The ulcers of Duke Huan of Ch'i.

• Author: Schilling, Dennis
• Position: Frequently mentioned character in classical Chinese literary sources

According to the Tso Chuan [Chinese Text Omitted], the following is said to have occurred in the year 657 B.C. (i.e., the third year of Duke Hsi of Lu [Chinese Text Omitted], and in the twenty-ninth year of Duke Huan of Ch'i [Chinese Text Omitted]):

The Lord of Ch'i (Duke Huan) went for a boat ride in the park with [the lady] Chi of Ts'ai [Chinese Text Omitted]. She rocked the [boat] and the duke became frightened, changed color and forbade her [to continue], but she persisted. The duke became angry and sent her back [to Ts'ai], without breaking off [his relationship with her] completely. The men of Ts'ai, [however,] married her off [to someone else].(1)

One year later, the combined forces of Ch'i [Chinese Text Omitted] and its allies made an incursion into the small state of Ts'ai [Chinese Text Omitted], a direct neighbor of Ch'u [Chinese Text Omitted]. Thereafter Ch'i also threatened the large state of Ch'u.(2)

Elsewhere the Tso chuan states (seventh year of Duke Hsi of Lu, 643 B.C.): "The Lord of Ch'i had three wives, [the lady] Chi of the Royal House [Chinese Text Omitted], Ying of Hsu [Chinese Text Omitted], and Chi of Ts'ai, [but] all were without sons." The text continues: "The Lord of Ch'i was fond of the inner chambers (hao nei [Chinese Text Omitted]) where [he kept] many favorites. Six of them were to him as wives. . . ." It then lists the names of these concubines and says they bore sons. The names of these sons are given, but they do not concern us here.(3)

The three elements contained in the above story - the boat tour and Lady Chi's return to Ts'ai (hereafter we shall refer to Lady Chi as Ts'ai Chi), the military campaign against Ts'ai, the remark on the duke's many wives and concubines - were also presented in later works, but the details vary and several points appear in a distorted form, as will be shown below. However, the dating of these later sources is a highly controversial matter and no attempt can be made in this short note to disentangle the correct sequence of these texts. By and large we shall follow the traditional views, assuming that such works as the Kuo yu [Chinese Text Omitted], Hsun-tzu [Chinese Text Omitted], and Han Fei-tzu [Chinese Text Omitted] were completed after the Tso chuan.

To begin with, it is important to note that Duke Huan of Ch'i (r. 685-641 B.C.), the first of the so-called five hegemons (wu pa [Chinese Text Omitted]), is generally depicted as a strong character in the "early" sources, neither necessarily negative nor exuberantly positive, but with some shortcomings. Kuan Chung [Chinese Text Omitted] (c. 730-645 B.C.), his famous advisor, is said to have described his master with the following words:

[Chiang] Hsiao-po [Chinese Text Omitted] (the duke's name) is not a man of petty intelligence and though he may be a little wild, he has great plans. I (i.e., Kuan) am the only one who can put Hsiao-po's [talents] to use.(4)

The above quotation is from the Kuan-tzu [Chinese Text Omitted], a work of uncertain date and origin. Parts of this work certainly go back to a stock of very old documents, while other segments seem to date to the Early Hun or even later periods. The Kuan-tzu version that is extant today provides the most extensive coverage of the duke's life. It also contains a brief reference to the boating episode, but in it the lady who rocks the boat is no longer identified as his wife. Moreover, the Kuan-tzu claims that she came from Sung [Chinese Text Omitted] and that when the duke sent her back, Sung married her off to the Lord of Ts'ai. This event is dated to the year 684 B.C. The text then states that, in the following year, the duke became angry and wished to attack the small state of Sung. Kuan Chung advised him to give up this idea, but the duke did not heed him and sent his troops against Sung. In the end, the feudal lords came to help Sung and severely defeated Ch'i. According to the Kuan-tzu, this occurred in 683 B.C.(5) The Tso chuan confirms that Ch'i went to war against Sung in that year, but the story of Ts'ai Chi has nothing to do with this campaign.(6) This difference may stem from the fact that the textual structure of the Kuan-tzu is faulty. In all likelihood, the author of this work mixed up the correct sequence of events, so that the campaign against Sung and the Ts'ai Chi affair were erroneously conflated.

The Hun Fei-tzu follows the Tso chuan more closely. It does not date the event but, once again, the lady rocking the boat is from Ts'ai and she is described as Duke Huan's "legal wife." There are some additional details, however, that combine narrative elements found in both the Tso chuan and the Kuan-tzu. Having sent away the lady of Ts'ai, the duke soon "recalled her but [Ts'ai] replied that she had been married out elsewhere. [Thereat] the duke became very angry and was about to attack Ts'ai." Kuan Chung does not favor this plan. He advises the duke to attack Ch'u first and only afterward to invade Ts'ai. The reason for this is that Kuan Chung thinks Ts'ai will not assist Ch'i in its move against Ch'u, whereupon Ch'i can then say it has good reason to punish Ts'ai in the name of "the son of heaven."(7)

Ssu-ma Ch'ien [Chinese Text Omitted] repeats the first part of the narrative - the boating story and Ts'ai Chi's marriage - and then records that Ch'i and its allies invaded Ts'ai and then attacked Ch'u. His wording closely follows the text of the Tso chuan.(8) But in another chapter of the Shih chi [Chinese Text Omitted], a slightly different version is found: "[Duke] Huan of Ch'i was angry about the younger Chi; he [first] made a surprise attack against Ts'ai in the south, then Kuan Chung [advised him] to attack Ch'u . . ."(9) The "younger Chi" may refer to the younger Chi of Wei (shao Wei Chi [Chinese Text Omitted]), one of the duke's six concubines whose names appear in the Tso chuan; or it may imply that Ts'ai Chi was the youngest of the "three Chi" (the duke's three wives with the cognomen Chi, see above); or it may be a simple mistake for Ts'ai.

The texts quoted above leave open several questions. Who was the lady involved in the boating incident? Did she really come from Ts'ai as the Tso chuan, Hun Fei-tzu, and other texts suggest? Was it because of her or owing to some other reason that Duke Huan began his military campaign? To begin with, if the Kuan-tzu is correct, the duke was very much determined to strengthen his political position well before the attack on Sung. More generally, he appears as a highly ambitious man willing to employ all methods to expand his influence.(10) Similar ideas are raised in the context of those versions of events where he moved against Ts'ai: that is, the real objective of the campaign against Ts'ai was the wish to weaken Ch'u, with Ts'ai itself only playing a secondary role. If this was so, Ch'i followed a very complex strategy, indeed, and we may surmise that Duke Huan knew well what he was after. Perhaps he thought a weak state like Ts'ai would have to be subdued first, before Ch'u, the major enemy, could be attacked. Under these circumstances, the duke's affair with Ts'ai Chi may simply have served as a pretext to start the campaign. In that event, it can also be asked whether the boating affair occurred as described, or whether it was fabricated and circulated as a "rumor" to the other feudal lords, to let them know that the duke had good reason to attack Ts'ai. News of what had happened in Ch'i may also have served to irritate Ch'u: to Ch'u, the duke's behavior must have appeared as hot-headed, so Ch'u would be inclined to think the duke's primary goal was the conquest of Ts'ai, rather than an attack against Ch'u. Regardless of the facts, the details given in Tso chuan do not suffice to reconstruct a definite picture; all one can say is that Duke Huan had ambitious plans. The Han Fei-tzu, it would seem, supports this general impression, although, in the context of the Ts'ai Chi affair, it clearly portrays the duke as an angry man who wishes to punish Ts'ai without regard for the potential risks involved in such a move. The same can be said of the Kuan-tzu, where the duke is pictured as equally hot-tempered prior to his ill-fated attack on Sung. Finally, in these texts, the role given to Kuan Chung is also somewhat more prominent, in contrast with that in the Tso chuan.

Let us now consider some other points. The Tso chuan, as noted above, claimed that Duke Huan had no son from his three "legal wives." Presumably it was for this reason that he frequented his favorites. It is in this context that one has to consider the expression hao nei. The phrase appears in several later texts and is usually understood as "to be fond of the inner chambers" or "to dote on one's concubines." We can be sure that most Han Confucian moralists would knit their brows upon reading such a phrase - unless the duke's fondness for the inner chambers was seen as a mirror of his exorbitant political powers.

Fu Ch'ien [Chinese Text Omitted] (c. 125-195), a Later Han scholar and one of the early Shih chi commentators, thought it necessary to explain the word nei; he glosses it as fu-kuan [Chinese Text Omitted], i.e., a general reference to "palace women."(11) Perhaps, by adding such a note to a passage that did not really call for a comment, he wished to draw attention to the "doubtful" side of the...