Pepper Mountain: The Life, Death and Posthumous Career of Yang Jisheng (1516-1555)

The political history of late Imperial/early modern China and the relationship between China’s traditional political culture and the rapidly changing political environment of China today are examined through this study of the iconic figure of Yang Jisheng. Born in 1516, Yang had a brief and traumatic career as a junior official in the middle Ming dynasty, before being executed in 1555 for criticising the politics of the imperial state. Over the ensuring 450 years, a variety of constituencies within China have appropriated and deployed Yang’s memory in different ways to promote their own political agendas. In recent years, as China has sought to come to grips with the ideological decline of socialism and the need for a new foundation for public morality, there has been a revival of interest in figures like Yang Jisheng, whose legacy is once again being taken up by actors on the contemporary political scene. This is an important study of the power of political myth in China, past and present.