Nine Currents and Human Classifications
The lecture opens at Yixin Lecture Center.
The teacher says they have already discussed six of the “nine currents.” Last time they reached the Mohist current. He briefly reviews it: Mohism emphasized universal concern and frugality, but later thinkers did not continue supporting it strongly. By the Han period, with Confucian learning established and Buddhism entering China, Mohism gradually declined and was displaced. In later usage, Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism came to be grouped together as the “three teachings.”
Tonight he turns to the seventh current: the School of Vertical and Horizontal Alliances, the *zonghengjia*.
He begins from dictionary and historical notes. In older writing it appears as 從橫家, later written 縱橫家. The *Han shu* “Treatise on Literature” says this current came out of the office of the “xingren,” official envoys. He says this point needs explanation, so he first pauses on what “xingren” means.
He explains the two offices in more detail.
The *Great Xingren* was an official under the autumn offices in the Zhou ritual system, responsible for the rites and formal reception of major guests, especially feudal lords. In modern terms, he says, if a head of state came, this was the level of official who would receive him.
The *Lesser Xingren* handled the formal reception of envoys and messengers from the various states. In modern terms, this would be closer to receiving ambassadors and diplomatic representatives.
From there he returns to “vertical and horizontal.” In older usage, he says, “horizontal” refers to east-west, while “vertical” refers to north-south. During the Warring States period, Qin occupied the Guanzhong region in the west, while the other major states were spread to the east. To explain the diplomatic school properly, he first situates Qin in Guanzhong, that is, the area of present-day Shaanxi.
He continues with a historical sketch. In ancient usage, “vertical” meant north-south and “horizontal” meant east-west. After the age of the Zhou and after Confucius, the feudal states entered the Warring States period, when states fought, annexed one another, and formed shifting blocs.
The six eastern states could combine against Qin; this was called “forming the vertical alliance” (*hezong*). When states broke with one another and instead linked separately with Qin, that was called “horizontal alliance” (*lianheng*).
So the *zonghengjia* were specialists in interstate persuasion and diplomacy — something like diplomatic strategists or political lobbyists, men who traveled between states as persuasive envoys and negotiators.
He then says he will move on to the eighth and ninth currents.
He gives a brief note on the eighth current, the *miscellaneous school* (*zajia*). Its method, he says, was to combine elements from Confucianism, Mohism, the School of Names, and Legalism. The OCR is rough here, but the sense is that this school mixed teachings from several traditions rather than standing on one alone.
Then he comes to the ninth current: the *School of Agriculture*.
The *Han shu* says the agricultural school taught the sowing of the hundred grains and diligent work in farming and sericulture so that clothing and food would be sufficient. He explains “agricultural officials” as the officers who managed farming matters.
He then spends some time on “mulberry” and its uses. The mulberry tree provides fruit, wood, fiber, paper material, feed for silkworms, medicine, and many other products. He speaks in a very everyday way here, describing mulberries, their taste, and the many practical uses of the whole tree.
He returns to the Agricultural school and repeats that “the hundred grains” does not mean only the canonical five grains, but many kinds of crops. Beans alone come in many forms; hemp, dates, mulberries, and other plants all fall into the range of useful cultivation. Agriculture supports food, clothing, and daily life.
At this point he says the original nine streams have been fully discussed, but later another category was added, making ten in some enumerations: the *School of Minor Talk* or *fictional/novelistic current*.
He therefore introduces that added category and cites the *Han shu*: “The school of minor talk arises from what is heard on the roads and in the lanes.” He says this too needs explanation.
He explains the “school of minor talk” by citing old definitions: it arose from the *baiguan*, the low-ranking officers who gathered hearsay, gossip, roadside stories, and scattered local reports. These were not formal histories, but bits of speech circulating among ordinary people.
He then explains the metaphor of *bai* (a kind of weed or millet-like plant) in contrast to proper grain. Just as wild *bai* grows alongside but is not the same as cultivated grain, so these unofficial sayings stand apart from orthodox historical writing. That is why the officers who gathered them were called *baiguan*.
He also explains expressions like “street talk and lane discussion,” and the phrase “praise and blame” or “approval and disapproval.” These all refer to ordinary conversation about people’s merits, faults, gain, and loss.
So the point is that this later-added stream grew out of popular talk, unofficial stories, and anecdotal judgments rather than from the authoritative classics.
He repeats that the *Han shu* calls these “street sayings and lane talk” — idle words, rumors, and rootless speech. If fiction or hearsay is wrong, one shrugs it off, but if formal history is wrong, responsibility is much greater. That, he says, is one reason the old distinction mattered.
He then warns listeners not to confuse this classical bibliographic category with the much later insulting social phrase “low nine currents.” In Confucius’s time the “nine streams” meant schools of thought, not social castes. The later ranking of “upper nine currents” and “lower nine currents” belongs to Qing society.
He begins the Qing-era “upper nine currents” list: geomancers, doctors, fortune calculators, diviners, physiognomists, scholar-officials, farmers, workers, and merchants.
He says that these nine occupations in Qing society were considered respectable enough to pursue the civil examinations and office, whereas the “lower nine currents” were not.
He first explains “mountain,” which here refers to geomancy and grave-siting. Through dictionary notes on tomb mounds and burial sites, he says this category refers to those who inspect landforms and search out auspicious burial grounds — what ordinary people call geomancers or “fengshui masters.”
He then turns to medicine. Here “doctor” means a practitioner of the older Chinese healing arts — what we would now call a traditional Chinese physician.
So in the upper nine currents, the first is the geomancer and the second is the physician.
He adds that “medicine” here obviously means Chinese medicine, since Western medicine came much later.
At this point one session ends. In the next session he resumes the same topic and says again that the old “nine streams” were originally a scholarly classification, while the later “upper nine” and “lower nine” became social ranks.
He now explains “fate” (*ming*). This means experts in star-and-destiny calculation — those who compute a person’s lot from the “eight characters” of year, month, day, and hour. This is the art of the four pillars and natal calculation.
He gives an example of the four pillars to explain how the astrologer works. The details are incidental; the point is that “fate” in this list refers to calculating a person’s destiny from the time of birth.
He then explains *bu* — divination — as using turtle shell, milfoil, later sticks, or temple lots to determine auspiciousness and inauspiciousness. This includes ordinary lot-drawing in temples.
Next comes *xiang*, physiognomy. A physiognomist reads faces, bones, and bodily features in order to discuss a person’s fortune. So at this point the list stands as geomancy, medicine, destiny calculation, divination, and physiognomy.
What remain are scholar, farmer, artisan, and merchant.
He defines the remaining four categories in simple terms.
“Scholar” here means a public employee or someone in official service. “Farmer” means those engaged in agriculture and stock-raising, producing the things human beings need. “Artisan” means skilled workers who make useful objects by labor — masons, ironworkers, and other craftspeople. “Merchant” means those who make their living by buying and selling goods.
Taken together, this completes the Qing-era “upper nine currents.”
But at this point the teacher objects to the whole scheme. If an official is corrupt, or a worker cuts corners and harms lives, or a merchant cheats, how can such people automatically be called “upper” merely because of their trade? Occupation alone cannot define human worth.
The teacher therefore proposes a new definition of the “upper nine currents” for a modern democratic age.
He says that among the old so-called upper nine there were obviously many morally low people. So the standard should be revised. In his own view, the truly “upper nine” should be moral categories: righteous people, upright officials, pure and honest poor people, good people, devoted practitioners, loyal men, filial children, and chaste women.
He notes that this is his own proposal and says it a little jokingly in his own old-man voice, but the point is serious: honor should attach to virtue, not simply to occupation or social rank.
He then says that anyone who truly becomes such a person should count as belonging to the “upper nine” in the revised sense. The old occupational list is no longer enough. That session ends there.
The lecture then turns to the “lower nine currents.”
The teacher says plainly that the Qing-era distinction was unequal and does not fit a modern age that should care about human dignity. Still, he wants to explain the old system before critiquing it.
In Qing custom, the “lower nine currents” referred to socially despised occupations, and people from such backgrounds could even be blocked from sitting the examinations. He begins listing them: prostitutes, singing girls, ceremonial musicians, barbers, matchmakers, shamans, flatterers/beggars, thieves, and actors.
He first defines prostitution and singing women in blunt everyday terms, then moves to the “blowers” — the musicians who played at weddings, funerals, and similar occasions.
He continues through the old list. “Blowers” are the musicians hired for weddings, funerals, house-enterings, and other rites. “Barbers” are explained through the change in hairstyle customs under the Qing, when shaving and queue-wearing became the social rule.
He then explains matchmakers as those who bring two families together in marriage.
Next come spirit-mediums and shamans. In the traditional language he cites, male and female mediums had different names, but together they referred to people who served spirits, conducted invocations, and acted as intermediaries between the human and spirit worlds.
He stays for a long time on spirit-mediums, using dictionary material and folk examples. The recoverable meaning is that “wu” and “xi” referred to male and female ritual specialists who served as mediators between humans and spirits, often through song, dance, possession, or invocatory performance. Some of the OCR becomes very unstable here, and the lecturer also wanders into social commentary, criticism, and anecdotal remarks, but the main subject remains the old classification of such mediums among the “lower nine currents.”
He then distinguishes *qiqiao* from *qishi*. In older explanation, *qiqiao* means a petty flatterer who begs for favor, patronage, or advantage; later people also used it more generally for begging. *qishi*, by contrast, is specifically alms-begging in the Buddhist monastic sense.
This leads him into a long aside on Buddhist mendicancy. He says monks and nuns who beg for food do so in order to sustain the physical body, and that this is considered a pure and proper livelihood. If monastics instead engage in commerce and trade, that becomes “wrong livelihood.” He stresses this point strongly, citing Buddhist reference works and scripture to say that begging is meant to break pride and attachment.
Finally he returns to the larger topic: whatever the old Qing list said, such social rankings are not suitable for the present age. Today singers, actors, and other such people cannot simply be treated as “lower currents” in the old way. He says he has therefore devised a new “lower nine currents” as well, but the time is up and he will explain that next time.
This literal version consolidates the lecture’s English material into continuous notes, keeping close to the spoken sequence while preserving explanatory detail.