“Resisting Strong Barbarians and Pacifying Various Bandits”

In the nineteenth episode of the 2013 Chinese television series the Patriot Yue Fei (精忠岳飛, literally “Yue Fei, the perfectly loyal”), a scene that has been ubiquitous in late imperial and modern popular narratives of Yue Fei was played out as follows: Yue Fei's mother tattooed four Chinese characters on the general's back: Jin Zhong Bao Guo 盡忠報國 (exhaust one's loyalty to requite the country). She asked Yue Fei a question: “Have you ever considered why I am talking about these four characters now?” She stated that the characters of “loyalty” and “country” particularly called for deep reflection:

Why did the production team take great pains to clarify what “loyalty” and “country” meant, or what they ought to mean to the audience, in the context of Yue dedicating himself to state service in military struggles against the Jurchens? The two points raised here echoed major scholarly concerns over Yue's image in the second half of the twentieth century: how loyalty should be interpreted and whether Yue's loyalty to the ruler was consistent with Yue's service to the country. In the television series, loyalty was first and foremost directed toward lofty ideals of “benevolence” and “righteousness,” backbones of Confucian ethics that mostly survived twentieth-century iconoclasm and are still celebrated as part of national essence in post-Mao China.Footnote ⁹ What stood out more conspicuously, however, was how guo, Yue Fei's country, was defined in the TV series: His mother told him that the country he was supposed to defend was something that, though based on the Song dynastic state, could not be confined by it. The new country “should,” in theory, embrace the Jurchens Yue was going to fight against.Footnote ¹⁰ In other words, struggling against the Jurchens was ultimately meant to make them part of a great unity that was yet to exist. The production team did not even try to hide their efforts to approach middle-period Chinese history with historical hindsight. The audience were expected to understand what that “country” should look like, and to feel proud that they had the good fortune of living in such a great country.

This kind of artistic handling of controversial aspects of Yue Fei's career was a continuation of the strategy adopted by earlier writers and performers who managed to reestablish Yue's “national hero” status among a general audience after the catastrophe of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). In the 1980s, “The Biography of Yue Fei,” delivered by the famous pingshu performer Liu Lanfang 劉蘭芳, was broadcasted nationwide via radio. Liu's rendering of the Yue Fei story has had great influence over generations of Chinese audiences ever since. Based on Yue Fei stories passed on from the “old times,” Liu's Yue Fei nonetheless discarded many “dregs” (糟粕) in traditional Yue Fei narratives:

Here, “insulting” ethnic minorities was obviously regarded as in need of correction even though Yue Fei's “anti-Jin achievements” were supposed to be highlighted. Equally importantly, Yue's suppression of peasant rebellions, together with his loyalty to the ruler, were defined as his “weaknesses and mistakes” that had to be downplayed or omitted altogether if Yue's status as a hero and role model was to be upheld.

In post-Mao China, Yue Fei's story had to be delivered through a narrative framework in which a national hero should direct his loyalty (忠) toward the nation (國) that embraces the Jurchens and the peasants, with the Southern Song ruler and his court occupying a position of insignificance if not straight illegitimacy. But appropriating and partly jettisoning elements in Yue's career to fit the political imperative of the PRC proved to be challenging, as Yue Fei's image as the “perfectly loyal” came into existence during a period when ethnicity or class were not major issues of controversy in cultural discourse or artistic treatment of him.

Both Liu Lanfang's pingshu and the 2013 TV series owed much inspiration to the dramas and novels on Yue Fei produced in the Yuan (1279–1368), Ming (1368–1644), and Qing (1644–1911) periods. Traditional narratives celebrated Yue Fei's suppression of peasant rebellions, especially that led by Zhong Xiang 鍾相 and Yang Yao 楊幺 in the Dongting Lake region, as one of his greatest military achievements. The number of chapters and subplots on the Dongting Lake campaign as well as the degree of fictionalization varied: from three chapters in the Ming novel A Vernacular Romance of the Restoration of the Great Song (大宋中興通俗演義) and the Qing play Winning the Autumn Prize (奪秋魁), to six chapters in the most widely received Qing novel on Yue Fei—Qian Cai's 錢彩 Romance of the Perfectly Loyal: the Storytelling Script of the Complete Biography of Prince Yue (精忠演義說本岳王全傳, hereafter Shuoyue)—for a few examples.Footnote ¹² These narratives used Yue Fei's actions in the Dongting Lake campaign to demonstrate both his civility and his martial prowess—two of the most important attributes of late imperial masculinity.Footnote ¹³ The campaign itself was displayed in traditional narratives within a dichotomic framework that distinguished “bandits” (匪, 盜or 賊) (whom the state was obliged to eliminate) from “good commoners” (良民) (whom the state was obliged to protect), which was difficult to reconcile with the PRC categorization of peasant rebels as courageous leaders of the people's resistance to feudal oppression. Not surprisingly, in the 2013 TV series, Patriot Yue Fei, Yue Fei's fight against the peasant rebellion in the Dongting Lake region was only marginally mentioned in the forty-third episode, and Yue was portrayed as reluctant to carry out the task which was commissioned by the emperor himself.

In contrast, Yue's role in fighting the bandits, together with his defense of the Song against the Jurchens, was commemorated even during his lifetime by people who had no means to know that nearly a millennium later they would be lumped together with their deadly enemies by the Chinese government and academics. In a piece written to record the building of “living shrine” (生祠) for Yue Fei in Yixing County, Yue Fei was praised for his “high ideal of upholding the country and protecting the people” (捍國保民為志) as follows:

For those in Yixing County who were first-handedly affected by the Song–Jin conflicts and the domestic chaos accompanying the inter-state war, Yue was revered as a hero or even a demigod because he “upheld the country,” that was the Great Song, and protected the people who embraced neither the “bandits” nor the foot soldiers in the Jurchen army as their own.

The above-cited expression from the local people, albeit mediated by literate elites, mirrored the ways in which Southern Song literati wrote about Yue Fei after Yue was posthumously rehabilitated in 1162. For example, the well-known poet Liu Guo 劉過 (1154–1206) wrote a ci lyric when passing Yue Fei's temple in E Prefecture. “Among the generals of the Restoration, who was the leading figure among myriads? … pacifying Xiang and Han, opening up Guo and Luo, wiping clear Dongting Lake, [and] facing north toward the Capital … ” Liu lamented Yue Fei's tragic death by mentioning the tears shed by the local people regarding “their late general” even decades after Yue's death. Known for his “heroic” (豪放) style in ci writing, Liu implied criticism of Emperor Gaozong by imagining Yue Fei's “self-expression”: “I have committed crimes. Your majesty is wise. You should be able to judge my heart!”Footnote ¹⁵ Despite his disagreement with the decision made by Emperor Gaozong, Liu nonetheless never questioned whether Yue's suppression of the Dongting Lake bandits and his pacification of the middle Yangtze region (“pacifying Xiang and Han”) should be juxtaposed with his major victories over the Jurchens (“opening up Guo and Luo”). Liu's position was echoed by the literati who reprinted Yue's family biography, The Essential Compilation of the Prince of E (鄂國金佗稡編), in the Ming period. Zhang Ao 張鏊, in his preface to the reprint, summarized Yue's major military achievements as “resisting strong barbarians and pacifying various bandits” (攘強胡，獮群盜), which embodied Yue's “perfect loyalty and ultimate fidelity” (精忠盡節).Footnote ¹⁶

In late imperial China, fighting the Jurchens and fighting domestic rebellions were both regarded as part of Yue's achievements which allowed Yue's image as “perfectly loyal” to be constructed and reinforced even after 1276 when the dynastic state that Yue was trying to defend eventually fell. Interestingly, the ethnic issues involved in Yue Fei's military struggle against the Jurchens did not generate much tension in comments on and narratives of Yue Fei in the Yuan and Qing periods. This was presumably due to the fact that, in those periods, the ruling ideology and dominating political logic were shared by rulers and the ruled despite their ethnic backgrounds. Yue, through his words and actions, ideally embodied what this political system required of a subject. This “match” made him the “banner of perfect loyalty” for both the Han and the non-Han.

The Banner of Perfect Loyalty

Yue's loyalty (忠) was honored publicly from the time his name was rehabilitated. According to Yue's biography in the official Song history compiled under the Mongols, He Zhu 何鑄, the high court judge originally assigned to handle Yue's “treason” case, was persuaded of Yue Fei's innocence after Yue Fei showed him the four-character loyalist tattoo on his back. He Zhu declined to try the case.Footnote ¹⁷ Loyalist tattoos such as “requite the country with a sincere heart; swear to kill Jin bandits” (赤心報國，誓殺金賊) or “kill the enemies to requite the country” (殺敵報國) were common among soldiers during the period of the Song–Jin wars. Yet, as Elad Alyagon has observed, “Far from being reassuring signs of popular support, loyalist tattoos were a symptom of the disintegration of the Song state.” These tattoos often marked personal dependence of soldiers toward their generals, who tattooed them, reminding the court and the literati of the military men's power despite the suspicion and contempt they received from the civil administration.Footnote ¹⁸ Regardless of the negative connotations of tattoos, Yue's loyalist tattoo, combined with the lack of evidence in his treason case, successfully dramatized the injustice he suffered by highlighting the sincere loyalty that was not properly understood or rewarded by the ruler. The tattoo that signified his loyalty eventually became an indispensable narrative device. It was adopted in nearly all Yue Fei hagiographies, fictional and non-fictional alike, as the association between loyalist tattoos and warlordism faded over time.

That said, there was a visible change of focus in late imperial Yue Fei narratives. It was the sincerity manifested in the tattoo on his back, “exhaust one's loyalty,” that was underlined in his official biography and in the private biography compiled by his grandson during the Southern Song.Footnote ¹⁹ But in one of the two most popular fictional adaptions about Yue in the Yuan period, the zaju play the Song General Yue Fei, the Perfectly Loyal (宋大將岳飛精忠), Yue started to be referred to not as the one who “exhausted his loyalty,” but the “perfectly loyal.”Footnote ²⁰ This title of Yue Fei as the “perfectly loyal” was carried on in Ming fictional writings. Even in plays that presented the tattoo on Yue's back as the original four characters, the most prominent characteristic of Yue was given as “perfect loyalty” (精忠), as in the Banner of Perfect Loyalty (精忠旗), a play written by one of the most well-known playwrights and novelists of the Ming period, Feng Menglong 馮夢龍 (1574–1646).Footnote ²¹ In Qing fictional writings, the tattoo on Yue's back eventually evolved from “exhaust one's loyalty to requite the country” to “requite the country with perfect loyalty,” with the Chinese character “jin” (exhaust) replaced by “jing” (perfect). While departing from historical records, this change strengthened the sentimental power of the tattoo by eliminating the difference between Yue's aspiration—“dedicating oneself to the country with sincere loyalty”—and what Yue managed to achieve in many people's eyes—“perfect loyalty.” In addition, the most famous Qing fictional writings on Yue Fei—Winning the Autumn Prize, An Appropriate View (如是觀), and Shuoyue—all made Yue Fei's mother the person who tattooed his back, combining loyalty and filiality, the two most treasured values in the Confucian political-familial order.Footnote ²² Yue Fei's image as “perfectly loyal” became so well-known among the general audience that when the 2013 TV series showed the tattoo in its original form as recorded in historical sources, a controversy about the “accuracy” of the scene forced the production team to publicly clarify why they made the decision to “change” the tattoo.Footnote ²³

In addition to the revised emphasis on loyalty, the Yue Fei legend also underwent significant development and popularization during the Mongol Yuan period. As Yu Zhang has noted, the two most popular themes in the Yue Fei legend—Yue's military talents and the karmic punishment that his opponent Qin Gui received in the underworld—emerged during the Yuan in two zaju operas—The Song General Yue Fei, the Perfectly Loyal (宋大將岳飛精忠) and Ksitigarbha Discloses the Conspiracy under the East Window (地藏王證東窗事犯).Footnote ²⁴ James T.C. Liu observed the thriving of plays on Yue Fei during the Yuan period, and insightfully attributed it to the Mongols’ lack of systematic surveillance of vernacular literature and ideology among the commoners.Footnote ²⁵ That theory cannot explain, however, why vernacular writings on Yue Fei flourished and further spread during the Qing period, considering that the Qing's Manchu rulers were notorious for censorship and literary inquisition, especially where ethnic issues were concerned.Footnote ²⁶ The high Qing novel Shuoyue synthesized all previous Yue Fei stories, serving as the departure point for nearly all Yue Fei narratives produced after it. It was written during a period when Qing censorship was at its height.

In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, early Manchu rulers showed signs of uneasiness toward the Yue Fei legend. In the end, Yue gained his fame in the war between the Southern Song dynasty, ruled by the Han, and the Jin dynasty in the North, ruled by the Manchus’ own proclaimed ancestors. The Kangxi emperor (r. 1661–1722) refrained from directly commenting on Yue Fei. But he did stress that it was unlikely that the Southern Song could have recovered the lost northern territories, insisting that it was wise for Emperor Gaozong of the Southern Song to seek peace with the Jurchens rather than pursuing military advancement as proposed by Yue Fei.Footnote ²⁷ The Yongzheng emperor (r. 1722–1735) moved Yue Fei out of the temple of martial virtue (武廟) in Beijing in 1726. But local temples for Yue Fei continued to operate. The largest temple of Yue Fei in Hangzhou was renovated under Yongzheng's reign.Footnote ²⁸ The lack of state-sponsored, high-profile veneration of Yue Fei changed dramatically under the Qianlong emperor (r. 1735–1796). The Qianlong emperor personally visited Yue's temple and tomb in Hangzhou three times during his “southern tours,” and visited Yue's temple in his birthplace, Tangyin, once. The Qianlong emperor also commissioned imperial envoys, sometimes his own sons, to offer sacrifices at the temples.Footnote ²⁹ He left behind a considerable number of writings on Yue Fei—not only essays and poems, ten in total, composed during his temple trips, but also historical comments on other people's assessments of Yue Fei. In his “On Yue Wumu” (論岳武穆), the Qianlong emperor stated:

Modern scholars such as Sun Jiang and Huang Donglan have asserted that the Qianlong emperor was trying to establish an image of Yue Fei that was “completely different from historical facts,” which unfortunately became the “guiding principle in propaganda” (宣傳大綱) and the “basic tone of narratives” (敘述的基調) concerning Yue in the Qing. For them, the Qianlong emperor tried to build up a myth of Yue's “blind loyalty” (愚忠), so that “this completely distorted image” (根本的篡改) could serve the Qing state's purpose of “blurring the boundary between the Manchu and the Han.”Footnote ³¹ Even those who approach the Qing's management of Yue's image as an effective strategy of empire building insist that the Qing had to first “transform Yue Fei into a hero of the empire who could be worshiped by each and every subject of the Qing, regardless of ethnic, cultural or racial background,” by “taking Yue Fei out of his original historic context.”Footnote ³²

I argue that the Qianlong emperor's assessment of Yue Fei was neither distorting historical facts nor taking Yue Fei out of his original historic context. The Qianlong emperor praised Yue Fei and promoted the possibility of the Southern Song recovering the North because the Qianlong emperor had the confidence that the Qing occupied a position within Chinese history that was equivalent to that of the Southern Song dynasty—a legitimate orthodox (正統, zhengtong) dynasty exclusively holding the “Mandate of Heaven” at a given moment in the historical transmission of the true lineage of rule.Footnote ³³ In this sense, the Jurchen Jin dynasty, from which the Manchus claimed descent, was the opponent of the true holder of the “Mandate of Heaven” in the context of the traditional political discourse of succession of orthodox dynasties ruling over all under Heaven.

For the Qianlong emperor, whether the ruling house belonged to the Han or the non-Han did not determine whether or not the dynasty had zhengtong legitimacy. The Mongol Yuan dynasty had the “Mandate of Heaven” after conquering the Southern Song. The Mandate was in turn passed on to the Ming and then to the Qing. The Qianlong emperor insisted that once the Mandate of Heaven was granted to a specific dynasty, this dynasty would not lose the Mandate until it was completely crushed by domestic rebels or outside invaders, even when a once-united dynasty was reduced to a rump state. The Southern dynasties lost their legitimacy only when the last in the sequence, the Chen dynasty (557–589), was conquered by the Sui dynasty (581–618) from the North in 589. The Northern dynasties, either the ones under non-Han rule, or the Sui dynasty whose ruling house was Han along the patriline, could not be regarded as holding the Mandate until 589. The same was true when the Southern Song dynasty was fighting Jurchen invasions in the twelfth century.Footnote ³⁴ In an imperial edict issued in 1781, the Qianlong emperor explained:

Here, the Qianlong emperor ridiculed the officials who tried to change the Yuan scholar Yang Weizhen's 楊維楨 (1296–1370) On the Orthodox Transmission of Rule (正統辨) in order to please the Manchu ruler. The Qianlong emperor stated on different occasions that the Song, even after losing its northern territories to the Jurchens, was still the holder of the Mandate, which it eventually lost to the Mongols; the Liao and the Jin under the Khitans and the Jurchens in the North were “regional regimes” (偏安) even though their rulers claimed themselves to be emperors.Footnote ³⁶ For him, the Qing rulers’ non-Han origin did not prevent them from succeeding the Ming as the orthodox dynasty that ruled over China. But non-Han origins did not automatically grant a regime orthodox status either. The Yuan and Qing dynasties were part of the historical succession of the Mandate of Heaven, but the Khitans and the Jurchens were not. The Qianlong emperor's sense of Manchu superiority over the Han within the framework of universal rulership and the “virtuous rule over all under Heaven” did not conflict with his association of the Qing with any previous orthodox dynasties, Han or non-Han.Footnote ³⁷

In light of this, it is not difficult to understand why the Qianlong emperor lamented the Southern Song's failure in recovering the North, particularly manifested in his poems on Yue Fei. For example, he praised Yue Fei: “In every battle he surprised Northern calvaries, and he defended the North China plain (中原) without losing one inch of land.”Footnote ³⁸ He imagined Yue Fei's anger and regret: “During the night, his indignation over settling in the South raged; facing [the temporary capital] Hangzhou, he could not calm himself.”Footnote ³⁹ And the Qianlong emperor criticized Emperor Gaozong of the Southern Song: “He destroyed his own Great Wall of ten thousand li; the anger and regret still linger today where the tombs and trees lie.”Footnote ⁴⁰ The Qianlong emperor did not confine his veneration of Yue Fei to “propaganda shows,” such as his visits to Yue's tomb. He expressed similar ideas about Yue and the Southern Song when he refuted the Ming scholar Qiu Jun 丘濬 (1421–1495):

How the Qianlong emperor assessed the military situation of Yue Fei's time best reveals the emperor's self-appointed position as the representative of the legitimate rule over All Under Heaven. His criticism of Song Gaozong should be analyzed together with his idea about the proper roles for both the ruler and the officials in the operation of imperial governance. As Hellmut Wilhelm points out, Yue Fei's image of Gaozong was highly idealized. What he revered and devoted himself to was a model emperor, “an image that had been built up by successive generations of Chinese political philosophers.”Footnote ⁴² To some extent, the Confucian concept of rulership functioned based on the assumption that the ruler had the potential, if not always the reality, of being virtuous. As Peter Zarrow notes, “If the emperor was not virtuous, he could be criticized, but it was literally impossible to imagine a legitimate system not headed by a virtuous emperor.”Footnote ⁴³

Yue Fei himself became an exemplar for imperial subjects within the Confucian framework of political loyalty, as he served his guo with dedication and competency. He became a model for military men within the context of imperial governance, as he withdrew the army under his control when ordered to do so by the court of his guo and its emperor. His “perfect loyalty” was devoted to not just Emperor Gaozong as a person, but first and foremost to the throne as a position that was entitled to issue legitimate orders on behalf of the dynastic state. If Yue Fei disagreed with the judgement made by the court, he was allowed to express his opinions via memorials, which he did many times in his career. But he was not in a position to challenge orders that were clearly issued, unless he either considered abandoning his loyalty to the Southern Song dynastic state or creating an innovative political system to replace the one dominated by imperial Confucianism. Without the possibility of a new set of political principles, which was beyond anyone's capacity or even imagination in Yue Fei's time and in subsequent dynasties, obeying orders from the legitimate government of his country was the only option barring a defection.

While the emperor's order always stood regardless of whether the emperor best served the interest of the dynastic state, imperial political ideology did not exempt the emperor from criticism if his actions deviated from what was regarded as “virtuous.” The Qianlong emperor, while applauding Yue Fei for his behavior as a model general in every aspect, questioned the poor decisions made by Gaozong and his motivation (“heart”). In “On Yue Wumu,” the Qianlong emperor described Gaozong as a “mediocre and cowardly ruler” (庸懦之主) who failed his father and elder brother, by leaving them in captivity, and who failed his people, by abandoning them to invaders. Gaozong also put Yue Fei in an impossible position, leaving him with no choice but to withdraw his army. It was Gaozong who should take the blame for the Song's failure to achieve a full restoration.Footnote ⁴⁴ Yue Fei was celebrated for his fulfilling his duty as a loyal general by carrying out imperial orders even though the orders were unwise. Song Gaozong was criticized by the Qianlong emperor for failing to live up to what was expected of him as “son of Heaven.”

The Qianlong emperor's opinion resonated with the stance adopted in the official history of the Song composed under the sponsorship of the Yuan imperial government: the official biography ranked Yue Fei over legendary generals in previous dynasties due to his martial valor, civility, and virtues.Footnote ⁴⁵ The official biography of Gaozong questioned Gaozong's motivation and foregrounded his failure: “Yue Fei and his son died on the verge of success … The emperor was satisfied with peace and tolerant of humiliation. He hid his own regret and forgot about his parents. How sad it is that he eventually could not avoid being ridiculed by future generations.”Footnote ⁴⁶ There was no need for the Qianlong emperor to “completely distort” the image of Yue Fei or take Yue out of his original context for the purpose of ideological indoctrination. The Qianlong emperor merely continued and extended a well-established tradition of assessing Yue Fei's character and achievements at the intersection of Yue Fei's own deeds and the Chinese concepts of rulership and subjecthood. “Exhausting one's loyalty to requite the guo” was a virtue critical to the function of the Chinese imperial system, for Han and non-Han dynasties alike. And it was Yue's manifestation of this virtue that allowed him to be widely worshiped even among the Manchu banner population of the Qing.Footnote ⁴⁷

Yue Fei's “loyalty” was continuously celebrated by the imperial government in the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing periods as his single most important attribute. The Southern Song dynasty granted him a series of posthumous honorary titles (諡號) after Yue was rehabilitated: Wumu 武穆 (martial and virtuous) in 1179, Zhongwu 忠武 (loyal and martial) in 1225, and Zhongwen 忠文 (loyal and civil) in 1261.Footnote ⁴⁸ The last one in the sequence even omitted the “martial” part, pairing “loyalty” with “civility” to elevate Yue's status among the literati.Footnote ⁴⁹ Yue's commemorative temple in Hangzhou was first granted the title of “reward loyalty and spread blessings” (褒忠衍福) during the Southern Song. After being renovated under the Mongols, the imperial government added two characters—“protect righteousness” (保義)—to the original temple title.Footnote ⁵⁰ During the Ming, the major offering halls in Yue's Hangzhou temple were named as the Shrine to Inspire Loyalty (啟忠祠), the Shrine to the Successors of the Loyal (繼忠祠), the Shrine of Loyal Assistants (翊忠祠), and the Shrine for Posterity (流芳祠). These names were carried on to the present.Footnote ⁵¹ Emphasizing “loyalty” as the defining character of Yue was certainly not a Qing creation.

Such continuity in Yue Fei's image, concentrating on his status as an emblem of loyalty ever since his death, was not confined to imperial commemoration or elite discourse. The first vernacular writing that particularly promoted Yue Fei's image as the “unconditionally loyal” was the play Record of the Perfectly Loyal (精忠記). The Record was produced in the mid-Ming, a period characterized by high tensions between the Ming dynasty and the Mongols in the north.Footnote ⁵² Yue's “blind loyalty” (愚忠), in Feng Qiyong's words, was so central that “his blind loyalty outshined his anti-Jin spirit” in this play.Footnote ⁵³ Upon receiving the imperial order to withdraw, Yue not only planned to obey immediately, but he also induced his son and most loyal subordinate into a trap and put them in chains so that they would not be able to avenge the wrongs he suffered.Footnote ⁵⁴ In the late Ming play, Banner of Perfect Loyalty by the Ming loyalist Feng Menglong, Yue Fei struggled with the court's orders to withdraw, and even went out to fight the Jurchens once more after he already received the imperial edicts. But Yue's initial challenge of the court order was narrated in a framework highlighting his unwillingness to compromise on his loyalty: If he continued to fight, he would be disloyal to “the court, who is the lord” (朝廷也是主上); if he withdrew, he would be disloyal to “the [captured] two emperors who are also lords” (二帝也是主上). Eventually, he chose to prioritize his loyalty to the person currently representing the Song state.Footnote ⁵⁵

Without upholding the dynastic state, Yue Fei's loyalty and dedication would be rootless and aimless: what criteria would enable him to determine the group of people he was fighting for and the territories he was fighting to recover? Should he aim to recover the people and territories that had been controlled by previous dynasties in China but had been lost to northern and northwestern regimes even before the founding of the Northern Song dynasty in 960? Yue Fei, as the “banner of perfect loyalty,” devoted his efforts to protect both the people and the territory, but always under the control of a specific dynastic state. In this sense, Yue's loyalty to the ruler (盡忠) and his dedication to the country (報國) could not be separated, at least not in imperial China with a dominant political ideology and governing logic that would not be toppled until the early twentieth century.

Treating the loyal subjects of the orthodox ruling regime as the people worthy of protection, and treating the enemies of that regime as bandits that should be killed or turned, regardless of their ethnic or social backgrounds, were what was expected of a loyal general. Moreover, submitting oneself to imperial orders and surrendering military command when ordered to, despite one's own judgement, was necessary for the maintenance of the imperial power structure. Rather than ethnic conflict, “loyalty” had always been the central theme in Yue Fei narratives under Han and non-Han dynasties in late imperial China—in official commemoration, in elite discourse, and in popular culture. It was no wonder that historians and writers in twentieth-century China faced great difficulties in transforming “the banner of perfect loyalty” into a national hero that served the interest of a nation that did not exist in Yue Fei's own day.

Making a National Hero Out of a Loyal General

The late Ming and early Qing intellectual Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 (1613–1682) defined the perishing of a guo (亡國, wangguo) as follows: “It is said that a change in the family name of the emperor and in the reign period constitutes loss of the guo.”Footnote ⁵⁶ For him, the ruler and his officials were the ones to concern themselves about the protection of the guo (保國); conversely, every single man had the responsibility to protect universal values “under Heaven” (天下), defined by Gu as “benevolence and righteousness” (仁義).Footnote ⁵⁷ The guo as understood by Yue Fei was the Southern Song dynastic state with a ruling house whose surname was Zhao. Historic assessments of and popular representation of Yue Fei prior to the late nineteenth century were produced within an ideological context similar to that of Yue Fei's lifetime. Even visionary thinkers such as Gu Yanwu, who did highlight the distinction between the interest of the guo and universal human order, did not deviate significantly from the long-established definition of guo.Footnote ⁵⁸ It was only in China's empire-to-nation transformation that the sovereign of China was redefined from the person of the ruler to a national people, which was accompanied by the meaning of guo being transformed from a dynastic state to a nation with the state supposedly representing the nation.Footnote ⁵⁹ As a result of this conceptual transformation, the newly acknowledged tension between Yue Fei's ultimate loyalty and his service to the guo emerged as an issue to be resolved, excused, or made sense of even for modern scholars who admired Yue Fei. It opened the door for Yue Fei to be taken out of his original historical context by modern scholars who assumed a teleological development of China after Yue's death that left behind “a country that advocated a strict cultural distinction between Han Chinese and barbarians” and achieved the “goal of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynastic states and the modern Republic of China and the People's Republic of China to construct a multi-ethnic polity.”Footnote ⁶⁰

Yue Fei was first redefined as a national hero at the turn of the twentieth century by anti-Qing revolutionaries. The “nation” for the anti-Manchu activists was exclusively Han, and “aliens” were first and foremost Northern nomadic peoples. The focus of Yue Fei narratives shifted from his loyalty to the Southern Song dynasty to his supposed anti-foreignness. Scholars have long recognized the importance of “The Biography of Yue Fei: The Chief of Chinese Nationalism” (中國民族主義第一人岳飛傳) in promoting Yue Fei as an emblem of Han-centric nationalism.Footnote ⁶¹ But this essay in itself only offered sketches of Yue Fei's background and deeds. The main body of it was on the periodization of Chinese history into four stages, with the supremacy of the “Chinese” over “foreigners” gradually declining: China was weakened during the second stage (the Song), and was eventually lost during the third stage (the Yuan). Chinese people even treated foreigners as their ancestors during the fourth stage (the Qing).Footnote ⁶² Yue Fei, who lived at the conjunction of the second and third stages, deserved to be worshipped as “soul of the race” (種魂), “soul of the nation” (國魂), and even “heavenly god” (天神) because he symbolized the spirit of resistance of the Han against “alien races” that was otherwise deemed lacking in Chinese history given the history of foreigners being accepted as legitimate rulers of China.Footnote ⁶³ Yue Fei's image in the anti-Qing context was not about what he achieved, which the author insisted not to be used as a criterion for evaluation (不能以成敗論), but about Yue's hatred for the ancestors of the Manchus.

Yue Fei became a god-like figure in rituals performed by members of anti-Manchu organizations such as the Prince Yue Society (岳王會) and the Restoration Society (光復會). These societies later merged into the Revolutionary Alliance (同盟會) which would play an important role in the overthrow of the Qing in 1911.Footnote ⁶⁴ Ironically, Yue Fei—a devoted Confucian who vehemently defended the Southern Song dynasty—and the Taiping leader Hong Xiuquan 洪秀全 (1814–1864)—an anti-Confucian rebel who theorized the Qing's Manchu rulers as demons in his Sinicized version of Christianity, were grouped together in a newly created lineage of “national heroes” due to their resistance to “foreign” invaders.Footnote ⁶⁵ In the late Qing, a poem attributed to the Taiping general Shi Dakai 石達開 (1831–1863) was widely circulated among radical reformers and revolutionaries. The poem reads as follows.

Those who referred to this poem clearly expected their readers to make the connection between the cause of restoring Han clothing to the Han people and the aspiration of “recovering our rivers and mountains (from invaders)” (還我河山) attributed to Yue Fei. In July, 1902, Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929) discussed it in his New Citizen Series Newspaper (新民叢報) to praise Shi Dakai whose possession of both military and literary talents made him comparable to Yue Fei.Footnote ⁶⁷ In May 1903, Zou Rong 鄒榮 (1885–1905) cited it in his Revolutionary Army (革命軍) to ask whether his compatriots (同胞) had the determination to follow Shi Dakai and Yue Fei in restoring China for the Han Chinese.Footnote ⁶⁸ And in late 1904, it appeared in the calendar printed by the revolutionary newspaper Thoe Lam Jit Poh (圖南日報), published in Singapore, to call for the overthrow of the Manchu Qing Guangxu (滿清光緒) who “temporarily occupied the position of emperor that belonged to the majestic Han” (暫理皇漢帝位).Footnote ⁶⁹

Yue Fei was not the only historical figure who was reimagined at the turn of the twentieth century due to the transformation of guo from a dynastic state holding the Mandate of Heaven to a nation that was defined along Han-centric ethno-nationalist lines. Zheng Chenggong's 鄭成功 (1624–1662) anti-Dutch endeavors in Taiwan were celebrated, while what drove his actions—establishing a loyalist base to continue the Southern Ming rump state—was downplayed if not omitted.Footnote ⁷⁰ The “remnant subjects” (遺民) who kept their loyalty to the fallen Song and Ming dynastic states were praised as national heroes, while remnant subjects of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, many of whom were Han, were ignored.Footnote ⁷¹ As the traditional virtue of loyalty to the orthodox dynastic state one had served—fidelity (節)—was dismissed by the revolutionaries who conceptually separated the nation from the ruling Qing regime, Yue Fei was celebrated not because of, but despite, his loyalty that could not “obscure” (掩) his nationalism.Footnote ⁷²

In “On the Psychological Basis of the Chinese People's Worship of Yue Fei” (論中國人崇拜岳飛之心理), the constitutionalist Jiang Zhiyou 蔣智由 (1865–1929) adopted a line of reasoning not so different from the above-analyzed “Biography of Yue Fei: The Chief of Chinese Nationalism” penned by a revolutionary. Unlike the Qianlong emperor, Jiang dismissed the possibility of a recovery of China proper under Yue Fei during the Southern Song. But he insisted that Yue, alongside Zheng Chenggong, deserved to be worshipped by the Chinese because he represented a determination (志氣) and sentiment (感情) of loving guo and loving race that was essential for the spirit of self-determination (自主之心) in resistance to foreign encroachment.Footnote ⁷³ Equally anti-foreign in their aspirations and similarly defining the Jurchens as aliens, the reformers nonetheless differentiated themselves from the 1911 revolutionaries by adopting a definition of the Chinese race (種) and the Chinese nation (國) that was inclusive and adaptative to historical development. Facing the prospect of the Qing territory disintegrating amidst a successful anti-Manchu revolution, reformers such as Liang Qichao proposed a “broader nationalism” (大民族主義) that would enable the fusion of all ethnicities currently living under the Qing into a politically and territorially, rather than an ethnically, defined Chinese nation. While recognizing ethnic groups such as the Manchus and the Mongols as part of the Chinese nation at the turn of the twentieth century, this state-centric and present-oriented nationalism was ambivalent about northern invaders such as Jurchens and Mongols prior to the Qing.Footnote ⁷⁴

The Republic of China carried on this more inclusive interpretation of the Chinese nation, together with a version of historical narratives that focused on national heroes’ universal patriotic “spirit” rather than their animosity against specific “alien” groups. State builders, both former revolutionaries and their more conservative collaborators, adopted an essentially Han-centric but also multi-ethnic conceptualization of the Chinese nation in their efforts to hold the old Qing territories together after overthrowing the Qing's Manchu rulers. The supposedly anti-Jurchen-ness of Yue Fei, which made him such a central figure in the anti-Qing revolution, was downplayed, while Yue's “perfect loyalty toward his country” continued to be honored. Facing the Japanese menace in the 1930s and 1940s, the Nationalists, who traced the origin of their organization to the anti-Manchu Revolutionary Alliance, fashioned Yue Fei into a model for national resistance in their textbooks by foregrounding his anti-foreign valor. But these textbooks avoided explicitly denigrating the Jurchens of the Southern Song period, and interestingly, largely refrained from denouncing Emperor Gaozong himself.Footnote ⁷⁵ The solicited article, “Yue Fei: a Loyal Minister of the Song Dynasty” (岳飛：宋朝的忠臣) published in the biweekly periodical New Citizen (新民) in 1935, reflected this new focus of Yue Fei narratives. At the top of Yue's personal qualities, the author particularly praised Yue Fei's determination to fight foreigners and his willingness to carry out orders of which he disapproved.Footnote ⁷⁶ The author used the term “loss of the country” (亡國), which traditionally meant dynastic fall, to describe the danger faced by both the Southern Song and the Republic of China, collapsing the distinction between the dynastic state and the modern nation-state so as to use a “loyal minister of the Song dynasty” to inspire anti-Japanese nationalism.Footnote ⁷⁷ More conspicuously, absolute obedience to orders and absolute loyalty toward the existing state were highlighted when the Nationalists, no longer challengers to established power, undertook the unpopular action of suppressing domestic contenders while preparing for a war against foreign invasion.

Enemy of the People or Protector of the People?

In 1949, the Chinese Communists, once labeled by the Nationalists as “bandits” (共匪), ascended to national power. Resistance by oppressed classes to exploitative classes became glorified as a major driving force of historical progress, and Han-centric ethnic policies of the Nationalists were replaced by a new emphasis on the common fate of all ethnicities. Today, China remains a nominal socialist power adhering to the doctrine of Marxism–Leninism, albeit with “Chinese characteristics.” Regional ethnic autonomy is still honored in name despite the increasing emphasis on ethnic solidarity and assimilation. The real question persists, however, of how the Chinese people and the Chinese nation should be defined. A revolutionary coalition led by the Proletariat and based on the alliance between workers and peasants? A multi-ethnic Chinese nation (中華民族) consisting of 56 ethnic groups who have their own histories and cultures but who are unified by a common political cause? Or a political community of which all Chinese citizens are members regardless of their background or political allegiance? The meaning of Yue Fei, a symbol of patriotism and nationalism created through centuries of mystification, was inevitably contested, as the very nature of “loyalty” and “nation” went through redefinition under new power holders.

According to Wang Zengyu, the leading expert on Yue Fei in China today, Yue, despite his hatred toward the Jurchens in his immature youth, later “corrected his own statement and adopted a sincere welcoming attitude toward the Jin army, including Jurchens among them, who would surrender.”Footnote ⁷⁸ Yue even allowed senior Jurchen military commanders to surrender and join his army.Footnote ⁷⁹ As Elad Alyagon's research shows, during the Song–Jin wars, switching sides was not uncommon for soldiers from either the Song or the Jin. As an attempt to prevent soldiers from switching sides, both the Song and the Jin states tattooed conscripted soldiers in border zones, many of whom were not from the ethnic groups to which the ruling classes belonged.Footnote ⁸⁰ In this context, Yue's “welcoming attitude” toward Jurchen soldiers was hardly exceptional. The reference to his “correcting his (previously presumably incorrect) statement (about killing all alien people)” is necessary, however, in a biography that portrays Yue Fei in an overall positive light in contemporary China. The Jurchens were not the only group of people who received clemency from Yue Fei, in Wang's account. The peasant rebels that Yue actively suppressed in his service of the Southern Song state were also treated with benevolence. In his discussion of Yue's handling of bandits in Jizhou and Qianzhou, Wang emphasizes that Yue “gave a large number of captured bandits extraordinarily lenient treatment, which gained him great popularity among the people.”Footnote ⁸¹ Late imperial Yue Fei narratives foregrounded the effective tactic Yue adopted in his suppression of the peasant rebellion led by Zhong Xiang and Yang Yao—“depriving [the chief] of his major assistants, and alienating from him his closest aides” (夺其手足之助，离其腹心之援).Footnote ⁸² Based on the same historical sources from the state-sponsored Song dynastic history, Wang Zengyu summarizes Yue's strategy as “first and foremost persuading them (the rebels) to surrender and fighting them militarily only supplementarily.”Footnote ⁸³

Wang Zengyu's expressions on Yue Fei concerning ethnicity and class, while based on empirical evidence, must be understood in the broader context of Chinese academia. Underneath is a central question: Did Yue Fei dedicate himself to the national body? A national hero's loyalty should be directed toward the nation and the people who constitute the nation. Yue's fight against the Jurchens could be explained away by the involuntary nature of the Jurchen common people's participation in the war. This is the reasoning adopted also in high school textbooks used in China: “Yue Fei insisted on fighting the Jin, which served the common people's interest of resisting exploitation from Jurchen nobles. This earned him admiration from the people.”Footnote ⁸⁴ But Yue's defense of the Song dynastic state against domestic rebellions, which could be equated to suppression of the people's organized resistance to feudal oppression, became an extremely tough issue for anyone who attempted to defend Yue's position as a national hero within the Marxist framework of historical analysis that dominated academic historical research in China until the 1990s and that still dominates history education in primary and secondary schools in China today.

According to Deng Guangming 鄧廣銘 (1907–1998), Wang Zengyu's former advisor at Peking University and one of the most renowned scholars of Song history in the PRC, Yue Fei's “exhausting one's loyalty to requite the country” materialized in three aspects in his military career: (1) putting down bandits roaming within the Southern Song territory; (2) suppressing peasant rebellions that challenged the Southern Song regime; and (3) resisting the Jurchen army that repeatedly invaded the South, recovering some of the lost territories, and “avenging and clearing the wrongs and humiliation suffered by the country” (報國仇，雪國恥). “Among the three, only the third was Yue Fei's true mission and aspiration, which was also the exact meaning of his ‘exhausting loyalty to requite the country.’” Deng stated that he was obliged to discuss the former two, however, only because “Yue Fei had indeed done each of them.”Footnote ⁸⁵ Deng's unease was palpable in this transitional paragraph:

For Deng, Yue's suppression of peasant rebellions was a mere blemish and a moment of weakness in an otherwise significant life characterized by patriotism. Deng's handling of the delicate issue of Yue Fei's quashing of peasant rebels—unquestionably part of the “Chinese people”—set the tone for Chinese studies on Yue Fei published since the 1980s.

In the decades prior to the publication of Deng Guangming's revised biography of Yue Fei in 1985, it was not always clear whether Yue's struggles against the Jurchens or his suppression of peasant rebellions should be regarded as the “main aspect” of his career. The controversy over the “historic assessment” of Yue Fei primarily focused on class issues during the period between the early 1950s and the end of the Maoist era, a period during which ethnic minorities were frequently treated as non-Chinese others or even as “foreigners” despite the official ideology of a multi-ethnic Chinese nation.Footnote ⁸⁷ Yue's crushing of peasant rebellions on behalf of a Southern Song state that was understood to represent the interests of “feudal” landlord classes, not only drew criticism from scholars who approached history mainly from the perspective of class struggle, but also led to the destruction of his temples and tomb during the Cultural Revolution.

In his Philosophy for the Broad Masses of the People, the Marxist philosopher Ai Siqi 艾思奇 (1910–1966) noted that Yue Fei's “loyalty to the ruler,” which obliged him to retreat, rivaled his “dedication to the country,” which obliged him to fight. This unsolvable contradiction inevitably caused his tragic death.Footnote ⁸⁸ In 1951, Ai no longer limited his critical assessment of Yue Fei to the issue of the contradictory nature of Yue's loyalty. Ai started to use “reactionary” (反動) to describe some of Yue Fei's thoughts and actions, which, he claimed, were clearly manifested in Yue's quashing of peasant uprisings. Ai Siqi conceded, however, that these limitations and reactionary aspects of Yue's ideas and actions were historically conditioned, and should not affect Yue's assessment as a patriot and a national hero.Footnote ⁸⁹ Emboldened by Marxist analysis that had by then become prominent, many others were less generous toward Yue Fei. Some denied that he was a hero, not to mention a national hero. Qin Wenxi 秦文兮, who, like Ai, participated in the debate over Yue Fei hosted by two issues of the journal History Teaching (歷史教學) in 1951, insisted that only the leaders of peasant uprisings could be considered national heroes as they were the ones that resisted “feudal oppression.” “Yue Fei's feudal servile thoughts reduced his views and spirit to such a pitiful level that he became a mediocre personality in feudal society.” Notably, while asserting that Yue should not be revered as a national hero at all, Qin did acknowledge what Yue had achieved in the anti-Jurchen struggles.Footnote ⁹⁰ Eye-grabbing titles such as “Yue Fei Committed Crimes against the People” (岳飛，他對人民是有罪的), appeared in newspapers during this period.Footnote ⁹¹ Even historians who supported Yue as a national hero, such as Zhang Chuanxi 張傳璽 (1927–2021), had to concede that Yue's slaughtering of peasant rebels prior to his participation in the anti-Jin wars was indeed a “crime” (罪惡). Yue changed his attitude toward the common people and allied with them to resist the Jurchens only because Yue, who represented enlightened small landlords, realized that the Song court, which represented large landlords, betrayed their interests by following defeatist policies. Yue Fei, despite his dubious history and his class origin, died as “a friend of the people.”Footnote ⁹²

As the theory of class struggle became increasingly dominant in the 1950s and the 1960s, voices defending Yue Fei became weakened or even muted: a member from the landlord class did not seem to be capable of making positive contributions to history. Deng Guangming, who first published his biography of Yue Fei in 1946, refrained from referring to Yue as “national hero” in the 1955 revised edition of his work. Rather, “outstanding strategist” is used to describe Yue. Deng concluded: “We have no choice but to admit guilt on behalf of Yue Fei.”Footnote ⁹³ During the Cultural Revolution, Yue Fei's memorial temple in Hangzhou, like other symbols of “four olds,” was stormed. It was transformed into a “rent collection courtyard” (收租院) that served as an educational site to denounce “feudal exploitation.”Footnote ⁹⁴ Yue's statue was destroyed and his son's tombs were disturbed. It was said that Yue's bones were not exposed—a miracle given that the team commissioned to renovate the temple after the Cultural Revolution had great difficulty in locating the tombs. The temple was destroyed so thoroughly that it had to be rebuilt from scratch in 1979 based on old images and records in gazetteers.Footnote ⁹⁵

Rebuilt together with Yue Fei's memorial temple was his prestigious position in the Chinese pantheon of national heroes. One year after the end of the Cultural Revolution, in 1978, an academic conference was held in Hangzhou on Yue Fei's “historic assessment.” Among the participants, who, for their own protection, were all anonymous in the newspaper coverage, some insisted that Yue Fei should not be regarded as a national hero because he suppressed peasant rebellions. But the majority agreed that Yue's resistance to the Jurchens was the “major aspect” of his career, and thus he should indeed be treated as a national hero, especially considering that class struggle materialized in Yue's time as military struggles between Jurchen nobles and the common people of all ethnicities.Footnote ⁹⁶ In the 1985 revised edition of Deng Guangming's biography of Yue Fei, he concluded:

While the significance of class struggle gradually faded after the end of the Cultural Revolution, its lingering effect can be found in academic and artistic works on Yue Fei produced in the twenty-first century, such as Wang Zengyu's biography and the 2013 TV series. At the same time, ethnic minorities in China that in the Republic and the early People's Republic were once referred to as “foreigners” have been in theory fully incorporated into the Chinese historical self since the 1980s through a new official narrative claiming that they have always been Chinese.Footnote ⁹⁸ This shift made it more imperative for scholars and cultural workers to carefully handle the anti-Jurchen aspect of Yue Fei's career. It is likely that the tortuous handling of the “ethnic minority question” in defining the guo in Patriot Yue Fei was adopted by the production team as a precaution to fend off potential attacks. A decade before Patriot Yue Fei was aired, there was a nation-wide controversy over Yue Fei's “standing in history” (歷史地位) originating from some expressions in a teacher's manual for high school textbooks that denied Yue Fei the status of national hero.Footnote ⁹⁹ When the news broke, many became furious at the possibility that Yue would not be treated as a national hero. As Zhidong Hao and Marc Andre Matten have insightfully observed, at the core of the textbook controversy in 2002 was the issue of whether Yue was a hero of the entire Chinese nation, which is supposed to embrace all ethnic groups currently living within the PRC's borders, or a hero of the Han ethnic group alone. The guideline received nearly universal criticism in media and on the Internet, as it was contradictory to what many people believed to be an indisputable truth. This unexpected popular uproar led to a change of course.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ The Ministry of Education eventually clarified at a press conference that the “historic judgement” (歷史評價) of Yue as a national hero would not be changed. “Yue Fei and Wen Tianxiang have always been regarded as national heroes in Chinese history. But there are indeed different opinions in academia.” The Ministry of Education promised that pure academic discussions would not be brought into secondary education.Footnote ¹⁰¹

In recent decades, emperors and court politics have made a “triumphant return” in popular culture.Footnote ¹⁰² With the current Chinese government's connivance, if not straightforward encouragement, the rhetoric of class struggle has been gradually replaced by the discourse of development, accompanied by a “re-Sinicization of political narratives” that justifies state-led capitalism as a means to recover China's historical glory.Footnote ¹⁰³ China's imperial past, including selected parts of Confucian thought and historical figures symbolizing traditional virtues, serves as powerful sources of legitimation. With the rise of official and popular nationalism, both China's ethnic policies and popular perception of “Chineseness” have seen a turn toward Han-centrism, making ethnic minorities’ unique historical and cultural identities increasingly irrelevant in public discourse.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ The Yue Fei legend has made a full-fledged comeback within the context of this intense nationalism, with the ruling regime being the “country” he was loyal to and foreign powers, especially the United States, being the equivalent to the alien enemy. China's leader Xi Jinping refers to Yue Fei as his childhood role model. Xi's mother, who told him about Yue's story of “requiting the country with perfect loyalty,” supposedly inspired Xi's dream of being a true patriot: “The goal of my whole life is ‘requiting the country with perfect loyalty’” (精忠報國是我一生的目標). Xi's words of admiration for Yue Fei have been transformed into educational posters, and they continue to feed into patriotic programs today.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

Concluding Remarks

The poet Zheng Xiaoxu 鄭孝胥 (1860–1938) was neither an admirer of Yue Fei in imperial times nor a nationalist revolutionary in the twentieth century. He was best known for the instrumental role he played in the establishment of Manchukuo, where he served as prime minister from 1932 to 1935. A Han Chinese who joined official service during the Qing, Zheng claimed that “the Republic of China is my enemy country” (民國乃敵國也) and strove to restore Qing rule after its fall.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Paradoxically, Zheng, a “traitor to the Chinese nation” who collaborated with the Japanese during China's national crisis, was deeply inspired by Yue Fei. What Zheng admired was Yue Fei's fidelity (節)—a word used to describe both the unwavering chastity of a woman and the steadfast loyalty of a minister regardless of whether the object of devotion was alive or gone. It was the same value that drove Zheng to dedicate himself to “recovering the capital” (收京) of the Qing from the Manchu homeland.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ The cause of Zheng and other “Qing remnant subjects” (清遺民) was not dissimilar to that of Yue Fei, or to those of Wen Tianxiang 文天祥 (1236–1283), Shi Kefa 史可法 (1601–1645), and Zheng Chenggong, loyalist officials of the Southern Song and Ming dynasties who defended the rump states that were shadows of their guo's former selves against their enemies. Song and Ming loyalists were refashioned into “national heroes” in resistance to alien oppressions in the twentieth century, while Yuan and Qing loyalists were either obscured in modern historiography or represented as traitors to the nation. Such a divergence in historic assessment of loyalist officials of Han-dominated dynasties and those of non-Han dynasties was a result of modern deviation from the original meaning of guo in classical Chinese—a compound concept that centered on a dynastic regime with its territory and people as an extension of its core. Even after the meaning of guo was re-oriented toward the nation-state in modern times, it was still possible to use Yue Fei's loyalty (忠) and fidelity (節) to support the cause of the “dynastic state” broadly defined. The patriotic song “River Washed in Red” (滿江紅, Manjianghong), composed by Lin Sheng-shih 林聲翕 (1914–1991) in 1932 to lyrics allegedly written by Yue Fei, was both extraordinarily popular in patriotic events during the Second Sino-Japanese War and after 1949 in Taiwan where the Nationalist government was relocated after being defeated in mainland China by the Communists.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ On the one hand, the newly coined meaning of Yue Fei as a patriot of the Chinese nation allowed him to serve as a symbol of resistance to Japanese invasion. On the other hand, Yue's exemplary loyalty to the regime he served made “win back our rivers and mountains” (還我河山) from Manjianghong a fitting vehicle to promote the Nationalist cause of “recovering the Chinese mainland” (反攻大陸) from the rump state of the Republic of China on Taiwan.

Across the centuries, and particularly with the end of dynastic rule, Yue Fei remained a potent symbol, in spite of the general incommensurability between his own actions and modern understandings of them. To qualify Yue as a modern national hero, parts of his aspirations and career had to be ignored or reinterpreted. But the continuity is stunning with respect to the logic dominating the relationship between the ruling polity in China and its people despite all the shifts and turns. Imperial dynasties in China and the People's Republic of China shared the same conviction that who counted as the people, and by extension who were excluded from the ranks of the people, should be determined not primarily by ethnicity or culture, but by the constituencies of the orthodox state in power. Those who supported the ruling regime were the people worthy of protection and benevolence regardless of their ethnicity or culture; those who threatened or harmed the ruling regime were the enemies every subject/citizen was obliged to fight even if they were of the same ethnicity and culture with the “people.” Under this overarching logic, Han literati could praise Yue Fei's crushing of Han “bandits” during the Southern Song and the Ming; a Manchu emperor could celebrate Yue Fei's military victories over the Jurchens. Under the same logic, Yue's loyalty toward his ruler and the Southern Song dynastic state, which had been commemorated for centuries as his major attribute, was denounced during the second half of the twentieth century as “feudal servile thought;” Yue's victories over the rebels and the Jurchens could be viewed as his crimes rather than his achievements. It was this logic that underlay both the 2013 TV series on Yue Fei and Deng Guangming's 1955 and 1985 biographies of Yue Fei. Despite the different frameworks they adopted, they agreed that Yue was worthy of being a “national hero” only because Yue served a specific nation—a group of people that were the constituents of the People's Republic of China.

Guo in China was first a dynastic state, and then became a nation defined by a state. The posthumous career of a loyal general saw ups and downs, as guo was defined by the ruling polity in some periods as closer to Yue's guo, but in other periods as opposite to Yue's guo. With Yue Fei's image so intimately intertwined with loyalty to the orthodox state and so prominent in promoting passionate anti-foreign nationalist spirit in the past, the Yue Fei legend may become anything foreseen or unforeseen. The last two lines from the lyric of the popular song “Requite the Country with Perfect Loyalty” indicate, but do not exhaust, the potentialities: