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was the last straw, and by 54 B.C., after the death of Wudi, a majority
of Xiongnu were indicating their willingness to submit to the Han.
It had taken the Xiongnu several decades to come to this point
because they greatly feared one thing: the tributary system that Wudi
had insisted the Han would impose on them if and when they decided
to submit to Han overlordship. It had three provisions:
1. The Xiongnu, far from receiving a Han princess given in marriage to
their shanyu, would be required to send a hostage from their imperial
family to the Han.
2. The Xiongnu would be required to perform rituals of submission to the
Han emperor.
3. The Xiongnu would periodically be required to pay tribute to the Han.
For decades the Xiongnu resisted these provisions because they
thought they would entail genuine submission and vassalage to the
Han. But once the Xiongnu had accepted them, they were startled
and delighted to find that these provisions ultimately were mere
gestures of submission and did not require any real subjection to China.
They were also overjoyed and astonished to learn that, in exchange for
these ritual gestures, the Chinese rewarded them quite handsomely in
material goods, out of all proportion with the value of the measly
items they presented as “tribute” to the Han emperor. Once they had
seen through the system, they were quite willing to embrace it. It was
all a sham, and the Xiongnu were soon figuring out ways to take
advantage of the system. They actually pressured the Han to allow
them to come more frequently to perform the rituals of submission
and offer their local goods to the Han emperor as tribute.
Even though some Chinese might have known that they were essen-
tially paying for flattery from the Xiongnu, they continued to support
the tributary system. As a result, China's relations with the Xiongnu
were largely peaceful until A.D. 9, when Wang Mang usurped the
Han throne and tried to restore Zhou-style political feudalism. Wang
Mang actually tried to make the tributary system entail real (as
opposed to ritual or symbolic) submission to China. The Xiongnu
balked at this, of course, and soon began to attack China once again.
By the end of Wang Mang's reign in A.D. 23, the Xiongnu were once
again feeling powerful enough to demand the restoration of the old
intermarriage system, but the restored or Eastern Han would hear of
none of this. As it turned out, by A.D. 40 the Xiongnu were once again
divided against themselves in a civil war, and roughly the southern
