Zhonghang Yue was a eunuch of the Han court and a man of Yan. The emperor Wen sent him north with a Han princess. He went over to the chanyu of the Xiongnu.[1] The Shiji tells his story in chapter 110, within the reign of Laoshang. The Han Shu repeats it in chapter 94A with small changes of wording.[1] Both give his advice to the chanyu as direct speech.[1]

Name and origin

The Shiji writes the name 中行說. Zhang Shoujie, an eighth-century scholar, explains in his Zhengyi commentary that Zhonghang is the surname and Yue the personal name.[2] The text calls him a eunuch (宦者) and a man of Yan (燕人).[1] It gives no year of birth and no family. It also names no office beyond the one that sent him north.[1]

The journey north

When Laoshang took the throne, the emperor Wen sent another princess of the imperial house to be the chanyu’s consort. He appointed Zhonghang Yue as her attendant.[1] A modern account points out that the bride was the daughter of a vassal king and not a daughter of the emperor. Such brides did not become the chief consort of the chanyu, and their children did not take the throne.[3] It was a heqin marriage. It belonged to the series of marriage treaties that began with Bagatur.[2] Yue did not want to go. The Han forced him. “If I must go,” he said, “I will become a plague to the Han.”[1] When he arrived, he went over to the chanyu. The chanyu held him in high favour.[1]

Silk, felt and curds

The Xiongnu had come to like Han silk, floss and food. Yue told the chanyu that all the Xiongnu together could not match the population of a single Han commandery. He said that their strength lay in eating and dressing differently and in needing nothing from the Han.[1] Yue added that if the chanyu changed custom and took to Han goods, and these came to no more than two parts in ten, the Xiongnu would pass wholly to the Han.[1] A commentary on the Shiji explains the figure as two tenths of the Han goods entering Xiongnu hands.[2]

He turned the argument into a demonstration. Silk and floss won from the Han were to be ridden through thorn and scrub until the coats and trousers made of them were torn. This would show that they were not as sound as felt and fur. Han food was to be thrown away. This would show that it was not as good as milk and curds.[1][4] The coats and trousers in the passage point to the dress of the mounted peoples. Trousers came to China only with the formation of cavalry units, and Chinese sources remark on the trousers of the Xiongnu.[5] Some modern scholars take the whole speech as evidence for a steppe norm, a way of life in which mobility and economic independence made the Xiongnu formidable in war in spite of their small numbers. They allow that the speeches may only reflect the conventional views of the time.[6]

He also taught the chanyu’s attendants to keep written notes and to count the people and the herds.[1] The Shiji says that the count covered people, animals and goods.[2] Its verb for the count can also mean to assess. The Han Shu has a different verb in the parallel line and says only that the attendants recorded the people and the herds.[1] Some scholars take the count as the basis for the first levy on the Xiongnu. They admit that this is the only mention of a levy in the sources and that the burden in Xiongnu society itself was small.[7]

The tablets

The Han wrote to the chanyu on a tablet one foot one inch long. It opened with the words: the emperor respectfully asks after the health of the great chanyu of the Xiongnu. Yue had the chanyu answer on a tablet one foot two inches long. The seal was broader and longer than the Han one, and the words were haughty. The reply began with the words: the great chanyu of the Xiongnu, born of Heaven and Earth and set up by the sun and moon, respectfully asks after the health of the emperor of Han.[1][4] Some modern scholars find the formula close to the Göktürk phrase teŋride bolmıš, “born in Heaven”. In their view Heaven is the main element of the formula and Earth stands second, as it does among the Göktürks.[8]

The claim to appointment by Heaven was older than Yue. The chanyu’s letter of 176 BC already opens with “the great chanyu of the Xiongnu, set up by Heaven”.[2] The Shiji credits Yue with the longer tablet, the larger seal and the fuller formula.[2]

The answers to the Han envoys

Two exchanges are reported. A Han envoy said that the Xiongnu despise the old. Yue asked whether, when a Han man was called up for garrison duty, his aged parents did not take off their own warm clothes and rich food and give them to him for the road. The envoy agreed that they did. Yue answered that the Xiongnu make war their business and that the old and weak cannot fight. For that reason, he said, they give the best food to the strong, so that fathers and sons protect each other for a long time.[1][9]

The envoy then said that Xiongnu fathers and sons sleep in the same tent and that a son takes his father’s widows and a brother his brother’s. He added that the Xiongnu have no caps and sashes and no ceremony at court. Yue replied that the Xiongnu eat the meat of their herds, drink the milk and wear the hides. The herds move through the seasons in search of grass and water. In a crisis the men practise riding and archery. In quiet times they enjoy leisure. Their rules are light and easy to carry out. The government of a country is like one body.[1] The Xiongnu take the widows because they dislike the loss of a lineage. Therefore, even in disorder, they always set up a man of the ancestral stock.[1][10] The Chinese word for the mother in the envoy’s question does not mean mother in the strict sense. A modern translator renders it as stepmother, which fits the custom described.[9] The Chinese, he said, claim not to take the wives of father or brother. Yet their kin grow more distant, kill one another and change the surname of the house.[1]

After this, whenever Han envoys wanted to argue, Yue cut them off. He told them to say little. They should see only that the silk, floss, grain and ferment the Han sent to the Xiongnu were of full measure and good quality. If they were, all was well. If they were short or poor, the Xiongnu would ride over the standing crops when the harvest ripened in autumn.[1] The Shiji adds that he taught the chanyu day and night to look out for the places of advantage and harm.[1]

The Shiji next reports the invasion of the fourteenth year of Wen, 166 BC, when the chanyu entered Zhaona and the Xiao pass with 140,000 horse.[1] The text does not say that Yue planned it.[1]

Later years

Laoshang died. His son Junchen was set up as chanyu. Wen made the treaty with the new chanyu. The Shiji adds one clause: Zhonghang Yue served him again.[1] After that clause, neither work mentions him.[1]

The speeches as evidence

Yue’s words reach the reader only through the Shiji and the Han Shu. The chapter does not say who reported them to the Han court.[2] Modern accounts compare Yue with the Chinese émigré advisers at later steppe courts. One case is Chunyu Tan, whom the Rouran khan Anagui used to introduce written record keeping and Chinese-style offices.[11]

The Jiu Tang Shu gives Tonyukuk a speech of the same kind. Bilge Khan wished to build walled towns and temples. Tonyukuk answered that the Göktürks were fewer than one in a hundred of the Tang and resisted them by moving after water and grass. If they settled in towns and changed their old ways, he said, the Tang would swallow them at the first defeat.[12] A modern account sets the two speeches side by side. In both, a small people lives by moving over the steppe, and the cities and customs of China would swallow it.[13]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Shiji, juan 110; Han Shu, juan 94
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Shiji, juan 110
  3. ^ Ögel 2015, p. 356
  4. ^ a b Ögel 2015, p. 357–358
  5. ^ Ögel 1978, p. 101
  6. ^ Lattimore 1951, p. 487–488
  7. ^ Khazanov 1994, p. 254
  8. ^ Ögel 2015, p. 358
  9. ^ a b Ögel 2015, p. 359
  10. ^ Ögel 2015, p. 360
  11. ^ Kradin 2005, p. 163
  12. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  13. ^ Jagchid 1989, p. 25, 193

Sources

Literature

  • Nikolay N. Kradin, From Tribal Confederation to Empire: The Evolution of the Rouran Society (2005)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Büyük Hun İmparatorluğu Tarihi I (2015)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Kültür Tarihine Giriş V: Türklerde giyecek ve süslenme (1978)
  • Anatoly M. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World (1994)
  • Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (1951)
  • Sechin Jagchid; Van Jay Symons, Peace, War, and Trade Along the Great Wall. Nomadic-Chinese Interaction through Two Millennia (1989)

Related

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Institutions and Titles
Army of the Steppe Empires · Women among the Turkic Peoples · Xiongnu Agriculture · Xiongnu Herds

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Zhonghang Yue.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/persons/zhonghang-yue/

Last revised: 8 November 2026