From this trip to the remote west we will return first to the Hun capital.  From 329 onward Shih Lo possessed a wide empire, but an unstable one.  He himself felt at all times insecure, because the Huns regarded him, on account of his humble origin, as a “revolutionary”.  He exterminated every member of the Liu family, that is to say the old shan-yue family, of whom he could get hold, in order to remove any possible pretender to the throne; but he could not count on the loyalty of the Hun and other Turkish tribes under his rule.  During this period not a few Huns went over to the small realm of the Toba; other Hun tribes withdrew entirely from the political scene and lived with their herds as nomad tribes in Shansi and in the Ordos region.  The general insecurity undermined the strength of Shih Lo’s empire.  He died in 333, and there came to the throne, after a short interregnum, another personality of a certain greatness, Shih Hu (334-349).  He transferred the capital to the city of Yeh, in northern Honan, where the rulers of the Wei dynasty had reigned.  There are many accounts of the magnificence of the court of Yeh.  Foreigners, especially Buddhist monks, played a greater part there than Chinese.  On the one hand, it was not easy for Shih Hu to gain the active support of the educated Chinese gentry after the murders of Shih Lo and, on the other hand, Shih Hu seems to have understood that foreigners without family and without other relations to the native population, but with special skills, are the most reliable and loyal servants of a ruler.  Indeed, his administration seems to have been good, but the regime remained completely parasitic, with no support of the masses or the gentry.  After Shih Hu’s death there were fearful combats between his sons; ultimately a member of an entirely different family of Hun origin seized power, but was destroyed in 352 by the Hsien-pi, bringing to an end the Later Chao dynasty.

2 Earlier Yen dynasty in the north-east (proto-Mongol; 352-370), and the Earlier Ch’in dynasty in all north China (Tibetan; 351-394)

In the north, proto-Mongol Hsien-pi tribes had again made themselves independent; in the past they had been subjects of Liu Yuean and then of Shih Lo.  A man belonging to one of these tribes, the tribe of the Mu-jung, became the leader of a league of tribes, and in 337 founded the state of Yen.  This proto-Mongol state of the Mu-jung, which the historians call the “Earlier Yen” state, conquered parts of southern Manchuria and also the state of Kao-li in Korea, and there began then an immigration of Hsien-pi into Korea, which became noticeable at a later date.  The conquest of Korea, which was still, as in the past, a Japanese market and was very wealthy, enormously strengthened the state of Yen.  Not until a little later, when Japan’s trade relations were diverted to central China, did Korea’s importance begin to diminish.  Although this “Earlier Yen dynasty” of the Mu-jung officially entered on