But we must not limit our view to these generals’ struggles.  At this time there were two other series of events of equal importance with those.  The incessant struggles of the cliques against each other continued at the expense of the people, who had to fight them and pay for them.  Thus, after A.D. 150 the distress of the country population grew beyond all limits.  Conditions were as disastrous as in the time of Wang Mang.  And once more, as then, a popular movement broke out, that of the so-called “Yellow Turbans”.  This was the first of the two important events.  This popular movement had a characteristic which from now on became typical of all these risings of the people.  The intellectual leaders of the movement, Chang Ling and others, were members of a particular religious sect.  This sect was influenced by Iranian Mazdaism on the one side and by certain ideas from Lao Tzu; on the other side; and these influences were superimposed on popular rural as well as, perhaps, local tribal religious beliefs and superstitions.  The sect had roots along the coastal settlements of Eastern China, where it seems to have gained the support of the peasantry and their local priests.  These priests of the people were opposed to the representatives of the official religion, that is to say the officials drawn from the gentry.  In small towns and villages the temples of the gods of the fruits of the field, of the soil, and so on, were administered by authorized local officials, and these officials also carried out the prescribed sacrifices.  The old temples of the people were either done away with (we have many edicts of the Han period concerning the abolition of popular forms of religious worship), or their worship was converted into an official cult:  the all-powerful gentry extended their domination over religion as well as all else.  But the peasants regarded their local unauthorized priests as their natural leaders against the gentry and against gentry forms of religion.  One branch, probably the main branch of this movement, developed a stronghold in Eastern Szechwan province, where its members succeeded to create a state of their own which retained its independence for a while.  It is the only group which developed real religious communities in which men and women participated, extensive welfare schemes existed and class differences were discouraged.  It had a real church organization with dioceses, communal friendship meals and a confession ritual; in short, real piety developed as it could not develop in the official religions.  After the annihilation of this state, remnants of the organization can be traced through several centuries, mainly in central and south China.  It may well be that the many “Taoistic” traits which can be found in the religions of late and present-day Mongolian and Tibetan tribes, can be derived from this movement of the Yellow Turbans.

The rising of the Yellow Turbans began in 184; all parties, cliques and generals alike, were equally afraid of the revolutionaries, since these were a threat to the gentry as such, and so to all parties.  Consequently a combined army of considerable size was got together and sent against the rebels.  The Yellow Turbans were beaten.