decades; the name "Sixteen Kingdoms" comes from the history of them written by Cui Hong in the 6th century.

One of them, the Former Qin, briefly unified the whole north and marched on the south in 383. At the Fei River (淝水), a much smaller Jin army routed it, and the Former Qin broke apart. The Jin never won back the whole north, though: in 420 their general Liu Yu seized the throne and founded the Song, the first of the Southern dynasties.

From 420 China had two halves. In the south, four short-lived dynasties followed one another at Jiankang: the Song, Qi, Liang and Chen. Together with Wu and the Eastern Jin, which had also ruled from Jiankang, they are the "Six Dynasties" (六朝) that gave the whole era one of its names. Swollen by refugees from the north, the south, until then almost a frontier land, filled with people and cities and grew rich.

In the north, the Northern Wei (北魏), founded by the Tuoba clan of the Xianbei, had absorbed the last of the Sixteen Kingdoms by 439. Emperor Xiaowen (孝文帝, r. 471–499) set out to make it a fully Chinese state. In 493–494 he moved the capital from Pingcheng, today's Datong, to Luoyang, the old capital of the Eastern Han and the Jin. Edicts banned Xianbei dress and language at court in favour of Han ones; Xianbei families took one-character Chinese surnames, and the imperial Tuoba clan (拓跋) became the Yuan (元). Marriages between Xianbei and Han families were encouraged.

The reforms also split the state: the garrisons on the northern frontier, which kept to the steppe way of life, rose in 523, and in 534–535 the Northern Wei broke into an Eastern and a Western Wei, soon replaced by the Northern Qi and the Northern Zhou. The Zhou conquered the Qi in 577. In 581 Yang Jian (杨坚), who controlled the Zhou court, seized the throne and founded the Sui; in 589 his armies took Jiankang and ended the Chen. China was one again: the age of division that had opened with the fall of the Han, which the brief Jin reunification had not closed, was over.

Buddhism had begun to enter China under the Eastern Han. It was during these centuries of division that it took root, among the elite and the common people, in the north as in the south, and changed Chinese culture in depth: it brought monasticism, monasteries, translated scriptures, new rituals and new forms of art; the Chinese pagoda grew out of the Indian stupa.

In the north, the Wei court and the great families paid for sanctuaries cut into the rock, although Emperor Taiwu, advised by a Daoist minister, launched the first of the persecutions known as the "Three Disasters of Wu". Two of China's most famous Buddhist cave sites were begun under this dynasty, near its two successive capitals. At Yungang (云冈石窟), outside Datong, the first caves were cut around 460 at the request of the monk Tanyao; the court paid for the work until it left for Luoyang in 494, after which most caves were paid for by nobles and officials. Some 51,000 statues are counted there, in a style that blends the Buddhist art of India and Central Asia with Chinese traditions. At Longmen (龙门石窟), south of Luoyang, carving began once the capital had moved there and went on for centuries, above all under the Tang: some 100,000 statues line the cliffs of the Yi River. UNESCO added Longmen to the World Heritage List in 2000, and Yungang in 2001.

In the south, Emperor Wu of the Liang (r. 502–549) was so devout that he gave himself to a monastery more than once; the court persuaded him to come back with lavish donations to the Buddhist clergy. Because monks and Daoist priests paid no tax, nearly half the households of the realm ended up registered under them, to the ruin of state finances.

Wang Xizhi (王羲之, c. 303 – c. 361) is often regarded as the greatest calligrapher in Chinese history. Born at Langya, in today's Shandong, into one of the great northern clans, he was still a child when his family fled south after the collapse of the Western Jin. He made a career in the service of the Eastern Jin and from 347 governed Kuaiji, today's Shaoxing in Zhejiang.

His most famous work dates from 353. On the third day of the third month he gathered about forty friends, relatives and pupils at the Orchid Pavilion (兰亭) near Kuaiji for the spring purification festival. Cups of wine floated down a winding stream; whenever one stopped in front of a guest, he had to compose a poem or else drink. Wang wrote the preface to the collection of the day's poems: the Lantingji Xu (兰亭集序), 324 characters in 28 columns of running script (行书), often celebrated as the high point of that style in the history of calligraphy.

The original is lost. Emperor Taizong of the Tang, who gathered some 2,000 of Wang's works and made his style the model for the court, is said to have had it buried with him in his tomb. Only copies and rubbings remain; the one judged closest to the original, the "Shenlong" copy attributed to Feng Chengsu, is in the Palace Museum in Beijing. Since the Song dynasty some have even doubted that Wang wrote it, a debate revived in 1965 by Guo Moruo. His style has nonetheless remained a model for calligraphers in China and Japan.

If the Three Kingdoms are among the best-known eras of Chinese history, it is probably thanks to a novel. The official history, the Records of the Three Kingdoms (三国志), was written by Chen Shou around 290, and Pei Songzhi added his annotations in 429. More than a thousand years after the events, probably in the 14th century, the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国演义), traditionally attributed to Luo Guanzhong (罗贯中), retold the story, blending in the tales of storytellers. First printed in 1522, it is read today in the 120-chapter version edited by Mao Lun and Mao Zonggang in the 1660s, and it is one of the Four Great Classical Novels (四大名著).

The novel does not just tell the story: it takes sides. Liu Bei, who claimed descent from the Han, is the rightful heir, flanked by his sworn brothers Guan Yu and Zhang Fei; Cao Cao becomes a cruel and cunning schemer; the strategist Zhuge Liang (诸葛亮) commands wind and rain. At Red Cliffs the novel has him "borrow" the east wind for the fire attack, and the enemy's arrows with boats covered in straw (草船借箭); it has Guan Yu let Cao Cao go on the Huarong road. These episodes are fiction, and Zhuge Liang did not command the allied forces.

The Qing historian Zhang Xuecheng judged the novel to be "seven parts fact and three parts fiction", enough to mislead its readers. Yet it is these scenes that fed popular culture, down to today's films, TV series and video games. Guan Yu, the loyal warrior, is even worshipped as a god: Buddhism still honours him as a bodhisattva.