Ancient Chinese Warfare (24 page)

The Shang also withdrew from P’an-lung-ch’eng, but Wu-ch’eng continued to flourish long after P’an-lung-ch’eng’s decline. Wu-ch’eng’s material culture continued to reflect early Anyang developments to some degree, but it clearly had shed central control and was no longer an integral part of the Shang realm. Many Shang enclaves in Hubei were also displaced by indigenous peoples, and the only outward-oriented activity, perhaps a collateral result of moving the capital eastward back toward the ancient heartland, was a weak expression of power into the nearby Shandong area that early on brought Lin-tzu within the shifting periphery and saw the establishment of a few eastern outposts.

It has traditionally been held that the Shang moved their ritual and administrative capital five times after King T’ang vanquished the Hsia and initially ruled from Po. Chung Ting reportedly shifted it to Ao, Ho Tan-chia from Ao to Hsiang, Tzu Yi from Hsiang to Hsing, Nan Keng from Hsing to Yen, and finally, in the most famous move of all, P’an Keng from Yen to the Anyang area.
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Although the exact locations continue to be much debated, they are generally confined to a broad corridor from Erh-li-t’ou to Anyang itself. Despite proposals of martial motivation, these shifts remain enigmatic and arguments have been simultaneously advanced that certain ones represent a movement away or a movement toward confronting such threats.

According to the generally accepted account, after Cheng-chou had flourished for about a century, in his first year of rule Chung Ting
ordered the populace to embark for a new capital known as Ao.
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The usual justifications have been advanced for his precipitous decision, including internal disorder, flooding, and a desire to confront the Tung Yi more directly. However, the last two are somewhat improbable: Cheng-chou doesn’t show much evidence of flood damage, and it would have been foolhardy to endanger the state’s administrative and ritual assets by making them more accessible to enemy forces (despite subsequent thinking about “fatal” terrain) by moving to confront the enemy. Nevertheless, ongoing conflict with the Lan Yi, a subgroup of the Tung Yi, is suggested by a
Bamboo Annals
entry that states, “in the reign of Chung Ting, the Lan Yi made incursions, some revolting and some submitting,” and “when Chung Ting ascended the throne he conducted punitive expeditions against the Lan Yi.” More likely, as reported in the
Shih Chi
, either unrest among the nobility or conflict over the royal succession probably prompted Chung Ting’s policy of compulsory emigration. However, it seems to have initiated nine generations of turbulence that ultimately caused the Shang’s power to wither so dramatically that the feudal lords no longer felt compelled to pay homage at court.

The remnants of a large Shang fortified city at Hsiao-shuang-ch’iao have been proposed as the site of Chung Ting’s capital of Ao, though not without controversy.
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Located 20 kilometers northwest of Cheng-chou and twenty kilometers from the Yellow River against Mt. Mang (anciently known as Mt. Ao), it dates to the Pai-chia-chuang period but employed construction techniques remarkably similar to Cheng-chou. An expansive city of just under 1.5 square kilometers, it was protected by a 3.5-meter-wide, 1.75-meter-deep, essentially rectangular moat that runs 1,800 meters from north to south and 800 meters from east to west.

Whether it superseded Cheng-chou (Po) as the capital or was a simultaneously occupied secondary capital where the ruler may have chosen to reside to project power against threats from the northwest or escape internal turmoil remains unknown.
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Insofar as conflict with the Tung Yi seems to have constantly troubled the Shang during the middle period, the discovery of several three-sided stone spades in sacrificial pits at Hsiao-shuang-ch’iao that originated in the Yüeh-shih culture identified
with the Lan Yi would seem to be evidence that Chung Ting conducted a successful campaign against them.
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A hundred heads from captives who were subsequently sacrificed have also been uncovered that show heavy cutting marks.
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However, the movement to Hsiaoshuang-ch’iao actually shifted the capital away from the friction zone just when Shang victories in these eastern clashes may have forced the Lan Yi to disperse into Shandong, initiating a substantial displacement of Tung Yi.
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After a mere twenty or thirty years King Tsu Yi reportedly moved the capital from Ao to Hsing. One likely location for Hsing is Ke-chia-chuang, a site that certainly was not occupied until P’an-lung-ch’eng and Yüan-ch’ü had been abandoned.
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This retrenchment in the northeast represents a thrust back toward the early Yü-pei/Chi-nan heartland, while Ke-chia-chuang’s location coheres well with traditional scholarly projections of Hsing having been positioned near Hsing-t’ai in Hebei. However, this shift would have brought the Shang core much closer to the Tung Yi, presumably spawning more frequent confrontations. However, the other proposed site, Tsu Yi’s capital of Hsing (or Ying)—Tung-hsien-hsien—is also located at Hsing-t’ai. Although only preliminary reports have appeared, Tung-hsien-hsien seems to have flourished between Cheng-chou’s decline and Anyang’s initial development and apparently continued as a regional center to the end of the dynasty. A few oracle bones have been recovered, and it evidences a cultural stage similar to Huan-pei, but surprisingly lacks walls.
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Next in the traditionally accepted sequence of Shang capitals is Yen, tentatively identified with a site out in Shandong amid the Tung Yi, near what would eventually became Ch’ü-fu in the state of Lu. It apparently served as the Shang center for some thirty-three years and may have been Nan Keng’s residence before he became ruler. Once enthroned, he presumably designated it as the official capital, thereby inescapably continuing the Shang’s confrontation with sometimes hostile Tung Yi cultural manifestations.
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Tsu Chia retained Yen before P’an Keng initiated the famous move to the Anyang area, somewhat away from the eastern threats that the Shang had been successfully repressing.

Acrimonious debate continues over the nature of P’an Keng’s motivation for again shifting the capital, the actual location, and the reliability
of the cryptic historical writings chronicling it.
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Until recently it had been assumed that he was the first to occupy the area south of the Huan River known from Chou times onward as the “wastes of Yin,” even though the lack of any oracle bones predating Wu Ting’s reign has proven problematic.
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However, the discovery of a large, well-engineered bastion whose radiocarbon dates just precede the facilities at Anyang has led to the well-reasoned proposal that P’an Keng ensconced the Shang at Huan-pei.

Located 19 kilometers east of the T’ai-hang mountains on the northern bank of the Huan River just above Anyang, Huan-pei’s walls form a slightly distorted square that extends 2,200 meters from north to south and 2,150 meters from east to west and encompasses a massive 4.7 square kilometers. Though neither ditches nor moats reinforce the perimeter, the walls vary from 7 to 11 meters in width and were erected upon deep, carefully layered foundations that began with an interior side trench and were then expanded with a conjoined trench on the exterior.
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Huan-pei’s immense size naturally prompted archaeologists to deem it one of the Shang’s intermediate centers, possibly Hsiang, rather than simply a military bastion.
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However, it is more likely that P’an Keng, Hsiao Hsin, and Hsiao Yi ruled from Huan-pei before Wu Ting ordered the erection of a new administrative capital when he assumed power, perhaps because a conflagration had heavily damaged the ritual complex.
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(Whether the fire was accidental or the result of enemy action is unknown. However, if it were viewed as an expression of Heaven’s will or interpreted as a fatal omen, psycho-religious factors could have compelled the move.) This would explain the lack of pre- Wu Ting oracle bones at Yin-hsü but not the slight chronological discontinuity evident between it and Huan-pei.

Surprisingly, after being abandoned the vast complex of highly functional structures at Huan-pei was never reoccupied during the Shang’s last centuries, despite being perfectly positioned to block attacks from the north. Even if the rather unrealistic conjecture that P’an Keng moved the capital twice
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—first to Huan-pei then back to the Cheng-chou area or even to Hsiao-shuang-ch’iao—were to be substantiated, Huan-pei’s abandonment as a military bastion would remain tactically and strategically puzzling.

The first ancient Shang site to be systematically explored, Anyang has yielded many of the artifacts and most of the oracle materials that underlie current depictions of Shang history and culture.
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A period of renewed fluorescence clearly began shortly after P’an Keng or one of his immediate successors moved the capital to Anyang, an area that had once been occupied by predynastic Shang culture.
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The forcible emigration of the populace seems to have prompted vehement opposition, compelling the king to issue proclamations acknowledging the burdens and inconvenience, yet mandating acquiescence on pain of death because of the situation’s exigency. Unfortunately, despite its vividness and detail, “P’an Keng,” the famous text purportedly preserving his pronouncement, is clearly a late fabrication and therefore useless except perhaps as a vestigial memory of their discontent.

P’an Keng’s reasons for initiating this incomprehensibly massive effort remain unknown but likely stemmed from a combination of internal strife and external military pressure, because the immediately preceding era seems to have been marked by weakness, contraction, threats, incursions, and rebellion. However, other factors have been proposed, including exhaustion of the land, pollution of the environment, irrecoverable fire or flood damage, and widespread debauchery that could only be rectified by the imposition of draconian Virtue.
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P’an Keng thus seems to have been trying to reassert royal authority in a pristine environment, unencumbered by political and personal entanglements, while Anyang was well situated to exploit numerous natural resources, including water, wood, and minerals.
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The lack of engineered fortifications at Anyang other than a lengthy moat has provoked questions about its character as a capital. As already noted, according to traditional texts and subsequent historical thought, capitals are defined by the presence of the ruling clan’s ancestral temple, fortified palace, and administrative complexes within a district demarked by protective barriers and substantial exterior walls, whether freestanding or systematically conjoined with internal and external moats.
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However, Anyang’s opulence and undeniable role as the Shang’s administrative and ritual center over the last part of the dynasty have
prompted historians to seek an explanation for the incomprehensible absence of substantial fortifications, especially in the light of lessons that should have been learned from Erh-li-t’ou’s vulnerability.

Even though the Shang had a lengthy tradition of ensuring site security before initiating other projects, Anyang’s early kings may have lacked the necessary power to coerce the populace into undertaking the onerous burden of wall building, particularly if they were still recovering from a disaster that had consumed significant resources. Conversely, the ability to order the excavation of the extensive moat that connected the river on the north and the south and partially defined and protected the imperial quarters, whether under his immediate predecessors or at the start of his reign, indicates that Wu Ting’s authority was more than sufficient to mandate the erection of walls or order the assignment of prisoners to the task.
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However, insofar as his aggressive reassertion of Shang power ensured decades of relative tranquility, perhaps his successors had the luxury of simply immersing themselves in the pleasures of empire that ultimately enervated the state, causing the domain’s contraction.

In addition to claiming that Anyang’s rulers were simply oblivious to external threats or the city was protected by as yet undiscovered fortifications, the lack of perimeter defenses has been rationalized as justified by superior Shang strength,
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an aggressive policy of projecting power and preemptively striking enemies at a distance, and confidence in the natural strategic advantages provided by the terrain. Early in the Warring States period the great general Wu Ch’i reprised the area’s dominant characteristics while rebuking his ruler for believing a state could rely on natural strategic advantages to survive:
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