Bao Shuya

Bao Shuya the ancient Chinese statesman of the seventh century BC (d. c. 644 BC), chief adviser to Duke Huan of Qi and the devoted friend of the reformer Guan Zhong, whose fame rests chiefly on his willingness to recommend a rival for high office and on the ideal of loyal comradeship that his name came to represent in Chinese literature.

Life and Service in Qi

Bao Shuya, whose personal name was Yawu and whose family name was Bao, was a noble of the state of Qi in the north-east of the Chinese world. He lived during the troubled decades when the Zhou royal house had declined and the feudal domains contended for leadership, and he served the princes of Qi as a trusted minister and general.

He first attached himself to Prince Xiaobai, while his friend Guan Zhong served a rival brother, Prince Jiu. When the old duke died and the sons struggled for the succession, the two friends found themselves on opposing sides. Guan Zhong is even said to have shot at Xiaobai with an arrow, striking his belt buckle, in an attempt to keep him from the throne.

Xiaobai nevertheless won the contest and became Duke Huan. He wished to put Guan Zhong to death, but Bao Shuya interceded, insisting that his friend possessed an ability far greater than his own and that only Guan Zhong could make Qi great. The duke listened, pardoned his former enemy, and entrusted him with the government, while Bao Shuya served faithfully beside him.

The two men worked together for decades to strengthen Qi. Bao Shuya is associated with the policies that made Qi the foremost of the feudal states and with the diplomacy that won Duke Huan the title of hegemon, the recognised leader of the Zhou order. His death is usually placed a few years before that of his friend, and the state soon declined after both were gone.

The Friendship of Guan and Bao

The bond between Bao Shuya and Guan Zhong became the most celebrated friendship in classical Chinese literature. The classic sources tell how, when the friends went into trade together, Guan Zhong took more than his share of the profit, and Bao Shuya, far from resenting it, explained that his friend had a family to support. When Guan Zhong failed in his schemes, Bao Shuya said that the times were unfavourable, not that his friend was incapable.

The same accounts record that Guan Zhong was thrice driven from office and that Bao Shuya never doubted his worth, and that Guan Zhong was defeated in battle and did not die with honour, though Bao Shuya understood that he had duties at home that made death useless. These anecdotes became proverbs in Chinese, cited to teach that true friendship looks past circumstance to the worth of the person.

Guan Zhong himself acknowledged the debt. He is reported to have said that his parents knew him as a son and his friend knew him as a man, and that it was Bao Shuya alone who understood his motives when others mocked him. The phrase about one who knows me, used of Bao Shuya, passed into the language as a name for the discerning friend.

This ideal of friendship as loyalty tested by adversity and success alike stood alongside the Confucian virtues of filial piety and loyalty to the ruler. It gave Chinese literature a stock of images, drawn from the two friends, for devoted companionship that survives jealousy, poverty and changed fortune.

The Politics of Recommendation

The most celebrated act of Bao Shuya's life was his recommendation of Guan Zhong to the duke who had just defeated him. To advance a political enemy and a personal rival required a moral courage that later writers never tired of praising. The act embodied the principle that the good of the state should weigh more than the advancement of one's own family or faction.

In recommending a man more able than himself, Bao Shuya also illustrated an ideal of official conduct that Chinese political thought held high: the minister should seek talent for the ruler rather than power for himself. Writers contrasted him with the many courtiers who advanced only their relatives and clients and thereby weakened their states.

The consequences were decisive for the history of the age. Had Bao Shuya kept his silence, Guan Zhong would have died and Qi would have remained a minor power. Because he spoke, Qi became the leader of the feudal order and its institutions became a model for rulers throughout the classical period.

Reputation and Interpretation

Bao Shuya appears in the Records of the Grand Historian of Sima Qian, which devotes a joint chapter to the two friends, and in many later collections of exemplary lives. He is usually presented as the lesser figure in ability but the greater in generosity, the man whose virtue made possible the achievements of his more famous friend.

Moralists used the pair to explore the relative worth of talent and character. Some argued that Bao Shuya embodied a virtue rarer than talent, the capacity to recognise merit in another and to promote it without envy. Others pointed out that the state needed both capacities, and that Qi prospered because it possessed a brilliant minister and a magnanimous one at the same time.

The story also raised difficult questions about loyalty. Both men had served rival princes before the succession was settled, and both then served the victor. Later debates about when an official may transfer his service and when he must remain faithful to a fallen lord used the case of Guan and Bao as a leading example.

Influence and Legacy

The name of Bao Shuya became a byword in Chinese for the selfless friend and the honest recommender of talent. Poems, essays and popular sayings invoked the friendship of Guan and Bao as the standard against which other friendships were measured, and it survives in modern Chinese speech as a metaphor for devoted companionship.

His conduct also influenced the practical theory of government, in which the chief duty of a high minister was to fill the offices of state with the ablest men available. This principle, urged by thinkers from Confucius to the legalists, acquired a memorable illustration in the act by which Bao Shuya brought his former rival into power.

He left no writings and no body of doctrine, and his historical footprint is small beside that of the reformer he promoted. Yet in the moral imagination of China he holds a secure place, as the man who chose the good of his state and the worth of his friend over his own advantage, and whose generosity made an age of greatness possible.

See also

• Guan Zhong
• Duke Huan of Qi
• Friendship in Chinese thought
• Hegemon system