The production of good government: Images of agrarian labor in Southern Song (1127--1279) and Yuan (1272/79--1368) China

This dissertation examines the changing face of labor during the Song and Yuan dynasties in relation to the development of a new theme in painting known as Gengzhi tu “Pictures of Tilling and Weaving”. Lou Shu (1090–1162), a court official during the reign of Emperor Gaozong (1127–1162), designed the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving, in which male citizens grow grain in a step-by-step sequence in one scroll, and female citizens produce silk and weave silk fabric in the other. Current scholarship tends to see Pictures of Tilling and Weaving as highly informative works, motivated by a didactic need to teach others how to grow rice and to produce silk fabric. I argue that the development of the theme was related to significant changes in the structure of government bureaucracy and ensuing political debates. By showing the introduction of technological advances and by positioning the farmers within self-sufficient communities, Lou Shu made an innovative shift in the iconography of labor. To accompany each step in both scrolls, he wrote an accompanying poem that in effect challenged the government's right to taxes.; The Pictures of Tilling and Weaving are part of a larger category of painting called “fengsu hua,” a phrase typically translated as “genre painting.” This conveys the general idea of the Chinese phrase, but it fails to capture all its nuances. Lou Shu's poems and later Southern Song documents on the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving attest to the political component of labor painting, specifically evoking associations of the common people and their role in validating government policy.; In order to comment on the changing political circumstances of the Southern Song and Yuan dynasties, the content and format of the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving were ideologically altered. They were reformulated as academic court paintings, as carvings on public stelae, and as woodblock prints in an agricultural treatise disseminated to the reading public. Imagery of working farmers form a political commentary on the relationship of the government to its citizenry. This dissertation seeks to reclaim the paintings' meaning by positioning them with their historical and literary contexts.