ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the earliest representations of the min, or the “people,” in China. In medieval times representations of legitimate authority typically show the emperor in majesty with his entourage, sometimes blessed by divine beings. In Song times we find new visualizations of authority in which the emperor does not figure, and that make no reference to divine power. These works portray the people as taxpayers toward whom the state has obligations, making explicit reference to the meritocratic system of official recruitment. Sometimes paintings show the people out shopping with family, eating in restaurants, touring, or going about their business making money. Such works are more akin to propaganda than documentary, but they are significant because they eschew traditional appeals to divine power or majesty. Instead they were informed by a Mencian conception of authority, one that acknowledged the tension between the taxpayer’s private needs, and the public needs of the state. Outside the court, we find privately produced works that castigate the deprivation resulting from unjust policies. Starving children and freezing fishermen are not uncommon. Like the socially conscious poetry of this period, these works presume an audience capable of sympathizing with society’s most vulnerable people. The concept informing such sentiments was a notion of shared humanity, or renqing. Renqing was recognized as frail and prone to fault but sharing in a dignity common to all, rich and poor, Chinese and non-Chinese. Works of art founded on a similar set of assumptions would appear in England also in the preindustrial period.
