struggles between the cliques, and the
universal impoverishment which all this fighting produced, were, of
course, the common people. The Chinese annals are filled with records of
popular risings, but not one of these had attained any wide extent, for
want of organization. In 860 began the first great popular rising, a
revolt caused by famine in the province of Chekiang. Government troops
suppressed it with bloodshed. Further popular risings followed. In 874
began a great rising in the south of the present province of Hopei, the
chief agrarian region.

The rising was led by a peasant, Wang Hsien-chih, together with Huang
Ch'ao, a salt merchant, who had fallen into poverty and had joined the
hungry peasants, forming a fighting group of his own. It is important to
note that Huang was well educated. It is said that he failed in the
state examination. Huang is not the first merchant who became rebel. An
Lu-shan, too, had been a businessman for a while. It was pointed out
that trade had greatly developed in the T'ang period; of the lower
Yangtze region people it was said that "they were so much interested in
business that they paid no attention to agriculture". Yet merchants were
subject to many humiliating conditions. They could not enter the
examinations, except by illegal means. In various periods, from the Han
time on, they had to wear special dress. Thus, a law from _c_. A.D. 300
required them to wear a white turban on which name and type of business
was written, and to wear one white and one black shoe. They were subject
to various taxes, but were either not allowed to own land, or were
allotted less land than ordinary citizens. Thus they could not easily
invest in land, the safest investment at that time. Finally, the
government occasionally resorted to the method which was often used in
the Near East: when in 782 the emperor ran out of money, he requested
the merchants of the capital to "loan" him a large sum--a request which
in fact was a special tax.

Wang and Huang both proved good organizers of the peasant masses, and in
a short time they had captured the whole of eastern China, without the
military governors being able to do anything against them, for the
provincial troops were more inclined to show sympathy to the peasant
armies than to fight them. The terrified government issued an order to
arm the people of the other parts of the country against the rebels;
naturally this helped the rebels more than the gove