垂拱平章
chuí gǒng píng zhāng
"with hanging sleeves and clasped hands, everything in order"
Another compressed image, but once I learned what was 垂-ing, or hanging, it made sense. I used "sleeves" here, but anything related to clothing would work, since the image is that of rulers unperturbed enough that they need only sit back with their hands folded over their chest and things will run smoothly. This picture of effortlessly benevolent rulers—all of whom existed in the glorious past, of course—is a constant feature in Chinese history. The development of the civil service exams and the bureaucracy indicates to me that Chinese thinking on governance and leadership wasn't entirely mired in this kind of nostalgia, even as nods to the near-perfect rulers of the past remained a necessary gesture up until the end of the imperial system. It's not much different than, say, American fetishization of the Founding Fathers; cultures and the states that emerge from them love having a golden age to pine for, since it allows existing problems (or "problems") to be ignored, or the fault of modern degeneracy, or some other group. I find this sort of conservatism ridiculously idealistic at best and deeply pernicious at worst.
平章 is an interesting phrase. Kroll mentions that, when 平 is pronounced pian instead of ping, 平章 is a phrase that means to "differentiate and mark out the merits of officials, as sage-king Yao 堯 is reputed to have done," and that 平章事 (with 平 pronounced ping again) was a title used by a certain kind of official in the 尚書省 Bureau of State Affairs during the Tang dynasty.
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