Wanyan Jing

Biography

Family Background and Early Years

Wanyan Jing was born into the direct imperial line of Jin. On the bingxu day of the seventh month in 1168, while Emperor Shizong was traveling through Jinlianchuan, Jing was born at Bingjing. Because he was born at Madage Mountain, he received the childhood name Madage. Emperor Shizong was delighted and told Crown Prince Wanyan Yungong that the accumulated blessings of their ancestors had produced this day and that the birth was a blessing for the state. He also remarked to senior officials that although he had many sons, the empress had only the crown prince, and now he was fortunate to see a legitimate grandson born at Madage Mountain, a place whose broad terrain and pure air he had long admired; the child should therefore be named after the mountain.

In 1178, Wanyan Jing was enfeoffed as Prince of Jinyuan and began studying the Jurchen small script and Chinese classical texts, with degree-holder Wanyan Kuang, court classicist Xu Xiaomei, and others serving as readers. Intelligent and studious, he was considered to resemble his father Wanyan Yungong. In the sixth month of 1185, his father died. In the twelfth month Jing was promoted to Prince of Yuan and put in charge of Daxing Prefecture. When he appeared before Shizong he was able to give thanks in the Jurchen language, moving the emperor, who told his ministers that although he had ordered the princes to study the language of their dynasty, only the Prince of Yuan spoke it fluently enough to earn his special praise. In the fourth month of 1186, he was formally granted the personal name Jing; in the fifth month he became Right Chancellor of the Department of State Affairs, and in the eleventh month he was designated imperial grandson-heir.

Accession and the Mingchang Prosperity

On the guisi day of the first month in 1189, Emperor Shizong died and Wanyan Jing ascended the throne before the imperial coffin on the same day. Before his death, Shizong had arranged for Shangshu Ling Tudan Kening, Right Chancellor Wanyan Xiang, and Senior Vice Councillor Zhang Rulin to serve as regents. After accession, Jing distributed broad favors, increased official salaries, reduced taxes and levies, and emancipated large numbers of palace-registered supervisory households and tax households attached to Buddhist and Daoist institutions.

Jing admired refined Confucian culture and literature, and prominent men of letters flourished during his reign. Eager to improve government, he once asked about Emperor Xuan of Han's method of examining names against actual performance. Wanyan Shouzhen replied that government required carefully coordinated central mechanisms and detailed regulations. When Jing asked where implementation should begin, Shouzhen answered that it began with the emperor's own tireless diligence. While serving as chancellor, Shouzhen systematically revised Jin ritual, music, penal law, and other institutions inherited from Liao and Song. Many ceremonial forms and regulations were fixed under his direction and became standards for the dynasty. The resulting Mingchang administration was celebrated for political clarity.

In 1191 the Jin treasury reportedly held more than 1,200 ingots of gold and 552,000 ingots of silver, each silver ingot being fifty liang. The Zhangzong reign also saw the largest recorded population of Jin. In 1206, Khitan, Jurchen, and Han households numbered 7,223,400 and the population 48,490,400, increases of more than 1,623,700 households and 8,827,000 people over 1187; the total population was said to exceed 56 million.

Suspicion of the Imperial Clan and Powerful Favorites

After accession, Jing gradually became dissatisfied with his uncles after many arrived late to mourn his mother, Empress Xiaoyi. He created offices of princely tutor and princely commandant to supervise the imperial princes. In 1193, Prince Zheng Wanyan Yongdao was executed after a household servant accused him of treason. Jing thereafter became still more suspicious of the princes and added a princely sima to inspect entry to and exit from their residences, while also restricting activities such as polo and hunting.

In 1194, Gao Tuowo, wife of Zhang Rubi, maternal uncle of Prince Gao Wanyan Yongzhong, was executed for a sorcery curse, and Zhangzong came to suspect Yongzhong. Officials of the princely household later reported disloyal remarks by Yongzhong's fourth son Aliheman and found lyrics composed by his second son Shentumen that were judged disrespectful. A servant named Dege further accused Yongzhong of having said that if he obtained the realm, one son would become a great prince and another person his consort. Zhangzong ordered Yongzhong to die, while Shentumen, Aliheman, and others were executed publicly. Remonstrators Jia Shouqian and Lu Duo memorialized in favor of leniency toward the imperial clan, and Wanyan Shouzhen also expressed doubts and remonstrated frankly. Under the influence of Xu Chiguo and Consort Li, Zhangzong turned against Shouzhen, accused him of forming a faction with the remonstrators, and removed him to govern Jinan Prefecture; Lu Duo, Dong Shizhong, and others whom Shouzhen had recommended were also sent to provincial posts.

Zhangzong favored Consort Li Shier and promoted Xu Chiguo, who had begun as a scripture-reciting youth, to Right Vice Director of the Department of State Affairs. Xu was pliant, flattering, and politically adroit, and he and Consort Li exercised influence over the court. According to the source, the executions of Princes Yongdao and Yongzhong and the dismissal of Wanyan Shouzhen all arose through their influence. Ambitious men seeking rapid promotion crowded around them, and contemporaries mocked the court with the saying, “A scripture boy becomes chancellor; a palace slave becomes consort.”

Northern Wars and the Kaixi Northern Expedition

In 1196, Tatar groups formerly subordinate to Jin broke away and submitted to the Mongols. Zhangzong sent Jiagu Qingchen, Wanyan Xiang, and others on repeated campaigns against northern peoples and continued digging a frontier ditch extending nine hundred li as a defense against the Mongols. Jin military capacity, however, was declining, and control of the steppe north of the desert was gradually lost.

In 1206, Southern Song chief councillor Han Tuozhou, seeing Jin begin to decline, launched the Kaixi Northern Expedition. Zhangzong had previously trusted the stability of Song-Jin relations and believed Song would not attack unilaterally. When Wanyan Aludai returned from a mission to Southern Song and reported that Han Tuozhou was preparing for war, Zhangzong even suspected him of spreading rumors. After the Song armies advanced in force, Zhangzong appointed Heshilie Zhizhong commander-in-chief and ordered Senior Vice Councillor Pusan Kui to direct a branch secretariat from Nanjing, present-day Kaifeng, to meet the attack. Song forces were decisively defeated. On the eastern front Jin troops crossed the Huai River and occupied several prefectures in Huainan; in the center Jin attacked Xiangyang; on the western front Song commander Wu Xi submitted Sichuan to Jin before his plot failed and he was killed. Emperor Ningzong of Song then had Han Tuozhou killed and sought peace. In 1208 the Jiading agreement was concluded: Song recognized Jin as an elder uncle, increased annual payments to 300,000 liang of silver and 300,000 bolts of silk, paid an additional three million liang for military expenses, and Jin returned territory it had taken from Southern Song.

Final Years and Death

In the eleventh month of the eighth year of Taihe, on December 29, 1208, Emperor Zhangzong died at the age of forty-one. All six of his sons had died before the age of three, leaving no surviving heir, and he was succeeded by his uncle Wanyan Yongji, Prince of Wei Shao. After Yongji's accession, Chinggis Khan learned of his weakness and in the following year launched a southward invasion of Jin. Zhangzong received the posthumous title Emperor Xiantian Guangyun Renwen Yiwu Shensheng Yingxiao and the temple name Zhangzong and was buried at Daoling. Tudan Kening, Wanyan Xiang, and Zhang Wangong were later enshrined in his temple.

Wanyan Jing was born in 1168 at Mount Madage in Rouyuan county of Fuzhou, while his grandfather, Emperor Shizong, was on progress to Jinlianchuan. His mother was Shizong's daughter-in-law, Lady Tudan, later honoured as Empress Xiao Yi. The next day Shizong visited the Eastern Palace and feasted with joy, telling his heir that the birth was a blessing accumulated by the ancestors, and remarking that although he had many sons, the empress had only one, so the arrival of a grandson born at Madage Mountain - a place he admired for its openness and clear air - was a cause for celebration; he accordingly took the mountain's name as the child's childhood name. In 1178 Wanyan Jing was enfeoffed as Prince of Jinyuan and began to study the Jurchen script and the Chinese classics. In 1185 he was advanced to Prince of Yuan and appointed to administer the Daxing prefecture, and when he answered his grandfather in the Jurchen language Shizong was delighted and held him up to the other princes as a model. In 1186 he was granted the name Jing, appointed Right Chancellor of the Shangshu Sheng, and designated imperial great-grandson. Before his death Shizong entrusted him to the regents Tudan Kening, Wanyan Xiang and Zhang Rulin. When Shizong died in the first month of 1189, Wanyan Jing ascended the throne before the coffin and became Emperor Zhangzong, changing the era name to Mingchang the following year. Zhangzong's early rule was marked by acts of leniency. He granted two degrees of general grace to officials inside and outside the court, one degree to those of the third rank and above, remitted the year's land tax together with arrears owed to the state, and gave a bolt of silk and two bushels of grain to each orphan, widow and childless elder. He renamed the Renshou Palace Longqing, manumitted all palace-register households that had formerly belonged to Ruizong, to the late emperor and to his own father, and ordered that censors be selected by their own bureau with the power to impeach those unfit for office, while raising the salaries of the hundred officials. On the question of Buddhist and Daoist bondsmen, the regent Tudan Kening urged caution while Wanyan Xiang argued that recluses had no need of servants; Zhangzong followed Xiang's advice and manumitted them, releasing many of the so-called two-tax households into commoner status. Zhangzong was eager for good government and employed Wanyan Shouzhen. Shizong had praised Shouzhen's ability as surpassing that of his elder brother, and Zhangzong summoned him to be Minister of Justice and concurrently Right Remonstrating Censor. Questioned on Emperor Xuan of Han's principle of matching names to realities, Shouzhen replied with the phrase "the mechanism of government made tight and its standards made complete," adding that its beginning lay in the sovereign's tireless diligence. He rose to Left Vice Director and then to Vice Director of the Secretariat, enfeoffed as Duke of Xiao. As the Jin state had then stood for seventy years with its ritual, music, penal and administrative systems inherited piecemeal from Liao and Song, Zhangzong had them revised into a single code of the age; most of the ceremonial and statutory provisions were drafted by Shouzhen, and the Mingchang era became known as a time of clear government, with upright men of the court gathering at his gate. Overshadowing this were the Xin Chiguo and the Consort Li Shier. Xin Chiguo, a native of Fanzhi in Daizhou who had entered office as a child prodigy, had long served in the heir's palace; after Zhangzong's accession he rose through the palace and works ministries to become Assistant Administrator in 1193 and Right Vice Director two years later. Duplicitous and resourceful, he knew the emperor's fondness for beauty and privately plied him with secret arts, while lavishing bribes on the attendants of Consort Li. The consort, mindful of her low birth, wished to gain support from the outer court and repeatedly praised Xin Chiguo's ability, so that the two came to control the government together. Li Shier had entered the palace on the recommendation of the court entertainers and the eunuch Liang Dao; witty and literate, skilled at reading the emperor's expression and pandering to his wishes, she was greatly favoured, enfeoffed as Zhaorong in 1193 and as Shufei the following year, her father posthumously honoured and her brothers, one a former bandit, raised to high and conspicuous office. Zhangzong wished to make her empress, but the ministers insisted that by the custom of the dynasty only women of noble stock could be chosen; pressed by the censors he relented and made her Yuanfei, her rank and influence equal to the empress's. Zhangzong grew suspicious of his imperial kinsmen. Resenting his uncles for arriving late to mourn his mother, he created the offices of princely tutor and princely commandant, ostensibly as staff but in fact to control the princes. When two of them, the Prince of Wu and the Prince of Sui, again arrived late for the mourning of Empress Xiao Yi in 1191, they were fined a month's salary and their staff officers beaten. The Prince of Gao, Yongzhong, who happened to be ill with a cold and could not attend, found the emperor's confidence in him gone. Two great cases followed. In 1193 the Prince of Zheng, Yongdao, was accused of treason by a household slave; after a prolonged inquiry the ministers advised that the matter be settled quickly to calm men's minds, and Yongdao, his consort, two sons and his sister the Princess of Zeguo were ordered to take their own lives, with numerous accomplices executed. Yongzhong, eldest son of Shizong, had been enfeoffed Prince of Gao in 1192; the princely staff appointed to watch him were harsh and meddlesome, and the ageing prince, unable to bear the constraints, asked to retire and was refused. In 1194 his maternal uncle's wife, Gao Tuowo, who for years had painted and venerated the image of Yongzhong's mother and practised heterodox rites to seek good fortune for him, was executed for sorcery. Soon afterwards the princely commandant reported that Yongzhong's fourth son had used seditious words under the strict surveillance, and a second son was found to have written songs of disrespect; a household slave testified that Yongzhong had told a concubine that if he gained the empire his sons would be princes. The emperor sent ministers to verify the case and, the findings agreeing, ordered Yongzhong to die and had his two sons executed in the marketplace. The case of Yongzhong drew in many others. The remonstrating officials Jia Shouqian and Lu Duo memorialised for leniency towards the imperial clan, and Wanyan Shouzhen, doubting the case, spoke out frankly; but with Xin Chiguo and Consort Li working behind the scenes and the chancellor Jiagu Qingchen supporting the death sentence, Zhangzong grew angry with Shouzhen, dismissed him as prefect of Jinan, and demoted all who had recommended him, including Dong Shizhong, Lu Duo and Li Jingyi. When Zhao Bingwen, newly entered into the Hanlin, memorialised that the chancellor Xin Chiguo should be dismissed and the imperial kinsman Shouzhen greatly employed, the informants and associates named under interrogation were all imprisoned and punished, and contemporaries coined the saying that where antiquity had produced Zhu Yun, the present had produced Bingwen, who pulled men down rather than a railing. Xin Chiguo's faction eventually fell. Renewed impeachment began in 1197, and in 1198 the censorate denounced ten officials who had fawned at his gate, derisively called the "ten sages of the Xin school," and asked that all be dismissed; Zhangzong agreed, Xin Chiguo retired with the rank of Grand Master of the Court, and his followers were sent out to provincial posts. He was soon recalled as prefect of Daming, then made Vice Commissioner of the Bureau of Military Affairs to assist Wanyan Xiang in the army at Beijing, and died in camp, receiving the posthumous name Tongmin. Zhangzong made many changes in local surveillance. He created the judicial commissioners, dividing the realm into nine circuits and giving them charge of encouraging agriculture and gathering information, with the garrison armies under their authority; following Tang precedent he required officials of the fifth rank and above to nominate a successor upon taking office. In 1198 the commissioners of the upper and eastern capitals were merged into a single commissioner also serving as pacification commissioner, and in 1199 the office was renamed the surveillance commission. Opinion was divided: Wanyan Xiang argued that reducing affairs was better than reducing offices and that the commissioners were of little use, while the chancellor Zhang Wangong preferred quiet and few affairs in government. The Meng'an Mouke system was repeatedly regularised. Zhangzong issued a series of regulations - on granting office to those exempted after frontier service, on stripping hereditary rank for negligence before the enemy and for killing in brawls even when pardoned, on the retirement of elders, and on the procedures of succession - in an attempt to weed out the incompetent, placed the Meng'an Mouke under the surveillance commission, and required them to practise arms in the agricultural off-season under the inspection of the circuit judicial commissioners and to assist in suppressing local banditry. In the Taihe years he reaffirmed the garrison-land system: for every forty mu of land one mu of mulberry was to be planted, the felling of trees was forbidden and the sale of land punishable, negligent local officials were to be held responsible and inspected by the surveillance commission, and the cattle tax was reduced by a third. Zhangzong valued husbandry. In 1192 he limited the Meng'an Mouke to two winter hunts a year of no more than ten days each; the following year he sent vice ministers to encourage farming in every circuit and ordered that the land outside the travelling palaces and the hunting preserves be opened to the people, who might enter even forbidden ground with their farm tools. As the population grew, the method of pit cultivation was debated at court; it was tried from 1196, when each man between fifteen and sixty with land was required to cultivate one mu by the method up to a limit of five mu, but officials repeatedly observed that it demanded much labour for little sown land, and in 1204 the Secretariat reported that hastily adopted in drought it was unlikely to help; though local officials were told to encourage it at their discretion, it was never widely carried out. Zhangzong gave great attention to the compilation of law. It was said of his reign that "in the Mingchang era the sub-statutes and the ordinances were both compiled and the standards grew complete." In 1190, asked why the statutes alone were not used, the chancellor Zhang Rulin replied that in earlier dynasties statute and ordinance had been distinct but that in Jin they were confused, whereupon a bureau for the determination of statutes was established. In 1192 the section on general principles was presented and the remaining sections completed, and Dong Shizhong and others were ordered to re-edit them. It was then decided to base a new code on the currently enforced Dading revised regulations, to follow the Tang statutes in revising them and to fill gaps from earlier penal codes, producing the Mingchang Code; separate sub-statutes were compiled for monopoly goods, frontier affairs and provisional matters. In the twelfth month of 1201 the new code was finished in twelve sections and thirty fascicles totaling 563 articles, with explanatory notes and sub-commentary, named the Taihe Code, together with three fascicles of newly determined sub-statutes and thirty fascicles of the forms of the Six Ministries, promulgated throughout the realm as the most complete code of the Jin dynasty. Flood and financial strain beset the reign. When the Yellow River overflowed at Caozhou in 1189 Zhangzong ordered that reports on water affairs never be delayed, and in the twelfth month the Ministry of Works reported that the construction of dikes required more than 6.08 million man-days, with 4.3 million more to be supplied by conscripted labour, so that households within five hundred li were to hire substitutes and a levy in lieu was imposed elsewhere, each man-day paid 150 cash plus fifty cash and a pint and a half of rice from the treasury. The river broke its banks twice more, and the great breach at Yangwu in 1194, which flooded Fengqiu and flowed eastward, required more than 8.7 million man-days; the supervising officials, having failed to protect the dikes, were each demoted two ranks, beaten seventy strokes and dismissed. To cover the shortfall the state resorted to the over-issue of paper notes. As coins were heavy and notes light and prices soared, the notes ceased to circulate; an attempt to use silver failed likewise, and copper coin was abolished in favour of notes and silver, whose defects proved worse than those of coin. The government favoured large notes, which poured out and were lightly regarded by the people, while the people favoured small notes, which flowed in and profited the treasury nothing; large notes were then forbidden to officials, and the people were required to pay their taxes in notes to prove that notes must be used. Denominations from twenty to a hundred strings were followed by those from two hundred to a thousand, and the people grew ever more bewildered, until limits of time, place and proportion were imposed, deepening their suspicion. The reign also abolished the seven-year reissue of notes and introduced contract notes, which failed because the copper reserves of the various regions differed, and the reforms collapsed under mounting fiscal pressure. Towards Song, Zhangzong consistently sought peace. When Song troops began probing into Qinzhou and Lianshui in 1205, and a spy taken at Tangzhou revealed that Han Tuozhou was massing troops at Ezhou and Yuezhou for a northern campaign, Zhangzong appointed the chancellor Pusuan Kui as pacification commissioner of Henan and levied troops from the circuits in preparation; but after consulting his ministers he held back from a pre-emptive strike on the ground that north and south had been at peace for over forty years and the people knew nothing of war, and he dissolved the commission after misjudging the frontier intelligence. Song forces nevertheless continued to act, attacking Biyang and Guxian and entering Xinxi, Neixiang, Sizhou, Baoxin, Hongxian and Yingshang and besieging Shouchun, while Wu Xi attacked the Lanjia ridge, and war followed. In 1206, when Song launched its great northern campaign, the Jin armies counter-attacked: Wanyan Kuang stormed the outer wall of Xiangyang and took Jingmen, Wanyan Gang took Dangchang and Pucha Zhen took Xihezhou; soon afterwards Wu Xi, king of Shu, was killed by the Song minister An Bing. The war ended in Song's defeat. Zhang Yan, Song's commissioner of military affairs, sent Fang Xinru to the Jin supreme command to sue for peace, and Zhangzong instructed Wanyan Kuang, who conducted the negotiations, to demand the delivery of Han Tuozhou's head in exchange for the occupied territory of Huainan and to raise the indemnity to three million taels of silver. In 1208 the Jin court, drawn up in full ceremonial array at the Yingtian gate, received from Helieshi Zhen the heads of the Song traitors Han Tuozhou and Su Shidan at the supreme command; Zhangzong had them and their portraits exposed in the marketplace and the proclamation circulated at home and abroad. Song and Jin thereupon became states of uncle and nephew for generations, increasing the annual tribute to three hundred thousand taels and bolts and the indemnity to three million strings, while Jin returned the occupied passes of Sichuan and Shaanxi including Sanguan, concluding the Jiading settlement. To defend the north Zhangzong had a boundary trench nine hundred li long dug along the Linzhao line; archaeological survey shows it three to four metres deep and more than ten metres wide with walls and forts on its inner side, a defensive work of great scale. Zhangzong was childless in his later years, all six of his sons having died before the age of three. His testament declared that as he had no heir and as the consorts Jia and Fan were with child and near their time, should either bear a boy he might be made heir apparent. After his death the throne passed to his uncle, the Prince of Wei, Wanyan Yongji.

Major Activities

Civil Government and Institutional Construction

During Wanyan Jing's reign, Jin ritual, music, penal administration, and political institutions were systematically revised. After seventy years of Jin rule, institutions inherited from Liao and Song were described as mixed and lacking coherence. With Zhangzong's support, Wanyan Shouzhen revised them into what the source calls “the law of a generation.” Zhangzong also revised penal statutes and official institutions, emancipated the remaining two-tax households, allowed their descendants to sit the imperial examinations, and established regulations for military-agricultural households to cultivate land themselves or lease it. These measures largely completed the feudal transformation of Jurchen society as described in the source. He also permitted intermarriage between Jurchen military-farming households and local residents, accelerating social integration. Zhangzong repeatedly asked ministers about Emperor Xuan of Han's methods for matching titles to actual performance and Tang systems of evaluating officials, hoping to compare Jin with Han and Tang rather than merely Liao and Song.

Cultural Contributions

Wanyan Jing was an accomplished calligrapher whose style was said to resemble Emperor Huizong of Northern Song's Slender Gold script. He enjoyed literature and admired Confucian refinement. The source describes an age in which men of letters appeared in numbers, ministers often possessed literary and scholarly ability, capable administrators and upright officials gained prominence, government orders were carried out effectively, and civil culture flourished. Under his patronage, Jin cultural development reached a high point and its institutions and material culture became characteristic of the dynasty.

Military and Foreign Affairs

During Zhangzong's reign, Jin first fought repeated campaigns against northern peoples and dug frontier ditches against the Mongols. In 1206 it successfully repelled the Southern Song Kaixi Northern Expedition and concluded the Jiading agreement, broadly preserving the interstate order that had existed under the earlier Shaoxing peace. Yet Jin military capacity had already weakened, control north of the desert was being lost, and the rise of the Mongols became a major future threat.

Relations with Contemporaries

Jing's relationship with Wanyan Shouzhen changed from trust to suspicion. Shouzhen was initially given major responsibility and helped establish a body of dynastic law, but was later dismissed after remonstrating over the case of Prince Yongzhong. Jing's favor toward Xu Chiguo and Li Shier became a classic example in the source of reliance on flattering favorites. His relationship with the imperial princes likewise moved from distrust to tight control: Prince Zheng Yongdao was executed and Prince Gao Yongzhong ordered to die, contributing to estrangement within the ruling house.

Wanyan Jing reigned for about twenty years, and is remembered chiefly for his civil administration and his codification of institutions. He was described as intelligent and of his father's stamp, devoted to letters and learning and to the Confucian refinement of manners, so that men of talent appeared in numbers, most of the ministers had literary ability and learning worth noting, capable officials and upright ministers were promoted, government orders were well executed and the civil order flourished as never before in the Jin dynasty. In his early years he sought earnestly to govern well, repeatedly questioning his ministers on Emperor Xuan of Han's principle of matching names to realities and on the Tang examination of officials, wishing to surpass Liao and Song and rival Han and Tang. The minister Wanyan Shouzhen was employed in this period to recast the ritual, musical, penal and administrative systems, inherited piecemeal from Liao and Song, into a single code of the dynasty. In law, a bureau for the determination of statutes was created in the Mingchang era to examine and settle the statutes; the section on general principles was collated first and the remaining sections completed, then re-edited by Wang Ji, Dong Shizhong and others, after which a new code was based on the revised regulations of the Dading period, revised in accordance with the Tang statutes and supplemented from earlier penal codes. In 1201 it was completed as the Taihe Code in twelve sections and thirty fascicles of 563 articles, accompanied by three fascicles of newly determined sub-statutes and thirty fascicles of the forms of the Six Ministries, bringing the Jin legal code to its fullest form. In administration and surveillance he created judicial commissioners over nine circuits with charge of encouraging agriculture and gathering information, required officials of the fifth rank and above to nominate a successor on taking office following Tang precedent, later renamed the commissioners as a surveillance commission, and restored the periodic tours of inspection by the censors. In economic and military institutions, Zhangzong issued a series of regulations for the Meng'an Mouke, placing them under the surveillance commission, requiring them to practise arms in the off-season and to assist in suppressing local banditry, and in the Taihe years reaffirming the garrison-land system whereby one mu of mulberry was planted for every forty mu, the felling of trees was forbidden and the sale of land punished, with the cattle tax reduced by a third. He limited their winter hunting to two outings of no more than ten days, sent officials to encourage farming in every circuit, opened the land outside the travelling palaces and the hunting preserves to cultivation by the people, and approved a proposal of the Secretariat that garrison households intermarry with the local Chinese households of the prefectures and counties, so easing the friction of mixed settlement. He manumitted all two-tax households, provided that the descendants of the manumitted might sit the examinations, and established rules for the self-cultivation and tenancy of garrison land. Abroad, his reign saw successive campaigns to subdue the peoples of the north, and a boundary trench nine hundred li long, three to four metres deep and more than ten metres wide with walls and forts on its inner side, was dug along the Linzhao line. When the Song minister Han Tuozhou launched the Kaixi northern campaign, Zhangzong appointed Helieshi Zhizhong as commander-in-chief and sent the chancellor Pusuan Kui to establish a branch secretariat at Nanjing; the Jin armies counter-attacked and won on every front, forcing Song to conclude the Jiading settlement by delivering the heads of Han Tuozhou and Su Shidan and increasing both its annual tribute and its indemnity. In culture he reformed the examination system, employed and protected men of letters and often offered incisive literary criticism. He learned the slender-gold calligraphy of Emperor Huizong of Song, was deeply versed in Chinese poetry, leaving such lines as "the blinds of the thirty-six palaces all rolled up, nowhere in the east wind is the willow catkin not flying," and a poem inscribed on the Youlong mountain; his seals appear on many surviving Tang and Northern Song paintings, and the inscription on the famous Admonitions of the Court Instructress scroll was later identified as his hand.

Personal Relations

• Grandfather: Emperor Shizong Wanyan Yong
• Father: Emperor Xianzong Wanyan Yungong
• Mother: Empress Xiaoyi of the Tudan clan
• Uncles: Wanyan Yongji, Prince of Wei Shao and successor; Wanyan Yongdao, Prince Zheng, executed; Wanyan Yongzhong, Prince Gao, ordered to die
• Brother: Wanyan Xun, later Emperor Xuanzong of Jin
• Empress: Empress Qinhuai of the Pucha clan
• Consorts: Consort Li Shier; Zhaoyi of the Jiagu clan; Lady Lin, Ziming Furen; palace attendants Lady Jia and Lady Fan
• Children: Wanyan Hongyu, Prince Jiang; Wanyan Hongjing, Prince Jing; Wanyan Hongxi, Prince Rong; Wanyan Hongyan, Prince Ying; Wanyan Honghui, Prince Shou; Wanyan Telin, Prince Ge, all of whom died young; and Princess Shun
• Readers: Wanyan Kuang, degree-holder; Xu Xiaomei, court classicist
• Regents: Tudan Kening, Wanyan Xiang, Zhang Rulin
• Senior ministers: Wanyan Shouzhen, chancellor later dismissed; Jiagu Qingchen, Right Chancellor; Pusan Kui, Senior Vice Councillor
• Favored consort: Li Shier
• Favored official: Xu Chiguo, Right Vice Director of the Department of State Affairs
• Remonstrators: Jia Shouqian and Lu Duo, transferred away after remonstrating
• External opponents: Han Tuozhou of Southern Song during the Kaixi Northern Expedition; the Tatar tribes; the Mongols under Chinggis Khan
• Imperial-clan conflicts: Prince Zheng Wanyan Yongdao, executed for treason; Prince Gao Wanyan Yongzhong, ordered to die

Historical Assessment

Jin and Contemporary Assessments

• Liu Qi, author of the Guiqianzhi, wrote that Zhangzong was intelligent and resembled his father, cultivated literature and learning, admired Confucian refinement, and therefore presided over a time when talented men flourished, ministers possessed literary learning, capable and upright officials were promoted, government was well ordered, and Jin reached the height of its civil prosperity.
• Contemporaries mocked his favor toward Xu Chiguo and Consort Li with the saying, “A scripture boy becomes chancellor; a palace slave becomes consort.”
• Later Jin scholars commonly regarded his civil government as impressive but believed that suspicion of the imperial clan and excessive trust in Consort Li and Xu Chiguo contributed to later decline.

Yuan and Ming Periods

• The Yuan-compiled History of Jin observed that during Zhangzong's twenty-year reign he inherited long-standing peace from Shizong, regularized ritual and music, revised penal law, established the official system, and created institutions worthy of a dynasty. It praised his aspiration to emulate Han and Tang but criticized the dominance of a favored consort, failure to establish an heir, suspicion of imperial relatives, and flawed succession, concluding that the Jin ruling house declined from this point.
• Ming scholar Wang Shizhen, discussing Zhangzong's calligraphy, regarded his Slender Gold style as preserving much of Emperor Huizong's spirit.

Qing Period

• Zhao Yi, in Notes on the Twenty-Two Histories, characterized Zhangzong as capable in letters but weak in warfare and argued that the height of sinicization under him coincided with decline in the Jurchen martial tradition.
• The General Catalogue of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries stated that the cultural flourishing of the Jin reached its peak under Zhangzong.

Modern and Contemporary Assessments

• Modern scholars generally regard Zhangzong as the most deeply sinicized Jin ruler and his reign as the cultural high point of the dynasty, while also linking military decline and suspicion of the imperial clan to Jin's weakening.
• Some scholars note that population growth and institutional development under Zhangzong gave later Jin a basis for continued rule but did not prepare it adequately for the challenge of the rising Mongols.
• Japanese historian Toyama Gunji, in Studies on the History of the Jin Dynasty, regarded the Mingchang Prosperity as a dividing line between Jin's rise and decline, combining major cultural accomplishments with serious political vulnerabilities.