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A very full comprehension of the general position is given by perusing the valedictory letter of the leader of the Chinese intellectuals, that remarkable man Liang Ch'i-chao, who in December had silently and secretly fled from Tientsin on information reaching him that his assassination was being planned.
The founder of this Later Liang dynasty, Chu Ch'üan-chung , was himself an eastern Chinese and, as will be remembered, a past supporter of the revolutionary Huang Ch'ao, but he had then gone over to the T'ang and had gained high military rank.
One of the family attained a high post through personal friendship with Yü Liang: on his death his son Huan Wen came into special prominence as military commander. Huan Wen, like Wang Tun and others before him, tried to secure a firm foundation for his power, once more in the west. In 347 he reconquered Szechwan and deposed the local dynasty.
Then Dschang Liang left his service and went to the Gu Tschong Mountain. There he found the old man by the yellow stone, gained the hidden knowledge, returned home, and feigning illness loosed his soul from his body and disappeared. Later, when the rebellion of the "Red Eyebrows" broke out, his tomb was opened. But all that was found within it was a yellow stone.
The one man who could have produced that result in the way Yuan Shih-kai desired to see it, the brilliant reformer Liang Chi-chao, famous ever since 1898, however, obstinately refused to lend himself to such work; and, sooner than be involved in any way in the plot, threw up his post of Minister of Justice and retired to the neighbouring city of Tientsin from which centre he was destined to play a notable part.
The Ta Liang Shan, or "Great Cold Mountains," the country of the independent Lolos, is a mountainous region extending north and south some three hundred miles, which constitutes to this day an almost impenetrable barrier between east and west, crossed voluntarily by no Chinese, unless in force, and from which but one European party has returned to tell the tale.
It was said at the time that Liang Shih-yi had won over his master to trying one last throw of the dice. The troops of the remaining loyal Generals, such as Ni Shih-chung of Anhui, were transported up the Yangtsze in an attempt to restore the situation by a savage display, but that effort came to nought. The situation had become truly appalling in Peking.
After 429 the Juan-juan peril no longer existed, and in the years that followed the whole of the small states of the west were destroyed, one after another, by the Toba the "Hsia kingdom" in 431, bringing down with it the "Western Ch'in", and the "Northern Liang" in 439. Here again, however, the influence of the Chinese gentry made itself felt after a short time.
The eastern states were warrior states, in which an army commander ruled by means of an armed group of non-Chinese and exploited an agricultural population. It is only logical that such states should be short-lived, as in fact they all were. Sociologically regarded, during this period only the Southern and Northern Liang were still tribal states.
Consequently all the Chinese historians are enthusiastic about the "Later T'ang", and especially about the emperor Ming Ti, who reigned from 927 onward, after the assassination of his predecessor. They also abused the Liang because they were against the gentry. The change of dynasty meant no more than that instead of the son following the father the son-in-law had ascended the throne.
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