Before their conquests, the Mongols had contacts with China through trade and political alliances. The Chinese built their first empire almost 1,500 years before Temujin earned the title of Great Khan. Throughout their history, the Chinese excelled at writing in many forms and styles, especially philosophy. Even before the first empire, a group of great thinkers set down rules of society and government that continued to influence China through Mongol times and beyond. The most important of these thinkers was Confucius. He taught that everyone had a specific role to play in society and should accept their position. Within the confines of this role, people were obligated to act morally. Just as a citizen had a duty to obey the rulers, the rulers had to govern fairly.
Confucius’s ideas helped shape the system that trained government officials in China. As noted in chapter 4, Khubilai was suspicious of Chinese officials in his government, but Confucians still served the Mongols. These Chinese officials hoped they could make the Mongols accept Chinese culture and perhaps rule less harshly. The Confucians tried to teach Khubilai their beliefs, but his limited knowledge of Chinese made this difficult. Still, the Great Khan made sure his second son was schooled in Confucianism and other aspects of Chinese culture. To further link the Mongols with the Chinese and to help educate the Mongols, Khubilai had some Confucian books translated into Mongolian. Khubilai also approved the establishment of the National History Office to document Mongol rule in China.
Throughout China’s rise to power as the dominant nation in East Asia, its rulers supported the arts. Under Khubilai and his Mongol successors, this support continued. Khubilai enjoyed theater and had plays staged at his royal palaces. Theaters also drew large crowds in China’s cities during his rule. Yuan Dynasty theater often combined short plays or skits with songs and dancing. Theatrical performances might also include mime and acrobatic stunts.
Actors and other entertainers had higher social status under Khubilai than they had in the Jin and Song Empires. One Mongol general ordered (as quoted at the web site Yuan Drama, Www. columbia. edu/~jv287/ mongol/drama2.html) that “all the townspeople be put to death except artisans and entertainers.” The Mongols also did not seem to limit what playwrights could show on stage. Under the old Confucian system, playwrights came from the class of educated government officials who had to take tests to demonstrate their grasp of Confucian ideals (see page 34). Khubilai ended the civil service examination system, and anyone could write and stage plays. Under Khubilai, playwrights and novelists also had greater freedom to use the language of everyday conversation, not the more formal language favored by native Chinese rulers.
During Khubilai’s rule, more
Enduring Creative Works
More than 150 plays written in China during Mongol rule still exist today, and at least three times that many were written but did not survive. The Mongol Theater of the Yuan Dynasty shaped the kinds of opera still performed in China today.
Books appeared in China than during previous dynasties. K. T. Wu (quoted by Morris Rossabi in Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times) says that under the Mongols, “printing attained prominence from the standpoint of quantity if not quality and technique.” In 1269 the Great Khan set up a government office to print books, and he later gave land to schools to use as a source of income, so they could publish texts. In general, however, the Chinese were
World History
