A Thousand Years of Turmoil

A work by my late father: A History of the Shui People’s Flight. During the Tang and Song dynasties, Guangxi was a remote region in the southwest, home to many ethnic groups and known as a land where the Hundred Yue peoples dwelled. Local officials and soldiers ruled with tyranny, leaving the Sui people, also known as the Shui, and other ethnic minorities in dire straits.

As a result, peasant uprisings broke out frequently in the area. The most notable was the largest and most far-reaching uprising, which erupted on the thirteenth day of the first lunar month in 1044. Led by Meng Gan, Ou Xifan, and others, the rebels used the “Shui Book,” a living fossil of pictographic writing, to aid their cause.

The uprising began with a decisive victory: the rebels captured the county seat of Huanzhou, killed the magistrate, and seized the county seal. They won the people’s support, and their prospects looked bright. Their forces swelled rapidly, and, riding their victories, they advanced with irresistible momentum. They established the Wucheng Army in Huanjiang and proclaimed an emperor.

Feng Shenji, prefect of Yizhou, repeatedly sent urgent reports to Bianjing. The court dispatched large armies one after another to suppress the rebellion. But the uprising’s key leaders lacked firm revolutionary resolve and still clung to hopes for the court. Deceived by imperial commissioner Du Qi, they wavered and made concessions, ultimately suffering a brutal massacre.

The uprising also gave rise to the earliest officially documented dissection in history, the “Five Viscera Diagram of Ou Xifan.” After the rebellion failed, the Shui people faced a desperate flight for survival as an entire people, forming the pattern of settlement along the Longjiang and Duliu rivers that we see today.