Ever since Xi Jinping 習近平 first enunciated the notion of the “Chinese Dream” in November 2012, it has become almost national policy in China. For Xi, this dream predicts a glorious future for China: “to realize the great renewal of the Chinese nation is the greatest dream for the Chinese nation in modern history” (Xinhuanet News 2012). However, it is important to note that national dreams, like personal dreams, can be, and often are, bidirectional: they point to the future, to be sure, but they are also deeply rooted in past experience. It is no coincidence that Xi first mentioned this Chinese Dream on the occasion of a visit to the National Museum of China, which is devoted to preserving and displaying China's millennia-old traditional culture. The “renewal” of a glorious future requires a glorious past, and so it is also no coincidence that while the Chinese government is investing heavily in the training of new engineers at its major universities to realize its dream, it has also established at many of those universities National Studies institutes that are intended to develop new, multidisciplinary approaches to understanding Chinese history. One of the most prominent of these National Studies institutes is at Xi's own alma mater, Tsinghua (Qinghua 清華) University in Beijing.

Although Tsinghua University is now known primarily as an engineering school, “the MIT of China,” this has not always been the case. From 1925 until the reorganization of China's universities in 1952, Tsinghua was home to the most famous Institute of National Studies in China, first staffed by its “four great teachers”: Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), Wang Guowei 王國維 (1877–1927), Chen Yinke 陳寅恪 (1890–1969), and Zhao Yuanren 趙元任 (i.e., Y. R. Chao; 1892–1982). This tradition was renewed in 2004 when another of its most famous alumni, Li Xueqin 李學勤, returned to the university to take up the directorship of a newly established Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Just four years later, the university procured a substantial cache of ancient bamboo-strip manuscripts and established yet another new center, the Center for Unearthed Documents Research and Protection. In the decade that this Center has been in existence, it has been remarkably productive, already publishing six volumes of these manuscripts. These manuscripts have been hailed as “revolutionizing our understanding of early Chinese thought” (Allan Reference Allan2015, 3).Footnote ¹

The first volume of the Tsinghua University Warring States bamboo-strip manuscripts prompted an outpouring of scholarship in China, and even attracted attention in the Western scholarly world, primarily for its version of texts that either were included as chapters in the Shang Shu 尚書 or Venerated Documents (also known as the Shu Jing 書經 or Classic of Documents) or that share the same format as those texts.Footnote ² These manuscripts seem finally to have brought to an end the centuries-long debate over the authenticity of the guwen 古文 or “ancient text” chapters of this classic; as Li Xueqin (Reference Li2011b, 105–6) has pointed out, comparison of the Tsinghua manuscript *Yin Gao 尹誥 or The Proclamation of Yin with the “ancient text” chapter “Xian You Yi De” 咸有一德 or “Both Had a Singular Virtue” shows that the latter is almost certainly a late forgery (Qinghua Daxue Chutu Wenxian Yanjiu Yu Baohu Zhongxin Reference Li2011). Another of these manuscripts corresponds to the famous “Jin Teng” 金縢 chapter of the Documents, and has led in its own turn to an outpouring of scholarship, including discussion of what differences between the manuscript and the received text may mean for the writing and transmission of texts in ancient China.Footnote ³

It has been less noted that the first volume of the Tsinghua University manuscripts also includes three separate texts that correspond with chapters of the Yi Zhou Shu 逸周書 or Leftover Zhou Documents, documents that are said not to have been included by Confucius in his editing of the Shang Shu but that were preserved nonetheless: *Huang Men 皇門 or The August Gate, which corresponds closely with the Yi Zhou Shu chapter of the same title; Zhai Gong Zhi Gu Ming 祭公之顧命 or The Retrospective Command of the Duke of Zhai, which corresponds closely with the “Zhai Gong” 祭公 chapter of that text; and *Cheng Wu 程寤 or The Awakening at Cheng, which corresponds closely with medieval quotations of a “Cheng Wu” chapter of the Yi Zhou Shu.

In this latter case, the reason that one can say only that the text corresponds with quotations is because the “Cheng Wu” chapter of the Yi Zhou Shu has long been lost, editions of that text preserving only its title. However, because the text concerns the prognostication of a dream, a topic of great interest throughout traditional Chinese history, medieval collectanea all quoted more or less substantial passages from the text in their sections on dreams; the Tsinghua University editors provide an appendix listing ten different quotations in a variety of sources from the Han through the Northern Song dynasties, which, in retrospect, if not explicitly, can be seen to derive from the Cheng Wu text (Qinghua Daxue Chutu Wenxian Yanjiu Yu Baohu Zhongxin Reference Li2011, 140–41).Footnote ⁴ These quotations correspond to passages in the Tsinghua manuscript to an almost startling degree, so that even though the Tsinghua manuscript is not titled, there can be no question that it is indeed the long-lost Cheng Wu text.Footnote ⁵ Just this correspondence between the manuscript and the medieval quotations would suffice to make this discovery an important event in the modern reconstitution of China's ancient literary tradition. But what makes this discovery truly extraordinary is that the manuscript not only provides the portion of the text that concerns the dream, but also includes almost twice as much content again discussing the significance of the dream for political philosophy. None of this could have been guessed at based on the early quotations.Footnote ⁶

The manuscript opens by recounting a dream that Tai Si 大姒, the wife of King Wen of Zhou 周文王 (r. 1099/59–1050 BCE),Footnote ⁷ had concerning bushes or trees at the court of the Shang king, the planting of another tree there by their son Fa 發, the future King Wu of Zhou 周武王 (r. 1049/45–1043 BCE), and the transformation of some of this foliage into other types of trees. Tai Si is said to have awakened in alarm, and reported the dream to King Wen. He too seems to have been startled by it, and enlisted clairvoyants at the Zhou court to interpret the dream. The clairvoyants exorcised the subjects of the dream and then performed various sacrifices and rituals in the Zhou court. King Wen and the crown-prince Fa then pronounced the dream to be a “lucky dream” (ji meng 吉夢) portending that they would receive from the “august Di on high” (huang Shang Di 皇上帝), the Shang “mandate” (ming 命) to rule. The Tsinghua manuscript then goes on to offer various interpretations and to draw lessons concerning government.

As might be expected, most of the attention given to this text has been devoted to the opening narrative of the dream. In the manuscript, this portion reads as follows:Footnote ⁸

In a subsequent section of this study, I will consider the opening portion of this passage in detail, and consider especially the symbolic significances of the various trees seen in the dream. Before doing so, however, it is worth examining two early quotations of the text that allow it to be identified as the Cheng Wu text. They both appear in the Taiping Yulan 太平御覽 or Imperial Survey of the Taiping Era, completed in 984, and both mention the text by title. Differences between these two quotations suggest that at least two different versions of the text may have been extant into the early Northern Song dynasty.

It is easy to see that the opening of the Tsinghua manuscript *Cheng Wu does indeed coincide to a very great extent with the information contained in these quotations, as indeed in other earlier quotations as well. Notably, the quotations mention the same six trees seen in the manuscript text. However, while the quotations as well as the Tsinghua manuscript agree that Fa (i.e., the eventual King Wu), whether described as the “young son” (xiaozi 小子) or “eldest son” (taizi 太子), took a “catalpa” (zi 梓 or 杍) from the Zhou court and planted it in the midst of the “brambles” (ji 棘) growing in the Shang court, there is one important point of difference between these two quotations (a difference seen also in other quotations): the first quotation states explicitly that it was this catalpa that “transformed into” (hua wei 化爲) “pine and cypress, white oak and sawtooth oak” (song bai yu zuo 松柏棫柞), while both the Tsinghua manuscript and the second Taiping Yulan quotation leave unspecified what transformed into “pine and cypress, white oak and sawtooth oak.” I believe that this is a point of considerable importance in the interpretation of the dream, and one that I will examine in some detail below.

The interpretation of the dream obviously hinges on the symbolism of the six different types of trees mentioned: ji 棘—“brambles” (also known as “jujubes” or “buckthorn”); zi 梓 or 杍—“catalpa”; song 松—“pine”; bai 柏—“cypress”; yu 棫—“white oak”; and zuo 柞—“sawtooth oak.” There can be little doubt that, on the one hand, brambles have a bad connotation, while, on the other hand, the catalpa has a good connotation. Brambles are low-standing bushes, pervasive throughout north and central China. Although they are known for their red date fruit (i.e., jujubes), their most striking characteristic, or perhaps I should say their most piercing characteristic, is their thorns, whence their name: ji 棘, the character being a pictograph of the dagger-like spikes on the branches of the shrub. In the Mozi 墨子, another mention of brambles in reference to the court of the last Shang king Zhou 紂 (r. 1086–1045 BCE) illustrates well their symbolic significance. The passage recounts portents that appeared at the change of past dynasties, and then describes the scene at the Shang court:

It might not be too impressionistic to see in this mention that “brambles grew in the state's ways,” a veiled allusion to the Cheng Wu text.Footnote ⁹ In any event, it is clear that the appearance of brambles at the Shang court was a portent of the impending demise of the dynasty.

The contrast between the brambles and the catalpa is obvious. Said by Li Shizhen 李時珍 (1518–93) in the Bencao Gangmu 本草綱目 to be the “head of the hundred trees and thus called ‘the king of trees’” (zi wei bai mu zhang, gu hu zi wei mu wang 梓為百木長，故呼梓為木王; Bencao Gangmu, 35.58a), the catalpa invariably carries positive connotations. It is included in the name of one chapter of the Classic of Documents: “Catalpa Timber” (Zi Cai 梓材), in which context the Shang Shu Zhengyi 尚書正義 says that “it is the finest of trees, the properly refined of governors” (mu zhi shanzhe, zhi zhi yi jing 木之善者，治之宜精; Shang Shu Zhengyi, 14.96). Its wood is said to be particularly pliable, an excellent timber for building materials, furniture, and musical instruments. In the Cheng Wu text, it clearly symbolizes the Zhou court. It is also worthy of note, and perhaps important for the symbolism of the catalpa, that the manuscript writes the character as 杍, confirmed also elsewhere as the guwen or “ancient script” form of the character 梓. Perhaps because of this form of the character, the catalpa is also associated with “sons” (zi 子), as seen, for instance, in the Shang Shu Da Zhuan 尚書大傳 comment on the “Zi Cai” chapter: “The catalpa is the way of the son” (zizhe, zi dao ye 梓者，子道也; Shang Shu Da Zhuan, Shang 上 24b). This may inform its association in the *Cheng Wu text with Fa, the crown prince (whether called the “young son” or “eldest son”). I will return to this point below.

The symbolism of the other four trees—“pine and cypress, white oak and sawtooth oak”—is not so immediately apparent; hence, there has been considerable disagreement among interpreters of the *Cheng Wu text, if not perhaps also among early interpreters of Tai Si's dream. The first discussions of the manuscript proposed that whereas pine and cypress are “auspicious” trees, symbolic in this context of upright ministers, the white oak and sawtooth oak are inauspicious trees, symbolic of miscreants at the Shang court (Huang Jie Reference Huang2011; Li Rui Reference Li2011; Liu Reference Liu2012; Wang Reference Wang2011). They suggested that pine and cypress are both “lofty” trees (qiaomu 喬木), while white oak and sawtooth oak are shrubs (guanmu 灌木). They noted too that in the Shi Jing, pine and cypress have consistently positive symbolism, as seen in the poem “Tian Bao” 天保 (Mao 166):

Those first discussions suggested that in contrast to this positive symbolism of the pine and cypress, the white oak and sawtooth oak need to be “pruned” (ba 拔), as in the poem “Huang Yi” 皇矣 (Mao 241):

However, in this poem, the reference to the white oak and sawtooth oak is strictly parallel to that of the pine and cypress, the one pair being “pruned” (ba 拔), the other pair being “removed” (dui 兌), so there would seem to be no difference in their symbolic nature.Footnote ¹⁰ Moreover, as several other scholars have separately argued, there is nothing in the Shi Jing or anywhere else in Chinese botanical symbolism to suggest that the white oak and sawtooth oak are different from the pine and cypress in terms of symbolic significance (Gao, Reference Gaon.d.; Shen Baochun Reference Shen2011; Zi Reference Zi2011). In the poem “Han Lu” 旱麓 (Mao 239), found just two poems before “Huang Yi” in the received text of the Shi Jing, the two oaks are also mentioned together with entirely positive connotations.

The discussion of this poem by Zheng Xuan 鄭宣 (127–200) indicates that it is not the trees that need “tending” per se, but rather the grasses growing beneath them, thus allowing the trees to flourish (Mao Shi Zheng Jian, 16.9a). It is quite strange to suggest that the pine and cypress are “lofty” trees and that the white oak and sawtooth oak are “shrubs”; while botanical identifications are not always precise, it would be hard to see any categorical difference between these four trees as they appear in nature. Indeed, the two oaks would appear to be “loftier” than the pine and cypress.Footnote ¹¹

Moreover, in the text of Cheng Wu, the four trees are simply listed sequentially, so that it would be hard to understand why two of them would have a positive symbolism and two of them a negative symbolism. It seems clear to me that they represent loyal supports of the Zhou state, as stated explicitly in the poem “Tian Bao” with respect to the pine and cypress.

Shen Baochun 沈寶春 (Reference Shen2011, 151) has suggested that the names of the four trees can also be read without the “tree” (mu 木) signific, such that the pine (song 松) and cypress (bai 柏) stand for “dukes and elders” (gong bo 公伯), while the white oak (yu 棫) and sawtooth oak (zuo 柞) signify “the state arises” (huo zuo 或乍 or 作). I am sure that this sort of metonymy is part of the trees’ symbolic significance.

However, the difficulty with understanding this arboreal symbolism in the text as favorable to the Zhou cause is that Tai Si awakened from her dream “alarmed,” and when she reported it to King Wen he too “did not dare to prognosticate it.” This suggests that both the king and his wife suspected that the dream had baleful implications. It was only after the clairvoyants prognosticated that the king was assured that it was an “auspicious dream.” What gave Tai Si and King Wen such concern? To try to answer this question, let us examine in more detail the descriptions of the dream in the different quotations cited above as compared with the Tsinghua manuscript.

For the most part, there are only very minor differences in wording, an added particle here or there. However, the Tsinghua manuscript contains one explicit variant vis-à-vis both quotations, writing that Fa planted the catalpa “in the midst” of the brambles (yu jue jian 于厥間) whereas the Taiping Yulan quotations (and indeed, all other quotations) both write that he planted it “between the gatehouses” (yu que jian 于／於闕間). In addition to this one explicit variation, the manuscript and one of the quotations also reveal one implicit variation: whereas the first the Taiping Yulan quotation writes the “catalpa” as the explicit subject for what transforms into “pine and cypress, white oak and sawtooth oak,” neither the Tsinghua manuscript nor the second Taiping Yulan quotation provides a subject before the verb “to transform into” (hua wei 化爲). Something is transforming, but what?

There are two possible antecedents that could serve as the subject in the Tsinghua manuscript and the second Taiping Yulan quotation. The nearest antecedent, and thus the grammatically most likely, would be the “catalpa” mentioned in the immediately preceding clause. If the catalpa is indeed a symbol of kingship, its transformation into the lesser trees would indeed be alarming to Tai Si and to King Wen. It might portend the decline of royal authority, whereas the lesser trees into which the catalpa transformed might symbolize the growing power of ministers, perhaps portending the civil war that would break out shortly after the Zhou conquest, or merely the growing power of the local states that would eventually lead to the downfall of the Zhou royal house. On the other hand, as we have seen from the portion of the Tsinghua manuscript quoted at the beginning of this study, and as we will see from the complete text of the Tsinghua *Cheng Wu translated below, King Wen went on to determine that the dream was an “auspicious dream” (ji meng 吉夢), one portending the Zhou receipt of the Shang mandate to rule. It would seem hard to reconcile this prognostication with a portent about civil war or the decline of the state.

I would like to suggest another explanation. Since the Tsinghua manuscript and the second of the two Taiping Yulan quotations do not make explicit the subject of the transformation, it is possible to understand it as the “brambles” in the Shang court, the antecedent in the first clause of the dream record. If the brambles symbolize the miscreants and disorder at the Shang court, as they surely do so in the passage from the Mozi quoted above, their transformation into pine and cypress, white oak and sawtooth oak, symbolic of loyal ministers, would surely be an “auspicious” portent. Admittedly, this reading is grammatically awkward, but by no means impossible. Indeed, in addition to the general symbolism implied by the dream and its interpretation, there are also two grammatical points in support of it. First of all, although Chinese nouns are not differentiated between singular and plural, there is some reason to view the brambles as plural. Not only do they grow as a bush with multiple trunks, but more important, later in the Tsinghua manuscript they are referred to as being “paired” (peng 朋), seemingly indicating their plural nature. It is thus perhaps understandable that the brambles could transform into several different trees. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine that the catalpa, said to stand alone at the head of all other trees, could have such split symbolism.

The second reason to question the grammar of the passage derives from the second variant between the Tsinghua manuscript and both of the quotations. As noted above, whereas the quotations indicate that Fa planted the catalpa “between the gatehouses” (que jian 闕間) of the Shang court, the Tsinghua manuscript writes this same expression as “in their midst” (jue jian 厥間). It is easy to see the graphic relationship between the words que 闕 “gatehouse” and jue 厥 “their,” and also easy enough to understand why editors of the “Cheng Wu” text might have chosen to add a “gate” (men 門) signific to欮 (certainly the original form of jue 厥), turning it into “gatehouse”: que 闕. However, it is perfectly possible to read the phrase as written in the Tsinghua manuscript, with the pronoun jue pointing back to the brambles. Indeed, I would suggest that it is far easier and more sensible to read the sentence in this way than by introducing a “gatehouse” that is probably more redolent of later Chinese city architecture than of that of the Shang dynasty. Read in this way, the brambles become the immediate antecedent for what “transforms into” the other four trees.

Support for this interpretation might also be drawn from traditional textual criticism. It might be a kind of poetic justice to employ a Lachmannian stammbaum to display the relationship between the two different textual traditions. We can draw this tree with a putative urtext (Ω) or original text at the top, branching into two lines of transmission, with the Taiping Yulan quotations (Q) representing one branch and the Tsinghua manuscript (T) a second branch as shown in figure 1. Q₁ refers to the first Taiping Yulan quotation (as well as the great majority of other quotations found in medieval sources) that indicates that it was the catalpa that transformed into the lesser trees, which we might indicate as “+梓,” while Q₂ refers to the second Taiping Yulan quotation that leaves the subject unexpressed, indicated here as “−梓.”Footnote ¹² “T,” the Tsinghua manuscript, would also be characterized as “−梓,” since it too leaves the subject unexpressed. According to the usual understanding of this sort of stammbaum, if there is agreement across the two branches of the tree, this should predict the reading of the original text (Ω). In this case, since Q₂ matches T, both leaving the subject unexpressed (“−梓”), the urtext can be reconstructed as having left the subject unexpressed. The explanation for Q₁ would seem to be quite natural: at some point in time, a scribe or copyist was perplexed by the absence of an explicit subject and “corrected” the text, inserting what he took to be the immediate antecedent. Unfortunately, he was almost certainly wrong in this, and confused the issue hopelessly until the Tsinghua manuscript was discovered.Footnote ¹³

Figure 1.

Stammbaum analysis of Wu Cheng texts and quotations.

If I am right in this botanical interpretation, both in terms of the symbolism of the trees mentioned in the text and of the stammbaum analysis, the dream would seem to be fairly simple to interpret. The brambles or buckthorn at the Shang court symbolize danger, both for Shang and for Zhou. Fa's planting of the catalpa in their midst of course symbolizes the Zhou conquest of Shang. For the brambles then to transform into pine and cypress, white oak and sawtooth oak symbolizes the Shang acknowledgment of Zhou rule. All of this is certainly “auspicious.”

However, if the dream is as straightforward as this, why should Tai Si have been so alarmed and why would King Wen have declined to prognosticate it? I would suggest that their concern lies in another feature of the catalpa mentioned above. The catalpa is not only “the king of trees,” but it also symbolizes the son, written into the very character of the tree, as it is written in the manuscript and as its “ancient script” form shows: 杍; i.e., a “tree” signific with the character for “son” (zi 子). Since the dream makes explicit that it was Fa, the son, who planted the catalpa in the Shang court, this would suggest that the Zhou conquest would not be achieved until the son came to power. Indeed, the dream might well be understood to portend the imminent death of the father, King Wen. If so, it is understandable why Tai Si and King Wen should have been alarmed. As it turns out, King Wen did die before the Zhou conquest of Shang, which was achieved by his son Fa, known to history as King Wu of Zhou. Although the conquest was not without its complications, it did succeed in establishing China's longest-lived dynasty and one that has always been looked upon as the Golden Age of Chinese civilization—an auspicious symbolism, indeed.

Not only does the Tsinghua manuscript provide, for the first time in perhaps a thousand years, a complete text of Cheng Wu, but, if I am right in my analysis of the text and its various quotations, it also allows an early editorial error in the transmission of the text to be corrected. This editorial error rendered the symbolism of the dream all but unintelligible. Now, with a complete text finally at hand, we have the opportunity to recover if not “the Chinese Dream,” certainly a very ancient Chinese dream.

By way of conclusion, let me consider in brief what implications the discovery of the Tsinghua *Cheng Wu manuscript might hold for Xi Jinping's vision of a Chinese Dream. The political philosophy of the manuscript is easy to see: revolution is not achieved all at once but requires the following generation or even generations to plant trees, if only metaphorically, so that they—the trees, and the new government—might take root. As the manuscript concludes, “Guard against what is to come, guard against what is to come! If others use your plans, it is a pity that the days will not be sufficient.” More than sixty-five years on, the communist revolution in China still feels the need to tend to its trees and ensure against internal dissent. However, as pointed out at the beginning of this essay, dreams are also rooted in the past, and in terms of its significance for China's past the *Cheng Wu manuscript is not so unambiguous. True, the manuscript demonstrates the antiquity of the text that was quoted in medieval sources, and so archaeology seems to confirm Chinese literary and historical traditions; this has long been seen in China as one of the important purposes of archaeology. However, the manuscript also shows that errors were introduced into the text in the course of its transmission over the centuries, mistakes that rendered its interpretation problematic at best. To pursue the arboreal metaphor, not all the roots of the Chinese past are as deep as we might think, and many other roots that are still to be found underground have left no lasting trace above ground. “The great renewal of the Chinese nation” may sprout from roots yet unknown.