ABSTRACT
The term qingliu (clear stream), as a self-image of Confucian intellectuals, is traceable to the Western Han era (25-220 c.e.), when literary works like Ban Gu’s (32-92) “Rhapsody of Two Capitals” (Liangjing fu) used it to depict a clear stream. About the same time, qingliu also obtained a socio-political meaning that defined certain kinds of persons. In the late first century, for example, an official named Liu Chang condemned himself for the behavior of “corrupting the qingliu.” 1 Yang Zhen, a Han official renowned for his insistence on political ethics, said to the emperor that his duty as a member of the Chancellery was to make the qingliu prevail in the Imperial realm. 2
