4 - Early Formulations of Kongzhai’s History

Summary

The earliest extant mention of Kongzhai appears in a late 12th-century official gazetteer, with an entry that suggests an already long history and venerable pedigree. Citing a mid-8th-century source, the account insinuates that Kongzhai might even trace back to an Eastern Han-period descendant of Confucius from Qufu. Kongzhai’s evolution thus is given a prestigious link to the early Kong diaspora and mirrors the larger history of its region, known as Wu. During the Han dynasty, the lower Yangzi delta was a half-civilized and exotic colonial outpost of an empire based in the North. As Hugh Clark has described, the region began to develop when early 3rd-century refugees from the North settled there to escape “barbarian” invasions and political collapse. For the next few centuries, the Yangzi delta was ruled by regimes based in the South, usually in Nanjing, and aristocratic cultural forms brought by the refugees took root. The area remained economically important after the Sui reunification of the late 6th century restored the northern heartland to undisputed political centrality.