Reading China

READING CHINA

CHINA STUDIES Published for the Institute for Chinese Studies University of Oxford

EDITORS:

GLEN DUDBRIDGE FRANK PIEKE

VOLUME 10

READING CHINA Fiction, History and the Dynamics of Discourse. Essays in Honour of Professor Glen Dudbridge

EDITED BY

DARIA BERG

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007

On the cover: “Lichao xianhou gushi ce zhi ba: jiao xun zhu wang”, by Jiao Bingzhen (Qing dynasty), reproduced with permission of The Palace Museum, Beijing. The editor and authors would like to thank The Palace Museum, Beijing, and Qilu shushe for permission to reproduce the illustrations in this book.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reading China : fiction, history and the dynamics of discourse : essays in honor of professor Glen Dudbridge / edited by Daria Berg. p. cm. — (China studies ISSN 1570-1344 : vol. 10) ISBN-13: 978-90-04-15483-4 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 90-04-15483-3 (alk. paper) 1. Chinese literature—History and criticism. I. Dudbridge, Glen. II. Berg, Daria, 1964PL2263.R43 2006 895.1’09—dc22

2006050951

ISSN 1570–1344 ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15483 4 ISBN-10: 90 04 15483 3 © Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

contents

v

CONTENTS Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . List of Illustrations and Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes on Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

vii ix xi

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Daria Berg

xiii

PART ONE READING MULTIPLE DISCOURSES 1 Liaozhai zhiyi and Chinese Vernacular Fiction . . . . . . . . . Allan H. Barr 2 The Allusive Mode of Production: Text, Commentary, and Illustration in the Tianzhang ge Edition of Xixiang ji (The Story of the Western Wing) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Li-ling Hsiao 3 Narrating the Passage of Text: Reading Multiple Editions of the Nineteenth-Century Novel Huayue hen (Traces of Flowers and the Moon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chloë Starr 4 Conflicting Discourse and the Discourse of Conflict: Eremitism and the Pastoral in the Poetry of Ruan Dacheng (c.1587-1646) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alison Hardie

3

37

74

111

PART TWO EDITING, RECONSTRUCTING AND REWRITING HISTORY 5 ‘Life’ as They Knew it: Du Zhongyuan’s Editorial Strategies for the Xinsheng (New Life) Weekly, 1934-35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rana Mitter

149

vi

contents

6 The Afterlife of a Lost Book—Du ji (The Record of Jealous Women) Fifth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Carolyn Ford 7 A Reading of Hou Jing’s Rebellion in Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror to Aid Government): The Construction of Sima Guang’s Imperial Vision . . . . Mark Strange 8 Female Self-Fashioning in Late Imperial China: How the Gentlewoman and the Courtesan Edited Her Story and Rewrote Hi/story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Daria Berg

170

200

238

Glossary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

291

List of Works Cited. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sources Cited by Abbreviation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Other Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

299 299 299

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

315

contents

vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book has been a long time in the making. It began to take shape in a conversation over dinner in windswept Durham, at a small Italian restaurant in the shadows of that city’s ancient and austere cathedral on a cold rainy night at the beginning of the new millennium. It was a privilege to be able to present the complete manuscript to Professor Glen Dudbridge at a champagne recep-tion in his honour under the dreaming spires of Oxford on a hot summer day in 2005. It is an enormous pleasure to see the fruits of our labours and to express my gratitude to all contributors for their cooperation. I would like to express my gratitude to the Leverhulme Trust for awarding me one of its much prized research fellowships, and to the British Academy for supporting research and conference travel in relation to this project. I would like to thank Professor ˆki Yasushi of Tokyo University; the staff at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the British Library, London; Carolyn Ford and Yoko Kawai for expert assistance in helping provide access to rare materials. I would also like to thank the Institute of Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford for its financial contribution to the publication process. Thanks are also due to the editors at Brill, in particular Albert Hoffstädt and Patricia Radder, and to Caroline Mason for meticulous copyediting, as well as to the anonymous reviewer for constructive comments. My husband, Mohammed Shafiullah, supported this project as usual with good common sense, intellectual, emotional and practical help, looking after our daughter Shaira and our baby son Vadim when I was working unreasonable hours.

viii

contents

list of illustrations

ix

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES 2.1

2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14

3.1 3.2 6.1

Contemplating the Moon. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji (Xiling: Tianzhang Ge, 1640) 52 Oriole and Pear Blossoms. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Fondling a Flower. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Writing in the Garden. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Sitting in the Study. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 A Branch of Plum Blossoms. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 The Fair Lady. By Chen Hongshou, Palace Museum, Taibei . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Running in the Wild. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Lotus. Reproduced from Hu Zhenyan, ed., Shizhu zhai shuhua pu (Shanghai: Duoyunxuan, 1985, vol. 1) . . . . . . . . . 64 Lotus. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Orchid Hanging from a Cliff. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Bamboo. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 The Portrait of Yingying. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 The Portrait of Yingying. By Chen Hongshou. Reproduced from Wang Shifu, Zhang Shenzhi xiansheng zheng bei Xixiang miben, Zhang Shenzhi, 1639. In Guben xiqu congkan series 1 (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1954) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Huayue hen. Text from Xiuxiang Huayue hen (N.p.: Guangyi shuju, ca. 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Huayue hen. Plate from Xiuxiang Huayue hen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Portrait of Miss Li. From Yan Jiantang, Baimei xinyong, 1804. Reproduced from Guo Qing and Liao Dong, eds., Zhongguo lidai renwu xiangzhuan (Jinan: Qilu shushe, 2002) . . . . . . . . . 198

x 6.2 8.1 8.2

list of illustrations Text on Miss Li. From Yan Jiantang, Baimei xinyong . . . . . 199 Portrait of Ye Xiaoluan reading a book. From Yan Jiantang, Baimei xinyong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 Portrait of Liu Rushi. From Chen Yinke, Liu Rushi biezhuan (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1980) . . . . . 271

Table 1. A comparison of the four early texts of the first tale from Du ji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 Table 2. Anthologies of Women’s Writings from the Late Ming Era (prior to the publication of Shen Yixiu’s Yirensi in 1636) Edited by Male Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 Table 3. Women Editors’ Anthologies from the Late Ming to the Mid-Qing Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

notes on contributors

xi

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Allan H. Barr is Professor of Chinese at Pomona College in Claremont, California. Under the direction of Professor Dudbridge, he completed a doctoral dissertation at Oxford University in 1983, on Pu Songling and Liaozhai zhiyi. He has published work on Ming and Qing literature and history in both the United States and China. His current projects include a study of the Ming History Inquisition of 1663 and an English translation of Yu Hua’s novel Zai xiyu zhong huhan. Daria Berg studied Sinology at Munich, Shanghai, Taibei, Oxford and Kyoto and received her doctorate under the supervision of Pro-fessor Dudbridge from Oxford University in 1995. She is a Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham and has pub-lished extensively on traditional and modern Chinese literature and cultural history. Her monograph Carnival in China: A Reading of the Xingshi yinyuan zhuan was published by E. J. Brill in 2002. Her most recent projects include a monograph on women and the literary world in China and an edited volume on perceptions of gentility in China (co-edited with Chloë Starr). Carolyn Ford completed her doctorate at Oxford University in 2004 under the supervision of Professor Dudbridge and Dr Robert Chard. Currently she is carrying out research on the composition, transmission and reception of Tang poetry collections with a focus on the works by or attributed to women poets. In autumn 2005 she took up an appointment as the assistant professor of Chinese at Saint John’s University, Collegeville, MN. Alison Hardie studied Classics at Oxford and Chinese at Edin-burgh and subsequently spent sixteen years working in China-related business, based in Peking and Hong Kong. In 1996 she returned to the UK to take a Master of Studies degree in Chinese Studies at Oxford, with Professor Dudbridge. She then completed a DPhil at Sussex University, on Chinese garden design in the late Ming, and since 2000 has been a lecturer in Chinese at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

xii

notes on contributors

Li-ling Hsiao is Assistant Professor of Chinese Language and Litera-ture at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She conducted her graduate studies under the supervision of Professor Dudbridge and holds a doctorate in Chinese literature and art from Oxford University (2002). Her research encompasses literature, art, history, and printing, with particular attention given to the drama culture of the Ming period. She has recently completed a manuscript entitled The Eternal Present of the Past: Theater, Illustration, and Reading in the Wanli Period, 1573-1619. Rana Mitter was an undergraduate at Cambridge, where he was taught by Professor Dudbridge. He also received his doctorate from Cambridge University (1996) and is now University Lecturer in the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford. He is the author of The Manchurian Myth: Nationalism, Resistance, and Collaboration (University of California Press, 2000) and A Bitter Revo-lution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2004). He won a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2004 for his work on modern Chinese history and politics. Chloë Starr is a Departmental Lecturer in Classical Chinese at the University of Oxford. She is also Associate Director of the Centre for the Study of Christianity in China, Oxford. She studied under Professor Dudbridge for her doctorate (Oxford University, 2000), writing a thesis on late Qing courtesan novels. She is just complet-ing a monograph on that topic, and has also published on gender issues in Qing fiction. Mark Strange is studying for a doctorate at Oxford University under the supervision of Professor Dudbridge. He is conducting research into the narrative construction of Sima Guang’s (1019-86) Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror to Aid Government). His focus in this text is Sima Guang’s account of the period between the fall of the Western Jin at the beginning of the fourth century and the establishment of the Sui in 589.

introduction

xiii

INTRODUCTION Daria Berg

This book develops the theme of reading China—her fiction, his-tory and cultural discourse. The volume consists of eight chapters that focus on the analysis of discourse and culture in literary and non-literary texts. The book explores the dynamics of discourse across open boundaries: those of fiction and history, literary and non-literary sources, records past and present, lost and extant, ver-nacular and classical, traditional and modern. Analysis deals with the different perceptions of the world at a given moment in time, and critical perspectives rooted in East and West. The idea for this volume originated in the wish to pay tribute to the long and outstanding career of the eminent British sinologist Professor Glen Dudbridge and to mark his retirement from the University of Oxford in 2005. His ideas, inquisitiveness, sense of humour, rigorous academic standards and meticulous scholarship have always served as an inspiration and a model to emulate. His life-long passion for reading China—reading Chinese books; reading about China; read-ing, interpreting and analysing all kinds of topics of enquiry related to China and all things Chinese—has sustained many students over many years and sparked the creation of this volume. This book aims to open a new window on both modern and tra-ditional China, the history of the mind and the imagination, also China’s popular and vernacular culture—as opposed to the officially recognised and imperially ordained version of culture that presents itself in the more orthodox sources of historical enquiry. Professor Dudbridge has defined the concept of China’s vernacular culture in his book Religious Experience and Lay Society in T’ang China: A Read-ing of Tai Fu’s Kuang-i chi (1995),1 and also discussed it in detail in several articles and in his inaugural lecture as Shaw Professor of

1 Glen Dudbridge, Religious Experience and Lay Society in T’ang China: A Reading of Tai Fu’s Kuang-i chi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

xiv

daria berg

Chinese, later published as a monograph entitled China’s Vernacular Cultures (1996).2 The present volume deals with various aspects of vernacular culture in China in different periods, tracing its history and pointing to common issues throughout the ages. This volume brings together the work of eight of Professor Dud-bridge’s students who now teach at universities in Britain and in the United States. All contributors are familiar with his methodology, which, in essence, deals with two main issues: first, the use of literature as historical source material, and second, the focus on vernacular culture. The contributors have a history of collaboration with one another, ranging from informal seminars and interdisciplinary panels at professional meetings to jointly organised international conferences and jointly published research. The present volume has a unified theme and presents an inde-pendent, integral piece of scholarship. Many great scholars in the field of Chinese studies from all over the world have been associated with Professor Dudbridge during his long and distinguished career and a Festschrift of the traditional type would include a long list of such contributors. This volume, by contrast, has a different focus and includes only the work of his students that shares certain themes and methodologies. The eight chapters apply similar methodological approaches to different kinds of Chinese texts, ranging from the fifth to the twentieth century and including both literary and non-literary sources. They adopt the analytical approach to the reading of Chinese narratives as historical source material pioneered and established by Professor Dudbridge. His seminal studies such as The Hsi-yu chi: A Study of Antecedents to the Sixteenth-Century Chinese Novel (1970), The Legend of Miaoshan (1978, rev. 2004), The Tale of Li Wa: Study and Critical Edition of a Chinese Story from the Ninth Century (1983), Religious Experience and Lay Society in T’ang China (1995) and Lost Books of Medieval China (2000)

2 Glen Dudbridge, “The Hsi-yu chi Monkey and the Fruits of the Last Ten Years”, Chinese Studies 6.1, 1988, 463-486; idem, “The Goddess Hua-yüeh San-niang and the Cantonese Ballad Ch’en-hsiang T’ai-tzu”, Chinese Studies 8.1, 1990, 627-646; idem, “A Pilgrimage in Seventeenth-Century Fiction: T’ai-shan and the Hsing-shih yin-yüan chuan”, T’oung Pao 77, 1991.4-5, 226-252; idem, China’s Vernacular Cultures: Inaugural lecture given before the University of Oxford on 1 June 1995 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).

introduction

xv

have developed a new style of close reading through which traditional tales give access to the lives of individuals, setting new standards for historical enquiry and the reconstruction of lost texts.3 The historian appears as a messenger of souls, recovering the sequence of voices that have transmitted fragments and documents from the past, while revealing himself as the last link in this chain.4 The studies in this volume discuss, with reference to various examples from Chinese history and literature, how written narra-tives have undergone different readings, editing processes, changing interpretations and significance in the process and how such pro-cesses contribute to the process of reading as reconstructing and the rewriting of history. All chapters complement each other and enter into a dialogue with one another by shedding light on the issues of perception, perspective and representation. They unravel the strate-gies and negotiations employed in creating, producing, editing and transmitting a written work across time and space. Each chapter revolves around the issue of how authors, editors and publishers use representation, editing and selection for self-fashioning and politi-cal propaganda. The book demonstrates how such readings bring us—the modern reader—closer to understanding how Chinese citi-zens perceived their world and what their writings reveal about the culture that produced them. PART ONE investigates readings of multiple discourses and read-ings across boundaries. Chapter One, ‘Liaozhai zhiyi (Strange tales from Make-do Stu-dio) and Chinese Vernacular Fiction’ by Allan H. Barr, notes that

3 Glen Dudbridge, The Hsi-yu chi: A Study of Antecedents to the Sixteenth-Century Chinese Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); idem, The Legend of Miao-shan (London: Ithaca Press, 1978, rev. edn Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); idem, The Tale of Li Wa: Study and Critical Edition of a Chinese Story from the Ninth Century (London: Ithaca Press, 1983); idem, Religious Experience and Lay Society; idem, Lost Books of Medieval China (London: The British Library, 2000). For the reconstruction of lost texts, see Du Deqiao (Glen Dudbridge) and Zhao Chao, Sanguo dian lüe ji jiao (Taibei: Dongda tushu gongsi, 1998). 4 See Dudbridge, Religious Experience, pp. 1-17; this has inspired a further discussion of the historian’s role in textual criticism, see Daria Berg, “What the Messenger of Souls has to Say: New Historicism and the Poetics of Chinese Culture”, in Michel Hockx and Ivo Smits, eds., Reading East Asian Writing: The Limits of Literary Theory (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), pp. 171-203.

xvi

daria berg

scholars have often studied the process by which Chinese authors adapted materials in classical Chinese to create vernacular narra-tives, but that relatively little has been done to explore the impact of vernacular fiction on classical Chinese tales. Barr examines in detail Pu Songling’s (1640-1715) debt to colloquial stories and novels in his famous collection of classical tales, Liaozhai zhiyi. Barr points out that Pu would have read the commentary editions of the great Ming (1368-1644) novels which were gaining currency during the seventeenth century and is likely to have acquired certain assumptions about narrative technique from these perceptive late Ming and early Qing (1644-1911) commentators. Unlike late Ming practitioners of the classical tale, Pu Songling tends to eschew the customary ambiguity of these tales, achieving precise definition through the rich use of detail. Pu Songling’s reworking of literary themes appears to have been designed to correct certain weaknesses or eliminate certain ambiguities he perceived in the Ming stories. Chapter Two, ‘The Allusive Mode of Production: Text, Commen-tary, and Illustration in the Tianzhang ge Edition of Xixiang ji (The story of the Western Wing)’ by Li-ling Hsiao, discusses the Hangzhou publishing house Tianzhang ge. It was not well known during the late Ming period, and only few of its publications have survived to this day. But its 1640 edition of Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji (The story of the Western Wing, with a commentary by Mr Li Zhuowu) presents an interesting case study of how a publishing house planned and structured its own publications through the use of both word and image. A study of the publishing house’s practices provides a chance to explore the publishing culture of the late Ming and the profound relationship between text and image. The appropriation of Li’s name reveals the tendency to privilege readership over author-ship, while the edition’s unique illustrations reinforce the importance of interpretation, exemplified in visual terms. Hsiao’s detailed study of this particular edition in both its textual and visual dimensions explores the philosophy that governed its publication. In Chapter Three, ‘Narrating the Passage of Text: Reading Mul-tiple Editions of the Nineteenth-Century Novel Huayue hen (Traces of flowers and the moon)’, Chloë Starr notes that recent western studies of Chinese literature have often focused on cultural or gender stud-ies, while old-style textual scholarship remains prominent in China. Starr considers the value of applying modern western textual studies to bridge this reading gap. Late twentieth-century western textual

introduction

xvii

critics have posited textual variation as the norm, and shifted from notions of the perfect critical edition to that of the novel as a series of events. Starr looks at five editions of a single nineteenth-century novel, Huayue hen, over a span of a hundred years. Reading multiple editions provokes reflection on genre classification and editorial prac-tice. Through a diachronic study of the bibliographic codes of the texts in their various manifestations, this chapter shows, for example, how the generic entity ‘the courtesan novel’ has been propagated through extra-textual features, and how a stronger emphasis on biography as an explanatory factor emerges in later editions. We can assess through the changing physical text how modern editions promote a different notion of the literary text from previous readings of the work, and how these differences affect the reading process. In Chapter Four Alison Hardie explores Ruan Dacheng (c. 15871646), a well known dramatist and a notorious political figure of the late Ming. As a patron of the garden designer and theorist Ji Cheng (b. 1582), Ruan was also an important figure in late Ming garden culture, and he was recognised in his own time as a distinguished poet. However, apart from the few poems which refer directly to Ji Cheng, his poetry has been largely ignored by recent scholars and has never been translated into English. Hardie focuses on a selection of Ruan’s poems on the subject of his various gardens and, after presenting English translations of the poems, analyses the eremitic, pastoral and political themes revealed in them. The chapter thus examines how Ruan addressed the conflict in his own life between his desire for political advancement and his loss of office as a result of supporting the losing side in the downfall of the powerful eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568-1627); it attempts to recover a view of Ruan which is less negative than that generally presented in the historical sources for the period. PART TWO discusses readings of lost texts and analyses the processes of editing and reconstructing literary and non-literary narratives, and rewriting history. It also revolves around the issues of how producers of written works used editing and selection as means of representation, self-fashioning and political propaganda. Chapter Five, ‘“Life” as They Knew it: Du Zhongyuan’s Edito-rial strategies for the Xinsheng (New life) Weekly, 1934-35’ by Rana Mitter, addresses the ways in which language reforms coincided

xviii

daria berg

with massive social change in the Republican period (1911-1949) to change the way in which the Chinese thought about their own society. Experiences such as revolution, war, and imperialism were understood through media which had never previously existed, such as the popular press. Mitter’s piece concentrates on writings by the new journalists of the era, including Du Zhongyuan (1898-1944) and Zou Taofen (1895-1944), to show the impact of popularised, vernacular language on the reporting of the social upheavals of the Republican period, both positive (development of railways and com-merce) and negative (war and famine). It argues that the press was crucial in providing a means for the newly politicised mass readership of China to create a sense of national identity in the face of modern forces which seemed as likely to tear China apart as to unite it. In Chapter Six, ‘The Afterlife of a Lost Book—Du ji (The records of jealous women) from the Fifth Century’, Carolyn Ford studies a lost work, Du ji, originally compiled in the fifth century by Yu Tongzhi, a courtier during the Liu Song dynasty (420-79). After an examination of the jealousy stories still extant today, Ford turns her attention to tracing bibliographic evidence, reconstructions from encyclopedias (primarily the Yiwen leiju, or A collection of literature arranged by categories), recovered Dunhuang fragments, standard histories, and contemporary sources such as Shishuo xinyu (A new account of tales in the world), and shows how Yu incorporated them into his work. We also see how Yu Tongzhi manipulated the material at his disposal and adapted it to his purposes, namely to criticise women he deemed to be acting in a jealous or shrewish manner while praising those who were not. Yu’s adaptation of earlier material is not seamless, however, and Ford highlights gaps and omissions in his rewriting. By reading what early bibliographers knew about the work, we can make estimates of what was lost—and how we might recognise at least some of the material if it were to be re-discovered today. After a brief look at sequels or ‘continuation’ volumes to Du ji Ford con-cludes, somewhat humorously, that Chinese literature long ago lost the cure for women’s jealousy because of the selection strategies of the early encyclopedist. The complete Du ji is irrecoverable, but we know enough from other sources to be able to mourn the loss. Chapter Seven, ‘A Reading of Hou Jing’s Rebellion in Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive mirror to aid government): The Construction of Sima Guang’s (1019-86) Imperial Vision’ by Mark Strange, examines nar-rative manipulation and political spin. It focuses on the construction

introduction

xix

of the Northern Song historical work, Sima Guang’s Zizhi tongjian. In particular, it pays attention to this text’s representation of Hou Jing’s rebellion (548-552 AD), an event that did much to alter the social and political structures of sixth-century China. The study has a dual focus. A close reading of Zizhi tongjian clarifies the complex events of Hou Jing’s rebellion. But the picture that emerges is coloured by retrospective Northern Song perceptions of the earlier period. The text therefore offers a second layer of historical interest: from its exploration of the ways in which Sima Guang has manipulated Zizhi tongjian’s narrative, this study probes his wider political and social ideology. A thorough consideration of Zizhi tongjian as a narrative construct in its own right affords insights into the composition of historical writing in the Northern Song, as well as the complexities of the culture that spawned it. It shows that Zizhi tongjian served a more complex function than later scholarship suggests, and brings into focus questions of literary authority and historical authenticity in medieval China. In Chapter Eight, ‘Female Self-Fashioning in Late Imperial China: How the Gentlewoman and the Courtesan Edited Her Story and Rewrote Hi/story’, Daria Berg explores the ways in which women fashioned representations of the female self by editing and publishing their own and other women’s writings. The publishing boom in late Ming/early Qing China propelled literary women into prominence, both as producers and consumers of literature. Berg analyses the literary and cultural aspirations, social anxieties and financial moti-vations of two women editors from the opposite ends of the social spectrum—a gentlewoman and a courtesan—in the economically prosperous and flourishing cultural environment of seventeenthcentury Jiangnan, the Yangzi delta region. As women set out to edit women’s writings, they discovered that the process of rewriting China’s literary history empowered them in new and different ways. In the role of editor, women perceived their work as a means to change the course of history and their own representations within it. This volume is but a small token to testify to the impact Profes-sor Dudbridge’s work has had on the field of Chinese studies and on the development of new and interdisciplinary approaches to the reading of Chinese texts. Like a harmony for many voices, this book offers themes and variations that echo and resonate with each other. The chapters in this volume share and reflect a passion

xx

daria berg

for reading China. This book is meant to express our gratitude to Professor Dudbridge for his guidance, generosity and commitment to the scholarly community. It is intended to be both a tribute and a celebration. Oxford, 1 July 2005

liaozhai zhiyi

PART ONE READING MULTIPLE DISCOURSES

1

2

allan h. barr

liaozhai zhiyi

3

CHAPTER ONE

LIAOZHAI ZHIYI AND CHINESE VERNACULAR FICTION*

Allan H. Barr Basic distinctions are often drawn between the two strands within the Chinese storytelling tradition: on the one hand the classical Chinese tale, concerned with personal and private affairs, characterized by terseness and ambiguity, and on the other the vernacular story and novel, more concerned with society at large, noted for their consider-able length and explicit detail. The interrelationship between these two forms of fiction has received a good deal of attention from twentieth-century scholarship, but until fairly recently such attention has been largely confined to the identification and analysis of the classical sources of vernacular Chinese fiction: the raw materials, often classical Chinese tales, which vernacular authors amplified and adapted in their own colloquial stories and novels. Such studies have served to reveal the extent to which vernacular authors have often creatively reworked classical source materials. It has been suggested, however, that it was not entirely a one-way process—that, in time, classical tales were themselves influenced by vernacular fiction. The Chinese scholar Yang Liu was perhaps the first person to air such a view, in a book published in 1958.1 In recent years other scholars have likewise argued that the great activity in vernacular fiction in the Ming period must have had an impact on Pu Songling (1640-1715) and his celebrated collection of classical tales, Liaozhai zhiyi (Strange tales from Make-do Studio). In an effort

* This essay builds upon doctoral research conducted under the guidance of Glen Dudbridge. In the days before electronic transmission of documents became customary, early drafts of this essay were flown across North America and the Atlantic, returning in due course from Oxford, marked, in pencil or red pen, with meticulous corrections and wise advice. Though expanded and revised after many years, this essay still owes much to Professor Dudbridge’s influence; having travelled so much, it finds in this volume a fitting home. 1 See Yang Liu, Liaozhai zhiyi yanjiu (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 1985), pp. 77-78, 84-89.

4

allan h. barr

to examine more fully the whole question, this essay reads across the boundaries between classical and vernacular and examines in detail Liaozhai’s relationship to colloquial stories and novels. It is worth noting at the outset that Pu Songling was himself an accomplished author of vernacular plays and ballads, and his enthu-siastic interest in vernacular fiction is frequently reflected in these works. Pu’s Chou jun ba (The beauty and the beast) imagines a farcical romance between Pan Jinlian, the seductress from Jin Ping Mei (The plum in the golden vase) and Zhu Bajie, the porcine pilgrim from Xiyou ji (Journey to the West).2 Although only the opening portion of this comic burlesque survives, it is enough to demonstrate Pu’s interest in the ironic reconfiguration of familiar vernacular partner-ships. Zhu Bajie is here cut loose from his accustomed association with Tripitaka and the other pilgrims, while Pan Jinlian is abstracted from the environment of Ximen Qing’s household, and a fanciful new interaction develops. Certain aspects of Pu’s vernacular play Monan qu (Trials and tribulations) bears a strong resemblance to scenes from Shuihu zhuan (Outlaws of the marsh), another major Ming novel. Pu’s depiction of the rebel chief Ren Yi harks back to the world of the Shuihu heroes: in the early part of the play, for example, he rescues the innocent victims of government persecution and punishes their oppressors,3 while later he triumphantly repels two attacks by government troops on the bandit stronghold, accepts an amnesty, and successfully leads a campaign against northern invaders.4 Pu Songling’s Qiangu kuai (Huarong revisited) is a creative reworking of the famous episode in Chapter 50 of Sanguo yanyi (The romance of the Three Kingdoms), in which Cao Cao is captured by Guan Yu.5 In this crucial chapter in the Ming novel, Guan Yu, moved

2 See Sheng Wei, “Liaozhai liqu yu Jin Ping Mei,” Pu Songling yanjiu 4, 1991: 127-37. 3 Pu Songling ji, comp. Lu Dahuang (Shanghai : Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1986), 4 vols., IV: 1378-81, 1436-39. 4 Pu Songling ji, IV: 1506-36. 5 Qiangu kuai is found in Guan Dedong, ed., Liaozhai liqu xuan (Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1980), pp. 19-46, and under the title Kuai qu in Pu Songling ji, III: 1112-31. The episode on which it is based can be found in Luo Guanzhong, Sanguo yanyi (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 1959), pp. 397-402. For further discussion of this and other work by Pu reflecting his interest in the events of the Three Kingdoms era, see Shen Bojun, “Pu Songling de sanguo ticai zhushu,” Liaozhai xue yanjiu lunji, ed.

liaozhai zhiyi

5

by a sense of obligation to his former benefactor, releases Cao Cao and thereby squanders an opportunity to destroy the power of the Wei forces once and for all. In Pu’s version of the story, Zhang Fei intervenes and gleefully decapitates Cao Cao, and the victorious Han troops then celebrate by using Cao’s severed head as target practice and roasting his ears to make a kind of party dip. The closing verses make clear Pu’s motives in recasting this scene: The Huarong incident was a lasting regret, In its failure to kill the treacherous rogue. Without Zhang’s lance to set things to rights Guan’s weakness would be mocked for centuries to come.6

Finally, intriguing similarities between Rang du zhou (The anti-jealousy charm), Pu’s rambunctious drama about a hen-pecked husband, and Xizhou Sheng’s Xingshi yinyuan zhuan (Marriage destinies to awaken the world) suggest that Pu may have been familiar with this seven-teenth-century novel.7 According to his son’s account, Pu Songling intended his vernacu-lar works as ‘morning bells and evening drums,’ “to clear away the confusion among benighted villagers and awaken market women from their illusions, and among the lanes and alleyways to make the onlookers sing and the listeners weep.”8 Liaozhai zhiyi, by contrast, was intended for an elite audience of ‘scholars and officials’ (xueshi dafu), and with these readers in mind Pu Songling on the whole avoided overt references to vernacular fiction in his classical writings. Scat-tered allusions in Liaozhai, however, testify to his familiarity with the major works in the colloquial medium, although nowhere does Pu explicitly refer to vernacular works by their titles. In ‘Xianren dao’ (The island of immortals), the recitation of the couplet On my whole body only whiskers and eyebrows remain, A small drink can make the ache inside dissolve.

Zhang Yongzheng and Sheng Wei (Beijing: Zhongguo wenlian chubanshe, 2001), pp. 302-13. 6 Liaozhai liqu xuan, p. 46. 7 See Liu Jieping, “Bianxuan tiyao,”, in Qingchu guci liqu xuan (Taibei : Zheng-zhong shuju, 1968), pp. 17-18. Recently, evidence has been found that suggests the first printed edition of the novel was circulating in the early Kangxi period: see Xu Fuling, Xingshi yinyuan zhuan zuozhe he yuyan kao lun (Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1993), pp. 26-27. 8 See Pu Ruo’s “Liuquan gong xingshu,” in Pu Songling ji, IV: 1818.

6

allan h. barr

elicits from the heroine the mocking commentary, “The first line is Pilgrim Sun leaving Fiery Cloud Cave, the second is Zhu Bajie crossing Child-and-Mother River.”9 The allusions here are to episodes in Chapters 41 and 53 of the novel Xiyou ji.10 Another vernacular classic is referred to in ‘Xia xue’ (Summer snow): The practice of calling the wife of an official ‘taitai’ has been followed for only a few years. In the past, only the mothers of officials were eligible for this form of address; the only wives to be so designated were Lin and Qiao in a lewd history, and the custom was found nowhere else. (LZ 8.1058)

Lady Lin and Lady Qiao are both characters that appear in Jin Ping Mei.11 Pu may not have had access to all of the short story collections of Feng Menglong (1574-1646) and Ling Mengchu (1580-1644), but there can be little doubt that he had read Jingu qiguan (Marvellous stories, new and old), the popular anthology that reprinted much of their best work. In ‘Nie Zheng,’ Pu remarks, “I have heard it said in an informal history that Jing Ke’s grave was upturned by the ghosts of Yang and Zuo” (LZ 6.845). The reference here is to a story first published in the sixteenth century, later edited by Feng Menglong and selected for inclusion in Jingu qiguan under the title ‘Yang Jiao’ai she ming quan jiao’ (Yang Jiao’ai sacrifices his life for friendship).12

9 Liaozhai zhiyi: huijiao huizhu huiping ben, ed. Zhang Youhe (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1978), 7.949-50. Hereafter, references to Liaozhai (abbreviated as LZ) will be included in the text. 10 For the first episode, see Wu Cheng’en, Xiyou ji (Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 1972), p. 472. Both Tripitika and Zhu Bajie become pregnant after drinking water from Child-and-Mother River (p. 610). Later, on p. 618, mouthfuls of water from Abortion Stream successfully terminate the pregnancies. 11 For the first appearance of these characters, see Jin Ping Mei cihua, Chapters 69 and 41. For a study of affinities between Jin Ping Mei and Liaozhai, see Sheng Wei, “Jin Ping Mei dui Pu Songling chuangzuo de yingxiang,” Pu Songling yanjiu 11.3-4, 1993: 107-22. 12 Jingu qiguan (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1979), 12: 211-17; it tells the story of the friendship between two early historical figures, Yang Jiao’ai and Zuo Botao. Cf. Hong Pian, comp., Qingping shantang huaben (Beijing: Wenxue guji kanxingshe, 1987), pp. 209-15; Feng Menglong, Gujin xiaoshuo (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1979), pp. 114-20.

liaozhai zhiyi

7

Colloquial Language in Liaozhai Zhiyi What, then, was the impact of the vernacular tradition of Liaozhai zhiyi? Most obviously, Pu’s sporadic use of colloquial language in dialogue can be seen as an effort to emulate the earthy directness of the vernacular medium. This point needs qualification, however, for even at a very early stage of development the classical tale was inclined to introduce colloquial speech in passages of dialogue, thereby lending immediacy to a scene. The combination of elegant classical diction and vernacular idiom became a standard artistic device during the rise of the chuanqi in the Tang period, and, as Qian Zhongshu has noted in connection with a tale by Niu Sengru (780-848),13 colloquial speech tended to be particularly favoured in the portrayal of female characters. In placing colloquial expressions into the mouths of his heroines and the other female members of his cast—particularly matchmakers, maids, and jealous wives—Pu Songling was applying a technique which had become a regular aspect of the writer’s craft long before the advent of vernacular fiction. It is nonetheless striking that Pu at times employs the vernacular on a much more extensive scale than was normal in earlier classical fiction. This difference may be explained in part by the increasing acceptance of the vernacular as a respectable medium by the educated reader in the early Qing, and in part by Pu’s own uninhibited interest in vernacular literature. Pu’s most prolonged use of the vernacular is found in a passage in a tale entitled ‘Shao Jiuniang’ that won ful-some praise from the nineteenth-century commentators. The story as a whole has many affinities with vernacular fiction: the hero’s jealous wife Jin-shi, for example, has all the characteristics of the shrew so often depicted in seventeenth-century novels and stories.14 Colloquial language is used in several scenes, but above all in a pas-sage describing the matchmaker’s efforts to secure a concubine for Chai Tingbin. Chai wants to marry Shao Jiuniang, the beautiful and

13

Qian Zhongshu, Guanzhui bian, (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), 4 vols., II:

784. 14 She recalls Xue Sujie and Tong Jijie in Xingshi yinyuan zhuan, and also Jia Chang’s wife in “Liang xianling jingyi hun gunü” (Two magistrates vie to marry an orphan girl), the second story in Jingu qiguan. Just as Jia Chang’s wife uses the pretext of tardiness in completing a needlework assignment to abuse her victim, so too Jin-shi drives a concubine to suicide by feigned concern about her education.

8

allan h. barr

talented daughter of a poor scholar, but is not optimistic about his prospects, for both his previous concubines were driven to suicide by his wife, and Jiuniang is known to have rejected a number of suitors. The first few matchmakers he talks to refuse point-blank to represent him, but he finally finds one who will: The old woman called on the Shao family and made a point of engag-ing Shao’s wife in lengthy and inconsequential gossip. Glimpsing their daughter, she feigned astonishment and admiration, exclaiming: “Oh what a lovely young lady! If she were to visit the imperial harem, all the emperor’s favourites would be green with envy!” She asked to whom she was engaged, forcing Mrs. Shao to confess that no betrothal had yet been concluded. “With a daughter like her,” said Mrs. Jia, “you’re bound to have a succession of dukes and lords knocking at your door.” Mrs. Shao sighed. “I don’t aspire as high as dukes and lords—I would be perfectly satisfied so long as it was simply the son of an educated family. This little terror of ours has scrutinized a whole range of candidates and hasn’t found a single one to suit her. I really have no idea what she’s looking for!” “You shouldn’t be so annoyed,” said Mrs. Jia. “Who knows what sort of good deeds a man needs to have performed in a former life in order to enjoy the privilege of marrying such a beauty? I heard a very funny thing yesterday by the way—Mr. Chai told me that after seeing your daughter at a funeral he’s so impressed that he is willing to offer a thousand taels as a betrothal gift. Wouldn’t you say this was a hungry owl imagining itself a swan? I sent him off with a flea in his ear.” Mrs. Shao smiled thinly but said nothing. “It’s the fact that your husband is a licentiate, of course, that rules out accepting such an offer. In other ways you gain much more than you lose, and there’s a lot to be said for it.” Mrs. Shao again smiled but said not a word. Mrs. Jia clapped her hands together in dismay and cried: “It would be bad news for me if you were to act on this! I’m always treated here like an honoured guest, served snacks every time I call. If you were to get a thousand taels you would be out paying social calls in your horse and carriage, and the next time I come to visit your gatekeeper will shout at me to keep away.” Mrs. Shao was silent for some time, and then she rose and went out.15

15

LZ 7.885-86. In using the title “Shao Jiuniang,” I follow all extant manuscript texts of this tale, rather than the 1766 printed edition.

liaozhai zhiyi

9

The direct speech in this passage, drawing heavily on the language and rhythms of vernacular Chinese, vividly brings the characters to life. Pu’s matchmaker, though something of a stock figure, is reminiscent of her counterpart in ‘Jiang Xingge chonghui zhenzhu shan’ (The pearl-sewn shirt): in a detail that forcibly recalls Feng Menglong’s story, Mrs. Jia draws part of her income from selling pearls. More significantly, she shows the same manipulative powers and psychological insight in her devious approach to her objective. Notice that at the same time, however, Pu Songling retains some of the reticence characteristic of the classical tale, hinting at, but not explicitly commenting on, the conflict within Mrs. Shao’s mind, one that leads her in the following scene to propose Chai’s match to her husband and daughter.

Narrative Technique It is worth noting that Pu would have read the commentary edi-tions of the great Ming novels that were gaining currency during the seventeenth century and he is likely to have acquired certain assumptions about narrative technique from these perceptive late Ming and early Qing commentators. During the middle and late seventeenth century Chinese fiction criticism made rapid advances through the writings of Jin Shengtan (1608-61), Mao Zonggang (fl. 1679), and Zhang Zhupo (1670-98). It is almost certain that Pu was conversant with at least the first of these commentaries, for Jin Shengtan’s commentary to Shuihu zhuan enjoyed great popularity from the time of its publication in 1644. Some of the literary devices that Jin drew attention to in the novel, features such as ‘advance insertion’ (daocha fa), ‘snake in the grass’ (caoshe fa), ‘whitening the background to bring out the foreground’ (beimian pufen fa) and ‘introducing new twists into the narrative just as you are about to bring it to a close’ (yuhe guzong fa) are employed on a regular basis in Pu Songling’s fiction.16 16 The Liaozhai commentator Feng Zhenluan specifically quotes Jin Sheng-tan in his commentary to ‘Wang Gui’an’ (LZ 12.1635), a Liaozhai tale noted for its dramatic introduction of new twists into the narrative: the reference is to an episode in Chapter 41 of Shuihu zhuan. The “device of the unfinished sentence,” praised by Jin Shengtan as a marvel which even Sima Qian failed to attain (in his

10

allan h. barr

Familiarity with Jin Shengtan’s commentary and the high evalua-tion that it attached to descriptive details in Shuihu zhuan would also account for some striking similarities in Pu’s handling of the physical setting in Liaozhai. Shuihu zhuan is famous for its depictions of the physical environment in a sparing, economical but vivid fashion. In the famous episode of the birthday gift convoy (Chapter 15), for example, the sweltering temperature is noted briefly at three different times on the day of the theft, and on the last occasion we are told, “They saw the blazing sun at its zenith, and the stones were so hot that walking actually scalded their feet.” This type of concise but evocative description is particularly praised by Jin Shengtan as the touch of a genius (caizi zhi bi): “Notice how he describes the heat of the day—he does not waste words, but just one or two lines is enough to make one keel over from heat exhaustion.”17 The passage in Chapter 5 that describes Lu Zhishen’s arrival at Waguan Temple is characterized by the same effective use of telling detail: Before he had walked a quarter of a mile along the mountain path, he raised his head to see a dilapidated temple, whose bells were tinkling in the breeze. Looking up at the entrance, he saw an old vermilion inscription, whose four words could still dimly be read: “The Temple of Waguan.” After another thirty yards he crossed a stone bridge and entered the monastery, heading in the direction of the visitors’ hostel, only to find the main door to the hostel had fallen from its hinges and all four walls were tumbledown. Zhishen thought to himself: “How did this big monastery fall into such ruin?” As he approached the abbot’s room, he saw swallow droppings all over the floor and cobwebs shrouding the lock on the door.18

In much the same way, Pu Songling employs brief but telling descrip-tion in setting the scene for his classical tales. In ‘Hu jia nü’ (A fox marriage), for example, the following passage is found as the story’s hero, boldly accepting a dare, prepares to spend the night in a haunted house: When he entered, he saw that sedge-grass had invaded the pathways. Artemisia and mugwort were growing as densely as hemp. The crescent

introductory comments to Chapter 5 of Shuihu zhuan), is employed by Pu Songling in ‘Lü Wubing’ (LZ 8.1113). 17 See Di wu caizi shu Shi Nai’an Shuihu zhuan (Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 1985), 15: 251-58. See also Wang Linshu, “Tan Shuihu yu Liaozhai,” Pu Songling yanjiu 4, 1991: 101-2. 18 Di wu caizi shu, 5: 121-22.

liaozhai zhiyi

11

moon shed a yellow glow sufficient to make out the outline of doors and rooms. He groped his way forward through several courtyards until he reached the main residence. He climbed up to the balcony, which was bathed in a radiant pool of light, and decided that this was where he would stay. He gazed westwards towards the moon, which cast a sliver of light on the mountains. (LZ 1.53)

Pu here is clearly employing a similar narrative strategy to that used in Shuihu zhuan, in this case to evoke the nocturnal atmosphere of a derelict mansion. The preference for ‘detailed, particularizing narrative’ has been identified as a key feature of the vernacular short story.19 Hanan makes this point when comparing Song Maocheng’s (1569-1622) tale ‘Zhu shan’ (The pearl vest) to Feng Menglong’s vernacular adaptation of it: “The tale is spare and direct; virtually every piece of information is necessary to the plot. The story, however, is prodigal with information, most of it only tangentially related to the action.”20 In the late Ming, it is true, the contrast between the two genres is stark, indeed. A passage in Pan Zhiheng’s (1556-1622) tale ‘Liang Dizhu’ (The two Dizhus), for example, reads as follows: At first light she fled her in-laws’ home to complain to her mother, and wept by the ferry crossing. A scoundrel named Wang Xi came over punting his boat and asked: “Madam, do you wish to cross?” When she said she did, he helped her on board and then guided the boat over to a backwater. There he asked, “Madam, where are you going all on your own?” When she started to weep piteously, he said to her: “This makes me suspicious. If you are fleeing, or if you drown, I will get in trouble with the local authorities. Why not rest awhile at my house, and I will tell your father to come and collect you.” He wanted to make free with her right away, but she was not willing.21

Pan Zhiheng’s version of this encounter is extremely laconic, and there is a sense of incompleteness to his account; Wang Xi’s sexual propositioning of the heroine seems too abrupt. Ling Mengchu’s vernacular adaptation of this passage is over ten times as long as

19 Patrick Hanan, The Chinese Vernacular Story (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 16. 20 Hanan, The Chinese Vernacular Story, p. 107. 21 Pan Zhiheng, Gen shi, 1626 edition, Rare Books of the National Library of Peiping microfilm series, ‘Waiji,’ 14.6a-b.

12

allan h. barr

the classical original, fleshing out this bare narrative with all sorts of ancillary details.22 Unlike late Ming practitioners of the classical tale, Pu Songling tends to eschew the customary ambiguity of the classical tale, achiev-ing precise definition through the rich use of detail. In the opening to ‘Gengniang,’ for example, he demonstrates the attention to detail and the concern for smooth transitions that are a hallmark of the vernacular medium. Jin Dayong was the heir of an old Henan family. He was betrothed to the daughter of a Prefect You. Her name was Gengniang, and she was both beautiful and able. They were a very devoted couple. Owing to turmoil caused by rebels, the family was forced to evacuate their home. Jin led his family on a flight south. On the way they met a young man who was also taking his wife away from the disturbances. He introduced himself as Wang Eighteenth from Yangzhou, and he offered to be their guide. Jin was delighted to accept, and followed his lead in everything. When they got to the Yellow River, Gengniang whispered to her husband: “Don’t take the same boat as that young man. He has looked at me several times. The glint in his eye and the expression on his face tell me that he has some ulterior motive.” Jin reassured her. Wang was most solicitous. He engaged a large boat and transported Jin’s luggage on board with the utmost alacrity. Jin could not bring himself to reject his help. Besides, he reflected that since Wang was accompanied by his young wife, it was hardly likely that he would try any tricks. Wang’s wife berthed with Gengniang. In manner, she seemed most warm and gentle. Wang sat at the prow, and talked in a low voice with the oarsmen, as though they were close friends. Before long, the sun set; the water spread out in a vast expanse, and the banks were so far away it was impossible to distinguish north from south. Jin looked all around at the enveloping gloom and became extremely suspicious. Soon, a glimmering moon began to rise, and he could see that they were surrounded by reeds. When they moored on the bank, Wang invited Jin and his father to come out and take a look. Taking advantage of the moment, he pushed Jin into the water. Jin’s father was about to give a scream, and the boatmen knocked him with their poles, and he disappeared beneath the water. Jin’s mother, hearing the noise, came out on deck to see, and she too was knocked overboard and drowned. Only then did Wang shout for help. When her mother-in-law went outside, Gengniang was behind her, and glimpsed what happened. When she heard the cry that all her family had drowned, she showed no surprise, but simply wept and said: “What is going to happen to me, now that my in-laws are dead?” Wang went 22 Pai’an jingqi, ed. Zhang Peiheng (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe), 1982, 2: 30-32.

liaozhai zhiyi

13

inside to console her: “Madam, do not be alarmed. Please accompany me to Nanking. My property will support you very adequately, and I guarantee you will have nothing to worry about.” Gengniang dried her tears and said: “If that is the case, then my wish is fulfilled.” Wang was delighted and waited upon her solicitously. That night he tugged her clothes and asked her to give herself to him. She said that her period made it impossible, and so Wang went to sleep with his wife instead. Around midnight a row erupted between the couple, Gengniang did not know why. All she heard was the wife cry, “After what you’ve done, I bet thunder’s going to strike you dead!” Wang hit her, and the wife screamed: “Go ahead and kill me! I really don’t want to be wife to a murderer!” Wang roared with rage, and pushed her out the door. She then heard a resounding splash, and the cry arose that the wife had drowned. Before long, they reached Nanking and Wang conducted Gengniang to his house, where he introduced her to his mother. The old woman was taken aback to see that he had returned with a new wife. Wang said: “My wife fell overboard and died, so I took a new wife, that’s all.” When they returned to his quarters, he again wanted to take liberties with her. Gengniang said with a laugh, “A man like you in his thirties must surely have a sense of the proprieties! Even when a barrow boy gets married he still needs a cup of thin wine—with your wealth, it shouldn’t be difficult. What sort of behaviour is it to sit with your wife in complete sobriety?” Wang happily laid out wine and drank with her. Holding a cup, Gengniang fervently urged him to drink. As Wang gradually became drunk, he declined to drink any more. Gengniang took a huge bowl in her hands and urged him on with simulated coquettishness. Wang could not turn her down, and drank it too. He then got blind drunk, and took his clothes off, urging her to get into bed. Gengniang cast the cups aside and blew out the lamp, pretending that she needed to relieve herself. She went out, and then returned with a knife in her hand. In the dark she fumbled for Wang’s throat with her hand, while Wang continued to clutch her arm and whisper endearments. Gengniang cut his throat with all the force she could muster, but he did not die; instead he screamed and rose to his feet, and only when she slashed him again did he expire. His mother had heard something and rushed to enquire what the matter was. She killed her too. Wang’s brother Nineteen woke up. Gengniang, realizing she would be caught, hurriedly cut her own throat. The blade had become dull and would not pierce the flesh, so she threw open the door and ran. Nineteen chased her, but she had already thrown herself into the pond. (LZ 3.383-85)

Pu’s narrative, while retaining the concision of the traditional clas-sical tale, maintains at all times a sensitivity to the psychological realities of a situation and the physical setting of a scene that is characteristic of vernacular fiction.23 23

This episode draws on a variety of traditional motifs. There are many stories

14

allan h. barr

Two scenes of domestic conflict further illustrate the point. The following extract describes just a couple of incidents in an extensive catalogue of torments that the shrew Jiangcheng inflicts on her hap-less husband: One day, when he was talking to the maid, Jiangcheng suspected that he had some private understanding with her, so she crammed a wine jar over the maid’s head and beat her. When she had finished, she tied up both the young man and the maid, and with embroidery scissors she cut out lumps of flesh from their bellies and then stuck them into each other’s wounds. Afterwards she loosened their bonds and told them to bandage themselves. After a month, the inserted gobbets of flesh had actually bonded with the surrounding tissue. Jiangcheng would often stamp cakes into the ground with her bare feet, and then bawl at her husband to pick them up and eat them. There was no end to the tortures she inflicted. (LZ 6.861)

A minor scene in another story describes the difficulty that Wang Taichang and his wife encounter in attempting to discipline their mentally retarded teenage son Yuanfeng and their irrepressible daugh-ter-in-law Xiaocui. A lavishly detailed passage chronicles the recre-ational diversions and mundane crises in the Wang household: Xiaocui stitched together pieces of cloth to make a ball for them to play with outdoors. Wearing little leather boots, she would kick the ball some twenty yards and urge the boy to run and retrieve it. He and the maids would drip with perspiration as they scuttled one after the other in headlong pursuit of the ball. One day Wang happened to be passing when the ball struck him squarely on the face with a resounding thump. Xiaocui and the servants all made themselves scarce, but Yuanfeng blithely continued to race pell-mell after the ball. It was only when his furious father hurled a stone at him that the boy fell to his knees and burst out crying. When Wang told his wife what had happened, she marched off to give the girl a dressing-down. Xiaocui hung her head and smiled, rubbing the bedstead with one hand. Once Mrs Wang had left, she resumed her customary mischief, daubing the boy’s face with rouge and powder so that he looked like a ghost. When his mother saw him she was beside herself with rage and summoned the girl for a severe scolding. Xiaocui leaned against the table and fingered her belt, showing no fear and saying nothing. As it became of treacherous boatmen preying on travellers: one example is Jingu qiguan, 26 (‘Miss Cai suffers humiliation and exacts revenge’). Gengniang herself is reminiscent of the heroine (also named Geng) of one of Li Yu’s stories in Wusheng xi, ‘The Female Chen Ping Saves her Life with Seven Ruses.’ Gengniang’s discovery that the blade of her knife is blunt also recalls the famous bloodbath in Chapter 30 of Shuihu zhuan, when Wu Song’s series of murders renders his knife unusable.

liaozhai zhiyi

15

obvious that she would get nowhere with her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Wang started beating her son. Yuanfeng shrieked with pain and Xiaocui immediately fell on her knees and begged for mercy. Mrs. Wang’s anger instantly dissipated and flinging aside her stick she left the room. The girl bundled Yuanfeng into her bedroom with a smile, patted off the dust on his clothes, wiped his tears away and gently massaged the marks left by the caning, feeding him dates and chestnuts all the while. Soon he stopped crying and visibly brightened. She closed the doors and dressed the boy up, first as Yu the Hegemon, then as the Desert Khan, while she herself donned bright robes, girded her waist and whirled about in her version of Concubine Yu’s tent dance, and then stuck a pheasant’s tail feather in her hair and strummed the lute in a flowing melody. (LZ 7.1001-2)

It is in passages like this that the familiar distinctions between the narrative method of classical tale and vernacular story show signs of breaking down.

Symmetry and Intricacy Pu Songling’s ‘Gengniang,’ translated in part above, concludes with plot developments typical of the vernacular story: Jin (who survives the murder attempt) not only marries Wang’s wife (a second survivor) but also is reunited with Gengniang (a third survivor), and all the innocent and virtuous characters in the story are rewarded with a harmonious and happy life. The ending to the story, so reminiscent of the vernacular tradi-tion, draws attention to another point in common between Liaozhai and the vernacular short story: a strong impulse to tie up loose ends and leave no questions unanswered, no issues unresolved. In Liao-zhai this tendency is quite pronounced, for Pu Songling is careful to anticipate and eliminate potential anomalies that might undermine the internal logic of his strange tales. A particularly good illustration is Pu’s ‘Wang Cheng,’ a tale that may have been inspired in part by ‘Zhuanyun han qiaoyu Dongting hong’ (The tangerines and the tortoiseshell, Jingu qiguan 9), Ling Mengchu’s story of a happy-golucky traveller who gains success unexpectedly as a businessman. Pu’s hero is a kindred spirit who in the same paradoxical way is rewarded with wealth despite his laziness. Ling’s story, rather unusually for a vernacular work, leaves unclear the moral mechanics that enable the hero to acquire such a huge fortune at the cost of such little effort. Interestingly, it is Pu Songling, the classical author, who is careful to

16

allan h. barr

account for the apparent anomaly of Wang Cheng’s success in life. He incorporates into the narrative two telling details that testify to the hero’s fundamental decency, and makes a point of appending a postscript which resolves the mystery of Wang Cheng’s career: Wealth is always acquired through diligence. If Wang’s alone was acquired through indolence, this would be an unprecedented event. What one has to realize is that though he had not a penny to his name he never wavered in his honesty—this is why Heaven began by spurning him and ended up pitying him. How could you ever really win fame and fortune by sloth? (LZ 1.110)

Thus, in another example of the adoption of narrative approaches associated with the vernacular tradition, Pu Songling closes his tale with a clear explanation of the link between Wang Cheng’s personal integrity and his material success in life. Vernacular authors are usually careful to ensure that all characters, even relatively minor secondary characters, are seen to receive their just rewards or punishments by the time the narrative comes to a close. Pu Songling is equally punctilious on this score, as his Qing commentators note. “He leaves no loose ends” (bu lou yi bi) or “he rounds things off tidily” (shoushi bu lou) are remarks they are wont to make.24 In ‘Fourth Lady Hu,’ for instance, the main plot interest in the latter part of the tale involves the heroine’s subtle chastisement of her erstwhile tormentors, but the closing lines round out the picture by noting the kindnesses extended to her loyal allies. ‘Chen Xijiu,’ another tale hinging on a reversal of fortune, is chiefly concerned with Chen Xijiu’s relationship with his wife and her parents, the rich and snobbish Zhous. Near the beginning of the story, the younger Zhou daughter marries a wealthy provincial graduate named Wang, prompting the Zhous to look down on the impoverished Xijiu with all the more distaste. By the end of the story, the tables have been turned: the Zhous are ruined, Xijiu becomes rich. The closing lines round out the picture: After Mr. Zhou’s death, his wife and son were all the poorer, and relied on support from the second son-in-law, provincial graduate Wang. He was assigned a district magistracy, but was dismissed for malfeasance, and his whole family moved to Shenyang, leaving them all the more destitute. Xijiu regularly attended to their needs. (LZ 8.1162)

24 See, for example, the comments by Feng Zhenluan in LZ 4.453, 4.472, 7.967, 8.1162.

liaozhai zhiyi

17

Just as the vernacular story tends to emphasize the long-term implica-tions of a tale’s happy conclusion,25 so too Pu Songling is concerned with continuity: Later Zhang ascended the civil service rankings as far as Vice Minister. His first wife (née Cheng) had two sons and one daughter, and his second wife (née Wang) had four sons and one daughter. Zhang submitted a memorial recounting their story, and both were honoured with the title Mistress (furen). (LZ 4.453) Yunmian afterwards had two children, a boy and a girl, while Yunqi had one daughter and three sons. Zhen’s mother lived well into her eighties and saw all her grandsons become licentiates; her oldest grandson, the son of Yunmian, was awarded the provincial degree. (LZ 11.1504)

‘Nian yang’ (The confidence tricksters) perhaps illustrates most fully the tendency in Liaozhai to emulate the neatness of vernacular nar-ratives. It consists of two separate but interrelated stories. The first account seems to be based on an actual incident that occurred when Wang Minru (zi Zixun, c. 1625-95), a friend of the author’s, travelled to the capital to visit his relative Wang Jiu (1627-65).26 On the way, Wang was robbed of all his money and baggage by a small group of confidence tricksters. The second tale appears to be totally fictitious, and is designed to offer a neat reversal of the preceding incident. Here, another Zichuan licentiate named Wu Anren (perhaps a play on words: wu an ren [‘I arrange the characters’])27 turns the tables on the thieves, inflicting painful injuries on one, taking possession of the wife of another, and robbing them of several hundred taels. This second story, which so neatly reverses the situation in the first story, is clearly intended to demonstrate that justice is done. Once again, Pu Songling has shaped his work in such a way that it leads to rounded closure.

25 See, for example, the endings of stories 15 and 17 in Ling Mengchu’s Erke Pai’an jingqi. 26 See Ma Zhenfang, “ ‘Chen Shuqing xiaoxiang tici’ kaobian,” Wenxue yichan 1, 1985: 103-6; Yuan Shishuo, Pu Songling shiji zhushu xinkao (Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1988), pp. 75-99. 27 This is suggested by Ma Zhenfang in his Liaozhai yishu lun (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1986), pp. 79-80.

18

allan h. barr Thematic Concerns

As noted by Patrick Hanan, another of the characteristic features of vernacular fiction is “the relatively humble social level of the life with which it deals.”28 Some of Pu Songling’s stories come closer to reproducing this feature than earlier classical tales. Here I am think-ing particularly of the lengthy Liaozhai tales that deal with marital or family problems, stories such as ‘Jiang Cheng’ and ‘Zeng Youyu’ which bring household crises to life through explicit description and comic exaggeration and which possess a strong moral orientation. In his keen observation of the interaction between women and between husbands and wives, Pu shares the preoccupations of sixteenthand seventeenth- century vernacular fiction. The tensions between wives, concubines and maids which formed one of the main areas of attention in Jin Ping Mei now become for the first time a key concern of the classical tale. The characterization of many Liaozhai wives as selfish and cruel may owe something to the portrayal of women such as Pan Jinlian and Chunmei. Pu’s opening description of Sun Qi’s third wife, for instance, almost reads like the synopsis of an episode in Jin Ping Mei: “In appearance she turned out to be as beautiful as promised, but her haughtiness was even more notable: she displayed contempt for many of the clothes and accessories offered her, and would often destroy them or throw them away.” (LZ 8.1112) Shanhu’s mother-in-law vents her spleen by the insidi-ous means familiar to us from Pan Jinlian’s behaviour: “Still full of rancour, she cursed everything she came across, the true target of these attacks always being Shanhu herself.”29 Liaozhai’s relative candour on sexual matters also reflects the author’s interest in accommodating to some degree the sexual content of Ming vernacular fiction. Impotence is suffered (and dramatically cured) in ‘Qiaoniang;’ venereal disease afflicts the hero in ‘Xianren dao’ (The island of immortals). One woman attempts suicide when she finds herself married to an old merchant who fails to satisfy her sexual needs.30 Another marriage, already deteriorating, founders finally on the same question: 28

Hanan, The Chinese Vernacular Story, p. 16. LZ, 10.1409. Cf. the opening scene in Chapter 60 of Jin Ping Mei, where Pan Jinlian expresses her scorn for Li Ping’er under the pretence of cursing her maids. 30 LZ, 11.1567. 29

liaozhai zhiyi

19

He was as terrified of her as if she were a tiger or wolf. Even if on occasions she favoured him with an affectionate expression, in bed he still so quaked with fear that he was unable to prove his virility. She slapped his cheeks and dismissed him with derision, and from then on held him in contempt as a creature less than human. (LZ 6.858)

Pu Songling’s interest in the hostilities and alliances that develop among the women of a large, established family may also have been encouraged by the precedents for such subject matter in the vernacular tradition. Pu’s most extensive exploration of this theme is found in the story ‘Fourth Lady Hu.’ The fourth daughter of a high-ranking official, the heroine is married by him to a gifted but penniless scholar, Cheng Xiaosi. Her mother, a concubine, had died when she was a child, and her elder brothers and sisters had all mar-ried into eminent lineages, factors which intensify her isolation: Much earlier, prior to Fourth Lady’s betrothal, a witch who possessed knowledge of people’s future status in life had come to inspect all the children, but issued no flattering predictions. Only when Fourth Lady came before her did she exclaim: “This one will be a really distinguished lady!” Now that she had married Cheng, her sisters all mockingly addressed her as “Distinguished Lady.” She, however, maintained her dignity and reserve just as though she never heard their jibes. Gradually this mode of address was adopted by maidservants young and old, who followed suit in their references to her. Fourth Lady’s maid Cassia became utterly exasperated and asked loudly: “How do you know that my master is not going to be a distinguished official?” Overhearing this comment, Second Sister replied scornfully, “If Cheng becomes a distinguished official, you can gouge my eyeballs out!” Cassia, enraged by this further provocation, cried out: “I’m just afraid that when the time comes, you’ll be reluctant to part with them!” Second Sister’s maid Spring Scent broke in, “If Second Lady goes back on her word, I’ll offer my eyes in place of hers.” Goaded beyond endurance, Cassia struck the palm of her hand to formalize this vow, shouting at the same time: “You’re going to be blind, no doubt about it!” Second Sister, offended by her impertinence, promptly slapped her across the face. Cassia howled and made a scene. When the matriarch heard about this incident, she simply smiled condescendingly, declining to commit herself one way or the other. The distraught Cassia laid her grievance before Fourth Lady, who happened to be twisting thread. Fourth Lady showed no anger and said not a word, but just carried on with her work. When the patriarch’s birthday came round, all the sons-in-law attended and birthday presents filled the courtyard. When First Brother’s Wife contemptuously asked Fourth Lady what gift she had brought, Second Brother’s Wife answered for her: “A mouth set on two shoulders!” Quite

20

allan h. barr unruffled, Fourth Lady displayed no signs of shame and embarrassment. Seeing how witless she seemed to be in all circumstances, everyone made fun of her with ever greater abandon. The only exception was Li-shi, the patriarch’s favourite concubine and Third Sister’s mother, who always treated her with great civility and frequently showed her favour. (LZ 7.962-63)

In such tales as this, where no less than nine women are introduced in the space of a few paragraphs, Pu Songling depicts scenes of domestic conflict that one might associate more readily with the vernacular than the classical tradition. In Pu’s hands, the classi-cal tale deals not simply with “experiences of private importance, which make no impact on the community,” but also with the kind of “socially significant conflict” which tends to characterize the ver-nacular story or novel.31

Narrative Mode A final feature of the vernacular story is, to quote Hanan again, “a distinct emphasis on either comedy, satire, and ribaldry or on straightforward moral didacticism.”32 One cannot claim that comedy, satire and ribaldry are consistently featured in Liaozhai zhiyi, but they certainly figure in a number of Pu Songling’s tales. In ‘Qiaoniang,’ for example, Pu Songling exploits to the full the comic possibilities when Fu Lian, formerly handicapped by an underdeveloped penis, is suddenly restored to full virility through medication provided by his hostess Mrs. Hua. In the passage that follows, Fu Lian eagerly tests out his newfound potency, first with Mrs. Hua’s daughter, then with the fox-lady Qiaoniang, whose earlier efforts to sleep with him had been frustrated by his inadequacy: Mrs. Hua told Fu and her daughter to address each other as older brother and younger sister. Qiaoniang laughed and said: “You can just as well call each other older sister and younger sister.” They all went into the main room and sat down together for a meal. As they drank, Qiaoniang joked with him, “Are eunuchs at all stimulated by women’s beauty?” Fu replied, “A cripple does not forget what it is like to wear shoes, and a blind man does not forget what it is like to see.” Everybody laughed. Because Sanniang was tired, Qiaoniang suggested that she go to bed 31 32

Hanan, The Chinese Vernacular Story, p. 25. Hanan, The Chinese Vernacular Short Story, p. 16.

liaozhai zhiyi

21

early. Mrs. Hua looked at her daughter and urged her to go along with Fu. Sanniang blushed with embarrassment and made no move. Her mother said: “He’s a woman in man’s clothing. You’ve got nothing to fear from him,” and she bustled her off. Surreptitiously she said to Fu: “You have my permission to be my son in public, and my son-in-law in private.” Fu was delighted, and seizing Sanniang by the arm, pulled her on to the bed. One can imagine his satisfaction at putting his newly honed weapon to the test. [ . . .] Although he now knew that Qiaoniang was not a human being, he admired her beauty, and regretted that he did not have a chance to offer himself to her. He was gentle and refined, with an appealing sense of humour, so that Qiaoniang became very fond of him. One day, Mrs Hua and her daughter were planning an excursion, and so they again locked him in the bedroom. Fu, bored with his confinement, paced around the room and called to Qiaoniang through the door. Qiaoniang ordered the maid to try every key she could find, and managed to open the door. Fu whispered in her ear that he wanted to be alone with her. She sent the maid away. Fu put his arm around her and led her over to the bed, then bent over towards her. She playfully put her hand inside his trousers, saying, “What a shame that a cute guy like you has something missing down here.” She had hardly finished saying this, when a solid object filled her grasp, and she cried in astonishment, “How could it have been so tiny before, and now it’s so enormous!” Fu laughed and said, “Last time it was bashful about meeting its guest, so it shrunk away. Now you’ve annoyed it so much with your mockery, it’s putting on a show of force.” (LZ 2.260-61)

Moral didacticism, a staple ingredient of vernacular fiction, is a notable element in much of Pu’s work. Perhaps the most striking example of this tendency in Liaozhai is the story ‘Zeng Youyu.’ It opens with the death of the patriarch, old man Zeng, and goes on to explore the relationships between members of the next three generations of the family, in particular the feuds that erupt between Zeng’s seven sons (by three different wives), and then among five of his grandsons. The narrative is punctuated by regular beatings; two characters are murdered, one commits suicide, one dies in prison, one has his legs broken, another his ears cut off. Pu’s closing com-mentary makes explicit the moral lesson that his tale is designed to convey: Only animals feel exclusive loyalty to their mothers and not to their fathers. How is it that educated families so often follow the same behaviour? Conduct within the home gradually establishes norms among sons and grandsons, penetrating their very essence. The ancient saying has it: “When a father is a thief, the son is bound to steal”—such is his negative influence. (LZ 11.1586)

22

allan h. barr Pu Songling and Li Yu

The most notable writer of vernacular short stories when Pu Songling was growing up was Li Yu (1610-80), whose short story collections Wusheng xi (Silent operas) and Shi’er lou (Twelve structures) and erotic novel Rou putuan (The carnal prayer mat) were all published between 1655 and 1658. The two men never met, although Pu Songling did draft correspondence addressed to Li Yu during his term as private secretary to a magistrate in Jiangsu in 1670-71. Given Li Yu’s celebrity at the time, it is not surprising to find that Pu’s tales show signs of familiarity with his work.33 The inversion of a familiar situation which lies at the heart of so many of Li Yu’s stories is quite a common feature of Pu Songling’s work. Sometimes this takes the form of altering the gender relation-ships in a familiar literary situation. ‘Fengyang shiren’ (The scholar of Fengyang), for example, draws on a tradition of tales focusing on a man’s dream of his wife, but reverses the characters’ roles (LZ 2.187-90). In rather the same way, Pu Songling’s ‘Hengniang’ is a reversal of a story by Li Yu, ‘Duqi shou youfu zhi gua’ (A jealous wife becomes a widow while her husband is still alive).34 In Li’s story, a henpecked husband seeks counsel from the renowned ‘Jealousy Tamer,’ his neighbour Fei Yingong, and Fei finally develops a strat-egy for bringing the overbearing wife to heel. Pu’s tale examines the opposite scenario: a neglected wife receives training from the lady next door in how to discourage her husband’s polygamous tenden-cies and gain ascendancy over him (LZ 10.1431-35). Other tales reverse conventional expectations for ironic effect. In the fanciful story of ‘Luocha haishi’ (The rakshas and the sea-market), normal standards of beauty and ugliness are turned upside down, and a handsome man is viewed as an ogre (LZ 4.454-65). ‘Qu guai’ (The exorcism) offers a sardonic treatment of a stock character in Chinese fiction, the Daoist exorcist. In a farcical episode, the exorcist manages to rid a haunted house of a frightening monster, “a creature with a beast’s head and human body” (LZ 4.510). The comedy of the situation derives from the fact that the exorcist is panic-stricken by 33

For a rather different approach to this subject, see Abe Yasunori, “RyÙsai shii: Shinsho no gåi shÙsetsu”, Chågoku bungaku ronshå 6, 1977: 22-31. 34 The story is translated by Yenna Wu in The Lioness Roars: Shrew Stories from Late Imperial China ( Ithaca: Cornell University East Asia Program, 1995), pp. 11-55.

liaozhai zhiyi

23

the appearance of the ogre, and throws his quilt over the approach-ing figure only as an act of utter desperation. His terrified reaction inadvertently has the effect of scaring away the apparition, but he himself barely survives the shock. The ingenuity of Li Yu’s plots finds its match in a number of Pu Songling’s tales. Pu’s ‘Chen Yunqi,’ a romantic comedy full of mistaken identities and amazing coincidences, shares some obvious affinities with the work of Li Yu, as Feng Zhenluan noted in his commentary.35 The story begins when the hero, captivated at first sight by a beautiful young nun, asks her name, and is told, “Yunqi, surname Chen.” Zhen Yu responds, “What a coincidence! It so happens I have the surname Pan!” (LZ 11.1496) His allusion to the well-known story of the romance between the nun Chen Miaochang and the young scholar Pan Facheng is meant as a flirtatious invita-tion to embark on a love affair, but it misleads Yunqi into thinking that Pan is his real name. This initial misapprehension is followed by an intricate series of unlucky accidents and happy coincidences that eventually lead to the joyful marriage of the young couple. In the aspect of commentary, also, Pu Songling may have come under the influence of Li Yu. In several of Li’s works, there is a reflexive tendency to his postscript comments, where under the pretence of marvelling at the extraordinary twists in his story, the narrator actually draws attention to his own cleverness in devising such a plot. The most well known examples come in Li Yu’s story ‘Shengwo lou’ (Nativity room). Early in that story, the narrator offers the following comments: Now, separation is a tragic experience, but it may occasionally lead to good fortune, either by our meeting someone we have never met or by finding someone we have been looking for. The Creator’s ingenuity in arranging our destinies often manifests itself in such ways.36

Near the end of the story a more transparent reference to the author’s achievement comes in a longer passage:

35 See LZ 11.1500. Feng compares the story to Li’s play Fengzheng wu (The mistake with the kite), notable, in Patrick Hanan’s words, for “its gossamer web of deceptions and mistakes that end in marriage” (see The Invention of Li Yu [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988], p. 16). 36 See Shi’er lou (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1986), p. 241. The transla-tion is that of Patrick Hanan in A Tower for the Summer Heat (New York: Ballantine, 1982), p. 223.

24

allan h. barr Who would ever have expected the Creator’s ingenuity to be a hun-dred times greater than man’s? It’s as if he had deliberately combined these events so that they could be turned into a story—uniting the two couples and then separating them, separating them and then uniting them, at a prodigious cost in mental effort! This plot rates as novel and ingenious to an extraordinary degree!37

In these and other passages, Li Yu introduces a note of reflexiv-ity into his fiction.38 In Liaozhai zhiyi, although some references to ‘Heaven’ can be taken at face value, reflecting a belief in an almighty power that shapes human destinies, in other tales, however, such expressions as ‘the Creator’ (zaowu), ‘Heaven’ (tian), or ‘the forces of nature’ (huagong ) appear to operate on another level of meaning, intimating in a self-conscious way the author’s role in conceiving the story. The effect in such cases is playfully to subvert the authority of the narrative and draw the reader’s attention to the artifice and creative energy invested in the tale. Such comments are most often attached to Pu’s longer and more complex stories. Pu Songling’s ‘Danan’ is a story full of plot twists that bears some similarities to Li Yu’s ‘Shengwo lou’: like Li’s story, it is concerned with the series of events that leads up to a son’s reunion with his long-lost parents. To it is appended the comment, “This reversal of fortune defies all expectation—how ingenious is the Creator!” (LZ 11.1569). Here, as in Li Yu’s comments, one can detect a note of self-congratulation. Pu’s tale ‘Qingmei,’ meanwhile, is reminiscent of Li Yu’s story ‘Fuyun lou’ (The cloud-scraper), detailing the com-plex series of events that allows scholar Zhang to marry both the resourceful maid Qingmei and the beautiful Miss A Xi. The postscript includes the comment, “So fantastic are the events that they entail extensive management on the part of the marriage arranger, costing the Creator a great effort” (LZ 4.453). As Feng Zhenluan remarks in an interlinear note, “This is the author’s assessment of the solitary effort involved in literary composition.” A final example is the comment appended to ‘Xing Ziyi,’ a story in which a White Lotus magician named Yang inadvertently initi-ates a train of events that enables the poor scholar Xing Ziyi to find wealth and happiness:

37

Shi’er lou, p. 258; translated by Hanan, A Tower for the Summer Heat, p. 245. Undisguised praise of his cleverness can be found in some of Li Yu’s com-ments, such as the critique at the end of Chapter 16 of Rou putuan. 38

liaozhai zhiyi

25

The White Lotus sect was extirpated, and Yang alone not only sur-vived but went on to improve his position—one almost suspects that the mesh of Heaven’s capacious net is so wide that it allows things to slip through. Who would have known that Heaven was preserving him for Xing’s benefit? Were this not the case, then even if Xing’s situation took a turn for the better, how could he have so rapidly erected a mansion and accumulated an extensive fortune? Because he did not covet a woman’s beauty, Heaven rewarded him with two beauties. Alas! The Creator says nothing, but his intentions are clear. (LZ 8.1143)

In this commentary, Pu Songling seems to be teasing the reader, disclaiming responsibility for the story’s plot and yet at the same time offering an explanation for his own motives in developing it, aptly encapsulating the ambiguity in his closing sentence. Liaozhai Zhiyi and Jingu Qiguan It is commonly acknowledged that when a vernacular story and a classical tale share the same material, “it is always the story that, as the more popular form, is the more derivative; there is hardly a single known case of a tale based on a story.”39 One might then not expect to find more specific instances of the influence of ver-nacular fiction than Pu’s constructive attempt to come to terms, in his general orientation, with the world of vernacular fiction. There is some evidence, however, which suggests that several of the finest stories in Jingu qiguan have left their mark on Pu’s work. The parallels between Jingu qiguan and Liaozhai are many and various. The preface to the vernacular anthology reiterates a point first made by Ling Mengchu in his preface to Pai’an jingqi: that the most remarkable events in the world may take place in the most humble and familiar context.40 In keeping with this conception of life itself being full of extraordinary incident, the stories in Jingu qiguan highlight local and domestic dramas of various kinds: solidarity or rivalry between brothers (Jingu 1, 3), enmity to an orphaned girl on the part of her ward’s jealous wife (2), discord between mother-inlaw and daughter-in-law (16), the spiteful machinations of malicious neighbours and rebellious servants (28, 29), or the hostility of broth-39 40

Hanan, The Chinese Vernacular Story, p. 24. “Pai’an jingqi xu,” p. 1, in, Pai’an jingqi.

26

allan h. barr

ers to their widowed sister-in-law (25, 31). Pu Songling’s foreword to Liaozhai touches on much the same point: Though people are not beyond the reach of culture, sometimes more remarkable events occur than in the lands of those who crop their hair; though our eyelashes veil our eyes, phenomena stranger than the nation of flying heads may be observed.41

Like the vernacular anthology before it, Liaozhai also goes on to include a number of stories that are devoted to domestic affairs. A tale such as Pu Songling’s ‘Shanhu,’ for example, has few precedents in the classical tradition—its closest relation in Ming fiction is the vernacular short story, as exemplified by ‘Teng dayin gui duan jiasi’ (Magistrate Teng divides family property through ghostly intercession, Jingu 3) or ‘Nian qin’en xiao nü cang er’ (Mindful of her obligations, a filial daughter hides a son, Jingu 30). Pu’s tale in fact has a longer list of characters and a more complex plot than either of the ver-nacular antecedents, though dealing with many of the same issues of jealousy, suspicion, and greed within a family context. ‘A Filial Daughter Hides a Son’ draws its main interest from the change of heart of a woman who initially is hostile to her husband’s concubine, fearing that the birth of a son by the concubine would undermine her position in the household, but who in time sees the errors of her ways and welcomes the return of the concubine and her son. ‘Shanhu’ hinges on a similar correction of aberrant behaviour within the family, but offers a more elaborate presentation, following the development of two women characters: Shanhu’s mother-in-law, who at first mistreats Shanhu before coming to realize her sterling qualities, and her second son’s wife Canggu, who abuses her motherin-law before finally reforming (LZ 10.1409-16). Elsewhere in Liaozhai Pu Songling avails himself of situations first depicted in the vernacular story, but incorporates them into a plot of his own devising. ‘Qinse,’ for example, begins with a scene that corresponds closely to the opening of ‘Li Pinggong qiongdi yu xiake’ (Li Pinggong encounters a knight-errant in adversity, Jingu 16). In the colloquial story a poor scholar named Fang De asks his wife to make him a new set of clothes for the impending winter. His wife, deeply dissatisfied with the marriage, seizes this opportunity to vent

41

“Liaozhai zizhi,” p. 2, in LZ.

liaozhai zhiyi

27

her spleen on her hapless husband, declaring finally: “I’m going to use those two bolts of cloth to make winter clothes for myself, so you can just forget about it!” This is too much for Fang De to bear: “He dared say nothing, angry though he was, and swallowing his rage, he stormed out of the door.”42 With Fang’s flight from his wife there then unrolls a series of adventures that form the substance of the colloquial story. ‘Qinse’ follows a similar pattern, opening with this vignette of the married life of penniless Licentiate Wang: When he returned from the prefectural capital, his wife happened not to be at home. In the pot was cooking a leg of mutton, done to a turn, and he went over to help himself. His wife came in and, without a word, shifted the pot out of his reach. Wang felt utterly humiliated and, flinging his chopsticks to the floor, cried, “If this is the way I am treated, I’d be better off dead!” His wife spitefully enquired how soon his death could be expected, and promptly handed him a rope with which to hang himself. Wang, outraged, threw his soup bowl at her, cutting open her forehead. Brimming with indignation, he stormed out, and reflecting that it really would be best to die, he tucked a sash in his pocket and made his way to a deep gully. (LZ 12.1682-83)

Wang’s departure from home sets in train a course of remarkable events that change his life. Other details from Jingu qiguan find their way into Pu Songling’s tales. The ‘flower-crazy’ hero of ‘Guanyuan sou wan feng xiannü’ (The old gardener, Jingu 8), falsely accused of sedition by a local bully, may be a partial model for the fanatical connoisseurs of several Liaozhai tales, particularly the lover of rare stones in Pu’s ‘Shi Qin-gxu’ (LZ 11.1577). The dramatic scene in ‘Zhao Xianjun qiaosong huang ganzi’ (Magistrate Zhao, Jingu 38) where Wu Yue’s attempted seduction is rudely interrupted by the return of his hostess’s hus-band, and he desperately seeks concealment underneath the bed,43 is re-enacted in Pu’s ‘Huabi’ (The painted wall, LZ 1.16). The coolheaded child who outwits his kidnappers in ‘Shisan lang wusui chao-tian’ (Thirteenth Son, Jingu 36) finds a sibling in the resourceful boy in Pu Songling’s ‘Gu’er’ (The merchant’s son, LZ 1.125-29), who exterminates the foxes haunting his mother. In ‘Dun xiucai yizhao jiaotai’ (The dull licentiate, Jingu 22), the hero seeks support from a

42 43

Jingu qiguan, 16: 299. Jingu qiguan, 38: 728-29.

28

allan h. barr

relative who is a magistrate, only to find he has just died, and he is left stranded.44 Pu’s story ‘Xihou’ involves a similar set of circum-stances (LZ 6.792). Yichun, the boatman’s daughter in ‘Song Jinlang tuanyuan po zhanli’ (Song Jinlang, Jingu 14), greets her husband, separated from her for two years, with the reproachful words “You frivolous fellow,”45 an almost identical greeting to that voiced by Yunniang in the Liaozhai tale ‘Wang Gui’an,’ when she is finally reunited with her husband (LZ 12.1636). Finally, the dramatic fam-ily reunions in ‘Lü Dalang huan jin wan gurou’ (Lü Dalang unites his family by returning gold, Jingu qiguan 31) may have suggested some of the plot twists in such Liaozhai tales as ‘Zhang Cheng’ and ‘Danan’ (LZ 2.247-56, 11.1564-70) Several other stories in Jingu qiguan may have had a formative role in some further Liaozhai tales. There is no question that ‘Lao men-sheng sanshi bao’en’ (An old protegé thrice rewards his benefactor, Jingu 21) would have struck a chord when Pu Songling read it, for it deals with a topic very close to his heart: the vagaries of the examina-tion system and the slender line separating success and failure. The vernacular story is conceived as a light comedy: the hero Xianyu Tong is fortuitously passed by the same examiner at every level of the examination, despite the examiner’s determination to fail him. By happy good fortune the successful graduate is then able on three separate occasions to demonstrate his gratitude by promoting the interests of his mentor, his mentor’s son and his mentor’s grandson. The story immediately invites comparison with Pu Songling’s ‘San sheng’ (Three lives), which, if it were given a vernacular title, might well be called ‘A Failed Candidate Thrice Punishes His Adversary.’ Pu’s tale turns the original story on its head, in this case imagin-ing what might happen in the opposite scenario—when a talented scholar fails to impress his examiner. Under normal circumstances, of course, the rejected candidate would be in no position to take any reprisals against the official who graded his papers. Pu’s solution is to exploit the possibilities suggested in a passing remark by the hero of Feng Menglong’s story, who says at one point: “I’d prefer to end my days as an old licentiate and then complain loud and clear to King

44 45

Jingu qiguan, 22: 407-8. Jingu qiguan, 14: 267.

liaozhai zhiyi

29

Yama after my death, hoping to get a chance in the next life.”46 In a very black comedy, Pu pursues this notion of reincarnation as an opportunity for the frustrated scholar Xing Yutang to wreak his revenge. The name of Pu’s scholar has two dimensions: on the one hand it harks back to the name of Xing’s Ming counterpart, on the other, its literal meaning (‘Arose in the Tang’), has ironic overtones, suggesting that Xing is an embodiment of all the candidates over the centuries whose lives were dominated by futile attempts to pass the civil service examinations, first institutionalized during the Tang dynasty. The ‘thrice’ (san shi) in the title of the vernacular story refers to the aid offered by the protegé to three different generations: exam-iner, son, and grandson. In Pu’s ‘Three Lives,’ on the other hand, the same two protagonists are involved throughout, but in different existences. Repetition, the key structural principle in the vernacular narrative, is retained in Pu’s reworking of the story, but the series of rebirths allows scope for novelty and variation: First Life Second Life Third Life Fourth Life

examiner Shaanxi commoner big dog literatus X

examinee (Xing) army commander small dog X’s son-in-law

In their second lives, Xing takes advantage of his authority to execute his nemesis, now a bystander inadvertently caught up in a peasant rebellion. Yama sentences them both to be reborn as dogs, the examiner as punishment for mistreatment of his parents in his second life, Xing for his callous disregard of human life. The adversaries then kill each other in a dogfight in their third lives. Pu’s finishing touch offers a delightful irony: the enmity between the two men is only eliminated when the former examiner, now reborn as Xing Yutang’s father-in-law, pulls strings and greases palms so that Xing is awarded a higher degree (LZ 10.1332). The vagaries of the examination system, which cause their vendetta in the first place, are also the key to their reconciliation. The comic elements in ‘Qiu Daniang’ derive from a similar situ-ation to that in ‘An Old Protegé Thrice Rewards his Benefactor,’ although the tale also follows in a tradition of vernacular short stories such as ‘Lü Dalang Unites his Family by Returning Gold’ and ‘Huai 46

Jingu qiguan, 21: 393.

30

allan h. barr

siyuan henpu gao zhu’ (A malicious servant with a grudge informs on his master, Jingu 29), in which schemes designed to create trouble for their authors’ enemies go awry, generating results the reverse of those intended.47 ‘Qiu Daniang’ derives its interest from repetition of a simple pattern: Wei Ming’s efforts to damage the Qiu family repeatedly backfire, and lead instead to unexpected benefits for them. The pattern is repeated no less than six times in the course of the story. Wei slanders Qiu Zhong’s wife, but this has the effect only of discouraging those who had designs on her (1). Wei persuades Qiu Zhong’s elder son Fu to divide property with his younger brother Lu, and entices him into a career of gambling that culminates in his mortgaging his wife to a notorious gangster, Yama Zhao. Fu flees from his debtors, but Fu’s wife refuses to submit to Yama, and the magistrate has Yama Zhao beaten to death (2). Wei tries to stir up more trouble by conveying the news of recent events to Qiu Zhong’s truculent daughter by his first marriage, Qiu Daniang. Her intervention, however, revives the family fortunes and restores the property lost in Qiu Fu’s gambling exploits (3). Wei tricks Lu into entering the property of a prominent official’s family, in the hope that he may be punished for the intrusion. Instead, the owner is so impressed by the young man that he marries him to his daughter, Huiniang (4). Wei accuses Lu of harbouring a fugitive from the Manchu banners, and Lu is banished to the frontier. En route he meets his brother, and persuades him to return home. In exile, he is reunited with his long-lost father, who helps him clear his name and return home. Fu also returns home and is reconciled with his wife (5). Wei sets fire to the Qiu property. The family discovers a fortune in silver in the wreckage of the foundations, enough to rebuild the house and ransom Qiu Zhong. The whole family is reunited and enjoys unprecedented harmony (6). After this series of reverses, there then develops a second ironic pattern, also repeated: Wei Ming’s belated efforts to please the Qiu family only create turmoil. The hen which he gives them starts a fire that burns down the kitchen (1). He gives them a goat, but a disturbed servant hangs himself with the rope by which the goat was

47 The structure of the tale, which delays the introduction of the key figure until well into the narrative, was compared by Feng Zhenluan to the handling of Song Jiang in Shuihu zhuan (LZ 10.1393).

liaozhai zhiyi

31

tethered (2). The tale finds a final equilibrium in the closing lines: The Qiu brothers sighed: “We are better off when he tries to damage us than when he tries to benefit us!” After this, although Wei was solicitous in his attentions, they never dared accept even the most trivial gift from him, preferring instead simply to thank him with generous presents of their own. Later, when Wei grew old, and became so poor that he was reduced to begging, they would treat him charitably by issuing him with supplies every week. (LZ 10.1400)

Of particular interest is the relationship between several Liaozhai tales and such well-known stories as ‘Jin Yunu bangda boqing lang’ (The beggar chief ’s daughter, Jingu 32) and ‘Du Shiniang nuchen baibao xiang’ (The courtesan’s jewel-box, Jingu 5). Love betrayed is the theme of both these vernacular stories. In the first story a young wife is thrown overboard by her husband, who is ashamed of her humble social origins. Rescued, she is later reunited with him, but only after administering a beating and denouncing his faithless ingratitude. In the latter story, a young man is persuaded to sell his courtesan lover to a rich merchant, but she commits suicide after casting a fortune of jewellery into the river and berating her lover and the merchant. Her lover goes mad and the merchant wastes away, haunted by the woman’s ghost. Pu’s tale ‘Yun Cuixian’ combines elements from both stories. Cuixian marries a penniless good-for-nothing named Liang Youcai, who later decides to sell her on the advice of a friend. She agrees, but asks that she first be allowed to visit her mother’s home to say goodbye. There, after discovering what great wealth she in fact possesses, the husband is verbally abused, beaten severely and then abandoned. Reduced again to poverty, he is forced to become a beggar and eventually dies in prison. Pu Songling’s reworking of the betrayal theme appears to have been designed to correct certain weaknesses or eliminate certain ambiguities that are present in the Ming stories. The problem with ‘The Beggar Chief’s Daughter’ is that the beating inflicted on the fickle husband hardly seems adequate punishment for his attempted uxoricide, and the couple’s reconciliation lacks credibility. In the case of ‘The Courtesan’s Jewel Box,’ the young man Li is not entirely contemptible, nor is the courtesan Du Shiniang wholly praiseworthy. Li’s predicament deserves some sympathy: he owes a great obligation to his father, and the money gained from the sale of Shiniang would demonstrate his filial loyalty. Shiniang, though intended as a heroic

32

allan h. barr

figure, does not merit unreserved admiration: she seems blind to the flaws in Li’s character, and her injured self-esteem prefers to wallow in self-dramatizing despair rather than take measures to dissuade Li from his proposed scheme. ‘Yun Cuixian,’ by contrast, presents a clear-cut case of male selfinterest oppressing a blameless woman and thereby incurring welldeserved retribution. Liang Youcai possesses no redeeming features; no extenuating circumstances or conflict of loyalties excuse his con-duct. His lechery, hypocrisy, and deceit are clearly displayed from the start, and his motives for selling Cuixian are the meanest imaginable: he requires funds to support his gambling activities. Thus whereas Li was swayed by the moral imperative in the suggestion, “If you have a thousand taels of silver to take home to your father, . . . peace will then be restored in your family,”48 Liang is attracted by these vile blandishments: “Once you have a thousand taels of silver in your possession, would you lack finances to cover your drinking and gambling?”(LZ 6.750) Liang goes further than Li in his coldblooded method of disposal of his wife: he plans to sell her into a brothel in order to maximize his profits. While the faithless lover’s image is utterly discredited in Pu’s char-acterization of Liang Youcai, the wronged wife conversely is portrayed as an altogether more formidable personality and is absolved of responsibility for her plight. Yun Cuixian is gifted with remarkable insight and self-possession; from the very beginning she recognizes Liang for what he is, and far from electing to marry him, is forced to do so by her mother. Always a step ahead of her husband, she anticipates Liang’s plan to sell her and wrests back the initiative by herself proposing that she be sold. As this latter detail suggests, Pu Songling was interested in creat-ing a heroine much more calculating and manipulative than the Du Shiniang prototype. This characterization allows him to resolve a puzzling issue raised by the Shiniang story: why does the heroine conceal her wealth from her husband? Unlike Shiniang, Cuixian can supply a convincing explanation for her secrecy: knowing her husband to be a wastrel, she kept him in the dark in order to keep her fortune out of his clutches. This then accounts for her refusal

48

Jingu qiguan, 5: 74-75.

liaozhai zhiyi

33

to let him visit her family home until the climactic episode on the eve of her induction into a brothel. This confrontation is far more dramatic than its counterpart in ‘The Beggar Chief’s Daughter,’ as Cuixian’s fury is unleashed in a series of ragged outbursts that mount to a peak of menace and violence, unrelieved by the comic moments that defuse the tension in the vernacular story. The ferocity of Cuixian’s verbal assault contrasts with Jin Yunu’s restraint in Feng Menglong’s story, and her tongue-lashing is accompanied by bodily violence, as the maid-servants grab any weapon to hand in the bloodlust of the moment, stabbing Liang’s legs with hairpins and scissors. Yunu’s faithless husband Mo Ji had only received a brief stage-managed caning in ‘The Beggar Chief’s Daughter.’ Pu Songling redresses the balance with a vengeance here. Pu’s final stroke in his reworking of the Ming stories is to devise a conclusion that is psychologically highly realistic. Whereas the retribution visited upon Li and the merchant in ‘The Courtesan’s Jewel Box’ takes a somewhat perfunctory and contrived form, the interlinked deaths of Liang Youcai and his gambling partner have a grim inevitability about them. Forced to sell his house, Liang lives in a cave and stays alive only by begging. One day he chances upon his former crony and stabs him to death. Arrested, he dies in prison of cold and hunger. The tempter thus dies by the hand of the tempted, as Liang wreaks bitter revenge on the man who first suggested selling Cuixian. What emerges from this discussion is how radically Pu Songling has managed to transform a traditional kind of story, even while retaining some of its characteristic features. As there is never any emotional bond between Cuixian and Liang Youcai, this is no longer a tragic tale of love betrayed. The selfishness and lack of principle which form only part of the psychological makeup of Li and Mo Ji are magnified to enormous proportions in the person of Liang Youcai, who acts like a monstrous lampoon of his counterparts in the vernacular stories. With romantic attachment removed from the story, sentimentality and passionate self-sacrifice are also made redundant, and Jin Yunu’s uncomfortable reunion with her husband and Du Shiniang’s anguished repudiation of life are alike rendered unnecessary. Stripped of all romantic trimmings, Pu’s tale presents a dark and uncompromising view of the destruction of a marriage that is doomed from the start by the husband’s moral bankruptcy. ‘Yun

34

allan h. barr

Cuixian’ thus demonstrates the truth of W.L. Idema’s observation that whereas the vernacular story tends to “retell an old and wellknown tale,” the classical tale prefers to “tell a new story, however imitatively.”49 The climax of ‘The Courtesan’s Jewel Box’ takes as its setting the stretch of water between Guazhou on the north bank of the Yangtze and Zhenjiang on the south bank—the traditional river crossing for those travelling between the capital and the prosperous Jiangnan region. In Liaozhai this Yangtze crossing is the locus for several dra-matic incidents reminiscent of the Du Shiniang story.50 ‘Huo nü’ (Miss Huo), for example, recalls Li’s sale of his lover in Guazhou, but introduces an entirely new twist to this familiar episode: On reaching the Yangzhou area they moored the boat on the banks of the Yangtze. She happened to be leaning against the window when the son of a wealthy merchant was passing. Stunned by her beauty he turned his boat around to get a better look. Huang however was quite unaware of this. She said abruptly to Huang: “Your family is poorly off. Today I have a cure for poverty, but I do not know if you are prepared to follow my suggestion.” When Huang asked to know what it was, she continued: “I have lived with you for several years, but I have been unable to bear you children. This is a piece of unfinished business. Plain as I am, I am at least not yet old, and if somebody offers you a thousand taels for me you can sell me off, this way acquiring a full array of wife, house and property. What do you think of this plan?” Colour drained from Huang’s face. He had no idea what had prompted this suggestion. She laughed and said, “Don’t panic. There are plenty of beautiful women in the world—who would be willing to pay a thousand taels for me? For fun let’s just spread the word around and see if there are any takers. Obviously it is up to you whether you go ahead with the sale or not.” Huang was still opposed to the idea, so she herself informed the boatman’s wife of the plan. The other woman eyed Huang enquir-ingly and Huang off-handedly signalled his assent. Before long the boatman’s wife returned with the news that a merchant’s son on a neighbouring boat was prepared to offer eight hundred taels. Huang shook his head deliberately in order to discourage the sale. The woman returned almost immediately to report that the pur-chaser had agreed to their terms and asked that they cross to his boat

49 W.L. Idema, “Storytelling and the Short Story in China,” in Chinese Vernacular Fiction: the Formative Period (Leiden: Brill, 1974), p. 54. 50 See Liaozhai, 11.1479, 12.1635.

liaozhai zhiyi

35

to finalize the exchange. Huang smiled his dismissal, but Huo-shi said: “Ask him to wait a little. I will make sure that Mr. Huang sends me over shortly.” Turning to Huang she then said, “So now you know that it is a woman worth a thousand taels who has been serving you all this time!” Huang asked what explanation they should give to get rid of him. “Please go over right away and sign the contract,” she said. “Obvi-ously it is up to me whether I leave or not.” Huang refused, but she pressed him insistently, and he had no alternative but to call on the merchant’s son. The latter immediately handed him the agreed amount, but Huang asked him to seal and label the package, explaining: “We love each other dearly and it is only poverty which is now forcing us to separate. If my wife absolutely refuses to go through with the deal, then I will refund to you the full sum.” No sooner had he transferred the gold to his own boat than he saw her following the boatman’s wife and crossing from the stern to the merchant’s boat. From her distant vantage point she gave him a farewell glance that conveyed not the slightest sorrow or affection. Huang was dumbfounded and could not say a word for shock. All of a sudden the merchant’s boat cast its moorings and moved off with the speed of an arrow. Huang shrieked in horror and wanted to pursue it, but the boatman ignored him and steered the boat towards the south bank. In no time at all they reached Zhenjiang, and Huang’s baggage was offloaded on to the shore. The boatman quickly cast off, leaving Huang sitting glumly with his luggage. With nowhere to go, he gazed at the endless flow of the Yangtze that swept forward like a dense shower of arrowheads. (LZ 8.1092-93)

This episode is far from vital to the tale’s plot, functioning simply as a further illustration of the manipulative and inscrutable per-sonality of the heroine. Like Du Shiniang, Huo-shi keeps her real intentions concealed from the scholar-hero, and the narrator keeps them concealed from the reader, achieving the same surprise effect as the climax of the vernacular story. At the same time, Pu’s tale is a radical revision of the Du Shiniang incident, reversing the roles of the lovers so that it is the woman who initiates the sale and the man who is devastated by the act of betrayal. Miss Huo returns to Huang shortly afterwards, explaining that her intention had been simply to enrich him at the expense of the lascivious merchant. Once again, therefore, an episode in Pu’s work seems designed as a retrospective redress of a historical injustice: the merchant not only loses the woman he is after (as happens in ‘The Courtesan’s Jewel Box’), he loses his money as well; the heroine punishes the merchant for his temerity, but at no cost to herself.

36

allan h. barr Conclusion

We have been mainly concerned in this essay with Pu Songling’s creative response in Liaozhai zhiyi to the practice of vernacular fic-tion in Ming and early Qing China. But it is worth noting, in clos-ing, that a number of Liaozhai tales were recast by Pu Songling in the form of vernacular plays and ballads, confirming the kinship between the two kinds of literature.51 Later still, after the publication of Liaozhai in 1766, an anonymous author was to adapt twelve tales from Liaozhai and publish them as a collection of vernacular stories under the title Xingmeng pianyan (Refined words to awaken one from dreams).52 Just as Pu Songling crossed the boundary between genres without apology or explanation, this eighteenth-century writer made no explicit acknowledgement of his debt to Liaozhai, and actually made efforts to conceal it by altering the names of Pu’s characters and the settings of his stories. But, as he set about retelling these twelve tales of marital complications and domestic drama, of partings and reunions, conflicts and reconciliations, the vernacular author found a wealth of material that could be readily converted into the colloquial medium. By engaging and assimilating the themes and techniques of vernacular fiction in Liaozhai, Pu Songling had already eased the way for a colloquial rendition of his classical tales.

51

Of the six Liaozhai tales rewritten by Pu Songling as vernacular liqu, four centre around domestic conflict: ‘Shanhu’ provided the material for Gu fu qu, in Pu Songling ji, III: 850-80; ‘Zhang Cheng’ for Cibei qu, in Pu Songling ji, III: 881-921; ‘Qiu Daniang’ for Fan yan yang, in Pu Songling ji, III: 922-1004; and ‘Jiangcheng’ for Rang du zhou, in Pu Songling ji, III: 1135-1265. Pu’s other liqu are Hansen qu, based on ‘Shang Sanguan,’ and Fugui shenxian and Monan qu, based on ‘Zhang Hongjian.’ 52 Some have conjectured that Xingmeng pianyan predates Liaozhai zhiyi: for a restatement of this view, see Wu Xiaoling’s preface to a typeset reprint of the collection, published under the alternative title Xingshi qiyan (Beijing: Beijing yan-shan chubanshe, 1992). It is clear, however, that Xingmeng pianyan was written after Liaozhai’s first printing in 1766, because some of the details in its stories reflect edi-torial changes made in the 1766 edition of Liaozhai, and differ from Pu Songling’s original text. For recent studies, see Gu Qing, “Xingmeng pianyan erkao,” Wenxue yichan 6, 1997: 93-6; Chen Yongchao, “Xingmeng pianyan muxi Liaozhai zhiyi kao,” Ming Qing xiaoshuo yanjiu 3, 1997: 175-81.

xixiang ji

37

CHAPTER TWO

THE ALLUSIVE MODE OF PRODUCTION: TEXT, COMMENTARY, AND ILLUSTRATION IN THE TIANZHANG GE EDITION OF XIXIANG JI (THE STORY OF THE WESTERN WING) Li-ling Hsiao The Hangzhou publishing house of Tianzhang ge was not well known during the late Ming period, and only a very few of its publications have survived to this day. Its 1640 edition of Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji zhenben (or The authentic edition of The story of the Western Wing with a commentary by Mr. Li Zhuowu) is an interesting case study, however, as it suggests the means by which publishing houses attempted to control the reception of their own publications through the use of both word and image. This edition is thoroughly conven-tional in its inclusion of a second-rate and almost surely fraudulent commentary attributed to the influential late Ming thinker Li Zhi (1527-1602), but it includes a very innovative set of illustrations that signals a new development in woodblock illustration during the late Ming period.1 Unlike most drama illustration, which includes many dramatis personae in a single frame, eleven illustrations included in this edition feature only the female protagonist Cui Yingying. The remaining ten illustrations, moreover, entirely abandon the represen-tation of human figures, instead depicting birds, trees, flowers, and rocks. The publishing house’s somewhat crude appropriation of Li’s name and its innovative approach to illustration might seem at odds, but this contradiction provides a chance to explore the publishing

1

Li Zhi (courtesy name Zhuowu). The twenty-one illustrations are grouped at the front of the book, an arrangement called in Chinese guantu or ‘pictures before text’. On Li Zhi’s commentary on Xixiang ji, see Huang Lin, “Lun Rongyu tang ben Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping bei Xixiang ji,” Fudan xuebao 2, 2002: 119-125; Jiang Xingyu, “Li Zhuowu pi ben Xixiang ji de tezheng, zhenwei, yu yingxiang,” in Jiang Xinyu, Ming kanben Xixiang ji yanjiu (Beijing: Guji chubanshe, 1982), pp. 88-103; and Zhu Wanshu, “Li Zhuowu piping guben kao,” Wenxian 93, 2002/3: 107-123.

38

li-ling hsiao

culture of the late Ming and the profound relation between text and image. This paper attempts to unveil the logic that underlies this seeming contradiction and to grasp the philosophy that governed the publication of this unique edition. It must be noted at the start that the history of Tianzhang ge’s 1640 edition of Xixiang ji is shrouded in mystery and subject to some dispute. The blocks engraved by Tianzhang ge were seemingly used to produce two subtly different versions of the same publication, each of which is commemorated by a single extant copy, one held in the Beijing Library, the other held in the collection of the National Central Library in Taibei.2 This paper is an examination and con-sideration of the latter copy.

The Implicit Ideology of the Text The preface-writer of the Tianzhang ge edition, who goes by the pen name Zuixiang Zhuren (Master of the Drunken Fragrance) and is almost surely the publisher himself, clearly takes a side in the urgent and topical dispute as to whether drama constitutes a literary or a theatrical genre.3 The publisher tellingly begins his preface by instructing the reader in the proper technique for ‘reading books’ (kan shu) and ends with the injunction, “Do not call this a script!”4 This vehemence is not misplaced—the distinction between a book and a script is far from trivial. The stage audience receives the text

2

The two copies are different in numerous details. The Beijing copy includes an illustration that identifies the engraver as Xiang Nanzhou (active 1621-1644), while the analogous illustration in the Taibei edition makes no such identification. The illustrations in the former copy are more finely detailed and more clearly rendered. The Taibei copy bears a colophon on the cover stating that it was printed from the blocks of Tianzhang ge. Both copies include a commentary attributed to Li Zhuowu, but the content of these commentaries differs significantly. The Beijing copy features commentary at the end of each scene, while the Taibei copy features interlineal commentary. Despite these differences, the copies are so closely related that it is safe to speculate that they derive from the same blocks. Most likely, the printer effaced slightly worn areas of the blocks before the printing of the Taibei copy. 3 In this case there is good reason to believe that the preface-writer is the pub-lisher: this would explain the fact that the preface is not attributed to a famous name. Throughout the paper, I will refer to the preface-writer as the publisher. 4 Zhongyang tushuguan, ed., Guoli Zhongyang tushuguan shanben xuba jilu—ji bu (Taibei: Zhongyang tushuguan, 1994), vol. 7, p. 466.

xixiang ji

39

through the mediation of actors, scenery, and the general social context of the theatre, while a reader communes with the text itself. Performance is ritualistic and communal; reading not necessarily so. Performance has an important spatial dimension; reading has no spatial dimension, but unfolds in the imagination. Performance brings human beings into contact, while reading does not. A theatre-goer has no influence over the unfolding performance, while a reader can stop, start, and move backward and forward within the narrative. Reading, finally, allows closer attention to language. The playwrights and drama critics of the late Ming period were very conscious of the dual roles of the drama publication and the issues surrounding its production. As the differences between watch-ing a performance and reading a play are so intrinsic and significant, the playwrights and drama critics of the period conceived the two roles of the drama publication as irreconcilably opposed. A play like Mudan ting (The peony pavilion, preface dated 1598), by Tang Xianzu (1550-1616),5 for example, was often criticized during the late Ming period for failing to lend itself to live performance. The plays of Shen Jing (1553-1610), on the other hand, were considered among the greatest examples of Ming drama solely on their merits as performance pieces.6 Late Ming critics denoted the two roles of the drama publication by the terms yan shang zhi qu (lyrics for the banquet) and an tou zhi shu (books for the desk).7 Tellingly, these terms have a Ming origin. They were first used by Shuai Ji in his discussion of Tang Xianzu’s Zichai ji (The story of the purple hairpin,

5

Tang Xianzu (courtesy name Tang Hairuo). Disputants in this controversy fell into two camps: Caiqing pai or ‘The School of Lyrical Talent’, which was led by Tang, and Gelü pai or ‘The School of Music’, which was led by Shen. The debate began with them and continues to this day. I discuss this issue in detail in the first chapter of my doctoral dissertation, “The Eternal Present of the Past: Performance, Illustration, and Reading in the Drama Culture of the Wanli Period (1573-1619),” D. Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 2002, pp. 10-62. 7 Ever since the Ming era, scholars have been proposing criteria for distinguish-ing between performance-oriented scripts and reading-oriented publications. In his study “Shilun Ming Qing chuanqi fumo kaichang,” for example, the modern scholar Xu Fuming bases the distinction on the relative elaborateness of stage directions. Xu coined the helpful phrases wutai ben (‘stage editions’) and wenxue ben (‘literary editions’). Xu Fuming, “Shilun Ming Qing chuanqi fumo kaichang,” in Zhao Jingshen (ed.), Zhongguo gudian xiaoshuo xiqu lunji (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1985) pp. 140-57. 6

40

li-ling hsiao

preface dated 1595), a revision of his first play Zixiao ji (The story of the purple flute).8 If the publisher of the Tianzhang ge edition indeed considered himself to be staking a position in a larger cultural debate about the status of drama publication, we must ask how this consciousness is reflected in the publication itself. It is an interesting detail that the published text more closely resembles the 1498 edition published by the Yue family in Jintai, near Beijing (popularly known as the Hongzhi edition) than the highly acclaimed 1614 edition published by the publishing house Xiangxue ju and correlated by Wang Jide (d. 1623).9 These texts—one a popular edition, the other a carefully annotated edition for the use of literati—respectively represent two major traditions in the textual history of Xixiang ji.10 This decision to follow the example of the 1498 edition seems perfectly natural to a modern critic, as this edition was the earliest available and presumably the most authoritative.11 But it would not have seemed perfectly natural to a late Ming critic. He would have considered the 1498 edition ‘vulgar’ on the grounds that it had not passed through the hands of literati such as Wang Jide, who could be trusted to authenticate and validate the text. In his preface, the publisher of the Tianzhang ge edition offers the explanation that he had stumbled upon an ‘ancient edition’ that had been preserved by his family.12 8 Tang Xianzu, “Preface to Zichai ji,” in Zang Maoxun (ed.), Linchuan simeng (Diaochong Guan, 1618), in the National Central Library, Taibei, 1b-2a. 9 The 1498 edition of Xixiang ji is now in the Beijing University Library. The 1614 Wang Jide edition is in the Palace Museum, Taibei. 10 Several scholars have attempted a systematic interpretation of the sixty-odd editions published during the late Ming period. In 1970 the Japanese scholar Denda Akira indexed the differences between the editions. See “Min kan gen zÙeki Seisho ki moku roku,” TÙyÙgaku Bunken sent§ sÙkan 11 (TÙkyÙ: TÙyÙgaku Bunken sent§, 1970). In 1977 Tanaka Issei carefully examined slight variations in the language of the many editions and came to the conclusion that these indicate a great deal about the intended locality, the intended reader, and the intended theatrical audience of the publication. See “Jyågo roku seiki o chåshin tosuru KÙnan chihÙku no henshitsu ni tsuite—Meidai KÙnan engeki ni okeru gazoku bunkai no shinkÙ,” TÙyÙ Bunka kenkyå jo kiyÙ 72, 1977: 129-440. In 1982, Jiang Xingyu collected his many papers on the different editions of Xixiang ji in an anthology called Ming kanben Xixiang ji yanjiu (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 1982). 11 Stephen West and Wilt Idema defend the decision to base their translation of Xixiang ji on the 1498 edition on the grounds that it is the ‘earliest’ extant edition and thus more ‘reliable’ than other editions. S. West and W. Idema, The Story of the Western Wing (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1995), p. 15. 12 “Preface,” in Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji zhenben, the Tianzhang ge

xixiang ji

41

This dubious claim—like the claim made for the authenticity of Li Zhuowu’s commentary—is almost certainly employed to enhance the value of the edition, and perhaps even to lend it a certain mystique. Rather than dismissing the Tianzhang ge edition as ‘inauthentic’ or ‘vulgar’, we might more profitably ask how the publisher’s textual decisions illuminate his stated philosophy, and how his stated philoso-phy illuminates his textual decisions. This enterprise is premised on the all-important understanding that almost all publishing decisions are rooted in a discoverable consistency. Tianzhang ge’s decision to model his own edition on the 1498 edition becomes more revealing and interesting the closer we examine the latter edition, which itself inscribes a strong tendency to conceive the play as reading material.13 In a colophon, the publisher of the 1498 edition makes his philosophical stance perfectly clear: We have scrupulously followed the format of the canonical books in the matter of both text and pictures. This fine edition has been revised and edited to include sizeable fonts and well-matched lyrics and pictures. With this book in hand, tourists who leisurely wander and lounge, who travel in boats and lodge in guest-houses, can sing [i.e. read] with an understanding of the entire work, and thereby divert both heart and mind. [We] have had it engraved, printed, and published so that people everywhere will find it easy to read.14

The publisher here accentuates the literary character of the publi-cation, not only in the direct reference to reading, but also in the references to ‘pictures’ and engravings, which, of course, appeal to a reader, but are lost upon a theatrical audience. Although the pub-lisher substitutes the phrase ‘to sing’ for ‘to read’ (the former having a theatrical connotation), the passage emphasizes the publication’s place in the larger world of boats and guest-houses rather than its restriction to the stage. This conception is carried forward through many later editions that are seemingly based on the 1498 edition. He Bi writes in his “General Notes” (Fanli) to a 1616 edition of

Taibei edition, 2a. All the following references to this edition will simply be noted as the Tianzhang ge Taibei edition and page number. 13 The Tianzhang ge edition is not necessarily based on the 1498 edition, though the two editions clearly fall within the same textual tradition. As the 1498 edition is the earliest extant edition, this paper takes it as representative. 14 Xixiang ji, the 1498 edition, in Guben xiqu congkan series 1 (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1954), 2.161b.

42

li-ling hsiao

Xixiang ji, for example, that the play is “unique among those liter-ary works read by scholars. Commercially engraved editions that include musical notation are for performers. I do not use them.”15 This statement clearly distinguishes between editions for performers and editions for scholarly readers, and locates this edition in the latter category. Like the Beijing copy of the Tianzhang ge edition of Xixiang ji, a Shijian tang edition includes commentary at the end of Scene Twenty. Here again we find the ideological proclamation, “No one with eyes will call this a script!”16 The attribution of this commentary to Tang Xianzu is distinctly meaningful, as Tang was a leader of the movement to reconceive drama as literature.17 It seems clear that the publisher wanted the reader of his edition to associate it with the position articulated by Tang. It is no coincidence that these editions stake out related positions, for the publisher was not a passive figure who printed whatever manuscript happened to fall into his hands, but a full participant in the larger debates and controversies of the culture. No less than the author of the text, the publisher used the publication as a vehicle for his ideas and perspec-tive. Not surprisingly, similarly minded publishers used publications in similar ways. If the editions closely related to the Hongzhi edition endorse printed plays as literature, the editions stemming from Wang Jide’s 1614 edition conceive the printed play as inextricably bound to theatrical performance.18 In a preface to his edition, Wang Jide calls the play a “means of ascending the stage” (deng chang zhi ju).19 He also mentions having edited and correlated the text on a boat with the help of a specially invited performer (qingyi) who sang excerpts as needed.20 The allusion to the boat interestingly echoes—perhaps even alludes to—the publisher’s note in the 1498 edition of the play.

15

Jiang Xingyu, Ming kanben Xixiang ji yanjiu, p. 170. Jiang Xingyu, Ming kanben Xixiang ji yanjiu, p. 109. 17 For a discussion of the movement, see Guo Yingde, Ming Qing wenren chuanqi yanjiu (Taibei: Wenjin chubanshe, 1991), pp. 10-15. 18 Editions closely related to the Wang Jide edition include the Xu Shifan edi-tion (1580), Liu Longtian edition (1592), Xiong Longfeng edition, Panke Shuoren (Xu Fenpeng) edition (1621), Yan ge edition (1630), and Zhang Shenzhi edition (1639). 19 Wang Jide, “Preface,” in Wang Jide (ed.), Xin jiaozhu guben Xixiang ji, the 1614 Xiangxue ju edition, reprint (Taibei: Palace Museum, 1988), 1b. 20 Wang Jide, “Preface,” 3b-4a. 16

xixiang ji

43

Wang perhaps attempts to make the point that performance can hold its own with literature even on the water. In his annotation, Wang further emphasizes that a text meant to be sung is very different from scriptures or histories, and requires the editor to follow the pronuncia-tion and rhyme schemes laid out in Zhongyuan Yinyun (Pronunciations and rhymes of the Central Plain).21 In the view of those who conceive the printed play as a script, the pronunciation and intonation of the text must perfectly correspond to the melody of the music. Wang’s famous annotation largely involves the attempt to make the text more melodious, either by changing discordant syllables outright or recommending possible substitutions. After he had finished work on the edition, Wang asked his fellow villager Shen Jing to copy-edit the whole play.22 This choice of collaborator is significant, as Shen played a leading role in the movement to maintain the tie between drama and performance. He also compiled a famous guide to the music of the Nanqu (Southern Drama) of the Ming period, entitled Nan jiugong shisan diao qupu.23 Undoubtedly, Wang involved Shen in his editing project to make his edition more compatible with musical traditions of the stage and to clarify his own ideological allegiance. In his preface, Wang also shares credit with another fellow villager, the playwright Xu Wei (1521-1593).24 Wang describes Xu as the consummate performance-oriented playwright, noting that he had grown used to hearing him sing from his house next door. He goes on to describe Xu as his mentor and master, which places Wang’s edition even more firmly in the theatrical tradition. Wang’s highly complimentary and ideologically driven comments on Xu inspired later publishers to make fraudulent claims that he had edited their own editions. These so-called Xu Wenchang editions, including Pid-ian huayi Xixiang and the edition printed by Li Tingmo’s publishing house Yan ge in Shanyin, follow in the footsteps of Wang’s edition by using Xu’s name to establish their place in the theatrical tradition.25 Another publisher, Xu Fenpeng, issued an edition of Xixiang ji in 21

Wang Jide, “Editor’s Notes,” in Xin jiaozhu guben Xixiang ji, 4b. Wang Jide, “Preface,’” 5b. 23 In this book, Shen gives examples of lyrics that complement well-known melo-dies. Using the rhythmic and tonal structure of these lyrics as a model, playwrights were able to compose for the stage without knowing anything about music. 24 Xu Wei (courtesy name Xu Wenchang). 25 The Palace Museum, Taibei, holds a copy of Pidian huayi Xixiang. The Yan ge edition is currently in the Beijing Library. 22

44

li-ling hsiao

1621. He appended the strange sub-title Citan qingwan (A capella lyrics for the stage), which suggests the extent to which Xu intended his edition for use in the theatre.26 He further metaphorizes his own editing work as “mounting the stage to practise and play” (dengtan xiwan).27 Clearly, Xu Fenpeng intended to emphasize the element of performance, and it is not surprising that his version of the text is closely related to that of Wang Jide. These ‘coincidences’ suggest that during the late Ming period publishers participated in the heated debate about the nature of the drama publication by consciously selecting a text associated with a specific tradition and by calling attention to the nature of this selec-tion in both subtle and overt ways. By alluding to a specific textual tradition, the publisher situated both his publication and himself in a specific ideological camp and actively involved himself in one of the more important cultural debates of the time. This allusive mode of production gave publishers a voice that was at once distinct and unobtrusive, and allowed them a role in the effort to preserve or reconfigure the traditions of the culture.

The Implicit Ideology of the Publisher One of the most important features of drama publication during the late Ming period was the commentary provided (or allegedly provided) by famous scholars. This commentary lent an edition scholarly authority and increased its commercial value. The titles of plays published during the late Ming period were often elaborated to emphasize the role of the commentator, sometimes at the expense of the author. The Tianzhang ge edition, for example, is called Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji zhenben (The authentic edition of The story of the Western Wing with commentary by Mr. Li Zhuowu). The most frequently invoked names—literati like Li Zhi, Xu Wei, Tang Xianzu, Chen Jiru (1558-1639)28—were all leading thinkers and playwrights of the time, and were sufficiently well known to attract

26

The full title of the edition is Citan qingwan Panke Shuoren zengding gaiben Xixiang ji, published in 1621. 27 Jiang Xingyu, Ming kanben Xixiang ji yanjiu, pp. 222-3. 28 Chen Jiru (courtesy name Chen Meigong).

xixiang ji

45

readers. The names of these cultural celebrities became, in Craig Clunas’ words, a ‘type of commodity’ whose value was appropriated by the publishers of the late Ming era, especially during the Tianqi and Chongzhen reigns.29 We can similarly explain the attribution of late Ming drama illustrations to famous painters as a stratagem to enhance commercial value.30 Commercial considerations undoubtedly played an important role in publishing decisions, but they hardly explain the manner in which commentators are publicized to the exclusion of the author, who himself may have significant commercial appeal. In the case of the Tianzhang ge edition, Wang Shifu, the renowned author of Xixiang ji, is nowhere mentioned in the whole edition, while the commentator’s name is incorporated into the very title. Commercial considerations are a useful point of departure, but the debate must range beyond the profit motive. The Tianzhang ge edition is one of eight editions of Xixiang ji with alleged commentary by Li Zhuowu.31 The other seven edi-tions are the Rongyu tang (1610),32 You Jingquan,33 Sanhui tang,34 Liu Taihua,35 Qifeng guan (1610, with joint commentary by Wang Shizhen),36 the Kong family of Guling (with joint commentary by Tang Xianzu and Xu Wei),37 and an anonymously published edition now housed in the Zhejiang Provincial Library that closely resembles

29

Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991),

p. 14. 30 Each illustration in the Tianzhang ge edition is attributed to a different painter. The most famous of them is the late Ming painter Chen Hongshou (15991652) whose illustrations of Xixiang ji are included in the Zhang Shenzhi edition published in 1639. 31 Even the commentary attributed to Tang Xianzu in the Shijian tang edi-tion imitates Li Zhuowu’s alleged commentary. See Jiang Xingyu, “Tang Xianzu pingben Xixiang ji shi weizhuang de Li Zhuowu ben,” in Ming kanben Xixiang ji yanjiu, pp. 104-112. 32 Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping bei Xixiang, published by Rongyu tang in 1610 in Wulin (modern Hangzhou), now in Tokyo. 33 Li Zhuowu piping hexiang bei Xixiang ji, published by You Jingquan in Fujian. 34 Chongjiao bei Xixiang, published by Wang Jingqiao’s Sanhui tang. 35 This edition is recorded in Jiang Xingyu’s study of the Ming edition of Xixiang ji, Ming kanben Xixiang ji yanjiu, p. 89. 36 Yuanben chuxiang bei Xixiang ji, with commentary attributed to Wang Shizhen and Li Zhi, published by Qifeng guan in 1610. 37 San xiansheng heping Yuan ben bei Xixiang, with commentary attributed to Tang Xianzu, Li Zhi, and Xu Wei, published by the Kong family of Huijin tang in Guling, now in the Palace Museum, Taibei.

46

li-ling hsiao

the Tianzhang ge edition.38 Rongyu tang’s editions of Shuihu zhuan, Pipa ji, Yougui ji, Hongfu ji, and Yuhe ji also claim to include com-mentary by Li Zhuowu and feature his name in the full titles. The popularity of Li Zhuowu as commentator undoubtedly had much to do with his collection of essays Fenshu (preface dated 1600), in which he discusses many of the works to which his name would later be attached.39 Li Zhuowu’s authorship of these commentaries, however, has never been taken very seriously, and has now been thoroughly discredited by the work of several modern scholars, including Jiang Xingyu,40 ˆki Yasushi,41 Huang Lin,42 and Zhu Wanshu.43 The general consensus is that the commentaries were the work of Ye Zhou, an assertion first made in a short biography of Ye written by the early Qing scholar Zhou Lianggong (1612-1672).44 The com-mentary in the Taibei copy of the Tianzhang ge edition, however, is different from the commentary in other editions, not excepting the famous edition published by Rongyu tang in 1610, the Qifeng guan edition, and even the Tianzhang ge edition in Beijing.45 Although all of these commentaries are now usually attributed to Ye, there is good reason to think that this particular commentary derives from some other pen. The preface to the Tianzhang ge attempts to establish the authen-ticity of Li Zhuowu’s commentary. The publisher begins by lament-ing that authentic editions are obscured by the plethora of specious editions on the market:

38

This edition is also entitled Li Zhuowu xiansheng pidian bei Xixiang zhenben. Li Zhi, Fenshu/ Xu Fenshu (Taibei: Hanjing, 1984), pp. 109-110, p. 194. 40 Jiang Xingyu, “Li Zhuowu piben Xixiang ji de tezheng, zhenwei, yu yingxiang,” in Ming kanben Xixiang ji yanjiu, pp. 88-103. 41 ˆki Yasushi, “Min batsu kÙnan ni okeru shuppan bunka no kenkyå,” Hiro-shima daigaku Bungakubu kiyo 50, 1991: 109-116. 42 Huang Lin, “Lun Rongyu tang ben Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping bei Xixiang ji,” pp. 119-125. 43 Zhu Wanshu, “Li Zhuowu piping guben kao,” pp. 107-123. 44 Zhou Lianggong, Shuying (Shanghai: Gudian wenxue chubanshe, 1957), 1.7-8. 45 For a discussion of the commentary in the Rongyu tang edition, see Huang Lin, “Lun Rongyu tang ben Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping bei Xixiang ji,” pp. 119-125. The Japanese scholar Denda Akira transcribed the commentaries of the Tianzhang ge edition in Japan in his study “Min kan gen zÙeki Seisho ki moku roku,” TÙyÙgaku Bunken sent§ sÙkan, no. 11. 39

xixiang ji

47

I blame only those gourmands of the world who cannot distinguish between the authentic and the forged. As long as a name is attached [to an edition], they proclaim its excellence. For instance, the various editions with forged commentaries by Masters Zhuo (Li Zhi), Wenchang (Xu Wei), and Meigong (Chen Jiru) have become popular without being questioned. But when they see an authentic edition, they are sceptical. People throughout the world bury their own souls and follow the aversions and preferences of others. What more can I say?46

It is interesting that rather than forcefully arguing for the authenticity of his own edition, the publisher concludes on a note of argumen-tative exhaustion—with a kind of a existential sigh. Gourmands, presumably, cannot be swayed from their vulgar tastes. The equal implication, however, is that gourmets will understand without any-thing further being said. The passage further suggests an unusual phenomenon of the late Ming drama culture: that readers respond more strongly to the celebrity names of commentators than to the reputation of the work or author. Despite this repudiation of celebrity name-mongering, the preface in the end makes a rather conventional claim that the edition is distinguished by its commentator, Li Zhuowu. This goes to show how entrenched this cultural tendency really was. Even in the attempt to escape it, one falls prey to it. Using another common technique to distinguish the edition, the publisher goes on to note that the manuscript is from a “family collection” and “has never been seen before”.47 This claim presents the edition as a new and important addition to the contemporary book market, but it also implies a kind of purity: having been lost, the text has been spared the meddling of inept editors and the general degradation of the marketplace. This implication takes account of an acute late Ming irony: the act of publication made books less desirable even as it made them available. The publisher’s claims for the authenticity of the commentary are suspicious, however. There is no formal annotation, but rather a few insignificant interlinear comments printed in a font so small that in some cases the characters can hardly be read. These comments are rather facile and superficial, and are entirely unbelievable as the work of Li Zhuowu, one of the most complex and systematic thinkers among late Ming literati. The legible comments are as follows: 1. “Main theme” (1.3b).48 46 47

“Preface to Xixiang ji,” the Tianzhang ge Taibei edition, 1b-2a. “Preface to Xixiang ji,” the Tianzhang ge Taibei edition, 2a.

48

li-ling hsiao 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

“Good!” (1.5a). “Wonderful narration!” (1.6b). “Significant emphasis” (1.14a). “The style of a real man” (1.32b). “A common fault of ancient and modern times” (1.35b). “The criticism redounds on himself, extremely intelligent and extremely intriguing” (1.61a). “Good: the first instance” (1.63b). “Good: the second instance” (1.65a). “Good: the third instance” (2.2b). “Bravo: the fourth instance” (2.3b). “Bravissimo: the fifth instance” (2.5a). “Study the [spirit] of the Taoist” [the fifth character is illegible] (2.13a). “This is not consistent with the genealogy of the prime minister” (2.20a). “Wonderful!” (2.38a). “[...] friends cannot meet as lovers. Sincere feelings cannot be expressed in words” [The first two characters are not legible] (2.39a). “A divine artifact” (2.40a). “Wonderful!” “Good!” (2. 41a). “In contrast and balance again, wonderful!” “Wonderful!” (2.42a). “Turban! Wonderful! Wonderful!” [‘Turban’ refers to a head wrap worn by examination candidates, generally used to connote the predictable and conservative scholar. The writer applauds the description rather than the scholar] (2.47a). “Wonderful! Wonderful!” (2.52b). “Absolutely wonderful!” (2.54a).

There are also interlinear comments inserted between the lines of the preface, such as “Strikes a nerve”.49 As the preface is dated 1640, thirty-eight years after the death of Li Zhi, it is self-evident that Li did not write these comments. The interesting question is why the publisher should include this kind of commentary and make such transparently false claims on its behalf. One explanation is that the publisher wanted to align the edition with a tradition of critical reading in opposition to the claims of performance. By including the commentary, he offers an example of this kind of critical reading and suggests the proper mode of literary reception.

48 Numbers in parentheses refer to page numbers in Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji zhenben, the Tianzhang ge Taibei edition. 49 Xixiang ji, the Tianzhang ge Taibei edition, preface: 2a.

xixiang ji

49

Given that the comments attributed to Li appear rather uncon-vincing, the publisher adopts several strategies to establish their authenticity. He claims that the late Ming literati Tao Butui (fl. 1640)—possibly a personal friend or patronee —had once lauded the comments in the edition: Tao Butui confirmed long ago that my family’s manuscript of Master Zhuo’s Xixiang had never been seen by the world. He observed that the “allusions [in the text] to the romantic Sui He and the wanderer Lu Jia are contrasted in a balanced and exuberant way. [Li Zhuowu] comments: wonderful—the first use, bravo—the second use, bravis-simo—the third, fourth, and fifth uses. And again his use of the term ‘turban’ (toujin) is interesting. It has an air of sour sarcasm that is quite lovely. He always alludes to aspects of the text that others ignore. But once he has illuminated them, these aspects indeed reveal truths [qing]. Even the playwright himself did not understand the greatness of his own literary talent.” Master Zhuo once said “all of my annotation is like Changkang [Gu Kaizhi] painting the eyes; there is no one who could do it for me.”50

By invoking Tao Butui and noting that his comments were made ‘long ago’, the publisher attempts to legitimize the provenance of both text and commentary. Tao Butui serves as an impartial eyewitness to the material existence of both, and verifies that the comments are consistent with Li Zhuowu’s style and genius. Insofar as commentary is a form of reading, the edition privileges or glamorizes the act of reading, even at the expense of authorship. The implication is that the commentator (and by extension all read-ers) illuminates the text and enacts the greatness of the author. The primary and all-important distinction between editions, then, has to do with the quality of the provided commentary rather than with the authenticity of the text itself, which was to become the overriding concern of Qing and modern scholars. On this basis the publisher calls the edition ‘Li shi zhi shu’ (Li Zhuowu’s book) and notes his principal ‘authority’ concerning its meaning.51 He emphasizes that

50 Xixiang ji, the Tianzhang ge Taibei edition, preface: 2a-b. Changkang is the famous painter Gu Kaizhi of the Eastern Jin dynasty (317-420). The story is related in Zhang Yanyuan’s Lidai minghua ji: “He once painted a figure but had not completed the eyes even after several years. People asked him the reason. He replied that ‘painting the beauty of body and limbs has nothing to do with the miraculous—it is the eyes that transmit the spirit.’” Zhang Yanyuan, Lidan minghua ji (Taibei: Wenshizhe chubanshe, 1980), 5.72. 51 Xixiang ji, the Tianzhang ge Taibei edition, preface: 3a.

50

li-ling hsiao

Li’s commentary “clarifies key points, opens our minds, and invokes our intelligence” (Preface: 3a), while other commentators do “not touch on the most lively passages (shengdong), the key points (guan-jian) or contrasts (zhaoying)”.52 The publisher notes that for all their ‘instructions and enthusiastic opinions’ these commentators fail to arrive at the play’s meaning.53 The publisher questions whether these commentators deserve their reputations.54 Consistently, the publisher holds that without the guidance of expert commentary the reader runs the risk of confusion and error. The fact that the edition does not include expert commentary indicates that the publisher’s rhetoric performs a formal function—it is philosophically required even in the absence of justification. The emphasis on commentary, and by extension reading, provides a context for the publisher’s injunction not to consider the edition ‘a performance script’.55 The edition’s adoption of the 1498 text and emphasis on Li Zhuowu’s commentary indicate thorough support for the idea that the text is a kind of reading material. We might call the publisher’s technique ‘allusive’, insofar as he invokes and exploits the name of Li Zhuowu, which carries with it an entire structure of association and ideology, just as poets are wont to invoke a name like Tao Qian (365-427) to indicate moral purity, or the fisherman in the story ‘Yufu’ (The fisherman) in Chu ci by Qu Yuan (B.C. 343-277) to indi-cate removal from the mundane world. An educated Ming reader would have perceived immediately that the edition’s commentary is a fabrication. He would have understood this practice not as fraud, but as allusion—as a kind of ritual invocation of Li Zhuowu and all he stood for. Other editions with specious commentaries should be understood in this light as well: not as attempts to deceive readers, but as attempts to align texts with existing philosophical, ideological, and aesthetic traditions. An edition that claims to include commentary by Li Zhuowu positions itself as reading material, while an edition that claims to include commentary by Tang Xianzu takes this posi-tion to a more extreme degree. In this scheme, the publisher guides the reception of his own publication, and takes his place with author and illustrator as a contributor to the meaning of the text. 52 53 54 55

Xixiang Xixiang Xixiang Xixiang

ji, ji, ji, ji,

the the the the

Tianzhang Tianzhang Tianzhang Tianzhang

ge ge ge ge

Taibei Taibei Taibei Taibei

edition, edition, edition, edition,

preface: preface: preface: preface:

1a. 1a. 1a-b. 3a.

xixiang ji

51

The Implicit Ideology of the Illustrator It is commonly held that drama illustrations are simple extrapola-tions from a play’s action, but I would like to suggest that drama illustrations constitute on the one hand a sophisticated art in their own right, and on the other hand a complex form of drama criti-cism, an attempt on the part of the illustrator, like the publisher, to impose something of his own meaning on the text.56 Drama illustra-tion, in short, deserves closer attention than it has usually received to date, and the Tianzhang ge edition of Xixiang ji is an interesting place to start.57 The illustrations in this edition are unusual on two counts. Illustrations in dramatic texts conventionally depict a range of characters and frequently the full cast of the play, but in this case the only character portrayed is the play’s heroine, Cui Yingying or ‘Oriole’ (Figure 2.1). Even more unusually, the Tianzhang ge edi-tion portrays Yingying in only eleven of the twenty-one illustrations. The remaining ten illustrations portray natural objects like trees, birds and rocks, in the style of huaniao (bird-and-flower) painting, as we see in Figure 2.2, which alludes to Yingying by representing a bird of the same name—oriole. This type of illustration, which we will call still-life illustration, is unusual in the drama illustrations of the period, representing a trend of experiment and diversity that became increasingly pronounced in and after the latter half of the Chongzhen era (1628-1644). The unique character of this edition is perhaps best explained by its transitional place in the tradition of drama illustration. It tentatively departs from the dominant influ-ence of shanshui renwu huace (landscape-figure album painting), here represented by the eleven portrait-style illustrations of Yingying, and

56 In a study of the illustrations in the Rongyu tang edition of Pipa ji, I dem-onstrate how the illustrations inscribe a philosophy of loyalty and filial piety in response to the text and commentary. See Li-ling Hsiao, “Political Loyalty and Filial Piety: A Case Study in the Relational Dynamics of Text, Commentary, and Illustration in Pipa ji,” Ming Studies 48, 2004: 9-64. 57 Several scholars have published studies of illustrations included in late Ming editions of Xixiang ji: Yao Dajuin has studied the 1498 edition; Dawn Ho Delbanco, Kobayashi Hiromitsu, and Wu Hung have studied Ming Qiji’s colour illustrations published in 1640 (currently in the Köln Museum); Kobayashi has studied the Zhang Shenzhi edition illustrated by Cheng Hongshou and published in 1639. None of these scholars, however, has addressed the relationship between the text of Xixiang ji and its illustrations.

52

li-ling hsiao

Fig. 2.1 Contemplating the Moon. The third illustration to the play Xixiang ji (The Story of the Western Wing) published by Tianzhang ge, a publishing house in Xiling, in 1640. In the collection of National Central Library, Taibei. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji, Xiling: Tianzhang Ge, 1640.

Fig. 2.2 Oriole and Pear Blossoms. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji. The tenth illustration to the play Xixiang ji.

xixiang ji

53

begins to explore a more abstract and symbolic mode of representa-tion, represented by the ten still-life illustrations. The eleven portrait-style illustrations of Yingying are clearly influ-enced by the example of landscape-figure painting albums, small bound volumes popular during the late Ming period, usually showing literati among gardens or against other natural backdrops. These ten illustrations adopt many of the conventions of these albums, but show Cui Yingying in place of the more traditional male literati. She appears engaged in several activities: reposing in her boudoir, read-ing, writing in the garden, gazing from pavilion balconies, strolling in the garden, venturing in the wild, fondling the garden flowers, and appreciating the moon from under a tree. Each of these activi-ties is modelled on the activities of the literati as represented in the landscape-figure painting albums, and symbolizes some aspect of Yingying’s talent, virtue and beauty. Together these activities suggest a personality in ideal balance, a vision of female perfection clearly informed by the example and ideology of the literati. The illustrator is especially ready to seize on any textual suggestion that unites Yingying to the spirit of the literati, as when the play’s hero, Zhang Gong, describes his first glimpse of Yingying: “She stands there, indifferent to her admirer, with her fair shoulders at rest, and merely fondles the flower with a smiling face.”58 Of the many possible descriptions of Yingying’s charm, this one seems to emphasize her languid grace and leisure, a quality especially prized and pursued by the literati themselves.59 In his rendition of this scene, the illustrator selects the lines “her shoulders at rest, [she] merely fondles the flower with a smiling face” (duo zhe xiang jian, jiang hua xiao nian) as an explanatory caption (Figure 2.3). The illustration seems to take its cue from the word duo, which I have translated as ‘at rest’, following the example of S.I. Hsiung.60 In the spirit of duo, Yingying is shown bending slightly forward in a supple man-ner, her pose echoed in the curved trunk and a branch of the plum

58

Xixiang ji, the Tianzhang ge Taibei edition, 1.5a. The modern scholar Dorothy Ko indicates in her study Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-century China that leisure was an important and venerated aspect of domestic life. See Teachers of the Inner Chambers (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 162. 60 Hsiung, S. I., trans., The Romance of the Western Chamber (London: Methuen & co., 1935), p. 124. 59

54

li-ling hsiao

Fig. 2.3 Fondling a Flower. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji. The second illustration to the play Xixiang ji.

tree behind her, both exuding a languid grace. According to the Hanyu dacidian, the word duo has three more literal meanings: to hang down, to face toward, and to hide.61 The modern scholars Stephen West and Wilt Idema translate the word duo as ‘bare’, thus giving both scene and illustration an entirely different implication. They conclude that Yingying’s “seductive nature is clearly suggested by the drooping garments that bare her fragrant shoulders for Student Zhang to see.”62 Yingying in this case is not languid, but alluring. It seems to me unlikely that a refined young woman would have exposed her shoulders in public, but in any case the disagreement between the illustrator and the scholars is instructive. By offering a vision of Yingying’s shoulder ‘at rest’ rather than ‘bare’ the illustra-tor no less than the scholars functions as a critic, and the illustration

61

Hanyu dacidian (Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 1995), vol. 10, p. 713. S. West and W. Idema, trans. and ed., The Moon and the Zither: The Story of the Western Wing, With a study of its woodblock illustrations by Yao Dajuin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p. 142. 62

xixiang ji

55

Fig. 2.4 Writing in the Garden. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji.

becomes the visual expression of the illustrator’s ‘reading’ of the text. Illustration can thus be understood as a form of drama criticism: an attempt to form a coherent response to the complexities of the text. The illustrator’s interpretation of duo is obviously a very simple instance of the illustrator ‘reading’ as a critic, but it underscores his freedom to manoeuvre within the ambiguity of the text and propa-gate his own meaning in precisely the same fashion as the scholars West and Idema. In two of the eleven portrait-style illustrations in the Tianzhang ge edition, Yingying is shown engaged in literary activities. One of these illustrations (Figure 2.4) shows her writing on a stone table in a garden and contextualizes her activity with a line from the play: “With her brush she writes out her deep feelings.”63 In the second illustration (Figure 2.5) she reads in what is perhaps a study room, an activity the illustrator very freely infers from the line selected as

63

Xixiang ji, the Tianzhang ge Taibei edition, 1.54b.

56

li-ling hsiao

Fig. 2.5 Sitting in the Study. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji.

a caption: “How can a single inch of brow’s peak withstand so many furrows?”64 In both of these illustrations, Yingying is shown in calm meditation, as if quietly waiting for inspiration. It is very difficult to associate these images with Yingying’s anguished state of mind, which is due to the uncertainty of her relationship with Zhang Gong and clearly indicated in the text. The description of Yingying’s ‘deep feelings’ is a clear allusion to this anguish, but the illustrator ignores this textual cue, and insistently presents Yingying in the composed and refined image of a literatus. Indeed, the entire configuration of the image seems to allude to the landscape-figure painting tradition, in which the image of the literatus writing in the garden is a defining commonplace. The illustrator follows in this tradition despite the fact that Yingying is a woman and does not properly belong to the literatus class. There is thus a disjunction between the text and the illustration: the text emphasizes the natural sadness of a young woman

64

Xixiang ji, the Tianzhang ge Taibei edition, 2.33b.

xixiang ji

57

separated from her lover, while the illustrator insists on Yingying’s serenity in her guise as a literatus. In these scenes, then, the illustra-tor seems to interpret Yingying’s activities in keeping with a larger theory of her character, suggesting the systematic interpretation of the text usually pursued by the late Ming critics. The illustrator further places Yingying in the literati tradition by associating her with long-fixed symbols of literati virtue, none of which are indicated in the text. In the illustration of Yingying read-ing, for example, (Figure 2.5) she is seated next to a potted orchid and a bonsai-style pine tree. In tradition, the fragrance of the orchid is ‘the smell of virtue’,65 and the pine tree symbolizes consistency of character, a trait at the very core of the literati value system. In the illustration of Yingying with ‘shoulders at rest’ (Figure 2.3), she stands near what is clearly a plum tree with a branch stretching over her head and fondles a plum blossom, though the text indicates only generally that she ‘fondles a flower’. In the literati tradition, the plum tree symbolizes female beauty and, as it blooms only in winter, moral strength amid difficult circumstances. The choice of the plum blossom brings the entire illustration—figure, flower and tree—into a thematic unity that suggests not only Yingying’s beauty, but also her virtue by the standards of the literati. Again, the illustrator enters into a kind of implicit critical debate with West and Idema, who see the flower as a highly sexualized symbol, as if Yingying were a kind of Carmen with her rose.66 Though the illustrator argues his interpretation of the play in images, where the scholars utilize words, his activity is essentially similar. The notion that the plum is plainly symbolic detail might be countered by the argument that it is merely realistic: a young woman is as likely to fondle a plum blossom as any other flower she might find. As mentioned above, the plum tree blossoms in winter, but the story of Xixiang ji, as we know

65 Qu Yuan, Lisao jing zhangju, in Chu ci buzhu (Taibei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1973), p. 36. On the orchid’s connotation of gentlemanly virtue, Maggie Bickford indicates “Orchids were associated with the virtuous minister Qu Yuan (c. 340—278 bc) who, slandered and banished, frequently evoked them in the poetry of his exile. This association with neglected or rejected virtue was underscored by the wild flower’s natural situation: growing hidden in the shade, orchids also stood for the superior scholar in seclusion.” See M. Bickford, “Painting: Bamboo, Plum, and Ink-flowers,” in The Grove Dictionary of Art Online (Oxford University Press, accessed August 30, 2004) 66 S. West and W. Idema, The Moon and the Zither, p. 143.

58

li-ling hsiao

from the text, takes place in the late spring. The choice of the plum blossom thus seems tendentious rather than coincidental. What is more, the plum appears prominently in three illustrations, including the last illustration in the play (Figure 2.6), which shows a still-life image of a solitary branch of a plum tree. This repetition suggests a conscious pattern of symbolism. The illustrator uses this pattern of symbolism—and indeed several overlapping patterns—as a critical device by which he, functioning as a commentator, imposes his own interpretation on the play. This device is subtle but essential in the work of most Ming period illustrators, who were utterly immersed in the cultural traditions of China, and lived and breathed the tropes of the past. The student of illustration, then, must constantly revert to the history of art and literature, which constructs the framework in which these symbols are meaningful. This attention to the larger cultural tradition is a commonplace when it comes to the interpre-tation of poetry or painting, but it is no less necessary in the inter-pretation of illustrations. In the case of the plum tree, the illustrator draws on a rich tradi-tion of symbolism. The origins of this symbolism are obscure, but the plum tree is famously associated with the Song hermit and literatus Lin Hejing, who planted numerous plum trees about his home on Gushan (‘Lonely mountain’), and declared himself married to the plum tree.67 At least in part because of Lin Hejing’s embrace, the plum tree has come to stand for the virtue of the uncompromising literati. As Maggie Bickford notes, Lin’s example inspired an entire cult of the plum tree during the Southern Song period.68 Wang Mian (1335-1407), a Yuan painter, exclusively painted plum trees to metaphorize his own lonely stand in a barbarian-ruled world.69 The association between the plum tree and the hermit is further complicated by a third element in the traditional association—female beauty—which derives from Su Shi’s two poems, “Dongxian ge” (A song of the cave immortal) and “Zaiyong qianyun” (Using again the former rhyme). These poems bring women and plums into association by metaphorizing their beauty in similar terms. The former poem

67 Tian Rucheng, Xihu youlan zhi, reprinted (Qiantang: Jiuhuai Tang, 1897), 2.6a-b. 68 See Maggie Bickford, Ink Plum: the Making of a Genre of Chinese Scholar-painting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 30-33. 69 M. Bickford, Ink Plum, pp. 213-217.

xixiang ji

59

Fig. 2.6 A Branch of Plum Blossoms. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji. The twenty-first illustration to the play Xixiang ji.

describes a beauty whose “flesh is of ice and bone is of jade”,70 while the latter poem describes plum trees whose “bones are of jade and snow, and souls are of ice”.71 Gao Qi (1336-1374), a Ming poet, wrote a poem entitled “Plum blossoms” in which all three of these elements are correlated: “A hermit lies on the mountain covered with snow / A beautiful woman appears among the trees under the moon.”72 Following in the tradition of this imagery, Ji Cheng, in his book of garden design, Yuanye, famously described the plum tree as the “beautiful woman of the forest and the moon”.73 When the illustrator of the Tianzhang ge edition invokes the plum blossom,

70

Su Shi, “Dongxian ge,” in Quan Song ci (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1965), vol. 1, p. 297. 71 Su Shi, “Zaiyong qianyun,” in Su Shi shiji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1982), vol. 6, p. 2076. 72 Gao Qi, “Plum blossoms,” in Qingqiu shiji, 15.25a, in Sibu Beiyao, (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1930), vv. 1903-08. 73 Ji Cheng, Yuanye zhushi (Taibei: Mingwen chubanshe, 1983), p. 233, p. 237.

60

li-ling hsiao

he has in mind this complex association. He intends to suggest not only Yingying’s female beauty, but also her moral kinship with Lin Hejing and the traditions of the literati. As we have noted, the illustrator strives to suggest the image of a woman who combines beauty, talent, and virtue, but there is more to this enterprise than meets the eye. What is at stake is less the idea of the ideal woman than of the ideal man. It will be noticed that Yingying engages in much reading, writing, and meditating, but in none of the characteristically female duties like praying, sewing, or serving her elders. She is pictured in the guise of a hermit, but never in the guise of a daughter. The illustrator could have depicted Zhang Gong and dispensed entirely with Yingying, but presumably he wanted to draw on female beauty as a powerful metaphor for moral virtue. The illustrator’s use of the female to mediate male concerns is rooted in the literary genre known as guiqing (boudoir sentiment). The genre is defined by the image of a lonely, lamenting female con-fined to some private world. Traditionally, male artists have worked within this genre less to capture moods and dilemmas particular to actual females than to express in the image of the female something of their own sentiments, situations, and ideals. This tendency can be traced to classical poetry, as for example to the Chu ci. Qu Yuan had offered counsel to King Hui during the fall of the Chu state in the third century B.C., but his assistance was spurned and he was exiled.74 In Chu ci, Qu describes his misfortune allegorically, telling the story of a beautiful woman who wishes to accompany Hebo (the River God), but is eventually obliged to separate from him.75 Since then a relation has existed between the conceptions of female beauty and male purity, and has sometimes been very strongly emphasised. In the guiqing tradition, especially, these conceptions are conflated, as we see in the poem “Jiaren” (The fair lady) by Du Fu (712-760). This poem describes the loneliness of a beauty whose relatives have died in a war and whose husband has become preoccupied with a new

74 Qu Yuan’s biography can be found in Sima Qian, Shiji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1972), 84.2481-91. 75 Qu Yuan, “Hebo,” in Chu ci, 2.23b-25b, in Sibu congkan chubian (Shanghai: Hanfen lou, 1920-1922), v. 577. The “Shao siming” section of Jiuge includes the line “the hall is filled with lovely women,” which refers to virtuous gentlemen. See Chu ci, 2.19a. David Hawkes, trans., Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 41.

xixiang ji

61

concubine. She lives alone in an empty and deserted valley while her husband “notices only his new love’s smile”.76 In the interpretative tradition that has grown up around this poem since it was written in 759, the fair lady is understood to symbolize Du Fu’s own sense of solitude and dislocation following the rebellion of An Lushan in 755-756, which brought the most glorious Kaiyuan and Tianbao periods of the Tang dynasty to an end. Du Fu’s ‘fair lady’ was rendered by several painters in later generations, and her symbolic significance was thus reinforced. The most famous of these paint-ings was by Chen Hongshou (1599-1652) in 1645 (Figure 2.7). Du Fu’s abandoned beauty provided the perfect symbol for the painter’s continuing fealty to the Ming dynasty and his sense of dislocation in a world ruined by the Manchus. In the work of both Du Fu and Chen Hongshou, the ‘fair lady’ allegorizes the condition of the artist. Similar examples of artists using the plight of beautiful females to allegorize their own situations could be adduced endlessly. Guiqing thus emerged as a distinctly masculine form, though it is exclusively concerned with the representation of females. The illustrations in the Tianzhang ge edition fall entirely within this tradition. It is significant, for example, that Yingying is never pictured with her maid, Hongniang, who according to the text of the play accompanies Yingying everywhere and usually appears in more conventional illustrations. The insistence on Yingying’s solitude identifies guiqing as the operative genre. Most of the females repre-sented in the tradition of guiqing, however, are passive and helpless in their own tragedies. On this point the illustrator departs from the example set by Du Fu and Chen Hongshou and imagines Yingying as quietly capable and determined. This is especially apparent in an illustration of Yingying hurrying through the wild in pursuit of Zhang Gong, who has begun his journey to the capital to pursue his career in officialdom (Figure 2.8). The textual version of this scene occurs in the dreams of Zhang Gong, but the illustrator, unlike most of his fellow illustrators, presents it as if it were an actual event. By thus departing from Wang’s text, the illustrator underscores Yingying’s spirit and attributes to her yet another virtue prized by the literati culture, the quality of qing or ‘feeling’—a kind of sincere strength.

76

Du Fu, Du shi pingzhu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), v. 2, p. 552.

62

li-ling hsiao

Fig. 2.7 The Fair Lady. By Chen Hongshou, Palace Museum, Taibei.

Fig. 2.8 Running in the Wild. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji.

xixiang ji

63

Here again we see the illustrator functioning as critic, indeed attempt-ing to wrest control of a crucial detail from the playwright by send-ing Yingying in actual pursuit of Zhang Gong. We also see how the rhetoric of this criticism is drawn from the entire cultural tradition of China. As the illustrator brings this tradition to bear on the text, so we must keep it in mind as we attempt to unravel the illustrator’s enterprise of criticism. In addition to the eleven portrait-style illustrations, the edition features ten illustrations in the still-life mode, nine of which are almost precise copies of illustrations in the Shizhu Zhai shuhua pu (Painting and calligraphy catalogue of the Ten Bamboo Studio) published in 1636 by Hu Zhengyan (Fig. 2.9). This borrowing may have been an attempt to co-opt some of the famous catalogue’s popularity or merely to imitate the widely acknowledged excellence of the catalogue. The objects depicted in these illustrations, however—orchids, Taihu rocks, birds, bamboo, lotus, and so forth—are also terms drawn from the metaphors of the text’s poetry. The illustrator once again functions as critic by extracting fleeting images from the flow of the narrative and instantiating them as free-standing, overarching symbols. In emphasizing certain elements of the play at the expense of others, the illustrator suggests an interpretation of the play. This interpreta-tion may indeed contradict what seems to be the gist of the text, as I believe we see demonstrated in Figure 2.10, which shows a lotus, and in the upper-left-hand corner excerpts the line from the text that inspired the lotus image: “[Yingying’s] face is a lotus, engendering Spring just like the face of city-toppling and state-toppling Yang guifei.”77 The rebel leader Sun Feihu speaks this line after hearing Yingying’s beauty favourably compared to the beauty of Yang guifei, a concubine of the Tang Emperor Minghuang (reigned 712-755). Her beauty was renowned, but she also came to be notorious, as she is said to have distracted the emperor from his proper duties and disrupted the stability of the state. Wang Shifu’s comparison between Yingying and Yang guifei was certainly calculated to suggest this notorious chapter in China’s history. The comparison, which is rightfully given great weight by West and Idema,78 compliments Yingying’s beauty, but it also inscribes a sense of wariness. The com--

77 78

Xixiang ji, the Tianzhang ge Taibei edition, 1.26a-b. S. West and W. Idema, The Moon and The Zither, pp. 223-4.

64

li-ling hsiao

Fig. 2.9 Lotus. Reproduced from Hu Zhenyan, ed., Shizhu zhai shuhua pu, Shizhu zhai.

Fig. 2.10 Lotus. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji.

xixiang ji

65

parison may respond to Yingying’s pre-marital liaison with Zhang Gong, which, to say the least, was not the kind of adventure young women were supposed to have. The illustrator, however, seems to object to this implicit critique. Rather than underscore Wang Shifu’s allusion to Yang guifei, the illustrator isolates and amplifies the image of the lotus, which, as its delicate beauty springs from the mud and mire of the pond, traditionally symbolizes moral purity. The northern Song philosopher Zhou Dunyi (1017-1073) immortalizes this symbol-ism in his famous dictum: “The lotus emerges from the dirty mud, but is free of taint.”79 There is a similar attempt to challenge the implication of the text in Figure 2.11, which shows an orchid and excerpts the corresponding line from the text: “Even if you infused [the quilt] through and through with orchid musk, I would still be alone in giving it warmth.” Here Yingying confesses her romantic loneliness to her maid Hongniang. Orchid musk was a perfume used on the body and about the boudoir. Unsurprisingly, it carried an erotic connotation. This connotation was apparently unappreciated by the illustrator, who places his orchid as far from the bedroom as possible: it grows from the side of a cliff, an image that alludes to the traditional platitude about the ‘lonely orchid in an empty valley,’ which describes an ideal of dignity and solitude. Even more dauntlessly, the illustrator attempts to redeem Yingying’s sexual union with Zhang Gong, as in Figure 2.12. He thor-oughly downplays the physical element of this scene by depicting a bamboo and excerpting the line spoken by Zhang Gong as he waits for Yingying’s arrival: “The sound is the bamboo in the wind, not as I thought the tinkle of her golden pendants.” The allusion to the bamboo, a symbol of gentlemanly virtue, as in the common pun junzi youjie (A gentleman/bamboo has virtue/knots), contradicts the nature of the liaison. The sound of bamboo—especially as juxtaposed with the sound of tinkling gold—also signifies an atmosphere of spiritual-ity, as we see in poems like Liu Cang’s “Ti Longmen sengfang shi” (A poem inscribed on the hut of Monk Longmen) and Jiao Ran’s “Xiari deng Guannong Lou he Cui Shijun” (Ascending the Guan-nong Tower on a summer day to congratulate Emissary Cui). In the former poem the bamboo sounds through a monastery, while the

79 Zhou Dunyi, “Essay on Loving Lotus,” in Zhou Lianxi xiansheng quanji, in Congshu jicheng chubian (Taibei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1960s), v. 1891, 8.139.

66

li-ling hsiao

Fig. 2.11 Orchid Hanging from a Cliff. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji.

Fig. 2.12 Bamboo. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji.

xixiang ji

67

poet of the latter poem was a monk.80 By emphasizing the bamboo, the illustrator ennobles the union of Zhang Gong and Yingying by asserting its essential spirituality. It is indicative that the illustrator systematically takes up all the most controversial moments in the play, as if self-consciously responding to opponents in a critical debate. The illustrator’s guiding purpose is to defend both Yingying and the play against the charge of moral licence, which was often levied by critics in the late Ming period.81 In opposition to this critique, the illustrator upholds the standards of the Taizhou and Gong’an schools of Xinxue, two late Ming schools of philosophy that empha-sized fidelity to one’s qing.82 The illustrator sees Yingying, then, as spirited rather than licentious, and rejects the rigid moral code of the day’s more orthodox Confucianists. At stake, of course, is not merely the moral status of Yingying, but the legitimacy of qing as a ruling consideration in moral discourse. In his interpretation of the play, the illustrator sides with the renowned scholar Wang Shizhen (1526-1590), who defended the play’s morality during the late Ming period against vigorous criticisms from He Liangjun (1506-1590), who described the play as “completely covered in rouge and powder.”83 The illustrator’s aesthetic decisions are certainly made in the con-text of this heated debate over the widest moral implications and represent a self-consciously staked position. The illustrator, indeed, is almost polemical in his departure from convention.

80 Liu Cang, “Ti Longmen sengfang shi,” in Quan Tang shi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1960), 586.6788. Jiao Ran, “Xiari deng Guannong Lou he Cui Shijun,” in Jiao Ran ji, Sibu congkan edition, 6.4b-5a. 81 Patricia Sieber also argues that the late Ming editors of Xixiang ji, such as Wang Jide and Jin Shengtan, defended the play against the charge of moral license through their editorial endeavours. See Patricia Sieber, Theaters of Desire: Authors, Readers, and the Reproduction of Early Chinese Song-Drama, 1300-2000 (New York: Pal-grave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 123-161. 82 For a discussion of the Gong’an school’s view of qing, see Chih-p’ing Chou, Yüan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). For a brief discussion of qing in late Ming culture, see Richard G. Wang, “The Cult of Qing: Romanticism in the late Ming period and in the Novel Jiao Hong Ji,” Ming Studies 33, 1994: 12-55. Tang Xianzu’s famous play Mudan ting was the most famous on the subject of qing, and Tang was an important figure in the Taizhou School. 83 He Liangjun, Siyou Zhai congshuo (preface dated 1569 and 1579) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959), 37.337-8. On Wang Shizhen’s comment, see Wang Shizhen, Qu zao, in Zhongguo gudian xiqu lunzhu jichen, (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 1959), vol. 2, p. 29.

68

li-ling hsiao

The Tianzhang ge edition of Xixiang ji is fascinating as a curio of this larger moral debate, but equally fascinating in the context of the history of illustration. As I said at the outset, this edition is unusual in its inclusion of still-life illustrations. How can we explain this anomaly? The answer, I think, lies in an understanding of the evolution of drama illustration as an artistic genre in its own right. During the earliest era of drama illustration in the fifteenth century we see illustrators struggling to replicate the dramatic narrative in pictorial terms: each page or double-folio page is visualized by an accompanying illustration. As drama moved toward the centre of the popular culture during the late sixteenth century, illustrators continued in this vein, but increasingly tried to replicate the con-ventions of the stage, often depicting figures in the highly stylized posture of stage actors and orienting the image toward an imaginary audience.84 In this type of illustration, figures almost always face directly forward like actors on the stage, even when this orientation is obviously unnatural. In the early seventeenth century, illustrators began to break with the example of the theatre, instead looking for inspiration in the field of landscape-figure album painting, a form primarily identified with the literati. This new type of illustration soon achieved a dominant position, such that modern scholar Yao Dajuin even suggests that this new development was an ‘obsession’ with landscape on the part of the illustrator.85 This shift was part of a more general movement to bring drama within the elite orbit of literati culture and refine its more popular elements. In this type of illustration the image is still subservient to the action described in the text, but the illustrator claims more freedom for himself to propound something of his own vision, and the conventions of the

84 In my 1991 article titled “Woodblock Prints and Theatre,” I attempt to dem-onstrate how illustrations in the Shide tang edition of Pipa ji derive their inspiration from props, acting technique, audience-oriented gestures, and other elements of the stage. See Li-ling Hsiao, “Woodblock Prints and Theatre: Characteristics of the ‘Drama Illustrations’ of the Early Wanli Period as revealed in Shih-te T’ang Edition of the P’i-p’a Chi,” Yishu xue 5, 1991: 133-184. In his 1998 study Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China, however, Robert Hegel denies the relationship between illustrations and the stage. See Robert Hegel, Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). 85 Yao Dajuin, “The Pleasure of Reading Drama: Illustrations to the Hongzhi Edition of The Story of the Western Wing,” in S. West and W. Idema, trans., The Moon and the Zither, p. 445.

xixiang ji

69

stage are dropped in favour of a more naturalistic rendering. The portrait-style illustrations in the Tianzhang ge edition fall within this tradition. Toward the end of the Ming period, however, illustrators began to break with the landscape painting tradition in search of yet more freedom, not only in their graphic technique, but also in their role as textual critics. This trend is hardly surprising, as the increasing popularity of drama publication gradually attracted more talented and well-known artists to the field of drama illustration, men who brought with them artistic and literary ideas of their own. This last generation of Ming illustrators engaged in several experiments that utterly broke with the traditions of the previous two hundred years. In 1640, for example, an edition of Xixiang ji published by Min Qiji (b. 1580) featured colour illustrations, probably the first drama pub-lication to do so.86 Putting the landscape painting tradition behind them, drama illustrators also began to seek inspiration in the huaniao painting genre. What I have called the still-life illustrations in the Tianzhang ge edition actually belong to this genre, as I mentioned at the beginning of this section. The Tianzhang ge edition thus represents a kind of transitional moment in the history of drama illustration, the illustrator simultaneously looking back toward the landscape-figure painting genre and forward to a more abstract style. Huaniao appealed to the illustrator of the Tianzhang ge edition and the illustrators of the coming generation as it allowed them free play with the symbols of literature and made possible truly sophisticated commentaries on the text. These illustrations do not replicate the physical action of the play, as did the earlier illustrations of the fif-teenth and sixteenth centuries, but express their own understanding of the text, utilizing a language of symbolic images whose meaning involves the delicate interplay of the entire cultural tradition and the momentary context of the play. The best illustrators, almost like poets, expertly manipulate this interplay to create very subtle and specific shades of meaning.

86

The text of this edition has been lost, but the illustrations were removed and preserved, and are now held in the Köln Museum. They are reprinted in Edith Dittrich (ed.) ‘Hsi-hsiang chi’, chinesische Farbholzschnitte von Min Ch’i-chi 1640 (Köln: Museum für ostasiatische Kunst der Stadt Köln, 1977).

70

li-ling hsiao

Fig. 2.13 Portrait of Yingying, published by Tianzhang ge, 1640. Reproduced from Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji.

xixiang ji

71

Fig. 2.14 Portrait of Yingying, by Cheng Hongshou, included in Zhang Shenzhi bei Xixiang miben, published in 1639.

72

li-ling hsiao

In the modern era, a publication like the Tianzhang ge edition of Xixiang ji would be condemned as a pirate edition. As we have seen, it fraudulently appropriates famous names and plagiarizes existing artwork. In addition to the extensive borrowing from the Shizhu Zhai shuhua pu, the first portrait of Yingying (Fig. 2.13) is a blatant copy of Chen Hongshou’s illustration produced for the Zhang Shenzhi edition printed in 1639 (Fig. 2.14). It would be easy to dismiss an edition of this type as derivative and second-rate, but this would be to judge it by a radically anachronistic standard. It is incumbent on the modern scholar to take seriously the fact that the edition has been preserved and studied for more than 360 years and to ask the nature of its lasting interest. Once we dispense with the modern criteria of authenticity, the notions of imitation and falsification fall away, revealing a deliberate technique of appropriation and allusion. As Joseph Allen notes, the allusive mode of production has been a widely accepted norm that defines the meaning of creation in traditional China since the earliest age of literary creation.87 This mode became the dominant mode of creation during the Ming period as the imperial exam system imposed a mode of legal and political exposition in which constant allusion to the four Confucian classics was a formal requirement. Given the centrality and uniformity of the examination system, it was inevitable that the literati would bring the same mode of allusion to other forms of expression, including the form and arrangement of books. Allusion was not considered mere borrowing, but a particularly clever form of creation in which shifting contexts lent new meaning to familiar material. The erotic poetry of the period serves as a good example of this allusive mode. The poem “The Double Lotus” appears in the album Huaying Jinzhen, and, as translated, in R. H. van Gulik’s study Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period. The poem alludes to the male and female sexual organs in the rarefied language of Buddhism. The male organ becomes a ‘meditation instrument’ and the female organ a ‘lotus boat’; sexual penetration is described as ‘opening the dharma door’. These allusions are stripped of their religious con-notation and given new meaning. There is perhaps a degree of wry comedy in this renaming, but also, as van Gulik indicates, an attempt

87

Joseph Allen, In the Voice of Others: Chinese Music Bureau Poetry (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1992).

xixiang ji

73

to interweave the sexual and the mystical.88 The Tianzhang ge edi-tion of Xixiang ji alludes to a broad range of people, texts, traditions, images, and ideas, not rapaciously, but philosophically, and creates a remarkably coherent mosaic. Underlying this web of allusion is the controversial and momentous idea that books are for reading. It takes an insightful and patient reader to decode these layers of allusion and grasp their obscure meaning. Far from being plagiaris-tic, the allusive mode demands the kind of dazzling and sometimes dizzying erudition prized by late Ming scholars.

88

R. H. van Gulik, Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period (R. H. van Gulik, 1951), p. 227.

74

chloë starr

CHAPTER THREE

NARRATING THE PASSAGE OF TEXT: READING MULTIPLE EDITIONS OF THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL HUAYUE HEN (TRACES OF FLOWERS AND THE MOON)* Chloë Starr Who knows what an editor does? There are the grabbers and the packagers and the promoters and the thieves…1

The reader of traditional Chinese fiction has seldom journeyed unac-companied. The author stands by the reader’s shoulder at the outset, marking the way through numerous prefaces penned by himself or friends. Commentators guide the reader through the text, pointing out interesting features en route, noting passing resemblances to other texts and recapping the story for the less vigilant. The narra-tor might develop this role, delighting in his own interventions in the narrative, alerting the reader to a certain facet of the story, or referring back to the implied author. This ‘accompanied reading’ allowed the reader to commune with past readers, and to become an active, informed participant in a creative act, able to understand where the author was coming from, and where the tale might go. The form of the text developed to encourage this notion of an ideal reader, and texts mutated fluidly as part of an ongoing process of reading and writing. During the twentieth century, both reading processes and the forms of novels changed greatly, although the goal of communing with the author remained surprisingly constant. This chapter considers the disjunction between textual form and reading process which develops when traditional novels are edited to con-form with late twentieth-century publishing practices. It draws on

* With many thanks to Glen Dudbridge for (inadvertently) editing this chap-ter, which forms part of a longer study on red-light fiction in nineteenth-century China. 1 Bill Henderson, ed., The Art of Literary Publishing: editors and their craft (New York: Pushcart Press, 1980), p. vii.

huayue hen

75

the work of recent Western textual critics as well as writings about traditional Chinese fiction.

Textuality and Red-Light Fiction Through an examination of five editions of one novel, Huayue hen (Traces of flowers and the moon, first published 1888), spanning around a hundred years in publishing time, the modern editions which became tremendously popular and widely available on the mainland during the 1990s can be set in their textual context. In considering several incarnations of this one nineteenth-century xiaxie xiaoshuo, or work of red-light fiction,2 the history of the novel(s) can be seen to confirm the critical view that texts reshape themselves according to the age and readership. A reading of various editions provides an interesting commentary on the implied claim of some of these modern versions to be the novel Huayue hen.3 Chinese literary 2 These are usually referred to as ‘courtesan novels.’ I am grateful to Glen Dudbridge for the suggestion of ‘red-light fiction’ as a neutral translation for xiaxie. The term appears in Lu Xun, Zhongguo xiaoshuo shilüe (Beijing: Beiyang, 1925), p. 295, translated by the Yangs as ‘novels about prostitution.’ (Lu Hsun, A Brief History of Chinese Fiction, trans., Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1976), p. 319). The term, which has the connotation ‘wayward,’ originally referred to the meandering alleys of the pleasure quarters where profes-sional prostitution was contained: see David Der-wei Wang, Fin-de-Siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849-1911 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), p. 54. Lu Xun’s original list of xiaxie works includes Pinhua baojian, Huayue hen, Qinglou meng and Haishang hua liezhuan. These novels, with the occa-sional addition of Fengyue meng, Haishang fanhua meng or Jiu wei gui form the basis for example lists of the genre by 1990s critics or literary historians such as Zhang Peiheng, Zhongguo wenxue shi (Shanghai: Fudan Daxue chubanshe, 1996); Guo Yanli, Zhongguo jindai wenxue fazhan shi (Jinan: Shandong jiaoyu chubanshe, 1995), and Tao Muning, Qinglou wenxue yu Zhongguo wenhua (Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe, 1993). A fuller list of around fifty mid- to late- Qing xiaxie novels appears in Wu Liquan, Zhongguo yanqing shi (Beijing: Shangwu chubanshe, 1995), though the author con-cludes that only Pinhua baojian, Huayue hen, Qinglou meng, Haishang hualie zhuan, Niehai hua and Jiu wei gui have any real value in a history of Chinese novels. Sun Kaidi, the premier critic and list-maker, lists eleven novels under the category xiaxie in his Zhongguo tongsu xiaoshuo shumu (Tokyo: Kyåko shoin, 1984), pp. 129-132: all those listed above and four additional, relatively late, works: Huifang lu, Haishang qing tian ying, the incomplete Lei zhu yuan and Haishang hong xue ji. 3 As Ralph Williams writes of the historical and material instability of texts, the boundaries of works are uncertain because “works are, in fact, observably processes, and because there is no a priori reason to privilege any state or version of that process over the others by calling it THE work.” George Bornstein and Ralph

76

chloë starr

studies in the west have tended to sideline the text itself in recent years, leaping over any version or edition of a work towards thematic, cultural or gender studies.4 Old-style textual studies—bibliographical and historical research—have meanwhile continued to form a major part of Chinese language research, often focussing on classification and genre.5 These preoccupations have fed into the modern editions of the courtesan novel, in ways that complicate attempts to consider a single edition of a novel. The nineteenth-century work of red-light fiction is a particularly apposite subject for a study of textuality, since the narratives of these novels are crucially concerned with the notion of text. In this they follow a long literary tradition, with particularly noteworthy prec-edents in the writings of Li Yu, and the vernacular novels Honglou meng (Dream of red chambers, first printed 1791) and Ernü yingxiong zhuan (Tales of heroic sons and daughters, preface 1734, printed 1878). Whether this is an extended literary joke or a serious metafictional statement is not at issue here. Even if the early manuscript versions were playful literary games written for friends, after successive reprintings the novels became literary works clad in literary jackets, worthy of narrative study.6 In a novel such as Huayue hen, self-reflexive

Williams, eds., Palimpsest: Editorial Theory in the Humanities (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), p. 49. 4 Two notable exceptions to this are David L. Rolston’s Traditional Chinese Fiction and Fiction Commentary, and Robert Hegel’s Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China, in their work on reading commentary editions and aesthetics of the text. Consideration of the huge effect that intratextual commentary had on the reading process of the novel is beyond the scope of this paper: the reader is directed to Rolston, Traditional Chinese Fiction (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), esp. Chapters 11-14. 5 This has been true of most works on Chinese literature, in all but studies of the most ancient texts and of scapulimancy and plastromancy, where the difficulties of reading and deciphering render the physical text the object of study. In even a seminal work such as Mark Lewis’ Writing and Authority in Early China (New York: SUNY, 1999), it is the linguistic codes rather than textual forms that are mainly studied as constituting writing. Works on printing, or the mechanics of paper-making etc., or even the print culture of the late Qing, tend to be discrete textual studies, and rarely link textual form to literary criticism. 6 Bornstein’s article on Yeats’ poetry is illuminating with regard to the ques-tion of changes of status in a narrative. The new bibliographic codes which came into being when the MS texts became a printed volume proclaim Yeats’s work “of sufficient importance to deserve the preservation, display and study that we assign to major monuments of our culture.” Yeats’ own re-editing of his work and the production of multiple editions problematise the use of authorial intention as

huayue hen

77

musing on the nature of the text is taken to an extreme: apart from commentarial and narratorial intrusions and plays on the transmis-sion of the text, indirect references are made by characters to the novel, and the two protagonists at one point exchange commentaries on its predecessor Honglou meng.7 The material form of the text is important in the self-representa-tion of red-light fiction, and references to the stitched and bound novel operate alongside other indicators of the writtenness of the text. These include non-prose sections of narrative, such as long lists of servant and flower names, or, as at one point in Qinglou meng (Dream of green chambers, printed 1878), tone transcriptions, with arrangements of the two characters ping and ze occupying a whole page. In this example, ostensibly part of a poetry lesson for two of the main protagonist’s courtesans, the first stanza of heptasyllabic regulated verse (qiyan lüshi) is represented in a modern text in a man-ner similar to the following: ping ping ze ze ze ze ping ping ping ping ze ze ze ze ping ping

ze ping ping ping ze ze ping ping ze ping ze ze

ze ze ping ping ping ping ze ze ze ze ping ping ping ping ze ze

ze ze ze ze

ze ping ping ping ze ping ping ping8

Long non-prose sections of narrative, or stretches of meaningless text, or text which cannot be read aloud, are indicators of the presence of the text and a means of subverting the reading process. Many others at play in the red-light novels include frame-breaks where the narrator appears in the text, direct appeals to the reader, and intertextual references. In Huayue hen legal and Imperial documents are transcribed into the text, such as the Imperial military bulletins posted up outside the protagonist Hesheng’s army camp, or the lengthy memorial a character submits to the emperor.9 The impo-sition on the text of an ‘officialese’ classical language authenticates the more natural rhythm of the main narrative; it also demands a change of voice on the part of the (oral) reader.

a rationale for editing. See George Bornstein, “What Is the Text of a Poem by Yeats?” in Bornstein and Williams, eds., Palimpsest, p.190. 7 The latter in the twenty-fifth hui, as noted by Rolston, Traditional Chinese Fic-tion, p.19. 8 Qinglou meng, pp. 142-3. 9 Huayue hen (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe), pp. 273-4.

78

chloë starr

Elaborate means of transmission are often contrived to account for the appearance of the physical text in the hand of the narrator. How the text later reaches the reader, often by a tortuous route full of coincidences and lucky breaks, may also be highlighted. In Hua-yue hen the text is hidden, dug up, and read out loud. The narrator describes this process for us in Chapter One: Five years ago, when the spring ice was beginning to thaw, I was hoeing the ground when suddenly the earth caved into a hole. In the hole was an iron chest, and in it were hidden several volumes of a book. The book was called Huayue hen, but the author’s name was not written on it and there were no details of dating. Having opened it and had a look, I waited for a middle-man to pass it on. In the fifth month of that year, the drought-demon was particularly cruel, and bare earth stretched for hundreds of miles around. I was helping my mother to evade famine at Taiyuan, but our circumstances were terrible and we had no means of livelihood. I suddenly realised the Heavens had given me this book to supply me with food and clothing. And so I copied out a volume by hand, and each day I take it along with me to the tea houses, strike up my clappers and earn a few hundred cash. I carry grain back with me, and present a sack to my old mother. As for right and wrong, truth and falsity in the book, I don’t know about that. But each day among those who listen to my book, some laugh, some cry, some sigh... Today the weather is fine, if you are at leisure with nothing to do, why not make your way along to the Yiweiliang tea stand at Liugangkou and listen to me narrate Huayue hen?10

There are serious logical inconsistencies in the narrative evidence of textual transmission in Huayue hen, as well as other red-light works.11 The first chapter describes the discovery of the novel Huayue hen, which is clearly impossible unless “the novel” signifies another ver-sion of the text without this initial chapter, or the oral retelling of it. We know that this first chapter of Huayue hen was probably written after the bulk of the novel and added to the front of the work.12 The

10

Huayue hen, pp.2-3. Own translations unless otherwise marked. On the role of narrators in red-light fiction, see Alexander Des Forges “From Source Text to ‘Reality Observed’: the Creation of the ‘Author’ in NineteenthCentury Chinese Vernacular Fiction,” CLEAR 22, 2000: 67-84. 12 According to Xie Zhangting’s memoirs Ke yu xu lu, Chapters 2-44 were writ-ten in 1858 and Chapters 1 and 45-52 after 1862: see Shang Cheng’s introduction to Huayue hen (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1994) p.2; Gu Qiyin’s preface (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1996), p.3. As with other red-light novels, contorted means of transmission (or their description as such) relate to the prohibitions on these works during much of the Qing. 11

huayue hen

79

narrator has “copied out” the text by hand and narrates it orally in sections to an audience. The copying out of Huayue hen both reflects and subverts the actual conditions of composition and dissemina-tion of the novel. The central forty chapters were written over a period of a few months and presented chapter by chapter to the author Wei Xiuren’s employer, with a celebratory gathering mark-ing the production of each couple of chapters. In aligning himself with the narrator of the finished text, Wei is gently downplaying the extent of his effort and laughing at his pecuniary needs, which his biography suggests were genuine motivations for writing. This parody has some basis in truth, enabling Wei to represent his work as a traditional tale and himself as a traditional literatus, while the fictitious representation of a laboriously written narrative as an oral tale undermines his adopted stance. An alternative narrator is presented at the end of Huayue hen. As one of the characters, Guan Shikuan, lies in bed, he dreams of events enacted in the novel, before waking up to find Huayue hen on the pillow beside him. Although illiterate, he treasures the book and, when he is about to die, he buries it. Given that the book he finds could not logically contain this last episode, we conclude this is added by the narrator, but the line demarcating the story and this narrated text is not clear, and it is not evident how our original narrator could have come across this information but that it were written into his copy of the text of Huayue hen. This double construction emphasises the fictive status of the text, although it risks destroying its own frame of reference in the process. Through these various means, the reader is required to construct (or, deconstruct) the text in progress.

Textual Descent Western theories of textual editing have moved a long way since the early 1970s. Definitive texts have been banished as impractical and impossible, and scholarly editions downgraded to “valuable access routes to works of art.”13 Following the preaching of the instabil-ity of the (conceptual) text by Derrida, Bloom, Fish et al. around

13

Peter Shillingsburg, Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age: Theory and Practice (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), p.93.

80

chloë starr

twenty years ago, the stability of the actual, physical text underwent scrutiny. Whereas earlier in the twentieth century it was argued in the West that a perfect critical edition consisted of the collation of all previous texts, over the last decades of the millennium this ideal was gradually discarded as unworkable and undesirable. The text came to be regarded by social textual critics as a series of events, each edition important in its unique circumstances of production.14 As textual criticism outgrew its position as a subset of historical criticism, it began to influence wider literary criticism. How these paradigm shifts fit with Chinese traditions of editing and textual criticism may become clearer below, but approaching the text via modern Western theories allows us at least to posit the value of each recent recension, descending downwards and outwards along the textual line, while drawing on work which points backwards to any original text and its author. While the authors of red-light novels often sought to highlight the importance of the physical text in the process of reading, they inevitably had little say in how subsequent editions of their novels have been presented to readers—and how these later editions might alter the format of the text, and so the construction of fictionality proposed. As a text is transmitted vertically through time and hori-zontally in space, its signifying processes become increasingly col-laborative and socialized, authorial intention being diluted through the workings of the editors and publishers.15 Writers could, of course, attempt to mitigate these by such techniques as writing their own textual commentary into the work to direct reading from within. If we accept, though, following Roger Chartier and his successors, that the reading of a work is influenced by the format in which it is received, then a selection of texts which foreground their textuality argues for a particularly close examination of form.16

14 The term ‘text’ will be used to denote both the physical book (Barthes’ ‘work’) and the conceptual work of art. For a discussion on the terms ‘text’ and ‘work’ see D. C. Greetham, Theories of the Text (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 26-8, 47-48. 15 Jerome McGann, The Textual Condition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 58. 16 See e.g. Roger Chartier, Forms and Meanings (Philadelphia: University of Penn-sylvania Press, 1995), p. 2. McGann, McKenzie and Shillingsburg have all ques-tioned how important the medium is to the message of the text, and all rejected for various reasons the notion that literary works are the ‘same’ if the linguis-tic text is identical but formats differ. For a convenient introduction, see D.F.

huayue hen

81

From the physical form of the text we can begin to look at what the courtesan novel is, and has become over the last century through the work of editors. In the course of this exploration, it becomes clear that the idea editors have held of the category of red-light novel as a genre has in part contributed to the material format of particular editions, just as the serial nature of editions has contributed to the works being seen as a genre. Editors and critics have colluded in this circularity since Lu Xun first classified the texts together in the 1920s. For the modern courtesan novel, we are reading a text, but also reading a packaged genre, with a set of reader expectations. A similar cover, introduction and format naturally leads readers to expect a similar narrative content. Genre is arguably text-specific, related to the bibliographic codes of a work (its format) as much as its linguistic code (words, or lines of text), and it is these bibliographic codes which have been subject to the greatest degree of change, reconfiguring the text for each new series. The re-issue of texts is a cumulative process, incorporating or read-ing against previous readings and generic features. Works featuring courtesans as protagonists have frequently been grouped according to their content, although most have overlapping identities as Wu dialect texts, or through the denotation ‘late Qing’ etc.17 The status of these texts has partially been dependent on a categorisation effected through the presentation of the works. While prefaces, colophons and even illustrations present in early printed editions are absent in most modern texts, under editorial policies discussed below, it is precisely in such quasi-textual features, beyond the narrow storyline encapsulated within the numbered chapters, that pointers to the value judgments of editors and publishers may be seen. The impact of publication as one work in a series of texts can be seen in a reading of the editorial prefaces to the modern novels. The prefaces (chuban shuoming) to a series such as the Shanghai guji Ten Classical Social Human-Sentiment Novels (Shi da guji shehui renqing

McKenzie Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts: The Panizzi Lectures 198, (London: British Library, 1986), pp. 9-14. 17 On the theory of two streams of brothel literature, see Patrick Hanan, “Fengyue meng and the Courtesan Novel,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 58, 1998: 345-372, esp. pp. 345-6. For a discussion of the relevance of these categories with regard to narrative, see Chloë Starr, “The Late Qing Courtesan Novel as Text and Fiction,” DPhil. thesis, Oxford University, 1999, pp. 167-9.

82

chloë starr

xiaoshuo), which includes several red-light works, are identical across the ten novels and novellas. The primary identity of any given novel is presented as its belonging to this series of works, selected by this edito-rial team, rather than as the unique work of an individual author.18 Each preface begins with a potted history of Chinese fiction, and discusses the classification of works, describing the characteristics of a few cognate genres. Works are placed in chronological categories, and discussed against other works written (but not always published) in the same time period. Apart from ‘human-sentiment’ series and thematic groups, courtesan works have made recent appearances in series of ‘great works’ of the Qing, suggesting a shift in editorial policy away from this generic recognition as red-light novels. An explanation lies in the visibility of novels: as proven sales successes, works like Huayue hen have now attained a certain status as prominent novels of the Qing period. “What is important is the continuously discontinuous remaking of texts by editors and curators in the process of their dissemination,” writes Joseph Grigely in Textualterity, a work which develops the ideas of McGann, McKenzie, and earlier critics on textual transmission and expression.19 One of the tenets of McGann’s work is that the only immutable law of the textual condition is the law of change.20 A continuous process of development and mutation accompanies each text, bounded by the socio-historic conditions under which it is produced. This view takes each edition of a work as a unique occurrence, while emphasising the process of textual editing and production as a site for study. The critic no longer asks whether a certain editor is right to emend a text in a particular way, or how a ‘true’ text should look, but what has informed or constrained given editorial choices. As the text is reconfigured in each edition, the search for authorial intention and such questions which so preoccupied an earlier generation of Western scholars retreats into the critical

18

Not all of the various series which contain courtesan works include a given set, or all of the novels Lu Xun classified as xiaxie, though in the early 1990s several of the newly published series did contain variants on this list. Some of these series gathered volumes from among it alongside other novels, usually either caizi jiaren (scholar- beauty) or late Qing works of a similar theme. 19 Joseph Grigely, Textualterity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), p. 4. 20 McGann, Textual Condition, p. 9.

huayue hen

83

background. The quest is no longer to trace an archetypal Ur-text, or to determine the textual version closest to the final intention of the author by combining readings of the earliest extant manuscript and print versions, but to account for the existence and reception of the plurality of texts comprising any given novel.21 The re-making of the modern red-light novel has brought about a generation of texts whose distance from their predecessors is apparent in their form and its encoded assumptions. This code of meaning embodied in the physique of a book is deciphered by the reader, “more or less deeply, more or less self-consciously.”22 In most of the modern edition courtesan novels, the reader is sold a popular tome. This is not the re-issue of a nineteenth-century novel for scholarly purposes but for reading pleasure. There are few, if any, references to earlier editions embedded within. Versions such as the Shanghai guji or Qilu shushe ones make no attempt to be scholarly critical editions, concealing changes to the copy-text and avoiding mention of variant readings.23 Only references to the Qing dynasty on the front cover and the style of language indicate the age of the novels. Notes, annotations and errant characters are excised. The reader is not required to jump around the text reading footnotes and com--

21

The method advocated by W. W. Greg, which remained influential in critical editing for decades and was incorporated into the so-called Greg-Bowers theory of transmission. The ‘substantives’ of an edition were to be taken from the latest authorial edited manuscript version, but the ‘accidentals’ from the earliest print version (authorial corrections to early print proofs were thought less likely to pick up on spelling and punctuation errors than substantive changes to meanings). For a discussion see G. Thomas Tanselle, “The Editorial Problem of Final Authorial Intention,” in Tanselle, ed. Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing, (Charlottesville, GA: University Press of Virginia, 1990), p. 27. Accuracy in transmitting accidentals in courtesan novels has been an issue for modern editors where (massive) textual emendations of prologues and such have not. 22 Jerome McGann, “How to read a book” in David Oliphant and Robin Bradford, eds., New Directions in Textual Studies (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), p. 26. 23 Editorial praxis departs from traditional scholarly writings here. Where early versions of texts were usually referred to by a year name (e.g. the Guangxu 14 Huayue hen etc.), that particular text/novel dating from the time of its inscription in print, this role has been subsumed by the publisher’s name. The earliest known inscription was usually taken as the ‘date’ of a given work, and changes introduced by subsequent compositors acknowledged by the renaming of texts with new date labels. This older practice acknowledged that copies are not identical, and that versions are particular instances of a novel, a realisation occluded by the modern editions.

84

chloë starr

mentary in order to comprehend it: the reading process itself has been modernised. While in early printed texts the bibliographic codes encourage a reflection on the act of reading in ways described below, a typical modern edition engenders a very different reading process.24 Mod-ern editions, products of the mass market, have sought to cut out an active response to the text’s own discursive acts by presenting the ‘story’ as a self-enclosed unit, creating a text of suspended belief for the reader. In doing so, they have created the fiction of a story over the more socio-historically grounded writings of the authors, and re-created their authors, once complicit in the reading process of the text, as story-tellers. The end-product is closer to a traditional Western experience of reading, where distance between author and reader is dissolved.

Reading the Changes As a reader, selecting an edition of a red-light novel from among the many available is no easy feat. A cursory list throws up seven companies with two or more of six major red-light novels from the late Qing currently in press.25 The range of print quality, price, and presentation is great. Printed copies of Huayue hen range from illustrated, fragrant, quality texts, to be enjoyed as a literary experi-ence and possessed for their commodity value, to mass-produced works read primarily for plot development. A comparison of two recent with three earlier editions of the novel Huayue hen will serve to illustrate some of these differences and point to shifts in under--

24

But see, however, series such as the Beijing tushuguan cang Zhenben xiaoshuo congkan, which present photocopied reproductions of early published texts. These are ostensibly much closer to the ‘originals’ in presentation, but are still in multiple volume editions where each volume is not necessarily consonant with one work, placing a text alongside another work identified as similar. Although the photostat format ensures each page is laid out as the original and the impression is given that this is a reproduction of the text, in fact not every page (including colophons etc.) of the earlier text is necessarily present. The relocation of ‘original’ texts within a series of highly valued works in uniform covers itself alters the nature of reception. 25 Including the Shanghai guji chubanshe, Qilu shushe, Zhonghua shuju, Han yuan, Huashan wenyi, Renmin Zhongguo and Shanxi guji.

huayue hen

85

standings of the meaning and function of a novel, and in patterns of reading over space and time. The emphasis below is inevitably on comparison and difference. Changes affecting reader reception include both the meaning read into the narrative by critics and changes to the text itself. One dis-cernible trend has been a downplaying of textuality in the editions over the course of the twentieth century—that is, of the reference the text makes to itself as a text. The editor and punctuator are prominently named on the earliest texts, signalling the process of compilation and production, but removed in later versions, according to prevalent custom.26 The ‘novel’ covers a relatively small volume of text in earlier editions, but expands to fill almost the whole book in a modern version. This modern Huayue hen is reconstituted as light reading for a wide audience, with cartoon-style Qing figures in slightly risqué poses on several front covers, not entirely congruent with the didactic serial introductions to those same editions. Various of the 1990s introductions recreate the historical back-ground to the work by situating the author in a general description of economic and political trends in nineteenth-century China, and introducing him as a studious Confucian scholar. Prefaces written by Wei and his contemporaries, which conditioned earlier readings, may be discarded or re-positioned within the text. The themes which they raise, such as fate and the individual’s response to it, are no longer highlighted for the late twentieth-century reader, and a much stronger emphasis on biography emerges as an explanatory factor in the fiction. Whereas an edition from the 1930s might signal the status of the work by including an extensive commentary and a kaozheng (evidential scholarship) section, a late twentieth-century edi-tion often elevates the author to the same end. The modern reader of Huayue hen is encouraged to view the novel as the self-analysis of a historical figure, but prevented from carrying out such a task by the means available to former readers due to the excision of much of the self-referential material outside the main story-text. The five editions selected have been chosen largely for their chrono-logical significance. The first is the earliest known printed edition: the 1888 Fuzhou Wu Yu Tian text, whose title is Huayue hen quan

26

A link can be drawn between the metafictional narrative techniques of the courtesan works and (original) textual form.

86

chloë starr

shu. The second is an early illustrated version from the Shanghai publishing house Guangyi shuju, entitled Xiuxiang Huayue hen, printed around 1910.27 The third is one in a series of extremely fragile 1930s texts from the Dada Tushu Gongying She; this and the later editions take the concise title Huayue hen. The fourth and fifth are recent editions, the 1994 Shanghai guji and 1996 Zhonghua shuju versions respectively. Given the inadequacy of reproducing images of the texts pictorially, ekphrasis will have to supplement the images in this paper. As for external appearance, the glossiness of the novel cover is inversely related to the fullness of text contained within. The earliest three texts are thread-bound on flimsy paper of decreasing quality and strength from the first to the third, although the 1930s text has a brown card cover to provide some protection. The variability of print type and quality across editions of even small temporal disloca-tion suggests that little inference can be drawn as to the perceived status of the novels from an individual edition. Just as for valorised texts,28 editions appear directed at differing levels of readership and purchasing power, so the wide range of quality in a given period is testimony more to the popularity of a work than its critical apprecia-tion. Editions of courtesan novels seem more related to the general state of publishing than to their perceived moral worth, diachronic quality shifts reflecting publishing mechanisms as much as editorial or critical views. The decision to print Huayue hen, which circulated in manuscript form for several decades until 1888, was eventually taken on financial grounds. (The novel was later proscribed for much of the remainder of the Qing, a factor affecting not only availability and versions, but 27 It is difficult to date precisely this edition, purchased from a Liulichang book-shop, but a comparison with other dated works from the Guangyi shuju of that period suggests the edition predates the early 1920s, by which point the publisher was including features such as advertisements for new books and pricing information on the inside cover; other works from the 1920s also carry the publisher’s name at the foot of the vertical margin of each leaf. Han Xiduo and Wang Qingyuan list a lithographically reproduced text from the Guangyi shuju entitled Huitu Huayue hen of 6 juan, but give no publication date: see Han Xiduo and Wang Qingyuan Xiaoshuo shufang Lu (Shenyang: Chunfeng wenyi chubanshe, 1987), p. 91. 28 Fiction, it must be remembered, was traditionally the lowest form of liter-ary engagement, and romantic or brothel fiction was the lowest of the low. On the changing status of fiction throughout the late Imperial period, see e.g. Hegel, Reading Illustrated Fiction, Chapter One.

huayue hen

87

how we read the ludic framing chapters and interpret the prefaces.) After the author Wei Xiuren’s death in 1873, his friend Xie Zhangting had approached the author’s brother Wei Xiufu and suggested the novel might have a certain market value in Beijing, and that with the proceeds they could have other of Wei Xiuren’s works printed. The brother stalled, and another clansman in straitened circumstances, possibly the author’s son Wei Shao’an, had the work printed (without using the proceeds to publicise further novels).29 As Robert Hegel notes, printing was seen as a making public; important texts, or those valued by their authors like Honglou meng were not printed but rather circulated as manuscripts. Publication for early novels did not bring the textual stability we might imagine, as publishers emended at will. Literati novels of the late Ming and Qing were less likely than other fiction to be modified in subsequent editions, being sequelled or imitated instead. Fictional texts could become as sacrosanct as works in higher literary forms if associated with a literatus author.30 The red-light novels discussed here, themselves often indebted to Honglou meng, have not spawned sequels and their status is rather ambiguous. The publishing pattern of Huayue hen suggests that the author regarded his work as aspiring to a reading by a discerning intellectual audience, but its subsequent printing and distribution have placed it firmly in the category of popular works. The bland uniformity of cheap modern paperbacks disguises the aesthetic experience of an earlier reader. If the reader’s appreciation of a modern classic is meant to be derived from the book’s content, rather than appearance, for earlier editions, part of the pleasure of reading came from sensual experience of the text.31 None of the three stitch-bound editions display any indication of authorship on the cover or frontispiece, though all carry first and second prefaces (qianxu, houxu) penned by Mianhe Zhuren (Master of the Sleeping Cranes), one of Wei Xiuren’s pseudonyms. In terms of appearance and binding, the three early texts form a group distinct from the later two, which are both standard modern paperbacks with gaudy covers, a mixture of horizontal and vertical characters, ISBN numbers and other such international cataloguing data.

29 30 31

See Gu Qiyin’s preface to the Zhonghua shuju edition of Huayue hen, p. 8. Hegel, Reading Illustrated Fiction, p. 154. Hegel, Reading Illustrated Fiction, p. 4.

88

chloë starr

The 1888 Wu Yu Tian edition punctuated and edited by Wang Songchen (whose name appears alone on the title page) is a fairly standard woodblock printing with nine columns of twenty-one charac-ters per half-folio, a density of text that approximates to one quarter of that of a modern edition. The luxury of paper and space testify to the perceived worth of the novel as a commodity rather than to contemporary technological capacity, as cheap mass-produced tracts of small print size were then feasible. The text of this edition is blocked off by a heavy border from the rest of the page, giving the sense that the page contains a text, rather than equates to it. Large characters and wide lines make for great ease of reading, although some of the space beyond the upper border of text is taken up by commentary. The textualised nature of this edition is seen in the superscript commentary, in punctuation markings or emphasis circles alongside characters, and especially through the series of prefaces, poems and anecdotes that make up most of the first fascicle of the novel. Here is an ‘already read’ reading of a work, a reading of oth-ers’ reading. It accords with the sense of reading proposed from Jin Shengtan onwards that a commentary edition is an organic whole, not “a mere conjunction of commentary and text.”32 The novel proper, in the sense adopted by a pared-down modern edition, begins only after a long series of poems and comments of endorsement from friends and acquaintances. These prefaces framed and informed the reading process for nine-teenth-century readers. The most important are the two by the author, and a third by the writer of the commentary to this edition, and they bear close scrutiny. The first of the two authorial prefaces, both dated during 1848, speaks of the vagaries of fortune, with reference to the changing careers and fates of the two main male characters. Throughout the two prefaces the author holds in tension belief in a fate which conditions events, and an affirmation of the ability of the individual to respond to and affect his circumstances. Events and forces in the lives of the four protagonists lie precisely on the boundaries between right and wrong, between union and separa-tion, writes the author, before explaining this statement through a description of the careers of the main protagonists Wei Chizhu and Han Hesheng. The responses of the men regarding their very dif--

32

See Rolston, Traditional Chinese Fiction, p. 40.

huayue hen

89

ferent destinies are contrasted to the effects that transposing them would have had on their relationships with the two courtesan lovers, Qiuhen and Caiqiu. If Chizhu had had the career and fortune of Hesheng, then Qiuhen could not but have remained with him, and if Hesheng had been transformed into Chizhu with his lack of fine houses and steeds, then Caiqiu could not but have left him. In another age all of the fine brothels and monasteries will be empty and decayed, presages the author, but people will see their own loves and hates mirrored in those of his protagonists, and be moved by tales of bones and dust. The preface speaks both of the resonant power of literature and the author’s expectation of the reinvention of his novel. The view of life developed here contrasts with the tirade against the examination system found in modern prefaces, condemn-ing author Wei Xiuren to a life of unfulfilled wishes and wasted talent, a Chizhu gazing at his more fortunate alter ego Hesheng, in a reading which confuses the frames of reference between novel and biography, characters and life. The preface author claims only to see, and translates what he has seen in the world into his novel: its tone is resigned rather than self-pitying. The important thing is one’s response to what fate serves: a message submerged in the more politicised prefaces from the late twentieth century. Having framed the tale as his own construction and sketched some moral and philosophical pointers towards a reading of the novel, the second authorial preface discusses the naming of the book and the meaning of each character of the title (moon, flower, scar/vestige).The mood is one of jocular pedantry, which soon returns to the themes of fate and human life. This is less a Confucian representation of his work33—that is left to the commentator in the third preface—than an aesthetic theory of resonances, where physical properties remain after the event in the form of their traces in the mind. The third inscription, that of the commentator Xixiajushi, points out that the novel could be read by shallow people as nothing but “admiring talent and envying beauty,” but directs readers beyond this. This commentator reprises the author’s warning to his readers, in the

33 Buddhist terms such as ‘cause and effect’ do appear in the preface, which does not however present a consistent Buddhist philosophy, with Daoist overtones also present.

90

chloë starr

manner of comments traditionally preceding censored works.34 The root of the matter, he claims, lies in an explication of the five Con-fucian relationships and the four cardinal virtues. The protagonist Wei Chizhu has failed to attain a full measure of the requisite virtue in any of these sets of relationships, and this lack of opportunity to develop right relationships has affected his character. Stressing the author’s comparison of two sets of relationships in the novel, Xixi-ajushi notes the skilful use he makes of the contrast, concluding that although the novel form is xiaodao (a ‘minor way,’ i.e. not canonical literature) it can still teach the world, exhort to good and punish evil. This understanding of the novel and its purpose accords more closely with the views of later critics and commentators, and provides the impetus for a dualistic reading which gradually becomes associated by the critic with a split authorial psyche. The second of the earlier texts, the Guangyi shuju Xiuxiang Huayue hen is notable for the extreme density of print, with 26 columns of 56 characters each per half-folio. The whole novel is stitch-bound as a single fascicle (ce) with a brushwork title printed on the outer leaf. The text follows that of the Wu Yu Tian edition in its presentation, although the spacing is so radically different as to alter the process of reading. Commentary, for example, becomes one continuous block above the double black line at the top of the story text. This superscript commentary ostensibly provides a full critical analysis of the text, but the reduced print size makes it barely legible and all but the most assiduous reader might be inclined to ignore it. The lines of text down the page are so long that it is not always immediately obvious which section of narrative the comment refers to. Characters in the text are in the craft style of calligraphy, with the text reproduced lithographically.35 Each chapter occupies only two to three pages of text, promoting the impression of a work which can be read rapidly. The actual page size of the text is quite close to the

34

The locus classicus is the Jin Ping Mei (Plum in the golden vase) preface of the Master of Delight: see The Plum in the Golden Vase, or Chin P’ing Mei, Volume One, trans. David Tod Roy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 3-5. 35 For a discussion of the transitions between wood-block, moveable type, and lithographic printing and correlations with the changing nature of supply and demand in the book market, see Tsien Tsuen-hsuin, Paper and Printing, in Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), vol.5, Part 1, p. 192.

huayue hen

91

modern editions: the dimensions of the printed area (bankuang) are 18 by 12 cms. On some pages the text is entirely continuous, occasional circles of punctuation running alongside characters. Chapter head-ing couplets are indented, as are poems and chapter end comments. As these offer the only breaks in a very dense text, their effect is to emphasise the poetry within the narrative. The two other noteworthy features of this edition are its frontispiece and the illustrations. The first of three vertical segments on the first leaf proclaims the novel to be a yanqing xiaoshuo (romantic novel), and this is followed by the title and the name of the publisher. Immediately, the novel has been categorised. It now has an identity as a novel about beauty and emotions, and has not only been pre-read and commented on, but placed in a critical editorial category, with a generic belonging. The eight plates of illustrations present the major characters of the novel in turn, almost exclusively in the setting of a pavilion, with elements of garden scenery visible. The illustrations are not particu-larly detailed or fine, with the men distinguished by apparel rather than facial features. The surroundings speak of simple elegance; characters denote their status by carrying a fan, sword, rosary or flute. The women wear trousers or long skirts, and tiny feet of a finger’s length emerge from under their garments. These are not illustrations of actions or events in the novel, but representational portraits of posed characters, adding little to the narrative. The main function of the illustrations is to enable the text to be entitled an illustrated text, to counteract the reduction in print size and general quality of the edition. An inverse relationship has been proposed between quantity of books and quality of illustrations across the Qing, with illustrated books being either utilitarian or popular, but less intellectually serious,36 commensurate with a change in attitude where illustrations were no longer regarded primarily as indicators of high culture but as reading aids. The pictures of this edition are not of the detailed quality of the late Qing, but nonetheless aspire to a higher status than the print and paper demand. Huayue hen is here presented as suitable reading matter for the aspirant genteel. Both the commentary and the illustrations have a pro forma air to them, producing a fully rounded classical text (and so presenting

36

Hegel, Reading Illustrated Fiction, p. 213.

92

chloë starr

Fig. 3.1 Text of the Guangyi shuju Huayue hen.

huayue hen

Fig. 3.2 Plate from Guangyi shuju Huayue hen.

93

94

chloë starr

the novel as a work of literary worth) without being particularly functional as art or criticism. The third edition of Huayue hen from the Dada Tushuguan pub-lishers in 1932 is the first of the five on single leaf paper in modern book format, with text on numbered white pages. The characters are no longer manuscript style, but typeset in columns. The text is one of a series published by the same house, including other novels about courtesans such as Qinglou meng, again denoting the category of the work on the cover.37 Similar typeface and cover illustration design and style promote a set of materially identical texts, imply-ing a similarity in content. Here the novel is designated a yanqing cizao changpian shuobu, a long novel which speaks of love in ornate language. A line illustration on the cover of a boat drifting through lotus leaves, with a woman on board supping drink, alludes to the pleasure quarters and the pleasure of reading to be gained. Textual modernisation has begun: this 1930s edition contains a set of publishing data including date, price, and company promotion statements inside the back cover. More obvious however are changes to the main body of the text, especially in the advent of new styles of punctuation. The classical text has been rendered modern in format, and begins to appear over-determined in the excess of punctuation, which the language of the original provides (through, for example, characters denoting speech, and final particles to mark sentence ends). Frequent commas and question marks create a text for easy consumption. Solid lines mark proper names, and speech is set in quotation blocks, separating it from the prose narrative for the first time. From the 1920s onwards, editions of traditional novels began to appear with Western-style punctuation, but without pingdian (punc-tuation and evaluatory comment) commentary. Changes in printing mechanisms coincided with a sense that commentary slowed a reader down, distracting from direct communication with the text.38 Alongside the prefaces and colophons, this edition adds a section of textual research (kaozheng) and a commentary (zhuiyu ‘superfluous words’). These simultaneously historicise the novel and re/pres-ent it to a contemporary audience. Subtitles within the section of

37 Huayue hen, Qinglou meng and Haishang hua liezhuan all appear in similar Dada tushuguan editions from the 1930s. 38 Rolston, Reading Traditional Fiction, p. 49, and pp. 98-100.

huayue hen

95

textual research—which runs directly on from the original prefaces and presents itself as a continuation of, if not part of, those intro-ductions—include a biography of the author, anecdotes about the author, a critical essay on the book and a note on the poems in the novel. The novel is not merely a story to be read, but a text with a history to be analysed in terms of what the editors regard as interesting or important about that text. A detailed understanding of the background, life and career of the author is deemed the pri-mary aid to that reading process. This includes comments on Wei Xiuren’s moral nature, his aspirations and virtues, intended to edify the reader of the 1930s. Such biographies, and those of the following two editions, are textual reconstructions, creating rather than recovering an author, selecting representative anecdotes and episodes in the light of the editorial agenda.39 The paragraph entitled ‘An index to the whole novel’ rejects the theory that Wei Chizhu represents the situation of the author, contesting that the author was comparing himself to both main protagonists. While the text is heavily annotated, edito-rial responsibility does not extend to providing an explanation of the provenance of the text, of alternative sources or versions, or of any emendations made. The editor has unquestioned authority in reading the text, and his area of responsibility in publishing an edition resides in presenting extra-textual details and biographical information to his reader. The novel has become an object for critical study, and the original prefaces which commented on the text are supplemented by further comment on their author. Most introductions to 1990s editions of Huayue hen comment on the chronology of the completion of the narrative: how the author wrote the second to fortieth chapters at one stage, and added the first chapter (the narrative frame, where the book comes into the posses-sion of its narrator) and the last chapters at a much later stage. The modern commentators then set about discussing the later chapters in term of alterations or inferior additions which affect the narra--

39 See Paul Eggert, “Discourse versus Authorship: The Baedeker Travel Guide and D. H. Lawrence’s Twilight in Italy,” in Philip Cohen ed., Texts and Textuality, p. 218, on biographical authorship. Though recognising the limits of biographical reconstructions, Eggert calls for a revisiting of authorship, given the predominance of text-based discourses despite the ongoing usefulness of authorship in citations and library catalogues, biographies, interviews, creative writing classes etc. (p. 208).

96

chloë starr

tive, but without considering how their own excisions and additions might also have the effect of rewriting the received narrative. All of the modern editions set the name of the Qing dynasty prominently beside the author’s name on the front cover. The cover illustrations evoke a sense of old China, either in watercolour-style or cartoon representations of courtesans together with their lovers. The artwork proclaims an ancient text in a modern guise, consonant with the modern presentation of the text within. The two paperback editions discussed represent differing editorial policies. The Shanghai guji text consists of the story chapters alone. The slightly lewd, or at least suggestive, cover picture and emphasis on plot reinforce the impression that these publishers are constituting the novel as trashy entertainment, a good read. There are no prefaces or colophons in difficult and off-putting classical Chinese. These are replaced with a publisher’s explanation and a preface. The first is a four-page analysis of why this series of books is being brought out, justifying the project in terms of its ability “to enable readers to have a deeper understanding of Chinese traditional fiction.”40 The emphasis throughout the preface is on the necessity of respond-ing to readers’ requests and readers’ needs. A discussion of genre and the many different names and classifications of courtesan works precedes a brief analysis of traditional novels from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. This history is shaped by the belief in the validity and success of the project of bringing the ten works of the series, as representatives of superior examples of their type, before the public. The appearance of brothel literature is said to have resulted from readers tiring of the content of scholar-beauty (caizi jiaren) novels, following Lu Xun’s line. Novels such as Huayue hen or Chen Sen’s Pinhua baojian (printed 1849) are described as transferring the attributes and characteristics of beauties (jiaren) to prostitutes, but retaining the same style as earlier works. Huayue hen, along with Qinglou meng and Pinhua baojian, is representative of the transition period in caizi jiaren works from Honglou meng to modern Butterfly works.41 Classification provides a pseudo-academic rationale for a populist text, and the educational project is fulfilled by a romp through four

40

See Wei Xiuren, Huayue hen (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe), pp. 1-4. Shang Cheng, Preface to Wei Xiuren, Huayue hen (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1994), qianyan p. 3. 41

huayue hen

97

hundred years of literary history. Though the series claims to present readers with the opportunity to improve themselves and their knowl-edge of Chinese culture, individual texts maximise a dehistoricised reading. The decision to eliminate superscript notes and commen-tary was taken by the editors of the Shanghai guji Huayue hen on the grounds that these showed evidence of baguwen (eight-legged essay) compositional methods, and so were no longer of great significance. Whilst one can sympathise with the desire to redeem the story from its commentary, this reasoning glosses over the fact that the story-text itself is in an unfamiliar language, and uses a dated compositional technique. While a pared-down text may improve sales ratings, it is difficult to maintain with integrity the publishing justification of educating readers, when a fuller text would present a modern reader with more insight into late Qing reading and writing processes. Readers who have purchased other works in the Shanghai guji series presumably skip the repeated editorial explanation, but the second preface is specific to the individual novel. This preface echoes, without attribution, the first authorial preface of the 1888 text in its sketched biography of the main characters, but without the reflection or analysis that the author provides. Changes in prefaces here pro-duce changes in both text and genre. The meaning of the novel, the new preface explains, lies in its expression of resentment at wasted talent, and not in the fact that it is a biography of courtesans. This assertion is followed by a biography, setting the novel in the context of the author’s life and experiences, including the fact that he lived through the two Opium wars and the Taiping ‘peasant uprising’ during the 1840s to 1860s. According to the preface writer, Wei Xiuren was “both pained at the decline and impotency of the Qing dynasty and resentful of the lack of use made of his talent.”42 The link between biography and autobiography is made very explicit for the reader, the preface writer Shang Cheng stating that the author has displaced his ideals of a Chinese revival in Han Hesheng’s sup-pression of internal troubles and external threats, and that through Wei Chizhu he examines the situation of those whose ambitions find no outlet. The Zhonghua shuju editors are more scholarly than almost all rival publishers of classical texts: the preface to this edition runs to

42

Shang Cheng, Preface, qianyan, p. 2.

98

chloë starr

ten pages, with copious footnotes. Unlike many other 1990s editions, the Zhonghua edition also includes all of the 1888 text prefaces and introductions, albeit as an appendix at the rear of the novel. Such a positioning acknowledges their scholarly value, while denying that they are a necessary or functional part of the novel. The difference that shifting the positioning of an appendix can make to the recep-tion and nature of a text has been amply demonstrated by Cohen’s study of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, whose Compson Appendix, written many years after initial publication, “re-contex-tualises and so re-ontologizes” the novel, creating “a version of the novel so different from the original version as to raise the possibil-ity that he had produced an entirely new work.”43 The inclusion of the appendices at the end of this edition of Huayue hen provides the reader with an opportunity to perform a critical reading of the text if so desired, but presupposes that the novel may be read equally well without: they are a footnote to textual history. Gu Qiyin, the preface writer for this Zhonghua shuju edition, begins by suggesting that throughout the history of traditional Chinese literature writers have diluted their own personality in their work and striven to accommodate themselves to the tastes of the masses. Huayue hen is an example of a work embracing a fresh approach. A premium is again placed on biographical data concerning the author Wei Xiuren as an explanatory model for the text. Not only does the novel condense the author’s experiences and circumstances, ideals and desires, delights and boredom, but this even “goes as far as the structure, penmanship and flavour of the novel: all are imprinted with a very clear branding of Mr Wei.”44 The biography of Wei evokes a scholar steeped in Confucian traditions and thought, a notably different emphasis to the original authorial preface. Much detail is provided on Wei’s examination attempts and failures, and subsequent travel itineraries around China. Huayue hen, we are told, was written during a relatively stable period of Wei’s life in Taiyuan, under the encouragement of his employer, a prefect. The novel is again explicitly linked to Wei’s (largely passive) experiences of the

43 Philip Cohen, “The Key to the Whole Book: Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, the Compson Appendix, and Textual Instability,” in Cohen, ed. Texts and Textuality, pp. 236, 255. 44 Wei Xiuren, Huayue hen (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1996), p. 1.

huayue hen

99

Taiping uprisings and historical events of the era, in a narrative which weaves family troubles, prolonged absences, Wei’s late mar-riage and happy union into the writing of the novel. “And so in the novel, through the circumstances of Chizhu, Wei Xiuren describes his own inner torments and in Hesheng’s successes enshrines his own ideals;” comments Gu, concurring almost verbatim with the preface writer of the Shanghai guji version.45 The emphasis on biography all but precludes other potential explanatory models for the novel. Reasons for certain narrative events are read into the novel through suggested parallels with inci-dents in Wei’s life, suppositions about his mental state and external circumstances. On the basis of one or two selected quotations from the novel, it is claimed that Huayue hen is an autobiographical work, and from this explanation a whole ideology of the text is derived. Huayue hen has developed through many changes, but its presenta-tion during the 1990s as the inward gaze of a failed literatus is both reductive and contradicts its editorial promotion as a good read.

Reading the Modern Novel: Authors and Editors What, then, is this novel, entitled Huayue hen? The question has most famously been posed in its “If the Mona Lisa is in the Louvre, where is Hamlet?” variant.46 For some modern editors, the answer appears to be: the story-text, stripped of paratextual features, in our new punctuated and formatted version. The ‘novel’ Huayue hen encom-passes all that the author wrote within the numbered chapters, and excludes prefaces, colophons, commentary in superscript, interlinear or chapter-ending forms, or the illustrations of any intermediary edi-tions. It is the work of the author alone, carrying his name on the front cover, an author absent (except by pseudonym) from all but the most recent editions. Where Huang writes of traditional fiction commentary that “‘author’ was often a figure carefully manipulated by the commentator to enhance the authority of his own interpreta--

45

Wei Xiuren, Huayue hen (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1996), p. 4. In its original version: “If the Mona Lisa is in the Louvre, where are Hamlet and Lycidas?” Bateson, F. W., “Modern Bibliography and the Literary Artifact,” English Studies Today, Georges A. Bonnard, ed. (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1961). 46

100

chloë starr

tion of the work,” he could equally well have been referring to a modern editor’s role. The prominence of the author’s name on the cover creates an affinity with this named historical figure who can be reconstituted at will.47 The authority of the text, both in the sense of the nature of author-ship and the play on fiction in attestation to the authenticity and veracity of the narrative, is such a characteristic feature of red-light fiction that much critical attention has been directed to this perspec-tive. Perhaps because of the overabundance of oblique references to (implied) authorship in the works,48 editors have seen little need to question their own stance towards the author and textual author-ity. The editors of more recent editions of Huayue hen have, like their predecessors, wanted to allow readers to approach as nearly as possible the author behind the text. For them, this is best effected through the addition of biographical details and critical notes. There is no assumption that achieving closeness to the author equates with closeness to an authorially sanctioned text. The notion that the text should carry its past with it is quietly discarded: while the biography of the author is given a high explanatory value, his text is not seen as having the revelatory powers that the editors have derived from it as a base for their commentaries. For twentieth-century Chinese editors, the quest has rarely been for final authorial intention, in contrast to generations of Western editors. Where multiple versions of early texts and manuscripts exist, the standard editorial policy, as described in the prefaces, has been to select one text, usually the earliest printed text, and collate against one later edition. Editors make no case for a systematic noting down of MS comparisons, or for producing stemmas or diagrammatic genealogies of prior texts, signalling an absence of belief in the need to regain the text that the author wrote. The history of Chinese novel texts from

47 Martin W. Huang, “Author(ity) and Reader in Traditional Chinese Xiaoshuo Commentary,” CLEAR 16, 1994: 41-67, p. 45. 48 Rolston argues that the notion of the implied author (i.e. the image of the author produced by a reader) has no analogue in traditional Chinese criticism, since the goal of reading was to commune with the author, not a constructed image of the author in the text, see Rolston, Traditional Chinese Fiction, p. 116. Most commentators wrote into their texts concrete images of the authors, making it “easier for ordinary readers to assimilate the reading of fiction to the classical form of reading centred on the discovery of the author’s intentions,” p. 120. On epireading—recovery of the original creative act—as the predominant mode of reading, see p. 112.

huayue hen

101

Shuihu zhuan through Honglou meng and beyond is one of multiple edi-tions, with little evidence of the Western editorial tendency towards the stabilisation of variation or the promotion of a single, authorially intended text.49 This produces a different reading process, where author and text remain critically separate. It is tempting to ascribe this to the legacy of ‘unauthored’ vernacular fiction, still essentially regarded as xiao dao, but the relatively detailed biographical notes on the author that accompany each novel suggest alternative causes. Modern Chinese editions use commentary and extra-textual means such as biographical details to point to the author’s meaning in the text, rather than seek the author’s version of a text. Where Western editors once invoked authorial intention to justify revisions, later editors have had more leeway to amend at will, in the consciousness that this was just one further, temporary, textual stasis.50 Nineteenth-century authors of courtesan texts would have expected editorial additions and emendations, particularly commen-tary, since works were written and circulated to be commented on, but the ‘historic descent’ of these nineteenth-century works since their initial printings has instead been a process of paring down—in the bibliographic codes, if not linguistic ones. In the same way as some early English works included lists of apologies for a lack of marginal notes in their texts or publications, with excuses ranging from a lack of time to their papers being lost or plundered,51 a degree of status was still attached to marginal notes and comments in the late nine-teenth century. A manuscript that had circulated among friends and contemporaries prior to publication would not return in its pristine state. Recent Western critics have argued that changes in meaning are introduced into texts even in such minor alterations as chang--

49

See Cohen, Texts and Textuality, p. 256. Critical editing in the West was construed as falling into two camps: the first producing an eclectic text based on several earlier ones, usually adopting a copy-text as close as possible to the author’s intended version and then amending errors, and the second putting on display variant and parallel readings. Gabler has characterised these two as ascending against the line of transmission, attempting to recover a lost text, or following a descending line of writing and transmission. The route of descent sees a work as a version, and variance between versions as text-constitutive, not corruptive. See Hans Walter Gabler, “Textual Studies and Criticism” in Oliphant and Bradford, eds., New Directions, pp. 154, 157. 51 D. F. McKenzie, “Speech-Manuscript-Print,” in Oliphant and Bradford, eds., New Directions, p. 104. 50

102

chloë starr

ing individual characters or using variant readings or forms.52 The boundaries between authorial and editorial changes are more fluid in the Chinese case, and both Qing dynasty writer and late twentiethcentury editor emend freely. Questions such as whether the editor can presume to alter an author’s decision, or what constitutes the ultimate form of his text, become less relevant where the form of a work is not presupposed to accord more to authorial design than any other vision. The immense changes in format through different editions of individual novels point to the diffusion of authority and the inabil-ity of authors to govern meaning in their works through stability in extra-textual codes. Primary authority over the bibliographic text is usually assigned in the West to the publishing institution, and over the linguistic text to the author, but the editors of modern red-light novels have usurped both functions and so taken total control of meaning of the texts—while still ascribing this to the author.53 The history of contemporary publications of texts now grouped as red-light fiction is notably diverse: works such as Huayue hen or Fengyue meng were not published in printed form until decades after the author’s death, leaving no authorially approved text for dissemination, while a novel such as Haishang hua liezhuan was published serially in a journal edited by the author himself.54 Where the author has direct input into the printed format of his text this further accretion of authority inevitably affects the status of any subsequent variants. The diversity in the proximity of authors to first editions (and varieties of print formats of those editions) cautions against a straightforward assess-ment of the uniform editorial policies imposed on modern series of red-light novels. If the textual codes of a novel are used to decipher editorial rationale, then the modern novel emerges as a detextualised story, recontextualised in the historical nineteenth century. Editors have

52

Tanselle, Textual Criticism, p. 53. McGann, Textual Condition, p. 66. 54 Evidence from Western studies of nineteenth-century works suggests weekly or monthly serialised novels were both written and produced differently from com-plete editions. On Haishang hua liezhuan and serialisation see Alexander Des Forges, “Building Shanghai, One Page at a Time: The Aesthetics of Instalment Fiction at the Turn of the Century,” Journal of Asian Studies 62.3, 2003: 781-810; on Fengyue meng see Hanan, “Fengyue Meng and the Courtesan Novel”: 345-372. 53

huayue hen

103

generally regarded a modern edition of Huayue hen as the same work as its previous texts, and prided themselves on the few changes they have made in their new version. This emphasis on the very few lin-guistic changes made supposes an editorial policy where transmission of Huayue hen entails accurately reproducing a linguistic text. Words equate to the novel, and that novel is iterative and allographic—it can be written in notational form. If this is so, then the particular physical form is of little real import. In the terms of continuing debate over whether a work can be said to exist independently of its physical manifestation, the courtesan editors give an affirmative answer, contrasting with the emphasis on the physical text through-out the narratives.

Emending the Text The range of textual change detailed across the five editions above raises questions about reading processes, and textual legitimacy. The view of texts as continuously made and re-made helps us begin to tease out threads to the question of how the editors of 1990s editions view their reproductions: as an illusion of reproduction, or as new texts? There has been much critical debate over the last twenty years in the West as to what degree of revision creates a new work, and apparently little theoretical basis for a compromise.55 The debate overlaps with the previous questions of authorship in that autho-rial revisions during the lifetime of a text can significantly alter its meaning: the ‘final’ version may be no more than one in a series of different works. While Honglou meng scholars are adept at tracing and analysing version histories, their work has not transferred readily into general theories on texts and textual editing, with scholarship on late Qing novels more heavily concentrated on the emendatio than

55 It has been argued, for example, that there is no necessary connection between the number of changes between texts and a changed conception, see Tanselle, Textual Criticism, p. 58. As Peter Shillingsburg writes “The difficulty editors and critics have in answering the question, When is a revised text a new work? and the contortions they go through to establish principles by which the question can be answered mechanically, testify to the fact that a desire for a single best text is not consonant with the facts about the production and existence of literary art.” Peter L. Shillingsburg, “Polymorphic, Polysemic,” in Bornstein and Williams, eds., Palimpsest, p. 34.

104

chloë starr

the recensio phase of work. It could be contended, though, that the revisions to the courtesan novels which have occurred in the edit-ing of many of the modern versions are so major as to constitute independent works. In this sense, it has been possible to construct a genre of novels in the 1990s where these works did not form a set in the 1890s or earlier. The issue is finessed where the texts are being styled as a series rather than as the historical writing of a certain author, but they cannot simultaneously be presented as both.56 While the bibliographical codes of the 1888 Fujian Wu Yu Tian edition of Huayue hen have been transformed in almost every con-ceivable way by the 1994 Shanghai guji version, the editors of the latter still list the emendations as minor alterations to the novel. In a similar vein, a modern Qilu shushe edition of Qinglou meng describes how Zou Tao’s commentary has been removed to accommodate readers’ needs, and then continues: Apart from this, other than adding modern punctuation, and changing long form characters to short form, and correcting variant characters for standard ones, we have completely retained the original appear-ance of the copy-text (diben) and have not allowed corrections at will, only making necessary corrections, consulting another edition (jiaoben) in the case of incomprehensible sections in the copy-text.57

Textual critics such as Tanselle have dismissed editorial claims which adduce ‘the reader’s convenience’ as the rationale for normalising a text. Such a position, he claims, “involves two curious assumptions: first, that the reader’s convenience sometimes takes precedence over textual accuracy; second, that certain acts of punctuation and spelling are not significant parts of the original and can therefore be altered without altering a reader’s understanding of the text.”58 Apart from ‘reader’s convenience,’ another frequently cited cause for editorial decisions to publish is didactic value.59 The publishing notes to the

56 In an interesting parallel, Tanselle writes that studying poems by particular authors or representatives of certain historical periods requires a knowledge of what the authors themselves wrote, while a study by theme or type requires only the poems, whose transmissional history is irrelevant (Tanselle, Textual Criticism p. 70). In choosing not to reproduce fully the texts as close to authorial versions as viable, the editors have directed readers into a serial reading. It would be easy to ascribe this to a simple marketing ploy. 57 Muzhen Shanren, Qinglou meng (Shandong: Qilu shushe, 1993), p. 243. 58 Tanselle, Textual Criticism, p. 9. 59 See e.g. Zhang Chunfan, Jiu wei gui (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe,

huayue hen

105

Taiwan Hanyuan Wenhua edition of Fengyue meng in its series MingQing xiaoshuo shibu xilie open by placing the novel as one in a series offered to the reader by the library and publishing house. The stated justification for such a sequence lies in its educative value, filling in the gaps in knowledge of the young where this does not extend beyond San guo yanyi (Tales of three kingdoms), Shuihu zhuan (The water margin) and Honglou meng, and in presenting works which were once in themselves influential.60 This educational mission is a continuation of centuries-old ideas on the production of anthologies and canonical series.61 The proliferation of publishers bringing out editions of one or several of these works rather undermines claims to furthering educational needs by making available undiscovered texts. While the identity of the readers supposedly demanding such novels and desiring them in an easy and convenient format is never revealed, the widespread availability of the courtesan texts throughout major chains of bookshops does suggest that their market surveys are not far off the mark. The minor character emendations that most of the modern editors acknowledge are often far less numerable than those of the inter-mediate editions. The relatively small number of differences in the linguistic texts shows that if words are taken to constitute the text of a novel, the editors have done a good job. A comparison of two chapters of the Shanghai guji (1994) and the Guangyi shuju (c.1910) versions of Huayue hen, for example, reveals around forty differences in one chapter (Chapter 7) and sixty in the other (Chapter 15). This number includes instances of reversed character order, omissions and accidental or incorrect characters, but not repeated alterations or vocabulary substitutions (such as dao for yue, both ‘to say’). The vast majority of differences between either of these two texts and the 1888 Wu Yu Tian edition are alterations in style or vocabulary in

1994), ‘Chuban Shuoming’, p. 1. The preface to the Shanghai guji chubanshe series of social-sentiment novels also begins with the claim that the series is being published in response to readers’ demands. 60 Hanshang Mengren, Fengyue meng (Taibei: Hanyuan, 1993), pp. 3-5. 61 Pauline Yu writes that “even in the Qing pedagogical concerns remained paramount” after describing the educational mission of anthologists from the Tang onwards, where the reader was aided through more heavily punctuated and anno-tated editions. Pauline Yu, “Canon Formation in Late Imperial China,” in Culture and State in Chinese History, Theodore Huters, R. Bin Wong and Pauline Yu, eds. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 97-98.

106

chloë starr

the earlier not the modern text. Some of the differences are simple typographical errors, some are synonyms, and in the modern edition replacement characters for unfamiliar vocabulary (e.g. yingwu for yingge) or to make reading simpler for readers (such as replacing niwo with zanmen). The most obvious changes in the Shanghai guji text from its original have clearly been undertaken to produce a more politically correct reading. These include replacing the pejorative terms huifei and huizi for the Hui insurrectionists with ones more acceptable in a modern multi-ethnic society: huibing and huibu. As for the claims of the editors not to have altered or excised any large sections of texts, these appear to be borne out by a cross-checking of sample chapters. A selection of Chapters 15, 20 and 37 for comparison on the grounds that their content matter might have indicated a removal of sexually explicit material, demonstrates that the modern text proves to be complete, and the novel as chaste as promoted. One interesting feature of the two modern texts, which casts doubt on the editorial process, is the almost complete congruence of para-graph breaks in them. Chapters 9 and 10 of the novel have identical paragraph break points, even where there is a sizeable discrepancy in adjacent paragraph lengths, and Chapters 7 and 8 have only one slight difference each. It seems fundamentally unlikely that two editors reading an unbroken classical text would consistently select identical points at which to register shifts in meaning or sense pauses. The dif-ference in print size between the two modern texts means that some paragraphs of a sentence or two in the Shanghai guji edition are not aesthetically pleasing, eliminating page layout as a guiding principle for paragraphing. A look at other modern editions confirms that there is nothing inevitable about the division of paragraphs. The Renmin Wenxue Huayue hen (1982), for example, is closer to an early text in having far fewer paragraph breaks across the same four chapters, usually only indenting for distinct time shifts in the narrative. While there may be a sense to a modern reader of a natural paragraph break, and rules to be learnt for constituting a modern paragraph, such as the tendency to begin with a time marker, the level of con-sistency in the 1990s editions studied suggests later editors’ reliance on other modern texts in their editing process. If this proves true, then lazy editing quite possibly extends beyond the unacknowledged borrowing of earlier decisions on paragraphing. Any form of publication entails loss. Transcription from manu-script to print removes traces of crossings out, and aberrant spellings

huayue hen

107

or punctuation are often altered. While Chinese editors have paid lip-service to faithful transcription of characters and sentences, the desirability of close transcription of spatial or physical features of texts has not been addressed.62 Aside from the import of the litany of changes following the ‘other than’ clause in the above statement by Zou Tao, the ‘retention of the original appearance’ neglects to mention that the original text was inscribed vertically, read from right to left, in several stitch-bound volumes, in pages of very few characters, on fragrant, quality paper, with all of the colophons etc. mentioned above. The statement hides its contradictions: the belief in a literary work as a mutable entity that can be reissued and altered at will stalls against this insistence that the original is somehow retained in the given version.

Conclusions Nineteenth-century literature began its critical life as a form of politi-cal theory, being viewed as an expression of political/literary critical revolution. In some ways the ground has shifted only slightly: the serial preface to one recent set of late Qing romantic works reads: These novels all to a greater or lesser degree reflected society and human emotions. They all took their material from daily life, were based upon reality, and, in the descriptions of the true sentiments and real feelings of characters in the book, were found the social and human visions of the author.63

The phenomenon of the wide-scale re-issue of Qing courtesan works is one further development in the surprisingly long-lived dissemina--

62 For example, the Fengyue meng edition described here claims: “For the sake of scholarly research and preservation, in the process of arranging [the text] we have not made any abridgements, and in order to save space, apart from a couple of instances we have not made any text-critical notes (jiaoji): these ought all to be made clear” (p. 5). Wang Chirun, writing a note on the punctuation of the Qilu shushe Pinhua Baojian, acknowledges in common with most editors that some alterations have been made: “Where the copy-text is intelligible, no corrections have been made; where the copy-text has wrong characters or expressions which are not complete, then, in consultation with other editions or internal evidence from the copy-text, we have made careful corrections” (Pinhua Baojian, p. 514). 63 See e.g. ‘Chuban shuoming’ in Zhang Chunfan, Jiu wei gui (Shanghai: Shang-hai guji chubanshe, 1994).

108

chloë starr

tion of these novels, attesting both to an acceptance of literature as a playful pastime, and to the sense that Qing fiction has didactic value as a historical form. The publication of mass-market, cheap gaudy editions favours the first, while the publishers’ notes in those same works posit their value entirely in literary and educational terms. The texts themselves convey the values of editors and liter-ary critics: the congruence of a revival of interest in the nineteenth century among literary critics with a new spate of publications from that period makes it difficult to gauge which came first. The modern editions compound this paradox: they are both highly commercial editions and often produced under the joint auspices of a university and a commercial press. As the text evolves, its meaning evolves; each edition produces only a temporary stasis in its presentation of textual meaning. For the modern versions studied, this textual stasis is very brief, especially given a situation where so many versions are on the market concur-rently. The novel itself is a series of variations. Abstract notions of the ‘text’ of a novel only exist in as much as the text is fixed anew in each edition: it is the particular inscription which creates a work. These particular manifestations of nineteenth-century red-light fic-tion have been moulded into generic or series readings by such quasi-textual features as cover and preface. The instability of the text demonstrated across the chronological history of a work such as Huayue hen, where successive editions display different prefaces and publishing forewords as well as covers and print styles, suggests that meaning too is conditional and transitory. What is disingenuous in the modern versions is the failure to acknowledge this fact. These often read as the definitive, authoritative version, with few references to previous texts, or to the formulae which create meaning deployed by editors of each new version. As Shillingsburg writes, “each copy is a witness to its source—that is all.”64 Editors who include forewords are adopting a literary critical function, but rarely concede their role in the history of the novel. The narratives of red-light novels self-consciously encourage a reflection on the process of reading

64 Shillingsburg, “Polymorphic, Polysemic,” p. 37. The danger in the use of copies, he states, “arises only when one mistakes the copy for the original and attributes original qualities and authority to the copy.” This is the worst charge that can be laid against the modern editions: not that they emend or re-package, but that they misrepresent.

huayue hen

109

through such means as poetry or the figure of the narrator, but the streamlined modern editions have sought to deflect an active response to the text’s own discursive acts. Recent courtesan novel editions have reinvested authority in the author figure, yet there has been only a partial attempt to reproduce what the author wrote. Editorial, rather than authorial, practices have created a retrospective genre out of dispersed texts. This is not a unitary grouping, but many overlapping genres and series. The edi-tors of the Shanghai guji series preface are right in saying that there is no one name for these ‘social human sentiment’ novels. There is no courtesan genre, and has not been even since Lu Xun’s defini-tive presentation of xiaxie works, but everywhere there are always attempts to create meaning for individual texts as members of a given series of works. Authority and genre are linked, and the creation of courtesan novels as works in categories can be associated with a low sense of the original, or authorial, text as a reading to be consulted and carefully reproduced. Generic labelling, editing and commen-tary suggest a non-authorial view of the text, that its ontology is not predicated on any original authorial intention or first manuscript. A simultaneous stress on authorial biography, however, complicates this reading. This is further problematised by the novel’s own dialogue on the text, and its relation the author figure, an author figure who often appears as a named character in the framing chapters of the novels. While the meaning of the narrative is read in terms of the life of the author, there is little attempt to recover his reading of the text as refracted through the prefaces. Intervention, the conscious reworking of the textual tradition, is justified on the grounds that it produces a text acceptable to the needs of the modern reader. Editors’ claims to adhere to the original (one which equates to the linguistic text of the work) need to be read against their willingness to make changes and construct a new text, without any sense that this differs from the author’s. There is an unresolved contradiction between the deliberate historicising that ‘corrects’ a few awkward terms, and the stated aim in every set of editorial notes of preserving the historical priority of form. The partial, largely unrecognised, modernizing that the texts have undergone is enlightening in the degree that it sees the message of the text as being impervious to the medium. This modern text in short form characters is differently parsed, laid out in a horizontal, Western style, is so very much a late twentieth-century text, and yet is Huayue

110

chloë starr

hen. The separation of textual authority from a notion of the author’s intended text implies that the text is regarded as reconstitutable in China, as indeed the vernacular text of a non-literatus author was for much of recorded literary history. Authority has been dispersed from author to printing house to editor. Traces of a split can be seen in the current cultural remaking of classical texts, which are both a cheap source of publishing revenue and a means of guiding readers closer to their cultural heritage. These functions are divided among editions, but with a price differential tipping the balance of authority towards the more expensive scholarly editions. The question “What is the modern Chinese editorial concept of the literary text?” finds several answers given differing editorial poli-cies. In the majority of cases, where novels are published as one in a series, textual relations are built up synchronically, not with ante-cedent texts of the same novel but via other texts of a similar time period, chosen by the editors. The idea of a mini-canon of courtesan works, formed of those novels which are published repeatedly by dif-ferent publishers under various serial rubrics (social sentiment novels, Qing dynasty romances, great classical works, etc.) may be linked to their reproduction as works of named authors. In all but the earli-est texts, the biography of the author is taken to be the single most determinate explanatory factor for a given novel. A most unlikely canon, of failed examinees writing of their brothel years, has been created through the attention paid to the authors as individuals and through attempts to homogenize their experiences and narratives in series of publications. This is counter both to the categorisation of novels by title—the only widespread form of indexing used in China—and to understandings of the literary or exemplary worth of canonical texts. Though the life of the author is read into his novel where at all possible, the import of his writing and choice of friends to annotate his text (where he had any control) are minimised. The author is promoted as the creator of a unique, unitary novel, and then quietly effaced from his text.

poetry of ruan dacheng

111

CHAPTER FOUR

CONFLICTING DISCOURSE AND THE DISCOURSE OF CONFLICT: EREMITISM AND THE PASTORAL IN THE POETRY OF RUAN DACHENG (c.1587-1646) Alison Hardie Introduction The late-Ming politician and dramatist Ruan Dacheng1 (c.15871646) has suffered from a bad press since at least the 1620s, when he threw in his lot with the party at court associated with the name of the powerful eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568-1627), in opposition to the Eastern Grove (Donglin) faction. He compounded this error of judgment by surrendering to the invading Manchus in 1645; shortly thereafter he died, and it has never been entirely clear whether he fell or was pushed. Although Ruan’s plays are much the best known part of his liter-ary output, he was also recognised in his own time as a distinguished poet, associated with the Gong’an school. In addition, as well as being a politician and writer, Ruan Dacheng also played an important role in late-Ming garden culture, as the owner of several gardens, patron of the garden designer and theorist Ji Cheng (b. 1582), and publisher of Ji Cheng’s book Yuanye (The craft of gardens).2 Garden historians have paid some attention to those of Ruan’s poems which

* Without Professor Dudbridge’s terrifying but enormously stimulating “Intro-duction to Sinology” course in the Oxford Master of Studies in Chinese Studies, I could never have scratched the surface of Ruan Dacheng’s poems. In addition, I am deeply grateful to him for the time and effort he expended more recently in helping me to understand many of the poems translated here. I am delighted to present the resulting paper in token of gratitude for his inspiration. 1 Formal name (zi) Jizhi, cognomina (hao) Yuanhai, Shichao, Baizi shan qiao. 2 Ji Cheng, Yuanye zhushi, Chen Zhi, ed. (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye chubanshe, 1981, repr. Taibei: Mingwen shuju, 1983); translated as id., The Craft of Gardens, by Alison Hardie (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988).

112

alison hardie

are addressed to or concerned with Ji Cheng himself, but in recent times Ruan’s poetry in general has been little studied, though there are signs that the situation is changing, as I will indicate below. Ruan’s poetry forms a substantial body of work, and a complete and thorough study of it would go well beyond the limited scope of a paper such as this. My aim here, therefore, is to take as a starting point those of Ruan’s poems which are particularly concerned with his own and his family’s gardens, both in Anqing and in Nanjing, and to examine them in relation to some themes which play a large part in them, the eremitic, the pastoral, and the political. Ruan’s apparent aspiration to be a hermit and his extolling of the pastoral life in his poetry, written during his years as a political outcast, form a strong contrast to what we know from other (certainly biased) historical sources about the efforts which he expended on trying to revive his official career. His continuing interest in politics and current affairs, indeed, is evident from many of his poems, including those with an eremitic or pastoral theme. There was clearly an internal conflict in Ruan’s mind between engagement in political life and withdrawal to the life of leisure—the classic opposition between engagement (chå) and withdrawal (chç)—as well as conflict in his life between his own political associates and their opponents, the Eastern Grove faction. In analysing Ruan’s poetry, we can see how he uses garden culture with its associated ideas of eremitism and pastoralism both to medi-ate his internal conflicts and to position himself as the injured party in the factional conflicts of the Tianqi (1621-1627) and Chongzhen (1628-1644) periods. Also, by reconsidering Ruan primarily as a poet rather than in his more familiar guises as a dramatist or a politician, I hope to contribute towards enlarging our understanding of a man whose position in the history of early modern Chinese literature has been greatly undervalued as a result of his notorious political reputa-tion, and to show that the quality and originality of Ruan’s poetry fully justifies the high opinion which some of his contemporaries held of his literary ability.

Ruan’s Life and Reputation Life and Politics The basic outline of Ruan’s life is fairly well known; the political aspects of his life have been studied by Robert Crawford, although

poetry of ruan dacheng

113

Crawford does not appear to have had access to Ruan’s literary works.3 Ruan Dacheng’s great-grandfather was Ruan E (jinshi 1544), one of the more prominent adherents of Yan Song (jinshi 1505, died c.1565); Ruan E settled in Tongcheng, but Ruan Dacheng was apparently brought up in Huaining (both in Anqing prefecture). A great-uncle, Ruan Zihua (jinshi 1598), was well-known as a poet and may have had some influence on the young Dacheng; Qian Qianyi (1582-1664) appends a few sentences on Dacheng to his biography of Ruan Zihua.4 Ruan Dacheng became a Presented Scholar (jinshi) in 1616, and an intermittent official career followed. His very early career is unclear, but his first post appears to have been as a Messenger (xingren); in 1621 he was appointed a Supervising Secretary for the Ministry of Revenue (huke jishizhong), and apparently remained there until 1623, when he was appointed as Supervising Secretary of the Right for the Ministry of Civil Offices (like you jishizhong). However, fairly soon thereafter he had to return home for a period of mourning. Ruan’s name came up in 1624 for appointment as Chief Supervis-ing Secretary of the Ministry of Civil Offices (like du jishizhong, rank 7a), although the appointment was opposed by the Eastern Grove, who supported the candidacy of Wei Dazhong (1575-1625); Ruan succeeded in obtaining the post, but resigned shortly afterwards. It seems to have been this conflict which led him to associate himself with the eunuch Wei Zhongxian.5 After the fall of Wei Zhongxian in 1627, Ruan managed to survive for a short time and indeed achieved promotion to Vice-Minister of the Court of Imperial Entertainment (guanglu shaoqing) in 1628, but he was removed from office in 1629 or 1630, and the following year was convicted of involvement in the “Treason Case” (i.e. of association with Wei Zhongxian).6

3 Robert Crawford, “The Biography of Juan Ta-ch’eng”, Chinese Culture 6.2, March 1965, pp. 28-105. This article contains a full translation of the joint biography of Ruan Dacheng and Ma Shiying from the Ming History: Zhang Tingyu, ed., Ming shi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), vol. 26: 7937-7945. See also Ruan’s biography in Arthur W. Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period 1644-1912 [hereafter ECCP] (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943), pp. 398-399. 4 Qian Qianyi, Liechao shiji xiaozhuan (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1961), 645-647. Despite the difference in generations, Ruan Zihua cannot have been very much older than his great-nephew. 5 ECCP, p. 398; Crawford, “The Biography of Juan Ta-ch’eng”, pp. 49-50. 6 Crawford, “The Biography of Juan Ta-ch’eng”, p. 53.

114

alison hardie

Ruan then lived in retirement until the end of the Ming, first in his home district and then, after rural banditry became a threat in the early 1630s, in Nanjing.7 It was during this time that he wrote his dramas and poetry, and became noted for an interest in mili-tary affairs, allegedly as a means to return to official life, to which end he also maintained an active social life.8 In 1638, a group of scholars associated with the Eastern Grove and its successor the Revival Society (Fu she) issued the Liudu fangluan gongjie (Proclamation of Nanjing) denouncing Ruan; they accused him, on the basis of his military interests, of being in league with rebels. He is then said to have closed his door to all visitors except his close friend Ma Shiying (jinshi 1619),9 although this is clearly not true: numerous poems from succeeding years attest to continued social activity. When the Southern Ming (Nan Ming) resistance government was set up in Nanjing under the Prince of Fu (Fu wang) after the fall of Beijing in 1644, Ruan obtained a high official position through the influence of Ma Shiying, but after the collapse of the Prince of Fu’s regime in 1645, Ruan surrendered to the Manchus and died, apparently from a fall (some said a stroke following excessive debauchery), while accompanying the Qing army over the mountains into Fujian. He died without male descendants. Ruan has been reviled ever since, but we should bear in mind that the history of this period was largely written by his political oppo-nents, and that in the factional in-fighting of the late Ming, there were certainly faults on both sides. Moreover, Ruan was not unique in deciding to go over to the Manchus; Qian Qianyi, for example, showed no less alacrity in doing so, but because of his association with the Eastern Grove, he was criticised far less severely by histo-rians of the period. Three and a half centuries later, we should be 7 Cao Xun, “Ji Cheng yanjiu”, Jianzhushi (The Architect) 13, 1982: 4, places the move to Nanjing in 1635, but does not give his source. 8 Qian Chengzhi, “Ruan Dacheng benmo xiaoji”, Suo zhi lu, juan 6, in Xuxiu Siku quanshu (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1995-2002), vol. 444: 192. I would like to thank Carolyn Ford for help in obtaining a copy of this. Ruan’s interest in military affairs was not an eccentricity; his family had a military tradition, and his great-uncle Ruan Zihua was noted for strategic ability (Liu Zhizhong, “Ruan Dacheng jiashi kao”, Wenxian 3, 2004: 193-4, 199; I am grateful to Professor Dud-bridge for bringing this article to my attention). 9 Zhang Tingyu, ed., Ming shi, 7938. The Ming History may be following the gos-sipy account of Qian Chengzhi, who adds, “Not that anyone visited him anyway” (Qian Chengzhi, “Ruan Dacheng benmo xiaoji”, 192).

poetry of ruan dacheng

115

able to take a more dispassionate attitude towards Ruan Dacheng. Literary Reputation Even those contemporaries who disliked and disapproved of Ruan Dacheng were prepared to admit his brilliance as a playwright and theatrical director. The distinguished scholar-official Wang Siren (1575-1646), who knew him personally, regarded him as the equal of Tang Xianzu (1550-1616), the greatest dramatist of the previ-ous generation.10 Zhang Dai11 (1597-1681), the essayist and drama enthusiast, wrote of watching three operas at Ruan’s house, and praised his care and attention to detail in composing his texts and training his singers; he remarked that “Ruan Yuanhai [Dacheng] was extremely talented; it was a pity that he was so restlessly ambi-tious” (Ruan Yuanhai da you caihua, hen juxin wujing).12 This theme was taken up by Kong Shangren (1648-1718) in his historical drama Taohua shan (The peach-blossom fan), in which Ruan appears as one of the major villains; in one of the scenes, adherents of the Eastern Grove watch one of Ruan’s operas and comment favour-ably on it, while criticising its author’s moral character.13 This inci-dent, also recounted by the historian Xu Zi (1810-1862),14 may be based on the occasion when the poet and later Ming loyalist Mao Xiang (1611-1693) and his concubine Dong Xiaowan (1624-1651) were entertained by other members of the Revival Society at the premiere of Ruan’s Yanzi jian (The swallow messenger) in Nanjing at the mid-autumn festival of 1642; the romantic plot had all the women in tears, and Mao recalled the performance years later as an other-worldly, fantastical experience (zhi jin si zhi, bu chi youxian zhen shang menghuan ye).15 10

Wang Siren, “Shi cuo ren Chun deng mi ji xu”, in Pan Xi’en, ed., Qiankun zhengqi ji (n.p., 1875), vol.35: 505.23b-24a; also in Ruan Dacheng, Ruan Dacheng xiqu sizhong, Xu Lingyun & Hu Jinwang, eds. (Hefei: Huangshan shushe, 1993), 169-170. 11 Zi Zongzi. 12 Zhang Dai, Tao’an mengyi & Xihu mengxun, Li Ren, ed., Ming Qing xingling wenxue zhenpin (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 1995), 157 (“Ruan Yuanhai xi”). 13 Kong Shangren, Taohua shan (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1959, repr. 1988), 29-36 (Scene 4: “Eavesdropping at the play”). 14 Xu Zi, Xiaotian jinian fukao, Wang Chongwu, ed. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1957), 191. 15 Mao Xiang, Yingmei an yiyu, in Shen Fu, Fusheng liu ji (wai san zhong), Jin Xingyao and Jin Wennan, eds. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2000), 13-14.

116

alison hardie

When Ruan Dacheng was a promising young man, before he attained political notoriety, Yuan Zhongdao (1570-1626), who became a Presented Scholar in the same year (1616) and saw him socially in Beijing in 1617,16 wrote enthusiastically of his ability as a poet, prais-ing him as a true successor to the literary ideals of Yuan Hongdao (1568-1610) and the Gong’an school. He described Ruan’s poetry as “unusual without being disorderly, fresh without being paltry” (qi er bu xiao, xin er bu xian), and stated that Ruan “has made great contributions to poetry in the style of Zhonglang [Yuan Hongdao]” (da you gong yu xue Zhonglang zhi shi zhe ye).17 The Gong’an school was of course noted for its reaction against the archaistic style of the Earlier and Later Seven Masters (Qianhou qi zi), and for its emphasis on authenticity and the expression of “native sensibility” (xingling).18 Ruan’s name is not one that is usually associated with the school. This may be partly because most of the writers associated with it—the three Yuans themselves, Jiang Yingke (1556-1605), Tang Xianzu and others—are known for both prose and poetry, whereas Ruan seems never to have had any impact as a prose writer. No doubt it is also a result of Ruan’s later notoriety. It is important to bear the link with the Gong’an school in mind when reading Ruan’s poems. The title of Ruan Dacheng’s collected poems, Yonghuaitang shi (Poems from the Hall of Chanting What is in my Heart) clearly refers to the Yong huai shi (Poems chanting what is in my heart) of Ruan Ji (210-263), one of the famous Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove (Zhulin qixian).19 As Donald Holzman has pointed out, the eighty-two

16 Yuan Zhongdao, Youju feilu, Song Ming Qing xiaopin wenji jizhu, annotated by Bu Wenying (Shanghai: Shanghai yuandong chubanshe, 1996), 280-281. 17 Yuan Zhongdao, “Ruan Jizhi shi xu”, Kexuezhai ji, Qian Bocheng, ed. (Shang-hai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1989), vol.1: 462. Yuan’s preface does not appear in the current edition of Ruan’s poems; it may have been written for a collection of his early poems, He xiao ji (Harmonising with the flute), published in 1619, which now survives in a unique copy in the Tianyi ge Library: see Hu Jinwang, “Ruan Dacheng shige de lishi jingyu yu qi shiji banben lunlüe”, Anqing Shifan Xueyuan xuebao (shehui kexue ban) [Journal of Anqing Teachers College (Social Science Edi-tion)], 18.2, 1999: 42-45, 65. 18 On the Gong’an school, see Jonathan Chaves, trans. and intr., Pilgrim of the Clouds: poems and essays by Yüan Hung-tao and His Brothers (New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1978), pp. 15-21, and Chou Chih-p’ing, Yüan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Chapter 2. 19 I am most grateful to the participant in the XIV EACS Conference, August 2002, who alerted me to this reference.

poetry of ruan dacheng

117

Yong huai poems constitute Ruan Ji’s masterpiece; the title phrase had never been used before, but almost immediately became the name of a poetic genre. Ruan Ji’s poems, while commenting by innuendo on current events, are also concerned with ultimate values.20 By using the same title, Ruan Dacheng is evidently claiming to be in a poetic line of descent from Ruan Ji, and to be spiritually akin to him; the Ruan family did in fact claim actual descent from Ruan Ji (whose native place was in Henan).21 Because of Ruan Dacheng’s political notoriety, his literary work has been unjustly neglected. Ruan’s famous plays are seldom, if ever, performed now, though a reading of the best known, The Swallow Messenger of 1642 and Chun deng mi (Spring lantern riddles) of 1633, also known as Shi cuo ren (Ten cases of mistaken identity), confirms his brilliance in both plot construction and writing. His importance as a dramatist is still generally recognised, but not his status as a poet. His poems were “rediscovered” in the 1920s by a group of distinguished scholars, and were published under the auspices of the then Central University (Zhongyang Daxue) in 1928, with a volume of addenda (buyi) in 1929, but interest in them then appears to have faded.22 In recent years, Ruan’s four surviving plays have been republished in a critical edition (in one case there are two editions),23 but his poems make only occasional appearances in anthologies of Ming writing.24 So far as I know, there is only one contemporary edition of his poetry, and this is simply a photographic reproduction of the 1928 edition, omitting the addenda, and with no critical apparatus.25

20 Donald Holzman, Poetry and politics: the life and works of Juan Chi, AD 210-263 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 1. 21 Liu Zhizhong, “Ruan Dacheng jiashi kao”, 193. 22 Hu Jinwang, “Ruan Dacheng shige de lishi jingyu”. 23 Ruan Dacheng, Ruan Dacheng xiqu sizhong; id., Yanzi jian, Liu Yihe and Zhang Anquan, eds. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1986). The other two plays are Mounihe (The Sakyamuni pearl) and Shuangjinbang (Double examination success; both undated). 24 E.g. Li Mengsheng, ed., Yuan Ming shi xuan (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 1993), 78-80; Qian Zhonglian, ed., Ming Qing shi jingxuan (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1992), 74-85. Nothing by Ruan is included in Jin Xingyao, ed., Ming shi sanbai shou (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1995), nor in Qiao Li, ed., Ming shi sanbai shou yixi (Changchun: Jilin wenshi chubanshe, 1993), nor in Jonathan Chaves, trans. and ed., The Columbia Book of Later Chinese Poetry: Yüan, Ming and Ch’ing dynasties (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). 25 Ruan Dacheng, Yonghuaitang shi (Taibei: Taiwan Zhonghua shuju, 1971);

118

alison hardie

This dearth is not a fair reflection of Ruan’s significant position in the literary world of the late Ming. There can be little doubt that it is a result of the devaluing of the poetry because of the perceived moral depravity of its author; the fact that Ruan had no sons to defend his reputation after his death must have played a part in this process. Recently there have been indications that Ruan’s status as a poet is being reconsidered in China, with articles on his poetry being published in relatively obscure academic journals such as that of Zhangzhou Teachers College,26 and most recently a study of his family background and relationships in the National Library of China journal Wenxian.27 It is certainly time that Ruan’s poetry should be taken more seriously, both for its considerable intrinsic merits and for its interest as a reflection of the personality of Ruan himself, a fascinating and in some ways archetypal late-Ming figure. Ruan Dacheng as garden patron To historians of Chinese gardens, Ruan Dacheng is best known as the patron of the garden designer and theorist Ji Cheng, whose Yuanye was published in Anqing in the 1630s under Ruan’s family imprint, with a preface by Ruan Dacheng himself.28 Some of Ruan’s poems are addressed to Ji Cheng, who is also obliquely referred to in a sequence of poems by Ruan on the Awareness Garden (Wu yuan) of Wang Shiheng in Yizhen (now Yizheng).29 Ruan was clearly deeply interested in garden culture. Many of his poems are concerned with his own gardens (he had several), those of members of his family, and those of his friends. In the following paragraph I will briefly summarise the locations of the Ruan family’s gardens;

hereafter YHTS. I use the arabic-numeral pagination in this edition. I understand that Professor Hu Jinwang and colleagues at Anqing Teachers College are hoping to bring out a new edition of Ruan’s poetry in 2006. 26 E.g. Hu Jinwang, “Teshu xintai de yishu zheshe—Ruan Dacheng huaigu shi lunlüe”, Zhangzhou Shifan Xueyuan xuebao 4, 2003: 36-40. 27 Liu Zhizhong, “Ruan Dacheng jiashi kao”. 28 On the relationship between Ji Cheng and Ruan, see Cao Xun, “Ji Cheng yanjiu”. This is a very useful article, but some of Cao’s conclusions are speculative and should be treated with caution: there is no evidence that Ji Cheng designed a garden for Ruan in Huaining. 29 For this and other material on the Awareness Garden, see Alison Hardie, “The Awareness Garden of Wang Shiheng in Yizhen”, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 24.4, 2004, pp. 272-279.

poetry of ruan dacheng

119

I discuss elsewhere the evidence for their locations and characteristics, so I will not go into detail here.30 The main garden or estate occupied by Ruan Dacheng himself in his native Huaining was Stone Nest (Shichao). This was located to the north or north-east of Huaining county town (now Anqing city). A building named Dove Ridge Thatched Hall (Jiuling cao-tang) was probably part of the Stone Nest estate. It is likely that the name Dove Ridge carries an allusion to Ruan Ji’s rhapsody Jiu fu (The doves). It is possible that the Hall of Chanting What is in my Heart (Yonghuaitang) was also located on this estate, though it may have been in the family’s town residence. In the hills to the west of Huaining county town was the Baizi Hill Villa (Baizi shan bieye), located in an area which was famous for its peach and prunus blos-som in the spring.31 After Ruan Dacheng left Huaining in the early to mid-1630s, as a result of increasing bandit activity in the area, he took up residence in Nanjing. There, he had a garden named the Assembly Garden (Ji yuan), evidently an allusion to his formal name (zi) Jizhi; this garden may have been in the vicinity of the Ancestor’s Hall Temple (Zutang si) in the low hills to the south of the city. The garden included features named Ten Endowments Belvedere (Shilai ge), Mirror Boat (Jing fang), Fragrant Islet (Xiang yu), Damask Snow Pavilion (Qixue ting), Drinking to Antiquity Studio (Zhuogu zhai) and Rock Obeisance Level (Shibai ping). Ruan’s father, Ruan Yixun, occupied a garden named the Good Beginning Garden (Chu yuan) near Mochou Lake (Mochou hu) in the south-west outskirts of Nan-jing; Ruan Dacheng himself also spent a lot of time in this garden, which may well have been designed by his protegé Ji Cheng. In the following sections I will first present translations of a num-ber of Ruan’s poems associated with specific gardens belonging to himself and his father, and then discuss the poems in relation to a variety of linked themes which emerge from the poems themselves: the eremitic, the pastoral, and the political. Because of the specific focus of my analysis, I will discuss in some detail Ruan’s allusions to

30 Alison Hardie (Xia Lisen), “Ruan Dacheng yuanlin kao”, Anqing Shifan Xueyuan xuebao, forthcoming. I would like to express my gratitude to Mr Wang Changlin and his colleagues at Anqing Teachers College for their warm hospitality and kindness on my brief visit to Anqing in April 2005. 31 Liu Yun et al., eds., Huaining xianzhi [1686], Zhongguo fangzhi congshu: Huadong difang, vol.730 (Taibei: Chengwen chubanshe, 1985), 190.

120

alison hardie

the archetypal recluse Tao Qian32 (365-427); the poems undoubtedly also contain a rich texture of allusions to and resonances with other literature, but these cannot be explored here.33

The Garden Poems I will present my translations of selected poems by Ruan divided according to the gardens to which they refer. Within each subsection, the poems appear in the order in which they come in Ruan’s Yong-huaitang shi. It is not always clear whether the poems were published in chronological order or not; in some parts of the collection, the poems clearly are in chronological order, while in others they are not. Where a date for an individual poem can be derived from the Poems, e.g. by appearing in the fascicles entitled Bingzi shi (Poems of 1636), I have appended the date to the poem title; in some cases I have cautiously adopted a date given by Cao Xun in his article “Ji Cheng yanjiu”, though it is not always clear to me how he has deduced the date. Much more work needs to be done on the textual history of the Yonghuaitang shi.34 My translations here are intended to convey the primary meaning of the source texts, and have no pretensions to literary merit; Ruan’s quality as a poet should be judged by the originals alone. A. Stone Nest A.1 Moved by thoughts of the past on spending a moonlit night in Master Ling’s old room at Stone Nest [1633?] By the moonlight on the hills I enjoy that brightness in solitude; After the rain the mountain air is clear. To cleanse my heart I cleave to the dew on the flowers; I intone the scriptures accompanied by the sound of the spring. In the darkness of the bamboos I seem to be leafing through the sutras;

32

Zi Yuanming. Glen Dudbridge has alerted us to the importance of allusion and resonance with earlier literature in prose as well as poetry; see The Tale of Li Wa: Study and critical edition of a Chinese story from the ninth century (London: Ithaca Press, 1983), especially pp. 99-102. 34 For an initial survey, see Hu Jinwang, “Ruan Dacheng shige de lishi jingyu”. 33

poetry of ruan dacheng

121

On the spreading moss I have the sense of brewing an elixir. As I think of the time when you passed away, Frost forms on the plants in the autumn glen.35 A.2 At Stone Nest, I got up in the night to look at the moon, and afterwards it rained The moon over the mountains has not yet set When suddenly a fine mountain rain starts to fall. Through it, the moon extends its solitary glow; The rain succeeds in extinguishing the remaining heat. This pure scene is something that heaven [usually] conceals: The two [rain and moon] do not usually go together; And the man who roosts upon the cliff, alone, Does not object to either clear skies or rain. It is as though these were flowers placed in a vase, And I could pluck whichever of them I liked.36 To empty my fragrant goblet facing the moon Never grows dull however often done. Taking advantage of the passing of this light rain, I plant my staff and carry my sickle at my belt. I will cut down those ferns on the rock, And await this moon-toad above the tip of the peak. When tired, I rest my head on my crooked elbow; As I recite poetry, I laugh aloud through my sparse moustache.37 The stone couch lies across the autumn window; As the window grows cold, my dreams, too, fade away. I have long paid obeisance to the remote Two Shu’s, And am determined to act as an obscure Tao Qian. Now I know that among the hills and dales Taking whatever one wants is ultimately a lack of restraint. A sense of appropriateness is quite enough: How can I predict the days to come?38 A.3 On the river, returning to Stone Nest [1636] The spring wind transforms the elms and willows; The colour of plants stretches along the path by the river. Leaning on my staff I have returned to the rivers and lakes;

35

YHTS, 55a. This refers to a Zen kÙan. 37 Ruan’s nickname was “Beardy” or “Whiskers” Ruan (Ruan huzi; see Kong Shangren, Taohua shan, 6), so he may be excessively modest in describing his mous-tache as “sparse”. 38 YHTS, 142b. 36

122

alison hardie Fortunately my humble retreat has not become overgrown. Beyond the hedge the mountains are bluer than ever; In the garden greenery already covers everything. Even a small group of servant boys, If they work hard, are better than none at all. They cook wheat and rice for me, Mixed with the duties of gathering firewood and grass. The neighbours around are glad that I have come home; They are kind enough to invite me to welcoming meals. I greatly value this contact with fermented liquor; [Normally] I make do for enjoyment by drinking water. The superior officials are so very sage and enlightened That, once reported, the robbers and bandits are captured. I will make strenuous efforts over ploughing and digging; The rates and taxes cannot be altered. What is it up to me to do? Exaltedly I lean for a long time against the wutong tree. How wonderful it is to visit this place again! Reclining aloft one can be at peace in one’s simplicity.39

A.a Dove Ridge Thatched Hall A.a.1 Returning to Dove Ridge Thatched Hall after a long absence [1633?] Involved in agriculture, I am content in my old retreat; The irrigation channels in the fields are still the same. Bamboo shades the path by which one ascends the hill; Oilseed rape is invading the paddy fields covered with water. The swarming bees constantly observe the sun; The calves being watered also choose their stream. By careful comparison with events in my life, I finally feel more respect for the Hermits of the Marshes.40 A.a.2 Hearing that Zhang Sunzhi41 is coming from Baimen [Nanjing], I await his arrival at Dove Ridge Thatched Hall [1633?] The trees on Phoenix Terrace have shed their leaves; Contemplatively, I think of my solitary return. This man arrives together with the migrating geese; His sail brings the delicate frost. By the old weir the fish-traps are under repair;

39

YHTS, 167a-b. YHTS, 39b. 41 Zhang Xiu, zi Sunzhi, was a professional artist who illustrated Ruan’s play Spring Lantern Riddles. 40

poetry of ruan dacheng

123

On the cold plains the feathered decoy is out of use. If you were merely enquiring about unusual characters, Would you be willing to penetrate these mountains and hills? On the stony road the autumn flowers are sere, But do not think you have made a mistake in searching out this secluded place. The fragrance in our cups is the harvest of glutinous millet; The hills are viridian with many a bamboo grove. In this obscure place my entrance way is solemn; With people at leisure, plants and trees are in harmony. Feeding the cattle we honour traditional customs: Beating time on their horns we give vent to a loud song.42

A.b The Hall of Chanting What is in my Heart Despite the fact that Ruan Dacheng’s entire collection of poetry is named after the Hall of Chanting What is in my Heart, only one poem in the collection is explicitly set in the Hall, and this is an extremely personal and melancholy poem on the death of a woman who was most likely Ruan’s wife. The title translated as ‘Lady’ (gongren) refers to the wife of a 4th rank official; in 1628-9 Ruan had briefly held the post of Vice-Minister of the Court of Imperial Entertainment, a post which was usually at rank 4 or 5. Ruan was married to a grand-daughter of Wu Yuexiu (jinshi 1580), who was associated with the Eastern Grove.43 A.b.1 Returning to stay at the Hall of Chanting What is in my Heart and mourning for the late Lady [1636] To this place of withdrawal I have now returned; My hermitage seems just as it used to be. In the warm breeze the willows by the gate are green; As the rain stops, the clouds over the river are white. There are wild mice all scuttling along the rafters; Pheasants are freely calling from beyond the fence. The ripening of wheat and vegetables is already complete, But no one has cut back the tangle of brushwood and undergrowth. Why do the nesting swallows treat this studio as their property? They look at me who have instead become a visitor. Inside the hall is the echo of loom and shuttle;

42 43

YHTS, 43b-44a. Liu Zhizhong, “Ruan Dacheng jiashi kao”, 200-201.

124

alison hardie In front of the hall are the traces of embroidered slippers. Her sweet voice still seems to be present, But her gentle soul, where has it gone? That single body has become like drifting bog-cotton, While a host of memories suddenly throng like halberds. How can I hold back a prolonged wail? My tears blend with the greenness of the moss.44

A.c Water Cloud Aranya It seems that there were Buddhist religious establishments closely associated with the Stone Nest estate. We have already seen a poem recalling a deceased monk who had been resident on the estate (A.1 above). Ruan Dacheng himself was friendly with a number of monks, and was clearly interested in Buddhist philosophy, as were so many late-Ming literati.45 Ruan’s great-uncle, Ruan Zihua, contributed to the construction of a still surviving pagoda in one of the main temples in Huaining, the Greeting the River Temple (Yingjiang si), and his father also seems to have been a devout Buddhist. A.c.1 Remembering the monks of the Water Cloud Aranya at Stone Nest In dreams I seek the likes of Zhidun and Huiyuan, And faintly seem to hear the bells and chimes. Chancing to catch sight of the moon between the rafters, I think of you like clouds upon the heights. Planting lotuses, you pursue the aims of the White [Lotus] Society; And let your cranes soar aloft into the empyrean.46 Do not become too attached to the green beyond your mountain window; The banana [palm’s hollow heart] is never divided. Having failed in my plan of learning to pursue a career, With a long song I resolve to pluck the thorn-ferns. 44

YHTS, 166b-167a. On late-Ming intellectual interest in Buddhism, see Timothy Brook, Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China, HarvardYenching Monograph Series 38 (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1993); Sung-Peng Hsu, A Buddhist Leader in Ming China: The Life and Thought of Han-shan Te-ch’ing (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1979); Yü Chün-fang, The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming Synthesis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981). 46 Huiyuan (334-416) was the founder of the Buddhist White Lotus Society; Zhidun (314-366), also a Buddhist monk, kept cranes but allowed them to fly away. 45

poetry of ruan dacheng

125

Still regretting the day when we can clasp hands [has not yet come], I cannot see the pear blossoms drifting down.47 It is cold roosting in the mist among the double “al§ trees;48 The distant bells tell of a light rain. In the dead of night the leaves on the mountainside rustle, The better to welcome home the weary clouds. Sitting cross-legged I think of you all day; Looking at me is only a single peak. Throughout the mountains I have planted much taro, And sometimes take advantage of the rain to transplant a wutong tree. I must close up my bamboo hut to sleep, Otherwise the mountain vapours will gather thickly. A lord’s mansion is the same as a shabby hovel; I would like to smile at the Venerable Shen.49

B. Baizi Hill Villa B.1 On a moonlit night I went boating on Stone Gate Lake with Wu Youyu and Liu Changxiu and then we went to [my] Baizi Hill Manor and also visited Changxiu’s Grain Dwelling50 The autumn scenery is fine on the lake; Water and trees have ample clarity. The sinking sun is reflected in the slight waves; How can we express our feelings? The leisurely oar disturbs the bright moon, Dragging at my good friends’ lapels. Fragrance plays around the caltrops in the pond; The sound reaches us of fish rising in the river. The ripples of the stream dizzy our hearts and eyes; Zither and cups float over emptiness. A breeze rustles in the depths of the wood;

47 I assume this must refer to an actual pear tree in the grounds of the aranya. 48 The Buddha attained Nirvana in a grove of double “al§ trees. 49 YHTS, 143b-144a. The Venerable Shen is the monk Zhu Daoqian, zi Fashen (286-374); when he was criticised for frequenting the court, he replied, “You may see it as a lord’s mansion, but to this humble monk, it is like frequenting a shabby hovel” (Liu Yiqing, Shishuo xinyu jiaojian, Xu Zhen’e, ed. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1984, repr. Hong Kong 1987), II.48). 50 Liu Zhongyue, zi Changxiu, who appears frequently in the poems, was a poetical associate of Ruan Zihua.

126

alison hardie A wind blows through the palms on the foremost hills. Young Mr Liu remembers the [Peach] Blossom Spring, And I too am nostalgic for my country dwelling. Each points to a pinnacle of the cloudy peak; Taking our classics with us, we want to hoe together. The mountain leaves weave a dense pattern of shadows; The barking of dogs links the remote hamlets. So we take our boating companions for a joyride, Wielding staves and riding in bamboo litters. At first we feel the stone-paved road is too narrow, But as we turn another corner the zhishu-herb grows less dense. Briefly we rest in the glow of trees and bamboo, And then approach the exquisite cottage. Dew from the herbs drips in the rear courtyard; Starry water lies still in the front channel. Cows and sheep lie in the light of autumn lanterns; Flying squirrels pry among tattered books. Once again we pour out wine and drink under the trees; With laughter and talk we are entirely content. When our boat goes back, even the moon is past the zenith; Cocks are crowing and dawn is just breaking. It is not that I worry about being oppressed by worldly duties: I am only sad that this splendid night is over.51 B.2 Constructing a building on Baizi Hill: sent to Grand Secretary Feng Lu’an52 [First of two poems; 1633?] The achieved life has become my interest; I have completed a house facing the woods and springs. In their awareness of the Way, fishermen and woodcutters are at ease; In their affection for their flock, birds demonstrate their virtue. As I gaze at the rushes, heaven seems near; As we collect the crops, how remote is this place! Observing the world of men in all its tumult, The heart at leisure is full of pity for them.53

51

YHTS, 29b-30a. Feng Quan (hao Lu’an, 1595-1672), like Ruan Dacheng, had been an asso-ciate of Wei Zhongxian, and later he was even quicker than Ruan in submitting to the Manchus. Under Wei Zhongxian he had been rapidly promoted but was dismissed from office in July 1626, before Wei’s disgrace. Perhaps because of this apparent falling out with Wei, Feng was able to escape severe punishment under the Chongzhen Emperor by payment of a commutation fee. For his career, see ECCP, pp. 240-241. Presumably at the time when Ruan addressed these poems to him he was living in retirement; his home was in the Beijing area. 53 YHTS, 47a. 52

poetry of ruan dacheng

127

B.3 The villa on Baizi Hill At the mouth of the valley, where the clouds are deep, The breeze carries the noise of the woodcutter’s axe. As the peaks open up, one can faintly distinguish the road; Where the woods join, a village has established itself. People are familiar with the mountain gibbons; Households consider the farming business the most honourable. It is a commonplace thing for the grass by the path outside the gate To hold the imprint of a sleeping tiger. My way of life is that of the woodcutter or fisherman; This remote mountain is the place to live. The cataracts from a thousand cliffs form roaring clouds; By the alluring water stands my cottage with its hundreds of flow-ers. At the shrine we offer wine to welcome the gods; In the mountains are concealed books on planting trees. When the season is cold I keep my door permanently shut, Too idle to organise the cart for firewood. A misty drizzle links dawn to dusk; The emerald-green of the peaks presses down on the house eaves. I let my feet take me along the eastern fence, Then personally return to the south acre to plough. Mist and frost make the sun’s rays cold; Pines and cypresses are mixed with the sound of the burn. Smiling, I see that on the quiet meadow Mountain birds are hopping round the calves. On the road, strewn with yellow leaves, on the frosty level ground, The traces of the fallow deer are unconcealed. Through the winding valley, where the rocks give way slightly, Several layers of cloud hang over my gate. Over an ancient creeper idly hangs the moon; Through the quiet of the empty glen carries the sound of temple bells. At evening, assembled under the mountain lantern, Casually the old farmers chat. Hiding my footsteps in a bend of lake and hill, And so allowing the business of seclusion to be my friend, In the restful fields, in sunshine, I mark out the earth; On the wild islet, in the quiet, my fishing line floats. Beyond the clouds I hear the swaying of the bells; In front of the peak, I have a monastery as my neighbour. Frosty branches clasp the bamboo buildings;

128

alison hardie Every household is equivalent to the subjects of Qin.54 The water of the cataract falls beside my studio; Its pure sound shakes my thatched hall. For my [hermit’s] clothes I can sew together fig-leaves; From my house I can directly cut firewood and mulberry leaves. My gate bears the traces of drifting clouds; The pond emits the fragrance of massed lotus-petals. In this place which sullied emotions cannot reach, My leisured dreams are long amid rocks and woods.55

C. Assembly Garden C.1 Miscellaneous songs on garden living [1635] Ten Endowments Belvedere The accomplished man abandons external things; He accumulates spiritual gifts above the haze. The bells by the stream at times produce a noise, Clink-clank, as though the pines were sounding. Mirror Boat The water is so clean that suddenly it appears to have no substance: The pale pike seem to be swimming in the void. If you bend down to look you can see the spring birds, Twisting and turning among the waterweed. Fragrant Islet Alone I stand and stroll beyond the eaves: Where does that fragrance in the air come from? Colourful butterflies are fluttering around the high branches; Only now do I realise that the wooden slaves56 have blossomed. Damask Snow Pavilion The flower petals comply with ancient instinct: As your gaze plays over them they turn spontaneously into damask.

54

I.e. to the escapees from Qin to the Peach Blossom Spring. YHTS, 107a-b. 56 ‘Wooden slaves’ is a kenning for orange trees, dating back to the Three Kingdoms period, and referring to their economic value; see Craig Clunas, Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China (London: Reaktion Books, 1996), p. 41. 55

poetry of ruan dacheng

129

Do not be reluctant to tip up your mountain goblet; Here you can start to pluck the fragrant flowers. Drinking to Antiquity Studio We pour wine and raise our glasses to remotest antiquity; Its light is buried and will never awake again. In sympathy with the Sages of the Bamboo Grove, Autumn plants appear around the overgrown pond. Rock Obeisance Level I have plucked you out from a clump of thorns and hazel, And set you up by the window where I write and play the zither. When a distant breeze rustles your creepers, You seem to bow your head in my direction.57 C.2 Six poems on the reconstruction of Assembly Garden To dwell in poverty is profound in significance; I have topped out my house beside the southern grove. Upon my gate the birds do not alight; The perches do not support the fowl. With my solitary zither I admire the moonlight on the river, While fine trees weave their autumn shade. I only await the arrival of respected former friends, But in my deep obscurity they have not yet been able to find me. My brushwood gate is blocked up by deep growth, And so what noise could there be of horse or coach? Chickens imitate the greetings of rustic gentlemen; Bookworms follow my students in rifling through my books. You can observe the emanations from the well to see if it will be overcast or fine; The mountains and waters add charm to zither and conversation. What is this Peach Blossom Glen? I repeatedly enquire of the cataracts and streams [which of them leads to it]. The pure sound elicits mystical response. How can one say that one enjoys living in a splendid mansion? Under the blossoming moonlight the night brings dreams; Beneath the high clouds, bright light covers my books.

57

YHTS, 85a.

130

alison hardie Abandoning the body, I am in sympathy with grass and trees; As a way of life I am attached to woodcutting and fishing. Only the sparrows around my unfrequented gate Fortunately do not disperse from dawn to dusk. I express my lofty pride by the eastern wall;58 Blissfully I have forgotten worldly concerns. The dove finds a secure perch on my staff of chenopodium; Butterflies flutter about my coloured clothes, bringing fragrance. Clasping a watering-can I am eager to water my plot; Opening my shutters I get used to selling soya-milk. With feelings of leisure I practise the business of seclusion: The bright day makes itself longer for me. Leisurely I observe the Shaowei constellation; Its autumnal clarity shines on my thatched pavilion. Holding a crab’s pincer helps me to beat the rhythm on my own;59 To identify the cranes I unroll an ancient scroll. The emerald-green of bamboo bedews my cap and shoes; The shade of paulownias shelters my door and courtyard. At this point if I let rip with a long whistle, The moon over the mountains seems to be listening to it. My lofty emotions have no sense of urgency; My little belvedere is bathed in pure fragrance. The moon surges over the pagoda of a thousand lanterns; Vapours suffuse the essay on Ten Endowments. Below the deep bank, the flowers escape the heat; In the remote forest, the leaves retain the twilight glow. I do not know any companions like Yang Zhong and Qiu Zhong:60 Who will come to approach these white clouds?61

Although the following poem does not mention a specific garden, the “mountain” location with the reference to the “grove of bells” (zhong lin), i.e. a monastery or temple, strongly suggests that this is the Assembly Garden, which I believe was located in the vicinity of the Ancestor’s Hall Temple in the hills south of Nanjing. It is almost certain that this was the same occasion as the hunting party described

58

The phrase “eastern wall” usually refers to a library. Recalling Bi Zhuo of the Jin dynasty; see Liu Yiqing, Shishuo xinyu, XXIII.21. 60 Han dynasty hermits. 61 YHTS, 120b-121a. 59

poetry of ruan dacheng

131

by Zhang Dai in an essay entitled “Niushou shan dalie” (Hunting on Oxhead Mountain), which took place on Oxhead Mountain (Niushou shan), the general area of the Ancestor’s Hall Temple, in 1638.62 Zhang Dai says that among the hunting party were his friends Lü Jishi and Yao Yunzai, though he does not mention Ji Zhongju, the other name given by Ruan. It is also possible that this was the occasion when Zhang Dai witnessed him directing his plays.63 Zhang Dai actually says that after the hunting expedition “we watched a play/plays at Offering Flowers Cliff, and spent the night at Zuying” (kan ju yu Xianhua yan, su yu Zuying).64 C.3 Zhang Zongzi, Lü Jishi, Yao Jianshu and Ji Zhongju came to the mountains to visit me65 I live as a hermit obscure amid cliffs and glens; Body and mind are made profound by entering this place. I am touched that you have traversed the misty roads And come to this grove of temple-bells to visit me. Among the trees at dusk, tired, you make your staves pause; On the remote peaks, cold, you await the [music of the] zither. In the clear night, as we lay out tea and gruel, To some extent we can perceive the thinking of the men of old. There are even companions who share one mind, And have come from far, far away to enquire after the hermit. These men are [as pure as] ice and snow; We face each other at the river of stars. Our philosophy honours the dragon nature; The feelings of the present day are afraid of the phoenix song. What is as good as, under the yellow leaves, The lamp’s reflection illuminating the Vimalakirti Sutra?66

62

Zhang Dai, Tao’an mengyi, 79. See note 12. 64 Zhang Dai, Tao’an mengyi, 79. Offering Flowers Cliff (Xianhua yan) was or is to the south-east of Oxhead Mountain; see the pictorial map in Wang Qi, San cai tuhui (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1988), 259. I suspect that Zuying may be an early misprint for Zutang. 65 Zhang Zongzi is the writer Zhang Dai; Yao Yunzai, zi Jianshu, was a wellknown painter from Zhang Dai’s native Shaoxing: see Jiang Shaoshu, Wusheng shishi, 7.13a, in Liu Wanrong, ed., Shugu congchao di 2 ji (n.p., n.d.). 66 YHTS, 191a. 63

132

alison hardie

C.a Ten Endowments Belvedere It is clear from the reference in the sixth poem of the sequence on the reconstruction of the Assembly Garden above that the Ten Endowments Belvedere (Shilaige) was a feature in the Assembly Garden. The phrase “ten endowments” comes from Tao Hongjing (452/456-536) and refers to ten attributes that enable one to make progress in Taoist cultivation. C.a.1 During rain; glad that my worthy friends have assembled at Ten Endowments Belvedere for a literary meeting [before 1634] The flourishing trees provide auspicious rain; The multitude of greenery produces sounds as the stems meet. Pouring and drinking in one go Makes obvious our feelings about literature. A fist-sized rock and a dipper are as good as the sea and mountains; The manifestations of the trigrams give order to the bright firmament. Plants and trees maintain their original nature; Through days and months they produce drifting blossoms.67 Although moved by them, we cannot grasp hold of them; Who says it is because we are not sincere in the attempt? Like clouds and dragons we are drawn together to fill this empty valley; Chanting in enjoyment, it is hard to put a name to anything. Among flowers and leaves the spring mist is warm; Over the stony shallows the autumn spring is clear. Our long chant becomes a wind in the pines: How could one make light of these endowments?68

D. Good Beginning Garden D.1 A chance composition while sitting in the rain in the Good Begin-ning Garden [1633?]

67 68

This phrase can refer to poetry as well as to actual blossoms. YHTS, 13b.

poetry of ruan dacheng

133

Intense rain has gathered in the spring garden; The still air takes us straight to autumn. There is no disgrace in being mixed up with the dust; Exalted leisure can to some extent be aimed for. By the blue pond, movement pulses through the reeds; On the green islet the bamboo’s radiance is remote. As I sit here and sip the Sage in the Goblet, Hunger and toil can be cured by this means.69 D.2 Censor Zhao Erzhan visited me in the Good Beginning Garden and I entertained him to drinks70 An air of immense value is lighting up the lower Yangtze region; The deer in the mountains and terns on the sandbanks are alike in longing for this beneficence. Your basket full of herbs from the park of Maoling,71 You are taking up the reins of censorial duty to guide the House of Han. Over the low wall the ancient willows wave their high jade fronds; Solitary blossoms by the balustrade over the water form a patchwork of small red points. Let us borrow the light of the moon over the banks of Mochou Lake For its pure gleam to shine on the poetry scrolls as of old.72

Themes of Ruan Dacheng’s Poetry The themes which I find most striking in Ruan Dacheng’s gardenrelated poems are those of eremitism, the pastoral, including the description of landscape and weather, and politics. The vividness of his descriptions can be related to Ruan’s association with the Gong’an school and its emphasis on personal experience and the expression of “native sensibility”. Vivid imagery, in fact, is some-thing which occurs frequently in Ruan’s poems. Eremitism and the pastoral are themes which are to be expected in garden-related poetry, but Ruan seems to have his own slant on them, particularly in his very strong self-identification with the poet and recluse Tao

69 70 71 72

YHTS, 51b. So far I have been unable to identify Censor Zhao. The tomb of Han Wudi. YHTS, 122a.

134

alison hardie

Qian, about which I will say more below. Politics as a topic may not appear quite so explicitly in other poets’ work, but we can see from Ruan’s life how important politics was to him. The themes of eremitism, the pastoral and the political are of course closely interrelated, and it is quite arbitrary and artificial to draw boundaries between them; I have done so for convenience of discussion, but the boundaries could well be drawn elsewhere. It could be argued that “the pastoral” is a category taken from European literature, but there is enough of a distinction in traditional Chinese concepts between withdrawing as a hermit into the mountains (eremitism) and returning to a life of rural self-sufficiency (pastoralism) for the category to be an acceptable one here. Ruan’s references to Tao Qian can sometimes be categorised as eremitic and sometimes as pastoral, depending on the contexts in which they occur. Eremitism First of all, an element that is really characteristic of all late-Ming garden literature, but which is particularly striking in Ruan’s work, is the cult of eremitism. As a result of his political vicissitudes, Ruan seems to have identified to an unusual extent with the archetypal figure of Tao Qian. Ruan also saw Baizi Hill Villa, situated in an area which, as we have noted, was famous for its peach blossom, as his own Peach Blossom Spring (Taohua yuan), like the idyllic haven described by Tao in his famous narrative and poem. Sometimes a reference to Tao may be less explicit, but none the less clearly per-ceptible: for example, the second poem in the sequence of poems on the reconstruction of the Assembly Garden (C.2 above) opens with the lines: My brushwood gate is blocked up by deep growth, And so what noise could there be of horse or coach?

This couplet is an allusion to lines by Tao Qian in the fifth poem in his “Drinking Wine” (Yin jiu) sequence: I built my hut in a zone of human habitation, Yet near me there sounds no noise of horse or coach.73

73 Tao Qian, Tao Yuanming ji, Lu Qinli, ed. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979, repr. 1982), 89. The translation is from Arthur Waley, One Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969), p. 57.

poetry of ruan dacheng

135

In this poem Tao claims that being a hermit is an attitude of mind rather than a function of where one lives; Ruan is therefore claiming the same for the not very remote Assembly Garden. In the first couplet of “At Stone Nest, I got up in the night…” (A.2), on the other hand, the poet lays stress on his remote position among the surrounding mountains, placing the word “mountain” (shan) at the beginning of each line, and describing himself as “roost-ing upon the cliff” (yan qi) and being “among the hills and dales” (qiu huo zhong). In the line “I will cut down those ferns on the rock” (jian bi shi shang jue) he is probably alluding to the legendary recluses Bo Yi and Shu Qi, who “thought shame to eat the grain of Zhou” (chi shi Zhou su) and retired to the mountains to live on wild ferns, while in a later couplet he cites the Two Shu’s (liang Shu; two Han retired officials, Shu Guang and Shu Shou) and Tao Qian as his models; he adds a particular emphasis here by puns on the “remote” (shu) Shu’s and “obscure” (qian) Tao Qian. These allusions reinforce the impression that he has withdrawn completely into the wilds. Of course, Chinese writers were quite capable of imagining themselves as hermits in the wilds even when they were living in an urban environment, but Stone Nest actually was a rural estate, in a hilly location. The poet can thus plausibly present himself as living the life of a hermit in the mountains. The poem addressed to Feng Quan or Feng Lu’an (B.2) depicts the recently completed Baizi Hill Villa as an idyllic rural retreat where Ruan can practise Taoism (“The achieved life has become my interest”) alongside the proverbial fishermen and woodcutters. We may recall that Ruan took the cognomen Woodcutter of Baizi Hill. As he emphasises the remoteness and leisure of his retreat, and contrasts this with “observing the world of men in all its tumult”, he seems to be consoling both himself and his associate Feng Quan for their loss of official status. The long sequence of poems on the Baizi Hill Villa (B.3) provides a good illustration of Ruan’s interest in eremitism, while its striking imagery reminds us of his association with the Gong’an school. In the last line of the fifth poem in the sequence on Baizi Hill Villa, Ruan’s surroundings are explicitly compared to the legendary Peach Blossom Spring. The line “hu hu deng Qin min” which I have translated as “Every household is equivalent to the subjects of Qin” could also be understood to mean “House after house awaits the subjects of Qin”; in this case Ruan would be conceptualising the village as the

136

alison hardie

Peach Blossom Spring before the arrival of the people who took refuge there from the oppression of the Qin dynasty. However, “Every household is equivalent to the subjects of Qin” is slightly preferable (deng is probably more likely to mean “be equivalent to” than “await”), so Ruan may see himself as actually living among the inhabitants of the Peach Blossom Spring. The “Miscellaneous Songs on Garden Living” (C.1), relating to the Assembly Garden, cover different aspects of garden culture. In “Ten Endowments Belvedere”, the focus is on Taoist eremitism and withdrawal from the world to pursue spiritual cultivation, while in “Fragrant Islet” the focus is more practical. Although the blossoming orange trees are valued by the poet for their scent, the use of the phrase “wooden slaves” (mu nu) reminds us of their economic value in producing fruit. In “Drinking to Antiquity Studio”, the poet recalls the distant past, in implied contrast with the decadent present; the ancient worthies whom he cites are specifically the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, and we are reminded that the title of Ruan’s collected poems refers to the work of Ruan Ji, who was one of the Seven Sages, and thus suggests that Ruan identifies with the politi-cal frustration of the earlier poet. The name of “Rock Obeisance Level” might suggest that Ruan, like the eccentric painter Mi Fu (1051-1107), wishes to pay his respects to a venerable rock, but it turns out in the last line that it is the rock, apparently moved by his music, which bows to Ruan, like those which were moved by the Buddhist sermon of Master Daosheng (Zhu Daosheng, 355-434); this draws the sequence of poems to a rather arrogant conclusion. The reference to “plucking fragrant flowers” (qian fang) in “Damask Snow Pavilion” suggests the presence of women to accompany the wine in the “mountain goblet” (shan zun), providing a contrast to the more austere imagery of “Ten Endowments Belvedere” or “Drinking to Antiquity Studio”. Ruan Dacheng’s poems written in 1638—the year in which the Revival Society issued the Declaration of Nanjing against him—show that in this year Ruan spent a great deal of time at Buddhist estab-lishments in the environs of Nanjing. Buddhist reclusion may take the place of more traditional Taoist eremitic imagery. In the poems written on the occasion of Zhang Dai’s visit (C.3), Ruan describes himself as living “as a hermit obscure amid cliffs and glens” and represents himself as reading the Vimalakirti Sutra, certainly an appropriate activity for a Buddhist environment. He expresses his

poetry of ruan dacheng

137

pleasure that his visitors, whom he represents as sharing his interest in Buddhist reclusion, have “traversed the misty roads” and come “from far, far away” to see him; actually, although they had come originally from Shaoxing, by Zhang Dai’s own account they were on a jolly jaunt from nearby Nanjing and they seem to have dropped in on Ruan as an afterthought, probably in the hope of a decent dinner and some first-class opera. In Ruan’s poems, much emphasis is placed on the traditional image of the hermit clad in ficus pumila and carrying a staff of chenopodium. For example: For my clothes I can sew together fig-leaves;74 The dove finds a secure perch on my staff of chenopodium;75 Many gentlemen have taken up the recluse’s attire [literally: ficus pumila and creepers];76 Since you enquire about creepers and ficus pumila, They sum up the mood of a dweller in the wilds;77 Respectfully visiting you in calf’s-muzzle breeks with a dove-headed walking stick.78

The important role of clothes and accoutrements such as these in Ruan’s view of eremitism is no doubt related to his passion for drama, which depends for its effects partly on dressing up. Ruan was particularly sensitive to the extent to which superficial appearances define the individual: this is the major theme of Spring Lantern Riddles or Ten Cases of Mistaken Identity, in which a series of accidents often related to clothing or the lack of it determines how the unfortunate hero’s identity is perceived by others. The play was interpreted by contemporaries as a self-justification, in which Ruan was claiming that he had been misjudged on appearances and entirely misunderstood.79 It is understandable that Ruan might take the view that if he rep-resented himself as wearing hermit’s garments, then he really was

74

YHTS, 107b. YHTS, 120b. 76 YHTS, 130a. 77 YHTS, 138b. 78 YHTS, 181a. Calf’s-muzzle breeks (dukun or dubikun), so called from their shape rather than their material, were a kind of shorts, or possibly a kilt, associated with a casual way of life in ancient times. 79 ECCP, p. 398. 75

138

alison hardie

a hermit. The extent to which dressing up was important to Ruan can be seen from an anecdote in Nan Ming yeshi (Unofficial history of the Southern Ming): when Ruan and others were ordered by Ma Shiying to guard Nanjing against Zuo Liangyu’s troops (this was not long after they had apparently massacred Ruan’s family in Anqing), Ruan held an inauguration ceremony beside the Yangtze, wearing a white python robe (presumably in mourning for the Chongzhen Emperor, or perhaps for his own family) and a jade court belt. The “unofficial historian” comments sardonically, “Amazed onlookers took this for a stage costume” (jianzhe cha wei Liyuan zhuangshu).80 It does seem an extraordinarily inappropriate way to behave in the circumstances, and suggests that by this point Ruan had really lost his grip on reality. We can see, then, that Ruan compensates for his enforced retire-ment by presenting it as a positive choice in favour of the hermit’s life, and that he has a very clear picture in his mind’s eye of how a hermit should look. Pastoral The pastoral and the eremitic cannot always be clearly distinguished. We have seen that the “Miscellaneous Songs on Garden Living” (C.1) incorporate the theme of eremitism, but also include pastoral elements such as the blossoming orange trees, which will eventually produce edible fruit. In “On the river, returning to Stone Nest” (A.3), the references to “wheat and rice”, “gathering firewood and grass” and “making do … by drinking water” suggest a similar ideal of rustic self-sufficiency. It seems likely that this poem was written on a return visit to Stone Nest after Ruan’s relocation to Nanjing as a result of the rural unrest in Anqing in the 1630s; possibly the government appeared to have got a grip on the situation (“The superior officials are so very sage and enlightened/ That, once reported, the robbers and bandits are captured”), and Ruan was exploring the possibility of moving back home, though in the event he did not do so. In the poem “On a moonlit night I went boating…” (B.1), Ruan

80 Nansha Sanyushi [Wang Zhongqi?], Nan Ming yeshi [1739] (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1930), shang.43a; cf. Xia Wanchun, Xu xingcun lu, 12b, in Zhongguo lishi yanjiushe, ed., Yangzhou shiri ji (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1982).

poetry of ruan dacheng

139

draws a parallel between Liu Changxiu’s and his own country resi-dences and the idyllic Peach Blossom Spring celebrated by Tao Qian, of a pastoral rather than an eremitic nature. The parallel is explicit in the line “Young Mr Liu remembers the [Peach] Blossom Spring”, but it is also implied in “The barking of dogs links the remote ham-lets”, which recalls Tao Qian’s line “Chickens and dogs cluck and bark to each other”.81 Ruan imagines himself and his friends sharing their time between agricultural and intellectual activity: “Taking our classics with us, we want to hoe together”. Daria Berg has discussed the prominence of the utopian ideal in late imperial China, as society experienced the transition from a traditional agricultural economy to an urban, monetarised one; this ideal could be personified in the figure of the simple scholar who combines farming and studying, living in the countryside and avoiding the social ills of the city.82 This was an ideal evidently shared—at least some of the time—by Ruan Dacheng. The first poem in the long sequence on the Baizi Hill Villa (B.3) sets the scene among mountain peaks, woods and clouds. The wood-cutter’s axe is mentioned in the first couplet; as Ruan called himself the Woodcutter of Baizi Hill, he may be placing himself in the scene also. So rural is the village that the villagers rub shoulders with wild gibbons, and tigers snooze at its gate. In the second poem, Ruan again equates himself with the proverbial woodcutter or fisherman as a typical rustic and apparently participates in village rituals (“At the shrine we offer wine to welcome the gods”), but in the last couplet he seems to be alluding to the story of Yuan An (d. AD 92), the retired official who took to his bed after a heavy fall of snow rather than trouble his humble neighbours by asking them to dig him out. Far from truly identifying with the surrounding villagers, then, Ruan sees himself as a benevolent superior. “Returning to Dove Ridge Thatched Hall…” (A.a.1) is one of a set of two poems, written before 1635, possibly in 1633. Ruan represents himself as being “involved in agriculture” (ming nong) and gives realistic details of the agricultural scene: irrigation channels, a

81

Tao Qian, Tao Yuanming ji, 167. Daria Berg, “Marvelling at the Wonders of the Metropolis: Perceptions of Seventeenth-Century Chinese Cities in the Novel Xingshi yinyuan zhuan”, in David Faure and Tao Tao Liu, eds., Town and Country in China: Identity and Perception (Bas-ingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 17-40. 82

140

alison hardie

bamboo-shaded path, oilseed rape growing in the paddy-fields (to re-fertilise the soil), swarming bees and drinking calves. Finally he concludes that the Hermits of the Marshes made the right choice in going into retirement. I will discuss the possible political implications of this poem in the next section. The poems on the rural Huaining locations of Stone Nest, Dove Ridge Thatched Hall, and Baizi Hill Villa seem to give a fairly realistic or at least detailed picture of rural life. Ruan’s rhetoric of garden living incorporates a strong emphasis on agricultural activity. His claim in the third of the sequence of six poems on his Baizi Hill Villa (B.3) to participate personally in ploughing should no doubt be taken with a substantial pinch of salt: the point of this reference is of course to lay claim to spiritual kinship with Tao Qian.83 But the “pastoral” poems do contain many references to or descriptions of agricultural activities not necessarily of a conventionally poetic nature: ploughing, hoeing, reaping and threshing, the use and repair of fishtraps, hunting with decoys (A.a.2): By the old weir the fish-traps are under repair; On the cold plains the feathered decoy is out of use.84

This is a strikingly original use of imagery to describe the approach of the dormant season of winter (and no doubt Ruan’s own enforced retirement also). In the “Miscellaneous Songs on Garden Living” (C.1), the imagery of Mirror Boat is particularly striking. Mirror Boat was presumably a building in the shape of a boat at the edge of a pond, from which one could look down into the water. Buildings of this type can often be seen in traditional Chinese gardens; there is one in the Artless Administrator’s Garden (Zhuozhengyuan) in Suzhou. The water is so clear that the poet imagines that the fish are swimming in air, or alternatively that the birds (in the form of their reflections) are flying through the water. This vivid, para-doxical description is a good example of the Gong’an influence in Ruan’s poetry.

83 “I let my feet take me along the eastern fence/ Then personally return to the south acre to plough”, YHTS, 107a-b. The phraseology is paralleled in the title of Wu Weiye’s essay on Wang Shimin’s (1592-1680) Western Fields estate: Wu Weiye, “Guicun gonggeng ji” (A record of personally ploughing in Gui Village), Wu Meicun quanji, Li Xueying, ed. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1990), 828-829; Wang’s “ploughing” generally took the form of music recitals and drinks parties. 84 YHTS, 43b-44a.

poetry of ruan dacheng

141

The Anqing landscape, as represented in Ruan’s poems, is peopled with a rural population who seem to have more basis in reality than the usual fisherman or woodcutter (though, as we have seen, these stock figures frequently occur too): old farmers relaxing after a day’s work (B.3), slightly incompetent servant-boys, rustic neighbours invit-ing the laird round for a meal (A.3): At evening, assembled under the mountain lantern, Casually the old farmers chat.85 Even a small group of servant boys, If they work hard, are better than none at all… The neighbours around are glad that I have come home; They are kind enough to invite me to welcoming meals.86

Another striking feature of Ruan’s rural poems is the wide range of flora and fauna occurring in them. The rural atmosphere of “On a moonlit night I went boating…” (B.1) is enhanced by the men-tion of specific flora and fauna: caltrops, Chusan palms, the herb zhishu, cows, sheep, and squirrels. Anyone who reads much lateMing garden writing grows inured to the same plants and animals (or birds) constantly reappearing, and becomes disproportionately excited at the mention of anything out of the ordinary, such as a peacock or the shrub michelia. For such a reader, Ruan Dacheng’s poetry is constantly exciting: apart from the usual plants such as chrysanthemum, bamboo, paulownia, pine, willow, lotus, he also has Chusan palms, ferns, thorn-ferns, zhishu, rushes, the barbarian string plant, the fragrant duheng, oil-seed rape, glutinous millet, hazel, wheat, vegetables, lichen, angelica. Some of these directly allude to the Chu ci (Songs of the South) imagery of eremitism,87 but the pres-ence of others can be attributed to the rural, agricultural setting of many poems; thus, “oilseed rape invades the paddy-fields” around Dove Ridge Thatched Hall,88 and the exotically named “barbarian string” (husheng) takes over when the grasslands are burnt.89 When it comes to more domesticated garden plants, Ruan is one of the

85

YHTS, 107a. YHTS, 167b (“On the river, returning to Stone Nest”). 87 See David Hawkes, Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South (Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1959). 88 YHTS, 39b. 89 YHTS, 55b. 86

142

alison hardie

few writers of this period actually to mention the Chusan palm (zonglü, trachycarpus fortunei), although it is clear from paintings and woodcuts that these were frequently grown in late-Ming gardens. (It is not clear to me why Ming writers are so shy of mentioning this plant, but it may be because of its economic value.) In one case, the palms seem to be outside a garden setting, perhaps in a commercial plantation: A breeze rustles in the depths of the wood, The wind blows through the palms on the foremost hills.90

Ruan also seems to have cultivated orange trees with some success on the Fragrant Islet mentioned in the “Miscellaneous songs on garden living” (C.1): Where does that fragrance in the air come from?... Only now do I realise that the wooden slaves have blossomed.91

The poet gives as an excuse for not visiting two friends the need to prune the trees: In my garden in the wilds the flower trellis has collapsed; My mountain hedge is thick with the spines of orange-trees.92

The range of fauna is equally wide, with domesticated animals such as horses, sheep, cows and calves, chickens, as well as the much less domestic: wild mice, swallows, sparrows, doves, and pheasants, fallow deer (actually Père David’s deer), gibbons, even tiger, alarmingly close to the Baizi Hill Villa: It is a commonplace thing for the grass by the path outside the gate To hold the imprint of a sleeping tiger.93

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Ruan is deliberately sub-verting the reader’s expectations. This reminds us of Yuan Zhongdao’s approving comment that his younger contemporary’s work was “unusual without being disorderly, fresh without being paltry”.94 Another particularly striking aspect of Ruan’s originality is his intense awareness of weather conditions, which are of such vital

90 91 92 93 94

YHTS, 29b. YHTS, 85a. For “wooden slaves” see note 56. YHTS, 43a. YHTS, 107a. See note 17.

poetry of ruan dacheng

143

importance to agricultural life. Of course he is far from being the first Chinese poet to comment on moonlight falling on water or clouds wreathing the mountains, but in Ruan’s case the reader really has the impression of the poet looking at nature with a fresh eye and not turning to a conventional stock of poetic imagery. For example: The breeze from the lake stirred up a slight chill; It proved to presage the rain which came in the night;95 Ethereal shapes drift from the dew-laden grass, Making me wonder if the blue hills are growing taller;96 Dew from the herbs drips in the rear courtyard; Starry water lies still in the front channel;97 From the valley’s mouth, where the clouds are deep, The breeze carries the noise of the woodcutter’s axe;98 The moon over the hills has not yet set, When suddenly a fine mountain rain starts to fall. Through it, the moon extends its solitary glow; The rain is able to extinguish the remaining heat. This pure scene is something that heaven [usually] conceals; The two [rain and moon] do not usually go together.99

This unusual degree of reliance on personal observation and “native sensibility” certainly supports Yuan Zhongdao’s view that Ruan was a worthy successor of Yuan Hongdao and the Gong’an school. Politics Political activity was clearly of central importance in Ruan’s life, and many of his poems are concerned with current events; the Anqing scholar Hu Jinwang has written on Ruan’s political poetry.100 Here I will simply look at political references occurring in the context of garden-related poems.

95

YHTS, 12b. YHTS, 26a. 97 YHTS, 30a. 98 YHTS, 107a. 99 YHTS, 142b. 100 Hu Jinwang, “Ruan Dacheng yingzhao shidai fengyun de zhishi shi”, Anqing Shifan Xueyuan xuebao (shehui kexue ban) [Journal of Anqing Teachers College (Social Science Edition)] 19.1, 2000: 52-55. 96

144

alison hardie

The three poems set in Dove Ridge Thatched Hall (“Returning to Dove Ridge Thatched Hall after a long absence” [A.a.1] and the two poems “Hearing that Zhang Sunzhi is coming from Baimen…” [A.a.2]) seem to have particularly strong political implications. This may support the idea that the Hall was named in allusion to Ruan Ji’s allegorical rhapsody “The Doves”. Although the symbolism of this rhapsody is now obscure, it is believed to have a political mean-ing (the familiar theme of the wronged but loyal minister),101 and this may have been the intended implication of the name for Ruan Dacheng. In the first poem, the couplet “The swarming bees con-stantly observe the sun;/ The calves being watered also choose their stream”, with its images of division into separate groups, appears to refer to the factionalism which caused such instability in the late Ming, and of which Ruan was a victim as well as a perpetrator. In the two poems addressed to Zhang Xiu, Ruan complains that like the fish-traps and hunting decoys his talents are not being used (pos-sibly Zhang Xiu’s business as a commercial artist, also, had suffered from his association with Ruan), and thanks Zhang for the sincere friendship which has brought him from the Southern Capital to the rustic environment of Huaining. The naming of Ten Endowments Belvedere in the Assembly Gar-den, alluding to Tao Hongjing and the ten attributes that enable one to make progress in Taoist cultivation, implies that Ruan is no longer concerned with political advancement but is concentrating on his own spiritual development. How seriously either his friends or his enemies took this we can only speculate; no doubt they also recalled that Tao Hongjing, known as “the Prime Minister in the mountains” (shanzhong zaixiang), was consulted on affairs of state even while living in retirement, and drew their own conclusions about Ruan’s ambitions. In the poem “Censor Zhao Erzhan visited me in the Good Begin-ning Garden…” (D.2), Ruan elaborately flatters the Censor, who has evidently just been posted to the area of the southern capital, referring to the “air of immense value” which surrounds him, his anticipated “benevolence” and the healing powers which he brings with him in the form of a “basket full of herbs”. As Ruan welcomes

101

Holzman, Poetry and Politics, pp. 18-20.

poetry of ruan dacheng

145

him to the garden, he emphasises its refined simplicity, with its “low wall”, “ancient willows” and “solitary blossoms”. The reference to the moonlight “shining on the poetry scrolls as of old” seems to imply that Ruan and Censor Zhao had studied together in the past, but no suitable Zhao can be identified from the official list of Presented Scholars for 1616.102 Ruan appears to be hoping that the powerful censor will show him favour and perhaps enable him to make a political come-back. There is an intriguing political reference in the second of the poems on Zhang Dai’s visit to the Assembly Garden (C.3). This is almost certainly dateable to 1638, and we may recall that at this time Ruan was under severe pressure from the Revival Society, who had issued the Proclamation of Nanjing against him. Ruan Dacheng claims Zhang Dai and his friends as “companions who share one mind” with him, men “as pure as ice and snow”, then says, “The feelings of the present day are afraid of the phoenix song.” Given Ruan and Zhang’s shared passion for drama, the “phoenix song” (feng ge) must be a reference to the play Mingfeng ji (The cry of the phoenix), attributed to the scholar-official and leading literary critic Wang Shizhen (1526-1590), which was an attack on the corrupt offi-cial Yan Song. Although Yan had in fact been a patron of Ruan’s great-grandfather Ruan E, Ruan seems here to be placing himself in opposition to corrupt officialdom in general, and ascribing his withdrawal into Buddhist reclusion to this principled stance: since the present age cannot accept his outspoken criticism of corruption through drama (this may refer to his Ten Cases of Mistaken Identity) he can only go into reclusion and concentrate on studying the sutras. We have already remarked on Ruan’s self-identification with Tao Qian. Evidently, Ruan was able to convince himself that his own loss of office consequent on his links with the eunuch Wei Zhongxian was morally equivalent to Tao Qian’s refusal to bow down for five bushels of rice. Behind such eremitic or pastoral references, therefore, there is often the shadow of factional politics. In Ruan’s frequent allusions to the Peach Blossom Spring legend, he seems sometimes to conceptualise himself not as the visitor to that paradise but as a permanent inhabitant of it, and often refers by name to the dynasty

102 Zhu Baojiong and Xie Peilin, eds., Ming Qing jinshi timing beilu suoyin (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1980), 2593-2595.

146

alison hardie

from which the inhabitants of the Peach Blossom Spring had fled, reminding the reader of the tyrannical and unpleasant nature of that regime, and thus making the allusion a much more directly political statement than is usual in the general rhetoric of garden culture.103 It seems to be unconventional to refer to the inhabitants as “subjects of Qin (Qin min)”. If we recall Tao Qian’s original nar-rative, the inhabitants of the Peach Blossom Spring were unaware that the Qin had been replaced by the Han, let alone the Wei and Jin.104 Is it possible that, by the reference to Qin, Ruan is somehow negating the existence of the Ming dynasty, or more specifically the rule of the Chongzhen Emperor, under which he must have felt that he had been treated very badly?

Conclusion Even in the small selection of poems presented here, we can see some of the thematic richness and depth of Ruan Dacheng’s work. Through the discourse of eremitism and pastoralism, some of the conflicts, both internal and external, in Ruan’s life are mediated, though ultimately these conflicts could never be resolved. The poems throw light on a number of aspects of Ruan Dacheng’s life and interests, and illustrate the classic contradiction for a scholar-official in troubled times between the desire for engagement and for with-drawal. The quality of Ruan’s poetry alone, quite apart from the interest of other aspects of his life and work, should encourage us to question the conventional view of him as an unmitigated villain, and to re-evaluate his significance as a literary figure in the late Ming. Ruan Dacheng was a highly complex individual who is more than deserving of further study.105 103 YHTS, 35b: “Chickens and dogs still resent the presence of the old man of Qin”; YHTS, 107b: “Every household is equivalent to the subjects of Qin”. 104 Tao Qian, Tao Yuanming ji, 166. 105 I would like to express my gratitude to my colleagues Dr Joanne Smith and Dr Naomi Standen, for their careful readings of early drafts of this paper and their many helpful suggestions.

xinsheng

PART TWO EDITING, RECONSTRUCTING AND REWRITING HISTORY

147

148

rana mitter

xinsheng

149

CHAPTER FIVE

‘LIFE’ AS THEY KNEW IT: DU ZHONGYUAN’S EDITORIAL STRATEGIES FOR THE XINSHENG (NEW LIFE) WEEKLY, 1934-35 Rana Mitter …to leave The Times would have hurt. You get fond of a paper and feel loyal to it, abstraction though it is. You develop a relationship with its readers, or think you do. Times readers are a special breed. Matthew Parris, feature columnist for The Times (London)1

There is a peculiar charm about leafing through back copies of old newspapers or periodicals. There is an additional frisson in reading papers from a time which we know ends in some great disaster or upset, or else some wonderful triumph: August 1939, July 1945, September 1989. Yet as historians, we also tend to read such publications precisely for those intimations of significance in the historical metanarrative. Until recently, many of the major historical sources for the Repub-lican period (1912-49) have included newspapers such as Shenbao or periodicals such as Xin qingnian (New Youth) or Funü zazhi (Women’s Journal); however, they have generally been treated as mines from which extracts are to be taken in service of a wider, important, story. For Xin qingnian, that story may be the rise of communism, if it is the pieces of Li Dazhao (1888-1927) or Chen Duxiu (1879-1942) which are under discussion, or anti-Confucian modernity in fiction, if it is those of Lu Xun (1881-1936). Until recently, however, the periodi-cal itself has rarely been the issue under consideration; the visuality, * I am delighted to contribute this essay to a volume in honour of Glen Dud-bridge. Although I only studied under Glen for one year, as a first-year under-graduate at Cambridge, I have spent the majority of my academic career since graduation in an environment shaped largely by him, the Institute for Chinese Studies at Oxford. Glen’s combination of scholarly rigour, collegial spirit, and an unquenchable enthusiasm for all topics of enquiry (China-related or not) have been a constant inspiration, and I look forward to his contributions to the scholarly community for many years to come. 1 Matthew Parris, Chance Witness (London: Penguin, 2002), p. 460.

150

rana mitter

the feel, the production values, or the constructed relationship with the readers (even as the abstraction that Matthew Parris describes). Nor has there yet been very extensive examination of what Benedict Anderson has famously termed the ‘imagined community’ as shaped by the newspaper as continuing part of lived experience in Republican China: the interaction between reader, editor and text (the latter as semi-autonomous variable) which is built up diachronically as well as at one particular moment.2 This has begun to change. Various innovative studies of the rela-tionship of a particular periodical as part of its readership’s shared experience have emerged in recent years, principally for the Qing (1644-1911) period. Dense textual readings of primarily literary sources, along with an attention to the production and composition of the book before it became an object of mass production, remain largely the preoccupation of scholars of pre-twentieth century China. For modern China, in contrast, this sort of ‘sinological’ technique, even when informed by contemporary critical theory, has been less used in examining the print and press culture of the Republic. For decades, there has been no doubt that in the Republican era, a great many Chinese were reading about politics. What has remained less examined up till now is the politics of reading; the strategies, consumption and lived experience of the era of mass print runs. The literature on the politics of reading in early modern Europe has now firmly established the importance of understanding the act of reading in its context: “For, whatever the intentions of authors (or authorizers) of texts, readers bring their experiences (not least of other texts) to any reading.”3 The feel, heft, size and production values of early modern texts say a great deal about their intended purpose and relationship with the reader.4 Rich work is beginning to appear for the Republican era, though. Denise Gimpel’s work, discussed below, on Xiaoshuo yuebao, has exam-ined one journal as a community of writers building up a discourse of modernity over a particular period.5 The internalisation of texts 2 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983, 2nd ed., 1991). 3 Kevin Sharpe, Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 34. 4 Sharpe, Reading Revolutions, p. 44. 5 Denise Gimpel, Lost Voices of Modernity: A Chinese Popular Fiction Magazine in Context (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press), 2001.

xinsheng

151

as a factor in ideological learning in the pre-1949 Chinese Com-munist Party has also been examined by scholars including David Apter and Hans van de Ven; the engagement of the reader with the text is crucial to their interpretation of the process of party-build-ing, showing the politics of reading at its most direct.6 Yet as these authors argue, the CCP used these techniques as a means of training would-be initiates to the party, rather than attempting to capture ambivalent or uncommitted readers in a market context. What this article attempts to do, tentatively, is to try to reconstruct the context of the reading experience put forward by one particu-lar journal, and to argue for the significance of the strategy of its writers’ self-presentation at a time widely acknowledged as crucial in modern Chinese history. The periodical concerned is Xinsheng (literally ‘New Life’, but known also by its chosen English name of ‘The Renaissance Weekly’) edited by Du Zhongyuan (1898-1944), the prominent journalist and nationalist activist of the 1930s.7 I argue that Xinsheng had a distinct role as a journal which aimed both to be ideologically committed and commercially successful, and for it to be so, Du and his co-writers used a strategy for the periodical which drew variously on techniques adapted from popular fiction of the period as well as newspaper reportage, and also developed a hybrid explanatory model which applied modernity to Confu-cian norms, also in part derived from popular fiction. In doing so, it was making a conscious effort to find tropes which would relate to a desired mass readership, and while these tropes were success-ful in terms of broad sales, issues such as gender were sidelined to make way for concerns such as anti-Japanese nationalism and male unemployment. Xinsheng is best understood as a complete product which engaged with its readers weekly on the newsstand, and rather than simply reflecting public opinion (for instance, on resistance to Japan), instead sought to shape it through a combination of narrative, linguistic and political strategies. It is a product that makes sense fully, in other words, only when one visualizes its target reader, the

6 See pieces by Hans van de Ven and David Apter in Tony Saich and Hans van de Ven, eds., New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995). 7 Citations from Xinsheng (XS) will cite the volume and issue number (e.g. 1/3), date of issue, and the page citation from the facsimile reproduction (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1984).

152

rana mitter

‘petty urbanite’ (xiao shimin), probably male, snatching half an hour at lunchtime away from the office to read through it, or else hold-ing it in his hand while searching for employment in the streets of Shanghai in the mid-1930s, streets increasingly bleak as the world depression hit China.

The Rise of the Periodical Press in Early Twentieth-Century China Recent years have seen a new interest in work on the press of the late Qing and the Republic. One of the pioneering attempts to trace the connections between news reportage and fiction, both in con-tent and style, and between production and audience response, was Leo Lee and Andrew Nathan’s piece on “The Beginnings of Mass Culture.”8 More recently, Joan Judge has identified the late Qing newspaper Shibao (The Eastern Times) as a site for an independent political voice to exist where there were no other opportunities for a ‘middle realm.’ Although Shibao rejected overt commercialism as triviality, the newspaper nonetheless developed an innovative format and layout, as well as accessible short editorials and provocative com-mentaries, and a new linguistic style.9 Republican periodicals have begun to come under further analysis too. Denise Gimpel’s study of Xiaoshuo yuebao (Fiction Monthly) shows that the early Republic had a strong culture of reform fiction predating the May Fourth era of the 1910s and 1920s, which retrospective historiography has credited for turning frivolous fiction to political and reform themes. Gimpel notes that Xiaoshuo yuebao’s size was designed specifically to make it portable and readable in public, an important insight into the way in which mechanized print culture changed the culture of consumption of printed material as well as its production.10

8 Leo Ou-fan Lee and Andrew Nathan, “The Beginnings of Mass Culture: Jour-nalism and Fiction in the Late Ch’ing and Beyond,” in David Johnson, Andrew J. Nathan, and Evelyn S. Rawski, eds., Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 360-95. 9 Joan Judge, Print and Politics: ‘Shibao’ and the Culture of Reform in Late Qing China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 10, 27, 36. See also Barbara Mittler, A Newspaper for China?: Power, Identity, and Change in Shanghai’s News Media, 1872-1912 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004). 10 Gimpel, Lost Voices of Modernity, pp. 3, 30.

xinsheng

153

A decade or so later, in 1926, came one of the most important of the new mass market periodicals, Shenghuo (Life), edited by Zou Taofen (1895-1944). Wen-hsin Yeh has comprehensively analysed the task which Zou undertook in starting Shenghuo under the patron-age of the Vocational Educational Association.11 Parks Coble has also pinpointed how the same journal, and its successors, Dazhong shenghuo (Life of the Masses) and Xinsheng, were an important source for the mobilization of public opinion during the National Salva-tion Movement of 1935.12 With a circulation of some 200,000 and a readership of perhaps two million at its height, these periodicals had significant reach. Retrospective studies have tended, because of the concerns of the topics for which parts of Shenghuo and Xinsheng have been used, to concentrate purely on the content of specific articles, whether on social mores or anti-Japanese nationalism. It is therefore worth considering how these journals presented themselves to the reader as a total product, building their own metanarratives and imagined communities. Shenghuo contained Zou’s own editori-als, tales of inspirational achievement by bright young men, and essays on topics such as social manners and customs, emotions, the lives of inspiring figures, politics, and later on in his career, travel. However, readers did not consume these pieces neatly categorized: their relationship with Zou was shaped by the variety of themes that appeared week after week. The readership, as Yeh has shown, was largely ‘petty urbanites’ (xiao shimin), a group which was rather frustratingly defined by what it was not: not the poorest nor the richest, but either better off and literate factory workers, or small shopkeepers or clerks, or primary schoolteachers. Many of them were internal migrants to Shanghai from the interior, and for them, Shanghai’s modernity was often as terrifying as it was glamorous or enticing. The popular fiction known as ‘Mandarin Duck and But-terfly’ (yuanyang hudie) found millions of readers in this period, in large part because it was a comforting genre that mocked the more ridiculous-seeming aspects of modernity. This genre also influenced the way in which Zou Taofen and the writers of Shenghuo wrote for

11 Wen-hsin Yeh, “Progressive Journalism and Shanghai’s Petty Urbanites: Zou Taofen and the Shenghuo Weekly, 1926-1945”, in Frederic Wakeman, Jr. and Wenhsin Yeh, Shanghai Sojourners (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1992). 12 Parks Coble, Facing Japan: Chinese Politics and Japanese Imperialism, 1931-1937 (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1991).

154

rana mitter

their readers, exhorting them to make something of themselves, but also reassuring them that they sympathized with their fear of the more bizarre or disorienting aspects of the new world in which China found itself in the early twentieth century.13 Its rise to mass circulation meant that Shenghuo had a ready read-ership after 1931, when it became one of the most important voices to speak out against Chiang Kaishek’s (1887-1975) policy of nonresistance to Japan’s invasion of Manchuria. Although it and its successors were published in the foreign concessions of Shanghai, outside Nationalist government control, Shenghuo was nonetheless banned in 1933 because the government felt it was provocative to the Japanese, and a short-lived successor, Dazhong shenghuo, was also shut down as editor Zou Taofen hastily went abroad. His chief edito-rialist and second-in-command, the Northeastern nationalist activist Du Zhongyuan, stepped in. Du had been an entrepreneur and local politician in pre-occupation Manchuria, but fled the Japanese in 1931, and had spent the next couple of years helping foment antiJapanese propaganda before his organization was shut down after heavy pressure from the Nationalist government. Now in 1934, he announced the publication of another magazine from the Shenghuo stable, this one waggishly named Xinsheng (New Life). Xinsheng, then, arrived on the scene on February 10, 1934 with a great deal of political and social baggage. Xinsheng, like its prede-cessors, had a brief and exciting life (some sixteen months), with publication being abruptly halted with Du’s arrest and imprisonment in 1935 after a particular article (“Xianhua huangdi”, (Loose talk about emperors)) which he had commissioned caused a diplomatic incident with the Japanese, forcing the Nationalist government to act once again.14 Yet during its period of existence, it also maintained the strong sales that Shenghuo had done, picking up the same readers and responding to their needs. However, it is difficult to judge more precisely how readers responded to Xinsheng. 13 Yeh, “Progressive Journalism”; the nature of the xiao shimin is discussed with great subtlety in Perry Link, Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981), and Lu Hanchao, Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999). 14 The complex relationship between Du and the Nationalist censors is dealt with in Michel Hockx, “In Defence of the Censor: Literary Authority and State Authority in Shanghai, 1930-1936,” Journal for Modern Literature in Chinese 2.1, 1998: 1-30, esp. p. 21.

xinsheng

155

The relationship between writers and readers is reflected in the varied nature of the contents of Xinsheng. It is much easier to answer the question “What was it about?” of Xinsheng than it would have been to ask the same question of Shenghuo or another journal such as Xin qingnian ten or fifteen years earlier (and it is important to remember just how recent those earlier publications had been). Xin qingnian was ‘about’ an uncompromising embrace of western modernity in fiction and real life. Shenghuo was ‘about’ various things: coping with modernity, in a rather more ambivalent and perhaps grassroots way than Xin qingnian, finding a job, coping with life, and Zou Taofen’s optimistic, self-motivating view of making good in a changing soci-ety. Yet neither publication could fairly be described as being for one purpose only; the mixture of items had clear social as well as commercial purposes, but they were not all pointing in one direc-tion. Not so Xinsheng. Xinsheng was ‘about’ the threat from Japan. Du Zhongyuan and Zou Taofen did not risk arrest and censorship simply to keep a hot commercial publishing franchise viable. Though it contained fiction, inspiring tales, foreign news and so forth, Du would have not gone to the financial and personal trouble needed to produce Xinsheng weekly if he had not felt that it was essential to keep an anti-Japanese voice in the public domain. Yet the combination of material in the periodical suggests that Du felt that a purely anti-Japanese weekly would not sell; after all, newspapers had for decades turned to fiction supplements to increase sales, as news often did not have enough commercial value on its own. This is particularly worth keeping in mind when considering that the period during which Xinsheng appeared was a relative lull in Sino-Japanese relations. It is now clear that it was just a tempo-rary easing of tensions on the path to war in 1937, but this could hardly be known for certain at the time. Furthermore, many other social crises, such as the depression, various civil wars, Communist insurgency, and floods and famines, were happening at the same time, distracting the immediate attention of many potential readers. Although clearly there was a market for an anti-Japanese publication at the time, the political context of Xinsheng’s production suggests that rather than reflecting anti-Japanese outrage among the reading public, it was seeking to provoke it.

156

rana mitter Continuity, Change, and Content

What, then, could readers at newsstands in Shanghai expect from Xinsheng? In some ways, the product that greeted the reader was very familiar. This is hardly surprising, as the title itself (New Life) recalled the hastily shut down predecessor Shenghuo (Life) very explicitly. By trading on an established brand name, and using the goodwill that had been built up with Shenghuo’s readers, Du Zhongyuan was able to capture a ready part of the market. Thus the heft and feel of Xinsheng, when it arrived in the shops on February 10, 1934, recalled Shenghuo in layout, content and style. The first edition set the tone for the next year and a half. The magazine was easily portable, consisting of 20 pages, about 25 centi-metres by 15 in size. The covers contained tinted photo-reproductions of current national and international news stories. The first page, as with every subsequent edition, contained Du Zhongyuan’s editorial column, “Laoshihua” (Honest talk), followed in that first edition by another piece on page 2 on the crisis being caused by the Japanese. Pages 3 and 4 discuss the problem of youth unemployment, and on pages 9-10, an inspirational story describes how a young man makes his way successfully in the world from his rural village to the capital city, finding work there. Pages 11-12 contain another regular column, a letter to the readers by one of Du’s associates. There follow three pages of fiction (xiaoshuo), and on page 19, the issue ends with a roundup of the week’s domestic and international news. There is also advertising throughout, for products including light bulbs (“national product”), Minsheng (“People’s Livelihood”) black ink, and Yaguang (“Light of Asia”) cigarettes. This combina-tion, broadly speaking, defined Xinsheng’s contents for the whole of its short existence. Examining Xinsheng as a diachronic narrative suggests the impor-tance of continuities as well as breaks with the past. The continuing concentration on the Japanese occupation of Manchuria is hardly surprising, in light of Du’s personal and political odyssey. Yet the amount of each individual issue concerned with that topic is rela-tively small, although it continues to recur as a prominent theme week by week; for instance, there is a two-part account of conditions in the occupied Northeast in issues from March 1934, but this is somewhat exceptional in terms of the normal balance of contents

xinsheng

157

in each issue.15 The combination of material suggests that, to make Xinsheng a commercial success, Du and his team needed to recognize that the readers’ primary concerns and interests would not neces-sarily coincide with theirs. Had they been in the position of Mao Zedong (1893-1976) or Chiang Kaishek, and producing material whose primary aim was ideological, or conversely, had they been producing a periodical aimed primarily at maximizing commercial sales for profit, then the task before the editors would have been more straightforward, if not necessarily easy. But in this case, they were editing a periodical that needed the sales of a commercial hit with the political agenda of an ideologue. This explains the particular mixture of materials in each issue. Fiction, after all, was by now a longstanding means for periodicals and newspapers to sell more copies, and this accounts for its regu-lar appearance, although the themes sometimes took in patriotic topics such as the National Products Movement.16 More particular to Xinsheng’s heritage, though, were the regular tales of young men making good in the city through hard work (a series called “Working lives”). These had been a regular part of Shenghuo’s mixture, appeal-ing to the petty urbanite readers who formed the bedrock of its readership. Linked to these stories, by the 1930s, were less optimistic accounts of social problems such as unemployment caused by the world depression, tying in with the increasingly Marxist worldview of Du and Zou Taofen, and that darkness did filter in to the stories too. In the words of a young man aspiring to greater things in the “Working Lives” story in the first edition: At first I was not satisfied, but when I’d read a few books which analysed our current society, I was enlightened and realized that our current society is not equitable… and that you couldn’t find a job that would use all your talents… and then I became relatively satisfied with my own employment.17

Yet the message was still a balance between accommodation to the system and rejection of it, writing to comfort the reader who was dissatisfied with his or her lot.

15

XS 1/5, XS 1/6 (March 10 and 17, 1934). E.g., XS 1/2 (February 17, 1934), 37. 17 “Cong nongcun dao dushi” (From village to capital city), XS 1/1 (February 10, 1934), 10. 16

158

rana mitter

The examination of Xinsheng as an entire product, rather than just for its most well-known columns such as “Honest talk,” forces the question of how easy it is to analyse the reasons for its popularity. It has been used as an indicator of rising public sentiment against the Japanese in the 1930s, and certainly it is true that Du and his editorial team revived Xinsheng, at personal peril to themselves, because they felt that an anti-Japanese voice was essential in the public discourse at a time when the 1933 Tanggu Truce seemed to have settled the Manchukuo issue. Yet it is not possible to make a simple inference that readers bought Xinsheng primarily because of its anti-Japanese stance, or even that they agreed with it. It is notable that much of Du’s editorialising berates the public for not being more concerned with Japanese aggression: this suggests concern at a lack of interest, rather than reflection of a popular sentiment. The period of Xinsheng’s publication suggests that is a reasonable interpretation; as has been mentioned, 1934-35 was a calm period in Sino-Japanese relations, and thus it is unsurprising that Du Zhongyuan felt he had to inspire public anger. Yet publishing nothing but anti-Japanese tracts would hardly achieve his task (as well as leading him once again to feel the wrath of the Nationalist censors). It is no particular surprise that a man who had become one of the major propagandists for the recapture of Manchuria in 1931-33 now drew on his political and journalistic experience to put together a periodical that combined political message and commercial viability. Xinsheng’s large sales prob-ably do indicate an anti-Japanese agenda among its readership—it is not unknown for readers regularly to buy periodicals which are in opposition to their political views, but it is more common for pur-chases to reflect broad world-views—and other evidence from the period does suggest strong anti-Japanese public feeling as expressed through demonstrations, petitions, and so forth, during this period. But it is not clear that this agenda was the reason that they bought Xinsheng—and the variety of material in Xinsheng, which is so reflective of its 1920s predecessors in content and style, suggests that it was the appeal of the familiar, rather than of the new, that the editors felt was necessary to capture the readership. Just as Shenghuo had done in the previous decade, Xinsheng sought strategies to show the readers that it understood and sympathized with their values and aspirations, while trying to persuade, rather than goad them along the path of anti-Japanese nationalism.

xinsheng

159

Confucian Values and the Subjective Self In large part, one cannot help but conclude that it was the strong, personalized voice of Du Zhongyuan himself, built up week by week with his first page ‘Honest talk’ column, that connected the periodi-cal with its readership. Fiction magazines remained a staple of the Republican print culture throughout the 1930s, and newspapers and periodicals—such as Guowen zhoubao (National News Weekly)—grew and flourished at this time as well. One of the things which marks out Xinsheng, and also reflects the personalized agenda of its editor, is the frequency of first-person diachronic metanarrative as a strat-egy in the writing. The construction by Du and his contributors of themselves in the first person owes a great deal both to changes and continuities in the construction of the self as China encountered individualist modernity in the late nineteenth century, as well as to the arrival of a mechanized mass print culture which enabled the dissemination and reproduction of that constructed self to become a meaningful trope to the community of readers. It is important not to fall into an assumption that ‘liberation’ from a ‘Confucian’ mindset to one informed by a ‘modernity’ predicated on the idea of the autonomous self allows us to believe that the ‘modern’ Chinese author was therefore ‘freer’ in every sense than her or his pre-modern counterpart. Such an author’s strategies of self-presentation, as well as the technological and social opportuni-ties open to her or him, were clearly different and in some cases wider, although the absolutist rejection of the Confucian repertoire in the radical May Fourth mind is a particularly stark example of how opportunities closed for many as quickly as others opened up. When Stephen Greenblatt examined what he termed ‘self-fashion-ing’ in Renaissance England, he started by aiming to examine how ‘major English writers of the sixteenth century created their own performances, to analyze the choices they made in representing themselves,’ but found that ‘fashioning oneself and being fashioned by cultural institutions—family, religion, state—were inseparably intertwined… there were, so far as I could tell, no moments of pure, unfettered subjectivity.’18 Yet this does not invalidate the clear change that emerges in the early modern era in the way in which self-pre--

18 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pbk. ed., 1984; orig. 1980), p. 256.

160

rana mitter

sentation takes place through writing. For Du Zhongyuan and his associates, their self-presentation is in many ways innovative and a product of their encounters with modernity, even while it is perhaps unconsciously shaped by internalised norms both old and new. Du’s long opening letter in the first issue of Xinsheng points out some of the different aspects of his identity, as well as showing both premodern and modern conventions of self-presentation which he used, either consciously or unconsciously: When a new periodical is published, the precedent is that we need a foreword. Xinsheng weekly has been brought about by my getting together several friends to collaborate on it. Several friends asked me to take on the responsibility of editing and publishing it, therefore on this first occasion that this periodical has come to the sight of the readers, I should introduce myself and the motivations behind producing this journal. I am not a cultured man [wenxuejia], and I’m not a news reporter, nor am I a famous or great character. Formerly, I was an entrepre-neur in Shenyang. I set up a ceramics works with over 1,000 workers. Although the factory is still running, because I was not willing to fall in with Japanese imperialism, I became what I am now, a man with no home to return to, and with no trade to turn to. I don’t know what country I am from. Can I say I am Chinese? My home village clearly is no longer part of China’s territory. Can I say I’m not Chinese? But I was nurtured and raised in the same envi-ronment with 450 million compatriots; only because it is the cause of the Chinese people do I feel the pain and shame... There are people who are stray curs, like the slaves of a lost country, and now I have become a stray cur. After the September 18th Incident happened, I ran around wildly everywhere east and west, calling out to the whole country, and heard a lot of great people’s inspiring addresses, and saw lots of enthusias-tic youth movements. General Ma had risen up in Siberia, and the Nineteenth Army fought in resistance in Jiangnan. Boycotts, donations, petitions—all of these made a big noise then. But now, all this has disappeared and dispersed, and now that the North China agreement has been signed, the Anti-Japanese national salvation movement has withdrawn and been silenced. Even the call for … long-term resistance is no longer seen. The great figures and the youth just carry on … as before. (Of course, there are a minority who are exceptions.) The only ones left behind are the 30 million “stray dogs” in the Northeast, who are living in hardship under the iron hooves of imperialism. But who is going to pay attention to them?… But as I have experienced the pain of a lost country [wangguo], I therefore have the authority and the necessity to call out a war-cry to the masses of the whole country.19 19

XS 1/1, 1.

xinsheng

161

This writing, and the wider tenor of Du’s editorial writing, reveal different cultural assumptions simultaneously. On the one hand, much of Du’s language and political analysis is modern in origin, informed in particular by nationalism and Marxism. Yet, unlike much Chi-nese Marxist and modernist thought of the period, particularly that shaped by the most radical May Fourth thinkers, it is also implicitly, and on occasion, explicitly informed by a desire to adapt Confucian norms within a modern context. This had also been a noticeable feature of Shenghuo in the 1920s, and even after Zou Taofen turned to Marxism after about 1930, his writing continued to be informed by a linguistic and interpretive framework at least partly derived explicitly from Confucianism. One particular feature that draws on premodern tropes is Du’s reiteration of the role of the writer as moral authority, which is strongly embedded in his writing: “To cultivate the person, to examine the self, to develop each individual to the utmost—these are among the themes most frequently discussed in classical Confucianism.”20 Also dating from the premodern period, and in some ways at odds with the romanticist May Fourth tradi-tion of self-glorification, was the declared modesty of the authors. “I am not a cultured man or a news reporter,” Du had started by declaring, and a little further in the initial issue, another contributor started his open letter by declaring: “Why don’t I write essays but instead write ‘letters’?… I could never write essays. Even when I was little and at school, I couldn’t write essays well.”21 The public self could not be self-aggrandizing if it was to be com-mercially, and therefore politically, in tune with its readers’ values. This self-presentation draws in part on the tradition of popular fic-tion, where such characterization was well-known; brashness and self-aggrandizement, or excessive self-pity were generally signals for mockery or contempt for a character, rather than sympathy or emulation. Furthermore, Confucian autobiography, as a genre, also sought refuge in precedent as a means of “protection from the censure of egomania, of doing something unconventional.”22 Although the Marxist assumptions about wider forces (class conflict, imperialism,

20 Pei-yi Wu, The Confucian’s Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 93. 21 XS 1/1, 11. 22 Wu, Confucian’s Progress, p.3.

162

rana mitter

and so forth) come up frequently in Du’s writing, the need to xiushen, or self-cultivate on a personal basis, still emerges over and over again, with the consequent frequent emphasis by Du and others on personal case-studies and action. The moral imperatives of national salvation are also embedded everywhere in Du’s writings, along with his exhortations to his readership to turn away from their own apathy and resist Japan. One detects, in Du’s self-presentation, both a desire to adapt to the Confucian-influenced norms which he felt his readers would still recognize, and a strategy shaped by his own internalised value system where modernity and Confucianism crossed over. We will see one reason below why an alternative explanation, that Du was actually a May Fourth radical posing as a ‘traditional-ist’ simply to ingratiate himself with his readers’ values, is less likely: for Du’s valorization of Confucius did result in the persistence of a less progressive mentality on issues such as gender constructions that would have been likely to be different if he really had been an antiConfucian true believer, and which reflects the agenda of Shenghuo from the previous decade. When Du explicitly addressed the question of “How should we remember Confucius?”, it is perhaps unsurprising to see him assess the sage in the following terms: One can’t help but recognize that Confucius was a brilliant and outstand-ing personality in Chinese culture and history. Confucius’s doctrines and thought, although in later ages they were greatly misunderstood and distorted, have been a very important influence on the culture of the Chinese nation.23

Du recalled the way in which the establishment of the Republic had meant that Confucius was no longer needed in the schools, and in particular, mentioned “the May Fourth Movement, … which was the fiercest time of the movement to throw out Confucius.”24 The Nationalist government, he noted, had also been keen to throw out Confucius at first, but now had reversed itself so far that it had declared a national memorial day for the thinker. Du concluded: In fact, to respect Confucius’s position in our culture, don’t go and blindly worship Confucius, but instead regard Confucius as a brilliant

23 24

XS 1/30 (September 1, 1934), 585. XS 1/30 (September 1, 1934), 585.

xinsheng

163

personality of the history of the Chinese nation. Unlike Japanese impe-rialism in the Northeast, don’t distort Confucius’s Wangdao thought… so as to intoxicate the people; only then will you really understand Confucius. Any type of sophisticated thought system is easy for people sometimes to misuse. The way of Confucius and Mencius can be reck-oned as very valuable in terms of historical value. But used with evil intentions, it can be used as a tool for… intoxicating the masses. We should clearly recognize this point… and only then will we recall the righteous way of Confucius.25

Shades here of Cato and Carthago delenda est—Du Zhongyuan clearly missed no opportunity to shoehorn the Manchurian crisis into any topic—but despite Du’s talk of the ‘masses,’ this is not the voice of a radical May Fourth anti-traditionalist. Yet the ‘new’ modern self is clearly visible in Du and his associates’ self-presentation as well. The conventions of premodern autobiography mean that …..the disinclination to use the first person, perhaps a virtue in a historian, has rendered many an autobiography indistinguishable from biography; they share the same impersonality of tone, the same sup-pression of an individual voice with its own whims and quirks, the same opacity as to the yearnings of a heart or the inward workings of a mind…26

This is not true of Du Zhongyuan. For the traditional autobiographer, credibility rested on distance from subjectivity: for Du’s purposes, credibility rested rather in exactly that subjectivity.27 The influences which caused Du not only to tolerate but rather to glorify his own constructed subjectivity come largely from outside China. Among the clear influences on Shenghuo, shown in the tales of young men and women who make good in the big city, was the ‘self-help’ tale which had been the mainstay of Samuel Smiles and Horatio Alger, and which had shaped the ‘reform fiction’ of the Meiji era (1868-1912) which in turn had influenced Liang Qichao (1873-1929) and the other shapers of reform in late Qing China, when Du was growing up.28 A parallel development was the emer-gence of intensely subjective writing, the ‘I-novel’ [shishôsetsu] whose

25

XS 1/30 (September 1, 1934), 585. Wu, Confucian’s Progress, pp. 6-7. 27 Ibid. 28 Peter Kornicki, The Reform of Fiction in Meiji Japan (London: Athlone Press, 1982). 26

164

rana mitter

self-obsessed romanticism and constructed ‘reality’ was an influence on many May Fourth writers, such as Yu Dafu (1896-1945).29 The explicit links between political autonomy and literary subjectivity which had shaped Japanese fiction and narrative genres in the Meiji and early Taisho (1912-1926) eras influenced the atmosphere of Republican China too.

Unemployment, Emotion, and Gender How did this constructed self, revealed through weekly encounters, relate itself to the reader? Absence and presence come up over and over again in terms of how issues of relevance to readers are dealt with, as illustrated, for example, by an examination of the way in which Xinsheng treated one of the great issues of the 1930s, urban unemployment. The trope of unemployment is one which recurs frequently, as in one morbid piece entitled “Ways to kill people” (in an example of the somewhat bizarre juxtapositions that a commercial weekly news periodical produces, this macabre story sits directly above an adver-tisement for the malted milk drink Horlicks).30 The piece discusses the growing phenomenon of suicide and murder in an increasingly Depression-hit Shanghai, and tells the story of a man who is laid off, goes back to ask the foreman to take him back on, is refused, and then kills his ex-employer. As a result, the man is imprisoned. When his wife and children go to the company to ask for the money that the man had earned before his dismissal, they are denied it. Concluding the story, the writer Gao Ping asks which is better: directly to kill a man, or indirectly to kill several people (the wife and children) by depriving them of the means of life? This was a more graphic version of an argument which had been put forward from the first issue of all, where youth unemployment was discussed in a long piece. Just as Shenghuo had shaped the employment aspirations of a generation of young, petty urbanite men (and some women) in the 1920s and found a captive readership, so in the 1930s, as unemployment and

29 On the I-novel, see Tomi Suzuki, Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996). 30 XS 1/7 (24 March 1934 ), 136.

xinsheng

165

the Depression impinged on the real lives of the readers, accounts and explanations of their experience were used by Du and his team both to reflect readers’ lives and to shape their experience. Du had, of course, in his foreword in that same issue, defined himself not just as a man without a country to return to, but also without a trade to turn to, even though the reality was that he was not unemployed in any sense that was comparable with his laid-off readers. The piece on youth unemployment noted that “we must quickly recognize that the rapaciousness of imperialism… the domestic economic system, and… warlordism are the direct causes of our being thrust into unemployment and hunger.”31 Yet one notable absence from this list, made more stark by its occasional reappearance, is patriarchy. This is not simply an early twenty-first century fixation being projected back onto the past: Shen-ghuo, after all, had had a significant female readership, as evidenced in part through the frequent letters to the ‘Reader’s Mailbox’ section of that earlier publication, a feature signally missing from Xinsheng. Gendered issues, such as workplace harassment, ‘free love,’ and women’s education had been staples of Zou Taofen’s agony column in the 1920s and early 1930s. Although Xinsheng was as keen as Shenghuo had been to analyse social problems, and did so in terms more explicitly Marxist than the earlier publication, throughout its existence, it portrayed social problems as essentially gender-neutral, and by default, masculine. The worker who shot his foreman leaving a wife and children behind is, as portrayed in Gao Ping’s piece, a sympathetic if not necessarily admirable character. (It must also be said that the sympathy expressed here is definitely not derived from Confucian norms.) The most dominant discourses of nationalism in the 1930s, whether Guomin-dang or Communist, though they often sought to include women, frequently subsumed gender issues beneath other issues defined as separate and more pressing. Even in the 1920s, Shenghuo’s attitude towards gender roles, though informed by a lively understanding of republican political culture, had also been heavily informed by patriarchal assumptions: Zou Taofen would tell distressed women readers who wrote in complaining that they were being harassed at

31

XS 1/1, 4.

166

rana mitter

work or in public spaces that a male chaperone might be the only solution, or that they should think first about their reputations if they wished to get married. This was perhaps realistic advice, along the lines of Lu Xun’s famous essay on “Nala zouhou zenyang?” (What happens when Nora leaves home?)—but hardly a beacon of feminist thought as expressed by more radical May Fourth thinkers.32 In Xinsheng, the female voices which were at least heard in Shen-ghuo were rarely to be found at all, and the occasional exceptions hardly suggest a progressive agenda, despite the talk elsewhere of the ‘masses.’ Take, for instance, the melodramatic life story of Jiang Xiaru, who gives a ‘Working lives’ account of going “from the hospital ward to the office.”33 The tropes of popular fiction are clearly visible here, and it is quite possible, even probable, that the story was written by a man. Jiang’s mother and father die when she is a child, leaving her to find her own way in the world. She takes a position as a nurse in Shanghai, though working conditions in the hospital are harsh and leave her unhappy, particularly as the other women nurses bully her. She finds a husband, but to her horror, he becomes ill and dies in the very hospital in which she works: “I had studied nursing, yet I could not even nurse my own husband properly.” A male relative finds her a place as a primary school teacher, a position she feels suited her best: “The world is false, society swindles you, so it’s only small children, small children who are for real!” But happiness is not to be hers; during the Sino-Japanese fighting of January 1932, her school is hit and wrecked by Japanese bombing. The only way she can find employment is to return to the countryside; but the office job she finds there makes her feel as if she is locked in a cage.34 As a rare appearance by a female character in Xinsheng’s narrative, Jiang is hardly a model of feminist consciousness: melodramatic in tone (the text is littered with exclamation marks), betrayed by her fellow women but helped out by men, her final exile from Shanghai comes

32

Lu Xun, “What happens when Nora leaves home?”, in Gladys Yang, ed. and trans., Silent China: Selected Writings of Lu Xun (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 148-154. 33 XS 1/7, “Cong bingshi dao bangongshi” (From the hospital ward to office), 130-1. 34 Ibid.

xinsheng

167

courtesy of the Japanese as dei ex machina. This female character is a victim of society, and of the Japanese menace, but she is granted little meaningful agency of her own. This is in marked contrast to the self-questioning agenda of Du Zhongyuan and his writers, which stresses the possibilities that autono-mous action opens up, or the rousing agenda they addressed to their ungendered but assumedly male readers, as at the end of the piece in the first issue on youth unemployment. Although the article is scattered with terms such as ‘labouring masses’ (laodong minzhong), suggesting a growing influence of class-based collective language, the tone recalls much more the individualistic and Confucian-influenced self-help doctrine of Shenghuo in the 1920s, along with that publica-tion’s tone of faith in technology and progress as a social panacea. Among the advice given to unemployed readers is “… you can use the possibilities around you to study the knowledge you need, and take part in the appropriate tasks that will be of benefit to society. Read books and carry out practical activities.” 35 Also as in Shenghuo, the role models cited are western and male: Faraday, Davy, Dickens, and Liebig, all of whom overcame difficult circumstances to do well. It concludes: “Last of all, you must remember—to serve truly, to devote yourself to justice, to do your utmost for national liberation, to struggle for the progress of humanity—this is our lifelong task.”36 Although a few female role models did appear in Shenghuo (such as Marie Curie), portrayals of working women such as Jiang, or the starving wife of the murderous laid-off worker, do not seem to include them in the uplifting discourse advocated by Xinsheng. Reading the periodical over time, it seemed that unemployment for men could lead either to inspiring homilies to keep trying, or else muted sympathy for homicide committed in frustration: for women, unemployment was portrayed more passively as a reflection on their own inability to deal with the contradictions of the modern world. Again, this difference reflects the position of women in popular fiction; the ‘new woman’ as object of respect rather than mockery is more typical of May Fourth than Mandarin Duck writing, and even ideological reorientation towards Marxism might not neces--

35 36

XS 1/1, 4. Ibid.

168

rana mitter

sarily turn Du and his writers’ minds toward rethinking patriarchy. Calculations of reader response must have shaped the tone of Xin-sheng toward unemployment here, as toward other issues. This could have meant either neglect of the female part of the readership, or a deliberate willingness to sacrifice one part of that readership (‘pro-gressive’ women) for another (‘traditional’ men who would not be sympathetic to over-modern women). Xinsheng, after all, was there to do one thing, to create public anger about the Japanese encroach-ment into China, even where that anger did not exist previously. It acknowledged other social issues, but the priority of the writers, as opposed to the readers, would always be to put anti-Japanese nationalism first.

Conclusion Xinsheng did not last long, although following Du Zhongyuan’s release from prison in 1935, Zou Taofen’s Shenghuo enterprise had various other incarnations, and Du himself continued to be prominent as a polemicist and entrepreneur into the war years. It was Du’s evergrowing closeness to the Communist party that led to his eventual execution by the militarist leader of Xinjiang, Sheng Shicai (18971970), in 1944. Yet the journal that he edited for such a short time left a perhaps disproportionate mark on the history of the 1930s in China. Certainly, the ‘Xinsheng incident’ which saw his arrest has been regarded as one of the more prominent events in the battle between Chiang Kaishek’s policy of non-resistance and the National Salvation Movement that demanded more action against Japanese aggression. Nonetheless, examining the journal not as a pawn in a wider game of diplomatic and domestic politics, but as a skein of political, commercial, and linguistic strategies in its own right gives us further insight into the complexities of the period. Du Zhongyuan and his writers were not simply Marxist nationalists, heirs of May Fourth, whipping up a population already engaged by anti-Japanese anger. Rather, their self-presentation in Xinsheng, and the content of Xinsheng itself, suggest a complex negotiation: between modernity and Confucianism, and the points where the two met and re-formed; between nationalism and other political concerns such as unemploy-ment; between issues stressed, and as importantly, those excluded,

xinsheng

169

such as patriarchy; and above all, negotation between writers and readers, the latter an abstraction who could not be known as individu-als, and yet who were a real, paying collectivity whose fears, hopes, and prejudices had to be acknowledged for Xinsheng to succeed.

170

carolyn ford

CHAPTER SIX

THE AFTERLIFE OF A LOST BOOK—DU JI (THE RECORD OF JEALOUS WOMEN) FIFTH CENTURY1 Carolyn Ford The Record of Jealous Women says: When Huan Wen2 pacified Shu [Sich-uan], he took Li Shi’s daughter3 as a concubine. His wife, the Nank-ang Princess,4 was violently jealous [by nature], but she was unaware [of the situation]. When she later found out, she picked up a sword and went to Li’s place with the intent of beheading her. She saw Li combing her hair by the window, her posture and appearance were serene and beautiful. She slowly tied up her hair, folded her hands and faced the princess. Her facial expression was calm and unruffled, yet her words expressed deep sorrow. The princess then tossed away the sword and stepped forward to embrace her, ‘Dear child, now that I

1

I would like to thank Dr. Daria Berg, Dr. Robert Chard, Jill Butler, Dr. Red Chan and the anonymous reviewer for reading various drafts of this paper and making a number of helpful suggestions. 2 Huan Wen (312-373), zi Yuanzi, son of Huan Yi (276-328), zi Maolun, pre-fect of Xuancheng, which corresponds to present day Xuanzhou, Anhui. Huan Wen was the general who recovered Shu (Sichuan) for the Eastern Jin dynasty in 347. He became the most powerful figure in the Eastern Jin court and harboured imperial ambitions of his own, which only his death prevented. See his biography in Jin shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 98.2568. 3 Li Shi (d. 361) was the sixth and last sovereign of the tiny Cheng Han kingdom (304-347), the capital of which was located in present-day Chengdu, Sichuan. He started his reign in 338. In 347 he received the title “Marquis Returned to Allegiance.” His biography is in Jin shu 121.3046. After Li’s death there were occasional reports of men pretending to be Li’s heir. Jin shu 13.373 states that after his conquest of Shu, Huan Wen sent Li Shi to the capital. There is no mention in the standard histories of Huan Wen taking a female relative of Li Shi as his concubine. 4 The Nankang princess (d. ca. 369) does not have an official biography. Nan-kang is located in present-day Jiangxi province. The Jin shu occasionally notes the fact that Huan Wen and the Nankang Princess were husband and wife. In Jin shu 24.734 (a section dealing with the bureaucracy) Huan Wen is mentioned as a high official accorded special privileges because he was married to a princess, giving him the status of an imperial son-in-law. Only in Huan Wen’s official biography is it explicitly stated that Huan Wen was given the hand of the elder princess of Nankang in marriage, Jin shu 98.2568.

du ji

171

see you, even I take pity on you, no wonder the old scoundrel [feels the way he does].’ Thereafter she treated her well.5

A number of Chinese literary and historical works preserve stories about female jealousy.6 Ancient works such as the Shanhai jing (Book of Mountains and Seas)7 list certain plants and animals as efficacious cures for jealousy. The Shi jing (Book of Songs)8 and the Lienü zhuan (Biographies of Eminent Women)9 include poems and biographies in praise of the virtue of women who did not feel jealous. Throughout recorded Chinese history, a childless wife who, out of jealousy, did not allow her husband to take a concubine was considered a threat to the continuation of the family line. Jealousy held such serious consequences for family and social stability that the female author of the Tang work, Nü xiao jing (The Book of Filial Piety for Women), pointed out that it was the foremost among the seven grounds for divorce and warned women to behave.10

5 Commentary to the Shishuo xinyu, citing the Du ji. See Yu Jiaxi, Shishuo xinyu jianshu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 19.693. 6 For an overview of female jealousy in Chinese history, see Chia-lin Pao Tao, “Women and jealousy in traditional China,” Zhongguo jinshi shehui wenhuashi lunwenji 1, (Taibei: Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 1992): 531-561. For an overview of female jealousy more narrowly focused on the fourth to sixth centuries, see Yamamoto Noriko, “HokuchÙkei fujin no toki ni tsuite: Hokugi o chåshin toshite,” Ritsumeikan bungaku 270, Dec. 1967: 78-104. 7 The Shanhai jing contains material from multiple periods, much of it pre-impe-rial. Liu Xin (50 BC-23 AD) was one of the first compilers to arrange the Shanhai jing in its current form, followed by Guo Pu (276-324). It is a mythical geography of China based on the five sacred mountains. 8 The poems in the Shi jing also date to the pre-imperial period. Although modern scholars do not see Confucius’ (551-479 BC) editorial hand at work here, the selec-tion and editing of the three hundred poems from a group of three thousand are traditionally attributed to him. See Arthur Waley, trans., The Book of Songs (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1960), p. 18. 9 Liu Xiang (ca. 77 BC-ca. 6 BC) selected biographies of 125 women known for their virtue from ancient times to the Former Han dynasty. 10 See Nü xiao jing 5b-6a, in Mao Jin, Jindai mishu vol. 61 (Shanghai: Bogu zhai, 1922 rept.) For a translation and comparison of this work with the Xiao jing (Book of Filial Piety), see Patricia Buckley Ebrey, “The Book of Filial Piety for Women Attributed to a Woman Née Zheng (ca. 730),” in Under Confucian Eyes: Writ-ings on Gender in Chinese History, Susan Mann and Yu-yin Cheng, eds., (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 47-60. For jealousy as one of the seven grounds for divorce during the Tang dynasty, see Changsun Wuji et al., Tanglü shuyi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 14.267. For a translation, see The T’ang Code Vol. II, Specific Articles, Wallace Johnson, trans., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 167.

172

carolyn ford

The first work known to be devoted exclusively to the topic of jealousy was the Du fu ji, or Du ji (The Record of Jealous Women, hereafter Record), written in the fifth century.11 The seventh-century encyclopaedia Yiwen leiju (A Collection of Literature Arranged by Categories, hereafter Collection)12 preserves seven of the Record’s tales.13 In addition to the Record’s afterlife in encyclopaedias (leishu), some of its tales of jealous women had previously been recorded as part of the fifth-century work Shishuo xinyu (A New Account of Tales in the World, hereafter A New Account),14 which was compiled slightly earlier than the Record itself. 11 The late fifth-century work Song shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1965), 41.1290, refers to the book as Du fu ji, but the commentary to the Shishuo xinyu refers to it as Du ji. See Shishuo xinyu jianshu 19.693 and 26.829. The character du is gender specific. The first-century dictionary Shuowen jiezi defines du as female jealousy and mao as male jealousy. See Xu Shen, Shuowen jiezi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1965), 12B.10a,b. 12 Ouyang Xun (557-641) was the chief compiler of Yiwen leiju, completed in 604. In modern times, Lu Xun recompiled the seven tales from the Du ji in Gu xiaoshuo gouchen (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1951), 309-12. He collated the tales from multiple sources, and so his versions should not be read or understood as reprints of early versions of the tales (as recorded in Yiwen leiju). 13 This chapter emphasizes the first tale, that of Huan Wen, Miss Li, and the Nankang Princess. The second tale involves the historical figures Wang Dao, his wife, Lady Cao; and Cai Chong. Cai made fun of an incident in which Wang rode an oxcart to catch up with his jealous wife, who was on her way to punish some of his mistresses. The third tale involves Xie An and his wife, Lady Liu, who did not allow him to have other favourites in the household, despite his male relatives’ reference to the canonical virtue of non-jealousy as proclaimed in the Guanju and the Zhongsi odes in the Shi jing. The fourth tale involves Wu Liyang’s daughter, who was so jealous of a peach tree her husband admired that she had it chopped down. The fifth tale involves an anonymous husband and wife. It may be referred to by its core plot device, the goat and the rope trick. A henpecked husband tied to his wife by a rope, tricks his wife into thinking her shrewish behaviour has caused the spirits of the ancestors to punish her by turning him into a goat. Her repentance causes the goat to disappear and the husband to reappear. The sixth tale involves a man surnamed Xun and his wife surnamed Yu during the Taishi reign. The wife was a terrible shrew who beat up her husband’s guests. Her violent ways almost led to her beating up her elder brother by mistake. The seventh tale is that of Zhuge Yuanzhi and his wife, née Liu, who had a habit of beating his hands and knees for his infractions. One day Yuanzhi mistook her intent to measure him up for new clothes as a prelude to a beating. For these seven tales from Du ji as preserved in encyclopaedias, see Yiwen leiju (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1999), 18.325, 35.614-16, and 86.1470. 14 Compiled by Liu Yiqing (403-444), the Shishuo xinyu contains anecdotes about people and society from 150-420. Commentary was added later by Liu Xiaobiao (462-521). Shishuo xinyu quotes the Du ji twice. See Shishuo xinyu jianshu 19.693 and 26.829.

du ji

173

Later generations of writers, such as the Tang poet Bo Juyi (772846)15 and the Song poet Mei Yaochen (1002-1060),16 found these seven tales in encyclopaedias and were often inspired to include them again in their own works. Their views of the female protagonists adhered closely to that of the sources upon which they drew.17 When encyclopaedias such as the Taiping guangji (Extensive Records of the Taiping Reign, dated 978) and the Taiping yulan (Imperial Reader of the Taiping Reign, started 977, finished 983) 18 became more widely available in the sixteenth century,19 several writers adapted the plot devices from the stories they encountered in encyclopaedias to create whole plays and novels on the theme of jealousy.20 In this manner, the process of re-compiling, re-printing, and reading of A New Account, encyclopaedias and fictional tales, which resulted in new literary creations during the sixteenth through eighteenth cen-turies, has provided for the transmission of the seven tales from the Record despite the loss of the codex. Five of the seven women from those tales were unrepentant and never reformed their jealous ways. Those late imperial writers not only made use of the plot devices from the Record as preserved in encyclopaedias,21 they also made a

15 For a critical biography and chronology of Bo’s life, see Zhu Jincheng, Bo Juyi nianpu (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1982). 16 For a critical chronology of Mei’s life, see Zhu Dongrun, ed., Mei Yaochen biannian jiaozhu (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1980). 17 Other writers, such as Liu Fu (1040 - after 1113), also found inspiration in the Record (as preserved in encyclopaedias) but adapted the plots more loosely than Bo Juyi and Mei Yaochen. See Liu Fu, Qingsuo gaoyi (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1983), 258, for an adaptation of the second tale. Liu Fu changed the names of the characters and appended another story. 18 Both were compiled by Li Fang (925-996) and others. 19 See Wang Shaoying’s introduction to the Taiping guangji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), 2. Wang discusses the wider dissemination of the work after the printing of the Tan Kai edition in 1566. Between 1568 and 1572 Huang Zhengse prepared a new edition of the Taiping yulan. 20 Compare the second tale from the Du ji as it appears in the seventh-century encyclopaedia Yiwen leiju (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1999), 35.615 with Wang Tingna’s (fl. 1596) play, The Lioness Roars (Shihou ji), Scene 17, in Liushizhongqu, Mao Jin, ed., (Beijing: Wenxue guji chubanshe, 1955), 55-58. 21 For a preliminary discussion of the portrayal of women in encyclopaedias, see Harriet Zurndorfer, “Women in the epistemological strategy of Chinese ency-clopaedia: Preliminary observations from some Sung, Ming and Ch’ing works” in Zurndorfer, ed., Chinese Women in the Imperial Past: New Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 354-395.

174

carolyn ford

point of putting those jealous wives through a course of punishment and penance.22 The first tale merits special attention here for the primary reason that it has on occasion been classified as a tale of virtue, thus raising an interesting question of when and why the tale is first read as one of vice, namely the vice of female jealousy. Moreover, in contrast to the handling of the other tales from the Record, the tale of Huan Wen, Miss Li, and the Nankang Princess was not so easily turned into a late imperial narrative—the princess’s change of heart had already disposed of the need to punish her.23 After studying the composition of the original Record, the handling of this tale in encyclopaedias, and late imperial reception of the tale, this chapter then surveys the unsuccessful efforts to recover and amend the Record or write a sequel.

The Composition of the Original Record Of the seven tales about jealous women, three are based on iden-tifiable historical figures—husbands and wives of the elite classes from the third to the fifth centuries. Several modern historians of China in the age of political division from the third to sixth cen-turies have recently supposed that elite women enjoyed a higher degree of intellectual and social emancipation relative to their Han dynasty predecessors.24 They view the princesses of dynastic lineages as particularly well placed to take advantage of this emancipation. This view differs from that of earlier generations of scholarship in

22 Yenna Wu, The Chinese Virago: A Literary Theme (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 111 and 115. 23 Yenna Wu notes the Record served as a source for plots later developed into full-fledged narrative and drama by writers from the sixteenth to eighteenth cen-turies. She very nearly asserts that any late imperial narrative in which there is the happy ending of the wife and concubines getting along in harmony is a later development of the first tale from the Record. See The Chinese Virago, pp. 69-70. She does not, however, cite any examples in support of this point. 24 Charles Holcombe, In the Shadow of the Han: Literati Thought and Society at the Beginning of the Southern Dynasties (Honolulu: University of Honolulu Press, 1994), p. 4; Beatrice Spade, “The Education of Women in China during the Southern Dynasties,” Journal of Asian History 13.1, 1979: 15-41; Zhu Dawei, “Wei Jin nanbei chao de jiben tezheng,” Wenshizhe 3, 1993: 39-46. Zhu’s article is also reprinted in Liuchao shilun (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998), 1-35.

du ji

175

that women are portrayed as actively taking advantage of opportuni-ties. The early twentieth-century historian Chen Dongyuan argued that the disturbances of the third to sixth centuries led to a decline in the Confucian teachings and practices that had previously kept women in a subordinate position with respect to their husbands. One of the ways wives began to resist the power and influence of their husbands in relationships was to display jealous attitudes and actions that they previously suppressed.25 The truth about women’s status during the third through sixth centuries most likely lies between those two poles of active pursuit of emancipation and simply benefiting from a decline in enforcement of Confucian mores. The standard histories recount a number of tales about elite wives, most of them princesses, who wielded sub-stantial personal and political influence. The princesses’ husbands and potential suitors viewed the influence they wielded with dismay and alarm. On occasion the influence a princess wielded was fatal to her husband. A brief entry from the Nan shi (History of the Southern Dynasties) illustrates the influence the Linchuan Princess (of the Liu Song dynasty, 420-479) had over the fate of her unfortunate husband Wang Zao (d. 465):26 Zao was the prefect of Dongyang,27 and the hand of Emperor Wen’s [r. 424-454] sixth daughter, the elder princess (posthumous name Yingyuan) of Linchuan [Jiangxi province], was bestowed upon him in marriage. The princess was terribly jealous by nature, furthermore Zao was partial to a member of his entourage, Wu Chongzu.28 During the Jinghe reign [465], the princess reported him to Emperor Fei [r. 465]. Zao was thrown in prison where he later died [the princess having already divorced him]. At the beginning of the Taishi reign period [later on in 465], the princess was betrothed to the prefect of Yuzhang, Yu Chongyuan, but he died before the marriage rites could be performed. Among the princesses of the [Liu] Song royal house, there was not one who was not prone to jealousy. Emperor Ming [r. 465-471] was sorely afflicted by each princess. The wife of Yuan Tao, the prefect of

25 Chen Dongyuan, Zhongguo funü shenghuo shi (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1937), 62. 26 Song shu 7.145 gives the date of Wang Zao’s imprisonment and death as corresponding to November 24, 465, but it does not state the reason for his impris-onment. 27 Dongyang is located in present-day Hebei province, east of the Taihang mountains. 28 Nothing else is known about Wu Chongzu.

176

carolyn ford Hushu [Jiangning county, Jiangsu province] was sentenced to death [by suicide] on account of her jealousy, and the emperor ordered the courtier Yu Tongzhi to write the Record of Jealous Women.29

The Linchuan Princess was never punished for her jealousy, but the wife of Yuan Tao paid for her jealous behaviour with her life. When even non-elite women began to put their jealous feelings into practice, the emperor decided to take preventive measures. Emperor Ming employed three strategies to bring jealous women under control. First, he issued an edict directed at the women of his own family which both criticized and made fun of them. This fifthcentury edict, still extant, makes special mention of Huan Wen as a figure of the previous century who had tried desperately to avoid marriage to a princess: From the Jin [dynasty 265-420] onwards, men who have been granted the hand of an emperor’s daughter in marriage, no matter how wellversed in the canonical works, handsome, extraordinarily talented, have all tried for the longest time to avoid marrying the princesses by pretending to be complete idiots, even the likes of Wang Dun with his imposing manner and Huan Wen with his martial prowess.30

The edict may have been successful for a time—the Linchuan Princess demurely requested permission to return to Wang’s household to raise their only son—but it was no permanent cure for the jealousy or shrewish behaviour of princesses and other elite women.31 The emperor’s second and third strategies—ordering the execution of a jealous woman as a warning to others and ordering the compilation of a book about jealousy—were no more successful. Yu Tongzhi, in his attempt to comply with the emperor’s order, would have consulted the written records of his own time as well as those of the previous

29 See Nan shi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975), 23.619. Wang Zao, the eldest son of Empress Wang (wife of Emperor Xiaowu of the Liu Song dynasty, r. 454465), is also mentioned briefly in the Song shu 7.145 and 41.1290. Yu Tongzhi’s dates are unknown, but he flourished in the later half of the fifth century, see Nan shi 72.1770. The Nan shi was compiled in the middle of the seventh century. Li Yanshou, the compiler, often included material from the earlier history Song shu, completed in 492-493. 30 Song shu 41.1290. Wang Dun (d. 324) was a son-in-law of Emperor Wu (r. 265-290) of the Eastern Jin dynasty. His biography is in Jin shu 98.2553. As impe-rial sons-in-law they both had the right to attend court, and both had imperial ambitions of their own. 31 Song shu 41.1290-92 also contains the Linchuan Princess’s memorial.

du ji

177

dynasty (Eastern Jin, 317-419), and compiled the jealous habits of elite women. Judging from the content of the other surviving tales, he may have rounded out his book with stories of non-elite women based on oral tradition. The Record circulated for at least a century. The bibliographic records for the Sui dynasty list it as a work in two juan,32 but by the end of the Tang dynasty the codex was no longer extant in China.33 Although we cannot compare the text of the Record as cited in A New Account and the Collection with earlier analogues, we may gain a partial glimpse of the manner in which compilers handled source texts by considering how a similar topic—cures for jealousy—was handled, re-copied and reprinted over time. For as long as there have been tales about jealousy there have been putative cures. The Shanhai jing lists three cures.34 The Collection, citing the Shanhai jing, includes only one of those cures but confuses its main ingredient—leaves similar to those of a pear tree—with the plant used to cure anger.35 This discrepancy alone means the reader should proceed with caution when preparing the recipe for the cure, much less actually eating or drinking it! Later encyclopaedias often contain the same citations of lost works as the earlier ones, but with the introduction of variant characters.36 In this manner, the

32

Sui shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1973), 33.978. Jiu Tang shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975), 46.2006 lists Yu Tongzhi as the author of a different work, but does not list a copy of Du fu ji (as it is listed in Song shu) or Du ji (its alternate title). Xin Tang shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975), 58.1486-87 lists the Du ji in two juan. The Record may have been extant in Japan even after its loss in China. A ninth-century catalogue of Chinese books in Japan lists a copy of the Du ji. See Fujiwara Sukeyo, Nihon koku genzai shomoku (885) (single juan), 19b, in Shumu leibian vol. 97, Yan Lingfeng, ed., (Taibei: Chengwen chubanshe, 1978), 43292. Reprint of 1884 edition, which is a reprint of the manuscript. The Du ji follows the Nü jie (Admonitions for Women) in one juan, and several versions of Lienü zhuan. 34 See Yuan Ke, Shanhai jing jiaozhu (Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 1993 revised ed.), 1.5, 3.110 and 5.177. The cures involve eating various substances: the first cure is the flesh of a hermaphroditic animal (lei), the second is the flesh of the yellow bird (huangniao), and the last is the fruit of a pear-like tree (yumu). All of these animals and plants are mythical. 35 Compare Shanhai jing jiaozhu 5.177 with Yiwen leiju 35.613. 36 The Taiping yulan 39.4a in Siku quanshu (hereafter SKQS ed.) vol. 893 (Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1986), (section on Song mountain) quotes the Shanhai jing correctly and claims that eating the leaves of the dixiu tree will cure anger, and Taiping yulan 961.5a (SKQS ed.) (section on trees) concurs. According to Shanhai jing jiaozhu 5.176 the dixiu tree cures anger, not jealousy. According to the Shanhai jing 33

178

carolyn ford

Taiping guangji and the Taiping yulan reproduce three of the seven tales without having had access to a copy of the original Record.37 In the case of the Shanhai jing, a number of texts are still extant, and it is possible to count the variants among the recipes for cures among the extant texts and the various encyclopaedias. Such a count cannot be undertaken for the Record (because there is no surviving source text), but the chances that any one encyclopaedia, specifically the Collection, re-copied the tales without introducing textual variants are slim.

Reading the Tale of Huan Wen, Miss Li and the Princess The standard histories of the period offer some assistance in under-standing Huan Wen and the Nankang Princess both as historical figures and as man and wife. The following official biography of Xie An’s (320-385) elder brother Xie Yi (d. 358) records one incident between the couple: Yi was on good terms with Huan Wen. When Huan Wen was appointed the Marshal of Anxi,38 Yi still proclaimed how good it was to be a commoner. At Wen’s place for social gatherings, he would remove his head wrap, laugh and chat cheerfully, no different from any other day. Huan Wen said, ‘I’m just a border general.’39 Every time Yi drank, he would no longer abide by official etiquette, on one occasion he forced Huan Wen to drink. Huan Wen ran to the quarters of the Nankang Princess to seek refuge. The princess said, ‘If you weren’t acting so crazy, General, would I be seeing you right now?’ Yi then brought his wine and went straight to Huan’s office, whereupon he invited one of Huan’s subordinate commanders to drink with him, saying, ‘I’ve lost one old soldier, but gained another one, so I have nothing to complain about.’ Wen did not upbraid him for this.40

The implication is clear that Huan Wen did not visit his wife’s

it is the yumu plant that cures jealousy. According to the Yiwen leiju 35.613, it is the zhimu plant that cures jealousy. 37 Taiping guangji 272.2144 (SKQS ed.); Taiping yulan 521.9b, 758.12b, and 967.7a. In the case of the Huan Wen tale, Taiping yulan 154.9a in its section on princesses cites the Shishuo xinyu version. 38 Anxi is located in Dunhuang. 39 This is false modesty, given that Huan Wen was a kingmaker in the Eastern Jin court. See note 2 above. 40 Jin shu 79.2080.

du ji

179

quarters often and only abnormal circumstances would drive him to seek refuge there. The unofficial histories offered in A New Account and the Record cre-ate a colourful, if unsubstantiated, portrait of the marital relationship between Huan Wen and the Nankang Princess. The specific text a reader encountered inevitably influenced his interpretation of the relative virtues and vices of the characters within the tale, especially given that the compilers usually arranged and labelled their material by categories. Thus one compiler’s notion of virtue may well turn out to be another’s notion of vice. In the tale of Huan Wen, Miss Li, and the Nankang Princess it is the princess who draws praise or blame depending on the viewpoints of different compilers. Our attention now turns to four early texts of this tale.41 In the first text from A New Account, Liu Yiqing classified the tale as an example of a virtuous woman (xianyuan) and it is clear that Miss Li is the paragon of virtue here: [Main text] When Huan Xuanwu subdued Shu [Sichuan], he took the younger sister of Li Shi as a concubine, and treated her with extreme favour, always keeping her in an apartment behind his study. The princess knew nothing about it at first, but after she heard, she went with several tens of female attendants, brandishing an unsheathed blade, to attack her. Just then Li was combing her hair, and her tresses reached down to the ground, and her complexion was like lustrous jade. The expression on her face was unperturbed. She said calmly, ‘My kingdom has been destroyed and my family ruined. I had no wish to come here. If I were killed today it would be my deepest desire.’ The princess withdrew in shame. [Commentary] The Record of Jealous Women says….42

We have already read the second text—the commentary citing the Record in the opening section of this chapter, but we should keep

41 The most noticeable differences among the four texts deal with Huan Wen’s name and title, the identity of Miss Li as either Li Shi’s daughter or younger sister, the presence or absence of the word ‘jealous,’ the description of the weapon used, the nature of the compilation in which the story occurs, the presence or absence of commentary, the presence or absence of speeches by Miss Li and the princess, and the nature of the conclusion (whether there is a happy ending or not). For a summary of these differences, see the table at the end of the chapter. 42 Please refer to page 251 above for a translation of the commentary. See also Yu Jiaxi, Shishuo xinyu jianshu, 693-94. Richard Mather also translates this section in A New Account of Tales of the World (second edition) (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002), pp. 377-78.

180

carolyn ford

in mind the fact that the events recorded in A New Account soon required large amounts of commentary to explain the background to certain people and events. The tale of Huan Wen, Miss Li and the Nankang Princess as presented in A New Account too was even-tually supplemented by a commentary quoting the Record. Once A New Account acquired its commentarial apparatus, it was no longer possible to read this tale without the influence of the Record.43 In the first text Huan is referred to by his posthumous name. Miss Li is identified as the younger sister of the last ruler of Shu, not as his daughter. The word ‘jealousy’ is not used. The princess is not explicitly identified as Huan’s wife, the reader is left to infer that fact. Miss Li speaks, but the princess does not. It is only with the addition of commentary that these elements are incorporated. The third text is found in a Dunhuang manuscript (Pelliot 2549, hereafter P2549).44 The palaeographer Luo Zhenyu (1866-1940) received photographs of P2549 from Paul Pelliot (1878-1945) himself in 1913. In his notes on the manuscript Luo argued that it was a Tang dynasty manuscript,45 possibly another compilation of A New Account.46 Other modern scholars disagree with Luo’s assessment. After comparing P2549 to Tang era manuscripts of A New Account and Song era print editions, Yu Jiaxi (1883-1955) concluded that many of the details in P2549 were more numerous and qualitatively different from those in both A New Account and the Record, therefore the tale, in his opinion, did not come from A New Account, but rather was more likely a fragment from an encyclopaedia.47 Wang Zhongmin,

43 The extent to which Yu Tongzhi may have drawn on A New Account for his writing of this tale in the Record of Jealous Women is unknown. 44 P2549 is kept in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. For a photoreprint of P2549, see Facang Dunhuang xiyu wenxian, vol. 15 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2001), 291. Alternatively see Luo Zhenyu, Luo Xuetang xiansheng quanji (san bian), pp. 3059-61. The tale of Huan Wen et al. appears on p. 3060, start-ing on line 7. I would like to thank my colleague Hsiao-ting Lin for helping me transcribe P2549. I did not always follow his suggestions, but his assistance saved me from a number of errors. 45 Luo did not assign a specific century, but the densely packed characters (33 per column) on a scroll with no margin are consistent with an assignment of an early date when paper supplies were scarce, rather than later. 46 Luo Zhenyu, Luo Xuetang xiansheng quanji (san bian), 3073. 47 Yu Jiaxi, Shishuo xinyu jianshu 21.694.

du ji

181

in response to Luo’s notes, has referred to it instead as a li zhongjie (moral exhortation manuscript).48 The section in which the tale is found is devoted to zhenlie (chaste and heroic women). Comments made by two empresses, Empress Yang and Empress Xian,49 on the nature of virtue introduce the sec-tion, which then turns to selected quotations from the Han dynasty work Lienü zhuan, other quotations which are analogues of items in A New Account, and one unidentified poem. There are only two top-ics in the fragment—loyalty (for men) and chastity (for women)—a fact that makes it easy to understand Wang Zhongmin’s reasons for describing the text as one of moral exhortation, perhaps intended as a manual for the instruction of men and women inside the home. The difficulty of extrapolating the larger identity of P2549 is great, but much can be said of the material within the tale. Here, in contrast to the Record, the princess is viewed as a woman whose virtue lies in managing to subdue her violent impulses and taking active steps to effect a rapprochement with the young concubine. For her pains, the princess is ranked among worthy women ranging from the Han dynasty Lienü zhuan up through her own time: When Huan Xuanwu pacified Shu [Sichuan], he took Li Shi’s daughter as a concubine. He was deeply fond of her, and he privately installed her [in a room] at the back of his study. At first the princess was not aware of this, [but] once she heard of it, she ordered several tens of maidservants to take up clubs to attack and kill her. When she found Li, Li was combing her hair as she stood on the bed. Her hair was so long it brushed the floor, her beauty was extraordinary, her skin had the lustre of jade, but her face displayed no emotion at all. She slowly let her hair down to the ground, clasped her hands respectfully and addressed her: ‘My country is ruined and my family destroyed, my parents were murdered, I merely while away the days and nights, I have no will to live. If you were to kill me now, it would be my

48

Wang Zhongmin, Dunhuang guji xulu (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1958),

203. 49 There were multiple empresses named Yang and Xian in the Six Dynasties period. Luo Zhenyu surmised that the one empress in the Jin dynasty who was referred to in the standard history as intelligent, perceptive and virtuous may be the woman quoted in this fragment. She was the wife of Jing (grandfather of the founder of the Western Jin dynasty), née Yang, and nicknamed Huiyu, posthu-mously called Xian (third century). See Luo Zhenyu, Luo Zhenyu jiaokan qunshu xulu (Guangling: Jiangsu Guangling guji keyinshe, 1997), 330, and Jin shu 31.949 for the biography of Empress Yang.

182

carolyn ford fondest wish.’ The princess then threw the sword and club away,50 in tears she went forward and took the girl in her arms: “Even I cannot help but take pity on you, in mind and spirit I feel so sorry for you, no wonder the old bastard feels this way about you.’ She subsequently treated Li with the utmost kindness.51

The fourth text of the first tale is the quotation of the Record in the Collection, the early seventh-century encyclopaedia. Compiled by Ouyang Xun and a group of scholars, this encyclopaedia contains excerpts from 1,400 books written before the seventh century, of which only ten per cent are extant today. Arranged by keyword topics, and sub-divided by genre, this work lists its sources at the beginning of each entry, and it is this feature that aids the partial recovery of the Record. The bulk of tales from the Record appear in juan 35, which opens with the topic of female jealousy. A common stylistic feature of the jealousy tales is the remark that the female protagonist “was extremely jealous by nature” (xing shen du). The compilers chose to comment here that: “According to oral tradition, after his conquest of Shu, Huan Wen took Li Shi’s daughter as his concubine. The Nan[kang] Princess was very jealous. This item is already listed under ‘beautiful women’ (meifu)”52 that is, in juan 18 of the Collection. Thus their assessment of the Nankang Princess’s jealous nature was not based primarily on evidence from the Record, but rather on oral tradition. To the compilers the salient point was that Miss Li possessed a beauty which could subdue jealousy: The Record of Jealous Women says: When Grand Marshal Huan took Li Shi’s daughter as his concubine, Huan’s wife, the Princess of Nan[kang] grabbed a sword and led several tens of maidservants to Li’s quarters with the intent of beheading her. She saw Li in front of the window combing her hair, hair so long it touched the ground. Her posture and appearance were breathtakingly beautiful. [Li] then slowly knelt down, tied her hair up [thus presenting her neck to the princess], clasped her hands respectfully and addressed the princess: “With my country in ruins and my family destroyed, I never intended to live till this day. If I were killed now, it would truly be my [fated] lifespan.” Her bearing was calm and graceful, yet her tone was one of deep grief. The princess then threw away the sword, advanced and embraced

50

This is the only version to mention clubs. The sword is not originally men-tioned, but crops up before this version of the tale ends. 51 Luo Zhenyu, Lu xuetang xiansheng quanji (sanbian), 3060. See also P2549. 52 See Yiwen leiju 35.616.

du ji

183

her, saying, “My child, now that I’ve seen you, I cannot help but pity you, no wonder the old fool [loves you].” Thereafter [the princess] treated her well.53

Although Huan’s military position as a Grand Marshal (da sima) is mentioned, his campaign against Li Shi’s kingdom as the background to his acquisition of Miss Li is not. The compilers have summarized the events in a manner intended to avoid the need for commentary. The passage explains little about the Nankang Princess other than the absolutely necessary fact that she is Huan Wen’s wife.54 All subsequent analogues of the first tale follow a line of descent from the first, second or fourth texts. None repeat the particular features associated with P2549. Although all four early texts are quite obviously descriptions of the same event, we have seen the degree to which they exhibit significant textual variants. Indeed there are enough variants that it is unlikely that all the accounts have been recovered. For example, the Record as it appears in A New Account is shorter than its counterpart in the Collection quotation of the Record. It is difficult to conclude however, which compiler—Liu Xiaobiao the commentator or Ouyang Xun the editor—is more faithful to the original Record. Consequently, the first tale as composed by Yu Tongzhi cannot be authoritatively reconstructed at this time. Liu and Ouyang failed to agree on one crucial point: Liu’s quota-tion of the Record uses the term ‘jealous’ with reference to the Nank-ang Princess, Ouyang’s does not. The main entry of A New Account, P2549 (of unknown textual descent) and the Record as cited in the Collection all agree against the Record as transmitted in A New Account in not using the language of jealousy to refer to the princess. Without the early text of the Record in A New Account, there would be little explicit textual evidence to support the claim that the Nan-kang Princess was a jealous wife.55 Yet without the main entry in A New Account and P2549, in contrast, it would be difficult for us today to recover readings of the princess’s virtue. Only by reading all four

53

Yiwen leiju 18.325. Commentary to the Shishuo xinyu cites the lost work Xu Jinyang qiu, “Wen was given the hand of Emperor Ming’s (r. 323-326) daughter, the elder princess of Nankang.” See Shishuo xinyu jianshu 19.693. 55 There would, of course, still be the documentation of oral tradition as found in Yiwen leiju 35.616. 54

Unknown

The Collection, 604 citing the Record (105)

P2549 (126)

Early fifth century

Main entry of A New Account (74) Commentary to A New Account, citing the Record (77)

Huan Xuanwu

Grand Marshal Huan

Huan Xuanwu

No

No

Daughter of Li Shi

Yes

“Jealous” used to describe the princess? No

Daughter of Li Shi

Younger sister of Li Shi Daughter of Li Shi

Huan Wen’s Identity of name and title Miss Li

After mid- Huan Wen fifth century

Date

Text and number of characters

Clubs and sword Sword

Sword

Blade

N/A

Yes

Yes

Passage remarks that she spoke but does not cite her words Yes

Yes

Commentary Quotation of added? Miss Li?

No Moral exhortation manuscript? EncycloNo paedia

Unofficial history

Unofficial history

Weapon Type of text

Table 1. A comparison of the four early texts of the first tale from Du ji

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Quotation Happy of ending? princess?

184 carolyn ford

du ji

185

early texts side by side, as is now possible, does a reader gain a richer idea of the interaction between the princess and Miss Li.

Rewriting the Tale in Tang and Song Poetry Bo Juyi read the tale and referred to it twice in his own work. He included it once in his own encyclopaedia, 56 and on a separate occasion he wrote a poem about the tale. His encyclopaedia entry is most consistent with the text in the Collection.57 Bo classified the tale as one of jealousy. He may have memorized what he had read, then improved upon it when he compiled his own encyclopaedia. Indeed, Bo’s encyclopaedia entry is most memorable for his re-formulation of the remark made by the Nankang Princess upon meeting Miss Li for the first time. It is the first to reduce the remark “jian ru, bu neng bu lian” to a four character phrase, “wo jian, you lian” (I saw you, and even I pitied you).58 Bo’s poem, in contrast, does not include this phrase. He gave the poem the title, “In response to Li Shi’s daughter.”59 He composed it in 829 when he was fifty-seven years old, living in Chang’an with an official position as xingbu shilang (Vice-President of the Board of Justice). This is one of twenty-three poems harmonizing with his friend Yuan Zhen (779-831). For a poem ostensibly in response to Li Shi’s daughter, by the end of the poem Bo shifted emphasis to the character of the princess: A shade less or a shade more, and your beauty would not be perfect. Un-rouged your face rivals the flowers, un-powdered your skin white like frost. 56

Bo Juyi and Kong Chuan, Bo-Kong liutie (Taibei: Xinxing shuju, 1974), 17.26b. Song dynasty editions of this book clearly place this tale under Bo’s authorship. The rare book room of the National Library of China in Beijing has a Song edition of Bo Juyi’s work before Kong Chuan’s additions to the encyclopaedia, and this work should be consulted in future to see if the phrase is a perfect match. Kong Chuan was a twelfth-century descendant of Confucius. See Wang Zicai and Feng Yunhao, Song-Yuan xuean buyi (Beijing: Beijing tushuguan chubanshe, 2002), 3.173. 57 But is slightly shorter at ninety-three characters. 58 I am grateful to Siu-fu Tang for first suggesting that the modern saying wo jian you lian was connected to the Record of Jealous Women. 59 Bo’s entry is also consistent with the Collection account of Miss Li as Li Shi’s daughter. If Bo were drawing on the A New Account main entry, he would have referred to Li Shi’s younger sister.

186

carolyn ford The most alluring beauty under heaven, and the bravest heart among your sex, You spoke of multiple calamities, of outliving your family. Everyone has one death to die, a death which is her due. You continued your family line, but for the princess you were an unwanted tumour.60 Your death would mean joy for the princess, only then could you both be at peace. Straight from the heart you begged her to kill you then and there with her naked blade. The princess retreated with a sudden change of heart and threw down the blade. She embraced you, saying, “My child, my house is now your home.” Not only did her suspicion and jealousy disappear, she treated you with true kindness. Once the sacrifice is on the chopping block there is no need to wield a precious sword. The Nankang Princess passed away long ago, her bones dry in a deep-green grave. I wish to place a stone on her grave, upon which to carve this phrase: “A warning to the wives of the world, ’tis unseemly for yin to master yang.”61

The reception history of Bo’s two pieces is unknown. Encyclopae-dias consistently enjoyed the readership of men preparing official examinations, so it is plausible that more readers encountered the tale in Bo’s encyclopaedia than read this particular poem. As for the warning to women, it is tempting to speculate that more men read it than women. If the reading audience was predominantly composed of men, then this warning would have been intended for them—that they should be on the look-out for women about to master their husbands. The Song poet Mei Yaochen (1002-1060),62 unlike Bo Juyi, did not

60

Youchuang, literally tumour or wart. Bo’s poem is the locus classicus. Zhu Jincheng, Bo Juyi ji jianjiao (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1988), 1481-82. The reader has a choice between Bo Juyi addressing Miss Li in the second person singular or speaking of her in the third person singular. Interestingly, Jin shu 27.816 describes Huan Wen’s disturbing influence over the imperial court as one of yin overpowering yang. 62 Mei Yaochen, zi Shengyu, was a native of Wanling, Anhui. In 1056 he was 61

du ji

187

compile an encyclopaedia. He read the tale and composed “Huan Wen’s Jealous Wife” circa 1041. Although the title emphasizes the Nankang Princess’s jealousy, Mei portrayed her jealousy as subdued by a sudden change of heart. Song dynasty moralists argued that since the presence of concubines was sanctioned by early canonical works, wives should accept the honours they enjoyed as the number one female of the household without jealousy of their subordinates.63 Mei agreed with such arguments, but when he surveyed the women of his own time, he countered that they would never be able to emulate the Nankang Princess, overcome their jealousy and live in harmony with the concubines in the household: I once heard Marshal Huan took a concubine of city-toppling beauty. His wife, the Nankang Princess, was the most fiercely jealous woman of all. She picked up a sword, gathered the maids, and off she went determined to kill the girl. The concubine was at the window, letting down her tresses, peering into a mirror to comb them. Her thick black-cloud hair reached down to the ground, her crystal-like posture an icicle reflected off a water clock. When she first saw the princess coming, she coiled up her hair and went down to the courtyard corner. Folding her hands respectfully she spoke of her trials, “My country destroyed, my family murdered, I did not come here of my own will, nor did I want to offer myself for the master’s pleasure. If I were killed today it would be no better or worse than carrying on living.” The princess then tossed the blade away, and embraced the girl with a long sigh, “Seeing you, even I take pity on you, no wonder the old scoundrel loves you so!” A great rage which turned to joy; sorrow and compassion were not her original intent. Even jealousy submitted to beauty. What a pity—this would never happen now.64 summoned to a post in the Imperial Academy on the basis of his poetic talent. 63 For a summary of the problem of jealousy in husband-wife relations during the Song dynasty, see Patricia Ebrey, The Inner Quarters: marriage and the lives of Chinese women in the Sung period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 165-71. 64 Zhu Dongrun, ed., Mei Yaochen biannian jiaozhu (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1980), 180.

188

carolyn ford

The readings and subsequent rewritings of the first tale by Bo and Mei fully allow the ambiguity or dual nature of the princess who can shift from vice to virtue. Mei’s choice of language is similar to the main text of the tale in A New Account in combination with added commentary from the Record. Just as the commentarial tradition to A New Account records both Miss Li and the princess as speaking, Mei’s text allows both women a voice. Mei’s poem repeats the phrase “wo jian, you lian” which originated in Bo’s encyclopaedia. Still in occasional use in present-day Chinese, it is currently used to describe a beautiful woman, and the speaker may be male or female. The underlying context of pity and affec-tion which subdue any prior feelings of jealousy is absent from the modern usage.65 As such, the phrase has taken on an existence of its own, independent of the tale of Huan Wen, the princess and the concubine, but each time we say it the ghost of the Record, as medi-ated by Bo Juyi (and echoed by Mei Yaochen), is with us.

Late Imperial Readings of the Tale In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, male writers observed that the Jiangnan area had an abundant supply of jealous women.66 Despite this perception of their female contemporaries, male readers were occasionally willing to read the princess’s virtue back into the tale. In the sixteenth century, Li Zhi (1527-1602) may have been inspired by his reading of A New Account in 1588 to cast a sympathetic eye on the princess. Having read it, he exclaimed, “What a virtu-ous princess! Although of jealous complexion she was able to prefer virtue, she has surpassed men by far.”67 His comments referring to the other women in A New Account (some of whom also appear in

65 This phrase rhymes, unlike the other formulations of the princess’s remarks, and that may be a reason for its continued use to the present day. For a discussion of the role of rhyme in the creation, preservation and transmission of proverbs and sayings, see Bronislawa Kordas, “The Poetic Functions and the Oral Transmission of Chinese Proverbs,” CHINOPERL 15, 1990: 86 and 93. 66 For a discussion of the problem of jealousy in Jiangnan, see Dorothy Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 103-110. 67 Li Zhi, Chutanji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 16.

du ji

189

the Record) are not so sympathetic, “These six are perfect shrews. Luckily for them, [their husbands] were wonderful men.”68 Soon after Li Zhi expressed his views on jealous women, Feng Menglong (ca. 1574-ca. 1645) also wrote a section of his book Gujin tan’gai (Talks on Matters Old and New) warning women against jealousy. Feng had read the Collection and cited it as his source on two occasions. He compiled five of the tales from the Record in his admonitions about the women’s quarters.69 Feng observed in his introduction to the admonitions that the majority of husbands, from the Son of Heaven (the emperor) down to the common man, all feared their wives and were unable to solve the problem of female jealousy. His admonitions could thus be read as signs to watch out for in diagnosing and curing the problem of female jealousy. Of the two remaining tales, Feng classified his fifth tale (the rope and goat trick)70 as one of practical intelligence under a later section, but Feng did not include the example of the Nankang Princess as a negative model for women anywhere in his book. The Nankang Princess, as an archetype of the principal wife who in the end does get along with her husband’s concubines and courtesans, receives neither criticism nor praise from Feng. Although it is not known why Feng omitted this tale from his practical book, perhaps he was unable to recast the tale into any sort of useful advice for his readers. In spite of Li Zhi’s and Feng Menglong’s views of the princess’s virtue, the label of jealousy applied to the princess in the fifth century still clings to her today, where the weight of extant texts makes it difficult to reclaim her virtue from the label of vice. Although some late imperial writers such as Li Zhi have questioned the Record’s assignments of virtue and vice to the princess, those assignments have outlived the life of the original text.71

68 See Li Zhi, Chutanji, p. 16. Among the six women Li Zhi criticized for their jealous behaviour were Lady Cao (Cao furen) and Lady Liu (Liu furen), who appear in the second and third tales of the Record (and in A New Account). 69 See Feng Menglong, Gujin tan’gai (Beijing: Wenxue guji, 1955), 19.4a, 19.5b, 19.6b-7a, 19.7a,b, 19.7b-8a, 21.15b-16a. 70 See note 13 above. 71 Modern feminist scholars such as Mei Chia-ling have continued this trend of reading virtue back into some of these old tales. See her article “Yiwei yu fude yu caixing zhijian: Shishuo xinyu xianyuan pian de nüxing fengmao,” Funü yu liangxing xuekan 8, 1997.4: 1-28.

190

carolyn ford The Amended Record

Later writers attempted to amend or continue the entire Record. Although the bibliographic records for the Tang dynasty are the last ones in China to refer to the original Record, post-Tang bibliographic records have citations of periodic attempts to compile amendment or continuation volumes to the Record. The compilers of these volumes presumably re-copied the tales out of encyclopaedias while adding new ones. The Xu Du ji (Continuation of the Record of Jealous Women, hereafter Continuation) by an unknown author in five juan was one such work.72 Books with xu (continuation, or sequel) in the title are often examples of imitation as the sincerest form of flattery. Sequels to A New Account, for example, appear with the telltale title Xu Shishuo xinyu and are still extant. The Continuation as an attempt to establish a genre of books about jealous women was unsuccessful. There are no known citations of the Continuation. The Amended Record of Jealous Women (hereafter Amended Record) is one of the last attempts to compile a book strictly dedicated to this topic.73 The private collectors during the Song dynasty provide us with the most details about the work. In the catalogue of his private library Chao Gongwu (ca.1105-1180) wrote: The Amended Record of Jealous Women is a work in one juan. In ancient times there was the Record of Jealous Women, which has been lost for a long time now. I do not know who compiled it. The material ranges from the Shang and Zhou dynasties to the beginning of the Tang.74

Another description from the private book collector Chen Zhensun (fl. ca. 1240) is more detailed: 72 Zheng Qiao (1104-1162) is the only bibliographer who attributed authorship to a seventh-century Tang official Wang Fangqing. See Tong zhi 65.46a (SKQS ed.). Wang Fangqing flourished during the 690s as an official during the reign of Empress Wu. The bibliographic records for the Tang dynasty credit him with the author-ship of a number of works (most not extant), one of which was a sequel to A New Account. Familiarity with such works of minor, anecdotal or unofficial history would have enabled him to compile a similar sequel to the Record. Wang’s biographies are located in Jiu Tang shu 89.2896 and Xin Tang shu 116.4223. 73 Song shi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1977), 286.5230, note 18, refers to the work as Bu gu du ji. The modern editors have corrected it to read Bu Du ji, in light of the fact Wang Ji is the listed author, in agreement with the catalogues by the private collectors Chao Gongwu and Chen Zhensun. 74 Chao Gongwu, Junzhai dushuzhi jiaozheng, Sun Meng, ed., (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1990), 13.600.

du ji

191

The Amended Record of Jealous Women in eight juan. The title says Wang Ji75 of the Metropolitan District is the editor. I do not know which era he belongs to. In ancient times there was Yu Tongzhi of the [Liu] Song dynasty’s work, the Record of Jealous Women, which is no longer extant, hence the amended work. Its material ranged from the Shang and Zhou dynasties down to the Five Dynasties period, any material about jealous women contained in the histories and biographies was all set down in this work, to include the supernatural, miscellaneous sayings, and prose. At the very end there are two prescriptions for curing jealousy, which are very funny.76

The famous book collector You Mao (1127-1193)77 also listed the Amended Record in the catalogue of his private collection, but his catalogue did not include details of his books, and in any case his collection, one of the most extensive ever known in China, was later destroyed by fire.78 Chao, Chen and You’s efforts to list the Amended Record in their catalogues ultimately did not aid the preservation of the book, but the details they provided were certainly used by later compilers attempting to reassemble the Record and Amended Record. One such attempt may have been the work listed by the scholar Huang Yuji (1629-1691)79 in the catalogue of his personal collection—a Du ji (Record of Jealous Women) in ten juan by one Yang Ruozeng.80 Books like the Record were organizationally and chronologically

75

No additional information about Wang Ji is known. Chen Zhensun, Zhizhai shulu jieti (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1987), 11.327. In addition to this catalogue entry, Chen elsewhere provides a clue about a specific tale included in the Amended Record as part of his description of the collected works of Yu Xuanji. He notes that the story of Yu Xuanji murdering her maid is included in Bu Du ji. See Zhizhai shulu jieti 19.585. 77 His official biography is in Song shi 389.11923. Zi Yanzhi, a native of Wuxi, Jiangsu. The highest official position he achieved was that of Minister of the Board of Rites (libu shangshu). 78 Suichu tang shumu 1.65b (SKQS ed.). Suichu is You’s nickname. 79 Huang Yuji, zi Yutai, was a native of Quanzhou, Fujian. His biography is in Qing shi gao (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1977), 484.13360. Able to compose poetry at the age of six, Huang passed an exam for child prodigies. Huang was one of only fifty men to pass the extraordinary special examination of 1679 designed to recruit Chinese scholars for work with the Manchu government, after which he was promptly appointed to a post revising the official histories of the Ming dynasty. His personal book catalogue was used as the basis for the bibliographical monograph of the standard history of the Ming. 80 Qianqing tang shumu 12.53a (SKQS ed.). No other information about Yang Ruozeng is available. 76

192

carolyn ford

similar to books such as the Biographies of Eminent Women. The biog-raphies of these worthy women were used for the instruction of the women in a household and were prescriptive. Women literate enough to understand the Biographies of Eminent Women would also be able to make sense of the Record. If the Record was intended for a male readership in the hope of providing warnings to prevent the spread of jealous female behaviour in homes, the sheer number of depress-ing and violent tales would not make very pleasant reading, or be a distraction from the domestic issues literati men already faced. It is unlikely that any version of the original Record (in which most of the women do not suffer as a result of their jealous actions) or its descen-dents was intended for female readership. It is difficult to imagine literati men leaving a copy of the book around the household, just waiting for their wives to read about new ideas for acting out jeal-ous rages—late seventeenth-century storytellers make precisely this point.81 On the other hand, if a scholar left an encyclopaedia lying around the house, there would have been less temptation for his wife to read a work intended to assist examination preparation. Compilers of encyclopaedias, in their attempts to systematize knowledge, did find a place for female jealousy, its diagnosis and cures, which they felt were important matters in the realm of human relationships. The partial preservation of the Record stands in stark contrast to the Continuation and Amended Record, which do not have extracts preserved. The Record was still extant when Ouyang Xun and company extracted tales for the Collection. The compilers of later encyclopaedias probably never had the opportunity to read the Continuation and the Amended Record, much less excerpt them, because those books were already lost.

The Loss of the Last Known Amended Record The question of dating the loss of the last known codex is an inter-esting one precisely because there are conflicting accounts. There

81

In the first tale by Aina jushi (pseud.), Doupeng xianhua (Idle Talk under the Bean Arbour, late 1660s), a storyteller talks of a fictional version of the Record, known as the Du jian (Mirror of Jealous Women) which women consciously strove to emulate. See Doupeng xianhua (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985), 3.

du ji

193

were writers lamenting its loss while at roughly the same time rare book collectors were claiming they owned a copy. Chen Di (15411617) 82 was a renowned Fujianese book collector who made just such a claim. Chen is the only late imperial bibliophile who claimed to own a copy not only of the Record, but of the Amended Record as well!83 He left behind a catalogue, the Shishantang shumu (A Catalogue of Shishan’s Studio) in two juan, which was first printed by Bao Tingbo (1728-1814)84 in 1795. In a post-face to Chen’s catalogue, Bao said that an earlier bibliophile of Hangzhou discovered a manuscript copy of the catalogue about 1750 and went to Fujian to see the books but was disappointed to learn that the collection had already been dispersed. Bao and this Hangzhou bibliophile were unaware that Zhu Yizun (1629-1709)85 had already ascertained this fact circa 1705 when he sent a Fujianese friend to investigate. A different account of the fate of Chen Di’s books is related by Zheng Jie,86 a Qianlong era gongsheng (tribute student) who recom-piled some of Xu Bo’s (1570-1642) bibliographic works. In 1798, in a response to Xu Bo’s comment that Chen Di’s sons and grandsons sold off the collection to obtain money, Zheng Jie claimed that the books were destroyed by his wife.87 Unaware of Chen Di’s claims of ownership, the author Hu Yinglin (1551-1602), a native of Zhejiang, once read a story that struck him

82

Hao Yizhai. For his biography, see Carrington Goodrich, ed., Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1368-1644 (hereafter DMB) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), pp. 180-184, esp. p. 183 for a discussion of his book collection and its fate. 83 Chen Di, Shishantang cangshu mulu (1795) A.33a lists a Du ji in one juan by Song Yun and a Bu Du ji in one juan by Wang Ji of the Metropolitan District. See Mingdai shumu tiba congkan vol. 1, Feng Huimin and Li Wanjian, eds., (Beijing: Shumu wenxian chubanshe, 1994), 825. 84 For Bao Tingbo’s biography, see Arthur W. Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (1644-1912) (hereafter ECCP) (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1943-44), p. 612. 85 See Zhu Yizun’s biography in ECCP, p. 182. 86 Zheng Jie, zi Renjie, later zi Changying, zihao. A brief remark about Zheng Jie’s bibliographic activities is found under Xu Bo’s biography in DMB, p. 598. 87 For Xu Bo’s comment that Chen’s descendants let the collection disperse like clouds or mist and Zheng Jie’s rejoinder about Chen’s wife, see Chongbian Hongyulou tiba, 1a,b, in Mingdai shumu tiba congkan, vol. 2, 2096. It is important to note that Xu Bo’s remarks, and Zheng Jie’s additions were in turn recompiled by the late Qing bibliographer Miao Quansun (1844-1919) in 1907. In a local gazetteer Chen Yan blames the descendants. See Chen Yan, Minhou xianzhi (1933) 44.5b, Zhongguo fangzhi congshu vol. 13 (Taibei: Chengwen chubanshe, 1966), 138.

194

carolyn ford

as the type which would have been included in the Record or in the Amended Record. He noted, however, that the original Record was lost during the Tang dynasty and that the Amended Record was no longer extant.88 He thus had no means of testing his supposition, but his remarks are evidence that at least one sixteenth-century scholar believed the Amended Record was not extant. Although late Ming writers like Hu believed the Amended Record to be lost, the title had curiously turned up again in one of the famous book collections in eighteenth-century Zhejiang.89 Zheng Xing (16661743)90 was a serious book collector who built the Er lao ge (Two Old Gentlemen Pavilion) at Cixi [in the vicinity of Ningbo, Zhejiang] in honour of his grandfather Zheng Qin91 and his grandfather’s friend Huang Zongxi (1610-1695).92 As a collection it was second only to the famous private library Tian yi ge (Celestial Unity Pavilion) also in Ningbo, Zhejiang. From 1772 to 1774 the Qianlong emperor had his highest officials engaged in a project to gather all the books of the empire, especially rare ones, in an effort to make the imperial library the repository of all knowledge.93 The edicts for this project also urged private collectors to submit their rare books to the gov-ernment for examination, copying and re-printing. Zheng Xing’s

88 See his work Shaoshi shanfang bicong 20.18a (SKQS ed.). The author’s study was named for the Shaoshi mountains in Henan province, among which is the main peak Song mountain. Hu’s work was first printed in 1606. 89 A manuscript copy of the Bu Du ji is listed in Zhejiang caiji yishu zonglu (shiji) 7.29, compiled by the Qing scholar Shen Chu et al., in Qianlong 39 (1774). This work is reprinted in Luo Weiguo and Hu Ping, eds., Guji banben tiji (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe), 307. 90 Zheng Xing, hao Nanxi. His biographical data are in Li Huan, Guochao qixian leizheng chubian (Taibei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1966), 409.15a-17b; and in Qian Lin, Wenxianzheng cunlu (Yangzhou: Jiangsu Guangling guji keyinshe, 1987), 8.71a-72a. In these two works, the specific notices on Zheng Xing were written by the historian Quan Zuwang (1705-1755). Quan also wrote a notice about the library ‘Er lao ge cangshu ji’ in Jieqi ting ji waipian, Xuxiu Siku quanshu vol. 1429 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1995-2002) (hereafter XXSKQS), 17.3a-4b (XXSKQS ed.). 91 Zheng Qin, zi Pingzi, flourished during the Tianqi and Chongzhen reign periods (1621—1644). Loyal to the Ming dynasty, he committed suicide when the Qing dynasty came to power. He has a biography in Guochao qixian leizheng chubian 476.32a. 92 Huang Zongxi has a biography in Qingshi gao 480.13102. 93 For a study of the Siku project, see R. Kent Guy, The Emperor’s Four Treasur-ies: Scholars and the State in the Late Ch’ien-lung Era (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1987).

du ji

195

descendent, Zheng Dajie,94 submitted a copy of the Amended Record along with ninety-five other books from the Two Old Gentlemen Pavilion to accompany the books from the Celestial Unity Pavilion to the capital. The editors of the Four Treasuries project were less than impressed when they examined the Zheng family copy of the Amended Record. They concluded that the book was unlike those examined by bib-liographers in the thirteenth century and that it had undoubtedly suffered from interpolation by Ming dynasty writers, if not outright reconstitution. The following are the editors’ comments on the Zheng family copy of the Amended Record: The Amended Record of Jealous Women in eight juan (the copy submitted by the Zheng Dajie family in Zhejiang). The old title says that Wang Ji of the Metropolitan District compiled the work, but it does not mention what era. According to Chao Gongwu’s (ca. 1105-80) Record of Reading Books at the Commandery Studio (ca. 1151), the book is listed as a work in one juan, but Chao did not know who compiled the book. Chen Zhensun’s An Explanation of the Books in My Collection (ca. 1240) also lists this book, and claims that Wang Ji was the author. It fol-lows in the tradition of the Liu Song dynasty writer Yu [Tong]zhi’s work Record of Jealous Women, which was no longer extant, therefore he amended the work. The title [of the Zheng copy] is consistent with the bibliographic entries by Chen Zhensun, and so it ought to be [the same as] the copy Chen saw. Juan one through six of the Zheng copy record stories of jealous women from the Shang and Zhou dynasties down through the Five Dynasties period. The seventh juan covers miscellaneous jealous women, women who because of licentiousness and disordered relations then became jealous, and some of the stories border on the supernatural. The eighth juan has general narratives and some miscellaneous essays. Everything after the sequel to the “Prose Poem on Jealous Wives”95 by a Mr. Zhang of the Liang dynasty is missing. As a result it is missing the two cures for jealousy mentioned by Zhensun. Chen Zhensun said that the original Record was no longer extant, yet he said that the Amended Record contained material from the original. It is unclear what evidence he had for making such a state-ment. It was probably the case that any material from the original

94 Little is known about Zheng Dajie, other than the fact that he was a land-scape painter. For a brief biographical note, see Feng Jinbo, Guochao huashi 12.22a (XXSKQS ed.). 95 Yiwen leiju 35.616 has a prose poem on jealous wives by a man surnamed Zhang of the Liang dynasty (502-557). The compiler of the Amended Record probably drew some of his material from encyclopaedias, particularly the Yiwen leiju.

196

carolyn ford Record was culled from encyclopaedias. In the seventh juan, for the story of Emperor Ren of the Song dynasty and his favourites, Beauty Shang and Beauty Yang, there is a note which says, “See the Song dynasty histories.” Men from the Ming dynasty have appended mate-rial to this work, it is not the case that this is a simple reprint of a Song dynasty text.96

If the editors of the Four Treasuries project had concluded that the Zheng family copy of the Amended Record was consistent with thirteenth-century accounts of the text, they might have considered it worthy of inclusion in Siku quanshu (Complete Books of the Four Treasuries). The Amended Record was thus rejected for inclusion in the Complete Books. The books which Zhejiang province private collectors had submit-ted to the throne were supposed to be returned to them upon the completion of the project. The Amended Record, among other books, was never returned to the Two Old Gentlemen Pavilion. No one since 1774 has mentioned seeing a copy.97 At first glance it may seem ironic that an imperial effort to preserve and reprint books could be directly responsible for the loss of the Amended Record, but preservation and loss of texts are two sides of the same coin. At times, storing a large quantity of books together only makes it easier for the fates of fire, flood and theft to befall them. As the eighteenth-century scholars noted, the Amended Record was already essentially lost. The book they examined, which lacked critical information about the two cures for jealousy and suffered from Ming era interpolation, could not possibly have been a simple reprint of the thirteenth-century edition. The Zheng family copy, even before it was lost, was not ‘the real thing.’ The Zheng family copy, even if it had been returned to the Two

96 Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1933), 131.2720. During the reign of Emperor Ren (r. 1023-1063) of the Song dynasty, the two court beauties Shang (Shang meiren) and Yang (Yang meiren) were in competition for the emperor’s favour. These two feuding ladies are included in the Song shi (242.8619 and 468.13655ff.), but a more detailed account of them is listed in the eighteenth-century work Xu zizhi tongjian (A Continuation to the Comprehensive Aid to Good Government) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1957), 39.902, 917-18 and 46.1110, 1176, 1201, 1222. 97 In the nineteenth century, Ruan Yuan (1764-1849) and Xue Fucheng (18381894) listed the Amended Record as part of the private collections submitted to the throne, but they had not seen copies of the work. See Ruan Yuan’s 1808 catalogue, Tianyi ge shumu 1.48b, 1.50a, 1.51a (XXSKQS ed.). See Xue Fucheng’s 1889 catalogue, Tianyi ge jiancun shumu (Taibei: Jinxue shuju, 1970), juan mo 1a, 34b, 35a and 40b.

du ji

197

Old Gentlemen Pavilion, would have had to face the floods, fires and bandits that destroyed the family’s entire collection over the course of the nineteenth century until its final destruction in 1914.98

Conclusion No book dedicated exclusively to tales of jealous women tended to survive. Specific tales about jealous women survived only when they were classified within greater systems of knowledge such as encyclopaedias. The Record of Jealous Women and the Amended Record of Jealous Women are both irrecoverable as physical objects, yet we can read seven of its tales of female jealousy in old encyclopaedias where they remained viable for planting within later narratives and dramas of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Chinese literature. The original sources for the Record lie beyond our grasp, but early texts ranging from the fifth to seventh centuries demonstrate the wide range of readings and rewritings surrounding one particular tale—that of Huan Wen, Miss Li and the Nankang Princess. The tale as transmitted in P2549 in particular offers the possibility of recovering the princess’s virtue from a background of 1,500 years of jealousy. The processes of textual preservation, transmission and loss have given us seven tales but have denied us the codex and those amus-ing cures for jealousy hinted at in book catalogues. If we are lucky enough to find an efficacious cure in the twenty-first century,99 we can only hope that modern methods of transmission and preserva-tion will pass that knowledge on to future generations.

98 See Chen Dengyuan, Gujin dianji jusan kao (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1983), 471-73; and Gu Zhixing, Zhejiang cangshujia cangshulou (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1987), 155-56. 99 For a humorous anecdote about death as a cure for female jealousy, see David Hawkes, trans., The Story of the Stone, vol. 3 The Warning Voice (Harmond-sworth: Penguin Classics, 1973-86), pp. 609-10. Efforts to find such a cure, or at least a treatment, are ongoing. See Stein, D.J., Hollander, E., and Josephson, S.C., “Serotonin re-uptake blockers for the treatment of obsessional jealousy,” Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 55.1, January 1994: 30-33.

198

carolyn ford

Fig. 6.1 Portrait of Miss Li from Baimei xinyong.

du ji

Fig. 6.2 Text on Miss Li from Baimei xinyong.

199

200

mark strange

CHAPTER SEVEN

A READING OF HOU JING’S REBELLION IN ZIZHI TONGJIAN (COMPREHENSIVE MIRROR TO AID GOVERNMENT): THE CONSTRUCTION OF SIMA GUANG’S IMPERIAL VISION Mark Strange Reading Zizhi tongjian On the bing chen day of the third month [13 April], [Emperor Wu of Liang] erected an altar in front of the Taiji Hall to declare to Heaven and Earth that [Hou] Jing had violated their pact. The beacons were then lit and the drums sounded. Originally, on the day when the imperial palace had closed its gates, its men and women had numbered in excess of a hundred thousand, over twenty thousand of whom had been fighting men. But having been under siege for so long, many people’s bodies had swollen up and they had problems breathing. Eighty or ninety per cent of the population had died and those manning the palace walls—not even four thousand—were all emaciated and exhausted. Corpses were strewn about, filling the streets without any prospect of burial. Decay and [the corpses’] effluent filled the gutters. Yet people still set their hearts on relief from outside. All Liu Zhongli did meanwhile was gather together his concubines and singing girls to lay on banquets and make merry with them.1 Every day the generals went with requests to go into battle, but Zhongli refused permission. Jun, Marquis of Annan, urged Lun, Prince of Shaoling: “The city is in such great danger yet the Commander-in-chief does not come to its rescue. In the unlikely event that something untoward were to happen, how would you have the face to stand among your contemporaries? What would be best now would be to divide the army along three routes and attack the rebels while they are off guard. We could realise our ambitions in

1 Liu Zhongli (d.550+) was a senior Liang commander at the time of Hou Jing’s siege of the Liang imperial palace. He gained a reputation for bravery when young, although he does not display that trait here. His biographical details appear in: Yao Silian, Liang shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1973), 43: 611-2; Li Yanshou, Nan shi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975), 38: 992-4.

zizhi tongjian

201

this way.” Lun did not follow his advice.2 Liu Jin scaled the palace walls and addressed Zhongli: “Both your ruler and your father are in trouble. If you are unable to make an effort now, then what will they say about you in a hundred generations’ time?”3 Zhongli took no notice of him. The emperor asked Jin for a strategy. He replied: “Your Majesty has Shaoling and I have Zhongli. Both are disloyal and unfilial. How will the rebels ever be pacified?” … Hou Jing subsequently channelled the waters [of Lake Xuanwu] to in front of the stone fortifications and attacked the city night and day along all routes. Jian, heir to Shaoling, was stationed at the Tai-yang Gate but spent his days gambling with dice and drinking, giving no thought to his officers and men. His clerks, Dong Xun and Xiong Tanlang, resented him. On the ding mao day [24 April], as night drew towards dawn, Xun and Tanlang led [Hou] Jing’s men over the city walls by a tower in the north-west section. Que, Marquis of Yong’an, resisted strongly but he was unable to fight them off. He burst through the door [of the imperial palace] and announced to the emperor: “The city has fallen!”4

These events took place in 549. Three years earlier, in 546, the military commander Hou Jing had been attacked by troops from his native Eastern Wei after he had failed in an attempt to defect to the rival state in the north, Western Wei. He had fled to the city of Shouyang in the territory of the southern Liang dynasty.5 From there he had led a rebellion with the aim of taking the Liang

2 Xiao Lun (519-551) was the son of Emperor Wu and a Liang imperial prince. His official biographies portray him as intelligent but criminal and subversive, Liang shu, 3: 70, 3: 76, 29: 431-7; Nan shi, 53: 1322-6. These descriptions find sup-port in “Apology for the detention of the Prince of Shaoling in custody” by Xiao Lun’s brother, the Liang Crown Prince Xiao Gang: “The subject Lun is not far off acting like a ruffian of the night in his habits. He is unable to change. The repeated instances of his criminal behaviour are self-evident and well-known, and he has been punished three times,” in Ouyang Xun, Yiwen leiju (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959), 54: 9a. 3 Liu Jin (d.549) was Liu Zhongli’s father. He was responsible for the education of the Liang Crown Prince and appears in the official histories as loyal to Emperor Wu: Liang shu, 43: 611; Nan shi, 38: 992. 4 Sima Guang, Zizhi tongjian (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1956), 162: 5008-9. Further references to this edition will appear as ZZTJ. 5 Shouyang was located in modern Shou County, Anhui Province. It lay approxi-mately 190 kilometres northwest of the Liang capital at Jiankang (modern Nanjing), occupying a position between there and Hou Jing’s former territorial base in East-ern Wei. The city’s strategic importance at this time is suggested by its frequent appearance in connection with military affairs in the official histories. The city also appears as Shouchun in sources dealing with this period, cf. Fang Xuanling et al., Jin shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju), 1974, 1: 23.

202

mark strange

capital of Jiankang. A bloody and destructive siege had started on 10 December 548, before Hou Jing succeeded in capturing the imperial palace in the manner described above. Two months after Hou Jing’s victory, the founder of the Liang dynasty, Emperor Wu (r.502-549), died in doubtful circumstances from neglect. Hou Jing installed Emperor Wu’s son, Xiao Gang, as Emperor Jianwen (r.549551) and attempted to assert his authority over a divided and hos-tile Liang court. On 1 January 552, Hou Jing proclaimed himself emperor but, on 28 February, Liang loyalist forces drove him out of Jiankang. He was murdered on 26 May.6 Despite Hou Jing’s death, the Liang court failed to regain full control of its territory. The newly instated Emperor Yuan (r.552-555) moved the capital to Jiangling in the summer of 553 but the following year Western Wei armies captured the new capital and murdered him. The former Liang general Chen Baxian seized power in the rest of Liang ter-ritory and founded the Chen dynasty on 16 November 557. This marked a formal end to the Liang dynasty; all that remained was a small dependency in Northern Zhou territory known as Later Liang. In 589, the northern Sui dynasty conquered Chen and unified the empire. The era of the southern dynasties came to an end. That is how Sima Guang represents Hou Jing’s rebellion and the fall of the Liang dynasty. His account appears in Zizhi tongjian (Com-prehensive mirror to aid government), which he submitted to the Northern Song throne in 1084.7 But the representation of Hou Jing’s capture of the Liang imperial palace at Jiankang reveals a complex textual construction. Several sources feed into Sima Guang’s account, and he has selected and shaped them to produce his own narrative slant on these events.8 The critical notes that Sima Guang includes

6 ZZTJ, 164: 5086 places Hou Jing’s murder in the first year of Emperor Yuan’s cheng bao period, on the ji mao day of the fourth month. No ji mao day falls in this month. I have taken the day as yi mao instead, which fits the text’s chronological sequence. 7 Hou Jing’s rebellion occupies ZZTJ’s narrative on 159: 4944-164: 5089. The section of ZZTJ that deals with the Liang dynasty, including Hou Jing’s rebellion, was composed between 1071 and 1076, cf. Cao Jiaqi, “Zizhi tongjian bianxiu kao,” Wen shi 5, 1978, 82-3. 8 Several scholars have detailed the process of ZZTJ’s compilation: E.G. Pul-leyblank, “Chinese Historical Criticism: Liu Chih-chi and Ssu-ma Kuang,” in W.G. Beasley and E.G. Pulleyblank, eds., Historians of China and Japan (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 135-66, esp. pp. 151-9; Cao Jiaqi, “Zizhi tongjian bianxiu

zizhi tongjian

203

in his kao yi commentary to Zizhi tongjian [hereafter: ZZTJ] supply some evidence of his historiographic choices. There are variations in military statistics: Sima Guang favours Sanguo dian lüe (Summary documents of three states) over Nan shi (A history of the South) in claiming twenty thousand, not thirty thousand, Liang defenders.9 Sima Guang follows Taiqing ji (Records of the Taiqing period) rather than Sanguo dian lüe to provide an account of Xiao Lun’s unwilling-ness to attack Hou Jing (in Sanguo dian lüe, this is attributed to Liu Zhongli).10 The result is a more explicit link in ZZTJ’s account between Liang disloyalty and members of the imperial family. And the kao yi’s commentary reveals that Sima Guang omits suggestions in his sources that the Liang defenders’ apathy resulted from incen-tives of personal profit.11 This causes his reader to look for wider political causes of Liang disloyalty. But the kao yi commentary does not provide a full picture of ZZTJ’s textual construction. The commentary restricts itself to differences in dates, names, and statistics—in other words, to discrepancies in basic data. It remains silent on the larger historiographic choices that underpin ZZTJ. This feature of the kao yi commentary has misdirected much critical analysis: readers have claimed histori-cal objectivity for Sima Guang’s work, while ignoring the textual

kao,” 68-86. Such analysis is not relevant to this study, which focuses on ZZTJ as a completed work. It treats ZZTJ as an expression of Sima Guang’s ideas since he had the final input into the work’s content in his role as editor. For the purposes of source criticism, the present study considers all extant texts available to Sima Guang, including those that do not appear in the kao yi commentary. In doing so, it follows Sima Guang’s standard that literary as well as historical sources should be used in ZZTJ’s composition, cf. Sima Guang, Chuanjia ji, in Siku quanshu, vol. 1094 (Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1986), 63: 16b. 9 Qiu Yue, Sanguo dian lüe, in ZZTJ, 162: 5008; Nan shi, 80: 2006. Sanguo dian lüe, written around the start of the eighth century, originally comprised thirty juan but the final ten juan seem to have been lost by the time of the compilation of the imperial library catalogue, Chongwen zongmu, in 1042, Chongwen zongmu (Beijing: Xiandai chubanshe, 1987), 2: 8a. Sima Guang appears only to have had access to the twenty juan version of Qiu Yue’s work, cf. Du Deqiao and Zhao Chao, Sanguo dian lüe ji jiao (Taibei: Dongda tushu gongsi, 1998), pp. iv-v. 10 Xiao Shao, Taiqing ji, in ZZTJ, 162: 5008. This text is no longer extant in its original form. It was a chronological history of ten juan, written by the Liang imperial prince Xiao Shao, cf. Wei Zheng, Sui shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1973), 33: 958; Chongwen zongmu, 2: 7a-b. 11 See citations from Sanguo dian lüe and Taiqing ji that appear in the kao yi com-mentary on ZZTJ, 162: 5008-9.

204

mark strange

manipulation that forms the basis of ZZTJ’s narrative.12 Close source comparison beyond the scope of the kao yi commentary reveals that Sima Guang chose to highlight the suffering of the common people in his account of Hou Jing’s siege of Jiankang. His images of disease and death appear in Nan shi but not as vividly elsewhere,13 while the people’s futile expectations of relief from outside are omitted from all surviving sources. He also draws from Nan shi for accounts of Liu Zhongli’s disregard for all strategic advice and Liu Jin’s pes-simistic view of Liang disloyalty.14 Neither appears elsewhere. Sima Guang’s selective use of his sources in these cases, which the kao yi commentary leaves undocumented, raises questions of literary author-ity and historical authenticity. The present study aims to explore these questions.15 Political spin is at the centre of all this. It emerges in Sima Guang’s comments on the social and political role that he claimed for ZZTJ. On 14 May 1066, Sima Guang presented this memorial to the throne: Ever since I was young, I have wandered my way through the his-tories. I have noticed that in the annals-biography form the writing is intricate and diffuse. Even if a humble scholar, dedicated to learn-ing, were to read them frequently, he would be unable to obtain a wide-ranging and deep understanding of these works. This really is even more difficult [to achieve], however, in the case of the emperor who inevitably wants a comprehensive knowledge of the gains and losses of former generations but at the same time has to deal with

12 See, for example, Pulleyblank, “Chinese Historical Criticism,” especially his comments on pp. 157-8. 13 Nan shi, 80: 2006. Compare Liang shu, 56: 850; Xu Song, Jiankang shilu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), 17: 690. 14 Nan shi, 38: 992. 15 Modern scholarship has rarely acknowledged ZZTJ’s narrative construction beyond the scope of the kao yi commentary. Exceptions include: Zhang Yuan, “Tongjian zhong de nanbei zhanzheng,” in Jinian Sima Guang Wang Anshi shishi jiubai zhounian xueshu yantao hui lunwen ji (Taibei: Wenshi zhe chubanshe, 1986), pp. 65-96; Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, “Textual Liberties and Restraints in Rewriting China’s Histories: The Case of Ssu-ma Kuang’s Re-construction of Chu-ko Liang’s Story,” in The New and the Multiple: Sung Senses of the Past, Thomas H.C. Lee, ed. (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2004), pp. 61-106. Tillman’s article was only published after the present study had been completed. Unfortunately, Tillman’s earlier article on the same subject in Chinese did not come to my attention until after the completion of this study either, cf. Tian Hao (Hoyt Cleveland Tillman), “Shixue yu wenhua sixiang: Sima Guang dui Zhuge Liang gushi de chongjian,” Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yanjiusuo jikan 73.1, 2002, 165-95.

zizhi tongjian

205

myriad matters every day. I do not rate myself highly but I have always wanted to produce a chronological history, roughly along the lines of Zuo shi Chunqiu zhuan (The Zuo commentary on the Spring and Autumn annals), starting with the Warring States and extending down to the Five Dynasties. Apart from the official histories, it would also select material from other books. [It would contain] everything on the flourishing and decline of states, and the ups and downs in the welfare of the common people. The good could be taken as an exemplary model, the bad could be taken as a warning. It would focus on that which an emperor or sovereign ought to know. It would be called Tong zhi (Comprehensive records).16

Sima Guang’s memorial to Emperor Yingzong (r.1063-1067) offers an indication of the audience that he claimed for ZZTJ as well as the means he used to slant his narrative to the requirements of that audience. Both of these are central to the reading of ZZTJ that this study proposes. ZZTJ was intended for the Northern Song emperor, “the emperor who inevitably wants a comprehensive knowledge of the gains and losses of former generations but at the same time has to deal with myriad matters every day.” Sima Guang’s close focus in his choice of audience is underpinned by the narrative structure that he chose for his work. He wrote ZZTJ in a chronological form (biannian ti). This has important thematic implications.17 First, Sima Guang draws on a historiographic tradition that traces back to Chunqiu (The Spring and Autumn annals) and its associated commentaries. He locates ZZTJ in the context of a canonical discourse that was concerned above all with sovereignty and the exercise of state government.18 This gives the narrative an implicit thematic focus, and lends canonical

16 Li Tao, Xu Zizhi tongjian changbian (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985), 208: 5050. The work that Sima Guang describes here, Tong zhi, was initially a chronological history in eight juan that spanned the period 403-207BC. It later formed the basis of the first eight juan of ZZTJ. Tong zhi was also used as a working title for ZZTJ—it is in this context that Sima Guang refers to Tong zhi here—until Emperor Shenzong changed the title to Zizhi tongjian in 1067. 17 A study of ZZTJ’s place in the development of the chronological form appears in Zhang Xuhou, Tongjian xue (Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe, repr. 1982), pp. 1-18. Zhang does not fully consider the effects of this form on the style of ZZTJ’s narrative, however. 18 A useful examination of the role of the Chunqiu tradition in Song dynasty political thought (although with little direct reference to Sima Guang) appears in Alan T. Wood, Limits to Autocracy: From Sung Neo-Confucianism to a Doctrine of Political Rights (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press), 1995.

206

mark strange

authority to his representation of imperial power. Second, ZZTJ’s chronological form highlights a single imperial regime through its use of rulers’ year titles as its structural framework. The decisions that Sima Guang makes as historian and editor in determining ZZTJ’s chronology—which rulers’ year titles to use, and which to reject— impact on his presentation of imperial power. This revisits Tang historian Liu Zhiji’s observation that “when one records [events] to create a complete system like the arrangement of Chunqiu, and one strings days and months together to form seasons and eras, then one writes about the ruler to show state rule.”19 Finally, the fractured style of ZZTJ’s chronological form, which provides the reader with information from all quarters in close succession, would have had force for the Northern Song emperors because it echoed in narra-tive form their own experiences at court. This can be seen as the ‘mirroring’ (jian) of the work’s title. And this ‘mirroring’ effect gives weight to ZZTJ’s function as a political manual for the Northern Song emperors.20 It is in the context of Northern Song political ideology, therefore, that this study will consider ZZTJ’s account of Hou Jing’s rebellion. Sima Guang’s memorial to Emperor Yingzong also hints at the ideological foundation of ZZTJ’s construction. Sima Guang’s aim here, he claims, is to produce a work in which “the good could be taken as an exemplary model, the bad could be taken as a warn-ing. It would focus on that which an emperor or sovereign ought to know.” ZZTJ’s chronological form is important to the success of this moral and political didacticism. It appears to offer a comprehensive view of the past—Sima Guang’s original choice of title, Tong zhi, is suggestive—which strengthens for the reader the authority of the ideological slant that Sima Guang gives his account. By examin-ing the tensions between the sources that lie beneath the surface of

19

Liu Zhiji, Shitong tongshi (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1978), 2: 37. Under Emperor Shenzong (r.1068-1085), Sima Guang found opportunity to read excerpts from ZZTJ at court, indicating his use of the text for the purposes of political persuasion, cf. Tuo Tuo et al., Song shi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1977), 336: 10763; Bi Yuan, Xu Zizhi tongjian (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1957), 65: 1609, 66: 1617, 67: 1679-80. Li Tao’s Xu Zizhi tongjian changbian differs in its account of the events described on Xu Zizhi tongjian, 67: 1679-80, cf. 210: 5112-4, 210: 5115. 20

zizhi tongjian

207

ZZTJ’s narrative, it becomes clear that Sima Guang’s representation of Hou Jing’s rebellion was independent of those sources and had a distinct ideology. When read with this awareness, it reflects closely Sima Guang’s view of Northern Song imperial power, and stands as a significant contribution to the arguments that he produced on this theme during the eleventh century.

Hou Jing’s Imperial Challenge On 22 December 551, Hou Jing received the nine ritual insignia of high office and appointed the official administration of his state of Han. When he ascended the imperial throne in the southern suburbs of Jiankang nine days later, he proclaimed a general amnesty and changed the year title. And, to legitimise further his claim to impe-rial power, Hou Jing attempted to establish the imperial ancestors of his newly created regime. Sima Guang presents the episode in this way: Wang Wei requested that he establish the hall of the seven imperial ancestors. Hou Jing asked: “What do you mean by ‘the hall of the seven imperial ancestors’?” Wei replied: “The Son of Heaven sacri-fices to a roll of seven generations of ancestors.” He also requested that he impose taboos on [the personal names of] those seven gen-erations, to which Jing said: “I don’t recall the earlier generations. I only remember that my father’s personal name was Biao and that he lived in Shuozhou.21 Why is it necessary to bring this matter up?” Those around all laughed at him. In Jing’s clique there was someone who knew that Jing’s grandfather’s name was Yiyuzhou. Wang Wei

21 In support of this reference to Hou Jing’s ancestry, Hu Sanxing appends the comment that “Hou Jing was originally from the Huaishuo garrison.” This is consis-tent with other references in ZZTJ to Hou Jing’s geographical origins: he makes his first appearance in the narrative as “Member of the Outer Troops, Hou Jing from Huaishuo,” ZZTJ, 149: 4645. Claims of Hou Jing’s origins in Huaishuo also appear in Nan shi, 80: 1993 and Li Boyao, Bei Qi shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1972), 1: 2. Liang shu, 56: 833 contains the suggestion that Hou Jing came from either Shuofang or Yanmen before moving to Huaishuo on military business. Huaishuo was located in the south-west of modern Guyin prefecture, Inner Mongolia. Established in 433 as one of the six garrison towns of Northern Wei, it featured in the Six Garrisons’ Uprising of 523 that contributed to the fall of Northern Wei, cf. Wei Shou, Wei shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 106: 2498. Apart from its military significance, the town had associations with the Xiongnu and Jie ethnic groups, cf. Yao Weiyuan, Beichao hu xing kao (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1958), p. 84.

208

mark strange created personal names and ranks for all the rest, honouring [Jing’s] father, Biao, as the Primal Emperor.22

Sima Guang follows Liang shu (A history of Liang) and Nan shi with little textual variation; the episode does not appear in his other surviving sources.23 But ZZTJ differs from these texts on one impor-tant point. Liang shu and Nan shi contain the claim that Wang Wei “took a Minister of Education from the Han dynasty, Hou Ba, as the founding ancestor, and made a Guardsman of the Jin dynasty, Hou Jin, the seventh generation ancestor.” The genealogy Wang Wei constructs for Hou Jing here has its roots in the two dynasties that had successfully unified China immediately before the period of north-south division in which the Liang dynasty arose. For Sima Guang, they were also two dynasties that had achieved imperial legitimacy.24 This genealogy and its historical associations do not appear in ZZTJ. Sima Guang’s omission denies Hou Jing’s legitimisa-tion attempt both its associations of political unity and its historical credibility. What remains in ZZTJ is an image of Hou Jing as a social out-sider. Hou Jing is a foreigner in the Liang court: his real ancestry (as opposed to the one that Wang Wei gives him) suggests his foreign ethnic origins. But, although Hou Jing’s ethnicity is more explicit here than elsewhere in ZZTJ, it is not the main point.25 Sima Guang’s focus on Hou Jing as an outsider instead falls on his role as a violator of the Liang court’s political and cultural traditions. He attempts to

22

ZZTJ, 164: 5075. Liang shu, 56: 860; Nan shi, 80: 2012-3. 24 Sima Guang included in this category the following dynasties: Zhou, Qin, Han, Jin, Sui, and Tang, cf. ZZTJ, 69: 2187. Unification of the state was Sima Guang’s main criterion in according legitimate imperial power to these dynasties. 25 Sima Guang’s accounts of Hou Jing’s ethnic background are less detailed and less derogatory than his sources. Liang shu contains a reference to Hou Jing as “a cruel Jie, a petty foreigner,” 45: 627. Hou Jing also appears as a “rebellious Xiongnu vassal” in Liang shu, 5: 122, a reference that remains consistent with the later reference to Hou Jing as a Jie, since the Jie formed part of the Xiongnu, cf. Tang Changru, Wei Jin Nanbei chao shilun cong (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1955), pp. 414-6. Yao Silian similarly casts Hou Jing as “a Jie rebel” in Yao Silian, Chen shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1972), 1: 4. Even sources that are less specific on Hou Jing’s ethnic origins—Nan shi, for example—are more insistent on Hou Jing’s for-eignness than Sima Guang’s account. Yao Weiyuan provides a close examination of Hou Jing’s Jie ethnicity based on accounts in the official histories in Beichao hu xing kao, pp. 84-5. 23

zizhi tongjian

209

legitimise his usurpation of Liang imperial rule by identifying himself with the dynasty’s Han Chinese lineage: the name he chooses for his regime alludes to a Han Chinese regime that achieved longlasting political unification of Chinese territory; the establishment of seven imperial ancestors conforms to Han Chinese practices of state legitimisation. While Hou Jing attempts to establish political legitimacy by emphasizing cultural similarities with the regime that he displaces, however, Sima Guang shows how little he actually under-stands the system he intends to exploit. Not only does Sima Guang omit claims of kinship with senior Han and Jin political figures, he also retains from his sources a description of the ridicule that Hou Jing’s ignorance attracts from other members of the Liang court.26 These historiographic choices suggest Hou Jing’s failure to fit into the Liang political system and point up his violation of that system’s traditions for the sole purpose of personal advancement. The whole episode assumes larger moral implications when it is set in a canonical and historical context. The business of imperial ancestral sacrifices was important to Sima Guang. On 29 June 1063, he submitted to the Northern Song throne a discussion on the ritu-als of ancestral worship that had been developed by rulers of China up to Tang times.27 His focus is the establishment of correct ritual in imperial ancestral sacrifice, in which he takes as his model the prescriptions of rulers of antiquity. Both this 1063 discussion and the account in ZZTJ of Hou Jing’s attempt at legitimisation through the

26

The phrase that Sima Guang uses here, “those around all laughed at him” (zhong xian xiao zhi), appears again on ZZTJ, 164: 5079. This repetition, so close in ZZTJ’s narrative, emphasizes Hou Jing’s role as an outsider in Liang court life. His attempt at legitimisation by self-association with the Han dynasty is not unique among foreign usurpers in ZZTJ. In an account of the foreign-led rebel-lions at the beginning of the fourth century, for example, Sima Guang details the attempts of the Xiongnu leader Liu Yuan to associate his regime with the Han dynasty in 304, cf. ibid., 85: 2702. And the contemporaneous rebellion by Zhang Chang, of southern Man ethnicity, parallels Liu Yuan’s self-identification with the Han dynasty, cf. ibid., 85: 2680. But in these cases, Sima Guang’s presentation of the foreigners’ legitimisation attempts suggests social and cultural convergence and assimilation rather than the obvious differences that Hou Jing displays. David Honey considers further examples of the legitimisation attempts of the foreigners who established political regimes in Chinese territory at the end of the Western Jin in “Lineage as Legitimation in the Rise of Liu Yuan and Shih Le,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 110.4, 1990, 616-21. 27 Chuanjia ji, 66: 2b-3b.

210

mark strange

establishment of a ‘hall of the seven imperial ancestors’ (qi miao) find canonical resonance in Shang shu (The book of documents). This text emphasizes that “through the hall of the seven generations of imperial ancestors (qi shi zhi miao), it is possible to observe [a ruler’s] virtue.”28 The link between virtue and veneration of the seven imperial ances-tors reappears in Chunqiu Guliang zhuan (The Guliang commentary on the Spring and Autumn annals), pointing up its significance in the core values of the Confucian canon.29 In this moral scheme, Hou Jing’s ignorance of the hall of the seven imperial ancestors implies a lack of virtue. And, for the alert reader of ZZTJ, Sima Guang’s criticism of Hou Jing as a violator of social and moral values receives canonical endorsement.

Political Disorder Hou Jing’s failure to provide social and political stability to Liang after his rebellion is seen to stem from basic traits of his character. Sima Guang focuses on Hou Jing’s disruption of established unity and order rather than his creation of it. This reaches to the thematic heart of ZZTJ. It is the reason for which Sima Guang denies Hou Jing the right to imperial power and, with this, a place in ZZTJ’s chronological framework.30

28 Shang shu zhengyi, Shisan jing zhushu ed. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980), 3: 14, 8: 54. 29 Chunqiu Guliang zhuan zhushu, Shisan jing zhushu ed., 8: 33. 30 This echoes the canonical conception of imperial power that appears in Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan (The Gongyang commentary on the Spring and Autumn annals): “What is one talking about when one refers to the calendar of the sovereign? One magnifies unified rule,” Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan zhushu, Shisan jing zhushu ed., 1: 2. This text seems to have played a central role in Northern Song debates on imperial rule. In 1040, for example, Ouyang Xiu wrote: “[Gongyang] zhuan states that ‘in the case of the gentleman, one magnifies the position of true integrity’ and ‘in the case of the sovereign, one magnifies unified rule.’ ‘True integrity’ is the means by which one makes true that which is out of shape in the empire; ‘rule’ is the means by which one brings together that which is not unified in the empire,” Ouyang Xiu quanji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2001), 16: 267. Note, however, that Ouyang Xiu misquoted his second reference to Gongyang zhuan. In doing so, he moved the debate on political unity from specific questions of calendrical systems to wider concepts of imperial rule. Ouyang Xiu was not alone in using this canonical phrase out of context: Huangfu Shi and Zhang Fangping prefigured Ouyang Xiu’s interpretation of “magnifying unified rule” in their discussions on imperial power, Huangfu Shi,

zizhi tongjian

211

Hou Jing’s destructive role in ZZTJ reveals itself in his cunning and ability to deceive: Hou Jing is a parasite. He has been two-faced from birth. When he lived far away, in Guan and Long, he depended upon treachery and duplicity, and contravened the established divisions between ruler and subject. He forged false fraternal relationships …31

It is useful to examine the various levels of Sima Guang’s narrative here. On the internal level of plot, this assessment of Hou Jing’s character appears in a speech to the Liang court by the Eastern Wei military supervisor Du Bi. It reflects a general reaction to Hou Jing among his opponents in ZZTJ’s account. But the inclusion of Du Bi’s speech in Sima Guang’s account is problematic. It appears with significant textual variation in the seventh-century Yiwen leiju (A classified compilation of literature).32 The assessment of Hou Jing’s duplicity is omitted from that text and from Sima Guang’s other surviving sources. Here is evidence of editorial selection, the external level of Sima Guang’s narrative. These two levels intersect: Sima Guang’s inclusion of Du Bi’s assessment of Hou Jing counter to his sources indicates an editorial decision to emphasize Hou Jing’s duplicity in ZZTJ. It not only appears as an important cause of the Liang dynasty’s downfall; it also provides a focus for Sima Guang’s criticism of this character. Sima Guang’s emphasis on Hou Jing’s contravention of “the estab-lished divisions between ruler and subject” through the manipulation

Huangfu Chizheng ji, in Siku quanshu, vol. 1078 (Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1986), 2: 4-6; Zhang Fangping, Lequan ji, in Siku quanshu, vol. 1104 (Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1986), 17: 13b. Liang Qichao examines the Gongyang zhuan’s original phrase and its significance to the issue of imperial rule in Yinbing shi wenji (Hong Kong: Tian xing chubanshe, 1949), 3: 105-6. 31 ZZTJ, 160: 4963. As Hu Sanxing’s commentary notes, this is a reference to Hou Jing’s surrender to Western Wei in 547, which appears in ibid., 160: 4952. The basic fact of Hou Jing’s rebellious nature seems to be undisputed in Sima Guang’s surviving sources. Another source that emphasizes this characteristic, which does not appear in ZZTJ’s kao yi commentary, is Yu Xin’s “Ai Jiangnan fu” (A rhapsody of lament for Jiangnan), in Yu Zishan jizhu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980). It was available to Sima Guang (Chongwen zongmu, 5: 41b) and characterizes Hou Jing as “burning with treachery and rebellion,” cf. 2: 117. A study and translation of this text appear in William Graham, ‘The Lament for the South’: Yü Hsin’s ‘Ai Chiang-nan fu’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 32 Yiwen leiju, 58: 7a-b. The compilers of Yiwen leiju attribute the speech to the Northern Wei minister Wei Shou, not Du Bi.

212

mark strange

of Du Bi’s speech corroborates the political ideology that he expresses in his own name. A discussion of the theme of social and political divisions provides ZZTJ’s opening. In his first personal comment to the text, Sima Guang states that “I, Your Minister, have heard that none of the Son of Heaven’s duties is greater than ritual. In ritual, nothing is greater than the functional divisions. In the functional divisions, nothing is greater than the names. What do we mean by ritual? It is social regulations. What do we mean by the functional divisions? They are [those of] ruler and subject.”33 Failure to maintain these divisions is seen to have direct consequences on the survival of the state in Sima Guang’s “Shang jin xi shu” (Statement on being circumspect about familiar practices), which he submitted to the throne on 6 August 1062. His analysis in this essay of the period of division in which the Liang dynasty emerged fits closely with ZZTJ’s account of Hou Jing’s rebellion: Only from Wei and Jin on down did rulers start to treat erudition and talent as noble qualities while debasing the preservation of moral integrity, and did ministers start to honour the frivolous and insubstan-tial while taking Confucian learning lightly. They did not implement the rituals of former sovereigns, considering them dross; they did not employ men who were pure and steadfast, thinking them simple and crude. In consequence, popular customs deteriorated by the day and entered the realm of the superficial. Rebelling against the ruler was not considered shameful; offending the emperor was not considered wrong. They pursued only [personal] profit, without paying any atten-tion to their reputation or integrity.34

But Sima Guang also provides a means of preventing such disor-der. He returns to the need for strictly defined social and politi-cal divisions. To elucidate this idea, he cites a claim from Zhou yi (The Zhou book of changes) that “the gentleman distinguishes between superior and inferior to anchor the will of the people.”35

33

ZZTJ, 1: 2. Chuanjia ji, 24: 15b. 35 Ibid., 24: 14b. The original source for Sima Guang’s citation is Zhou yi zhengyi, Shisan jing zhushu ed., 2: 27. Sima Guang cites this passage again on ZZTJ, 220: 7064, in an analysis of the reasons for the disintegration of Tang power under the threat of An Lushan’s rebellion. Other core features of Sima Guang’s account of An Lushan’s rebellion correspond to his account of Hou Jing’s rebellion. In summary, both accounts deal with a member of a northern ethnic minority with a distinguished military career who associates himself with a dynasty suffering imperial misrule. He rebels against that same dynasty, causing it to fall. The dynasty eventually recovers 34

zizhi tongjian

213

The establishment of such a hierarchy can result in political longev-ity, even immortality: It is only once [the hierarchy of] superior and inferior has been clarified and social regulations have been established that Confucian learning will be cultivated, transformation through education will flourish, hon-esty and sincerity will be promoted, and the frivolous and insubstantial will fall away. If ritual and righteous behaviour were to come into ascendancy and popular customs were to be perfectly pure, then the state would safeguard these blessings boundlessly for ten thousand generations.36

The source of imperial immortality seems to be Sima Guang’s ulti-mate political aim, both in his memorials to the Northern Song throne and in ZZTJ. Long-term political order and imperial rule are predicated above all on the observance of social and political divisions. Hou Jing’s violation of these same divisions appears as a compelling reason for his disqualification from imperial power in ZZTJ. Hou Jing’s abuse of social and political divisions finds its climax in ZZTJ’s account when he officially usurps the Liang imperial title on 1 January 552.37 He fulfils both his own political aspirations and the reader’s expectations of ZZTJ’s narrative, which Sima Guang has developed through earlier evidence of Hou Jing’s plans to seize power from Liang.38 But the episode creates a paradox. At the point of his appropriation of the imperial title, Hou Jing is both at his most powerful and his most vulnerable: Sima Guang claims that “the areas in which Hou Jing’s orders and decrees were implemented extended west of Wu Prefecture and north of Nanling, but no further.”39 The

but the rebellion is seen to have weakened it to the point of final collapse shortly after. The impact of An Lushan’s rebellion would have seemed relatively immediate to Sima Guang’s Northern Song readership, and so these basic thematic parallels suggest one possible focus for the use of Hou Jing’s rebellion as a political ‘mirror’ in the eleventh century. 36 Chuanjia ji, 24: 20b-21a. The phrase that Sima Guang chooses at the end of this citation, “boundlessly for ten thousand generations,” has a further canonical echo in Shang shu zhengyi, 8: 164. 37 ZZTJ, 164: 5075. 38 See, for example, ibid., 159: 4945. Note, too, Hu Sanxing’s commentary on this section of ZZTJ’s narrative: “the historian states that early on Hou Jing had the intention of seizing the territory south of the Yangzi.” 39 Ibid., 162: 5018. Liang shu, 56: 852 and Nan shi, 80: 2008 both support this claim.

214

mark strange

insecurity of Hou Jing’s power dominates the later part of ZZTJ’s account of his rebellion until his expulsion from Jiankang and sub-sequent murder. The pinnacle of Hou Jing’s success is therefore also the start of his downfall, revealing the violation of canonical political and social relationships as his hubris in the narrative. It is in this context that Sima Guang denies him imperial status and a place in ZZTJ’s chronological framework.40

Domestic Disorder Hou Jing’s violation of established social conventions occurs on a domestic as well as state level. This provides an important link in ZZTJ’s narrative between personal and political morality. His mar-riage into the Liang imperial house shows him as both a political and a social usurper: Jing requested a marriage with either the Wang or the Xie households. The emperor replied: ‘Wang and Xie are both exalted families and are unsuitable as a match for you. You should enquire after the houses of Zhu and Zhang.’ In a fury, Jing declared: ‘Things will turn out such that I’ll take that child of Wu’s daughter as my slave!’41

40 Scott Pearce suggests that Hou Jing’s failure to establish a long-lasting politi-cal regime is what sets him apart from rulers of contemporary states such as Gao Huan (Eastern Wei) and Yuwen Tai (Western Wei), cf. “Who, and what, was Hou Jing?” Early Medieval China 6, 2000, 49 and 54-5. As this study shows, lack of political longevity was not the only reason for Sima Guang’s decision not to acknowledge the legitimacy of Hou Jing’s rule, but it does seem to have played a part in that decision. 41 ZZTJ, 161: 4979. The phrase “child of Wu” (Wu er) reappears in Hou Jing’s claim that “those children of Wu [the Liang imperial house] are cowardly and weak. It will be easy to take them by surprise and seize them,” ibid., 164: 5070. This verbal parallelism points up the thematic similarities between Hou Jing’s usurpation of imperial power and his violation of the conventions of marriage. Sima Guang draws this analogy more explicitly in his personal comment on ZZTJ, 291: 9511: “Inside [the home], there is man and wife, outside there is ruler and subject. For her whole life, the wife does not change in following her husband; right up to death, the minister does not serve two rulers. This is the great order of human affairs. If it is abandoned, then the greatest possible disorder will result.” And again, in the same context, in his 1045 essay “Feng Dao wei si dai xiang” (On Feng Dao’s service as Chief Minister to four dynasties): “The loyal minister does not have two rulers; the virtuous woman does not take two husbands,” Chuanjia ji, 67: 8b.

zizhi tongjian

215

This exchange of 548 sets up a thematic climax in Hou Jing’s viola-tion of social order when in 550 he marries Emperor Wu of Liang’s granddaughter, the Princess of Liyang, after he has obtained political superiority over the Liang.42 Against the social yardstick that Sima Guang has already established in his narrative, it is clear that Hou Jing has forced the most unsuitable match of all: a member of the imperial family. But for Hou Jing this marriage seems to vindicate the public usurpation of imperial authority: Hou Jing took as his wife the emperor [Jianwen]’s daughter, the Prin-cess of Liyang, with whom he was deeply in love. On the jia shen day of the third month,43 Jing requested the presence of the emperor at a banquet of purification in the Leyou Park. The feasting went on for three days. [After] the emperor had returned to the palace, Jing and the Princess together occupied the imperial couch and both sat facing south, with the military and civil officials sitting in attendance according to rank.44

Sima Guang follows Nan shi, with some textual variation.45 The episode does not appear elsewhere in his surviving sources. Its inclu-sion in ZZTJ brings into sharp focus the thematic relationship that Sima Guang suggests elsewhere in his account between Hou Jing’s marriage and his simultaneous violation of the social and the politi-cal status quo. As important as the selection of sources, however, is the location of this episode in ZZTJ’s narrative. Sima Guang departs from the structure of Nan shi by setting his description of the banquet immediately after an account of Hou Jing’s marriage. Through this structural construction, Sima Guang reinforces Hou Jing’s disruption of social codes more thoroughly. Like the realisation of his political aspirations, Hou Jing’s violation of the conventions of marriage acts as a catalyst for his downfall. Sima Guang shows the Princess of Liyang’s interference in court politics through her influence over the infatuated Hou Jing. Hou

42

ZZTJ, 163: 5038. There is no jia shen day in this month, and Sima Guang seems to have followed Nan shi without correction. The commentary on Nan shi, 80: 2026 notes the error but it seems that ZZTJ’s commentators have failed to recognise it. It is possible that jia shen is a corruption of jia yin, which would fit better in the chronology. This would give a date of 6 April 550. 44 ZZTJ, 163: 5038. 45 Nan shi, 80: 2008. 43

216

mark strange

Jing’s closest adviser, Wang Wei, fears for his own safety and in an act of political self-defence suggests that Hou Jing depose Emperor Jianwen, the Princess’ father.46 This advice prompts Hou Jing to murder several of the Liang imperial family and proclaim himself emperor. From that point, as seen, his fall becomes inevitable. There is a final twist in the portrayal of Hou Jing’s marriage. At the end of ZZTJ’s account of the rebellion, his death receives a graphic description: The Regional Inspector of Southern Xuzhou, Xu Sihui … stuffed Jing’s chest cavity with salt and sent his corpse to Jiankang. [Wang] Sengbian sent the head to Jiangling, and cut off his hands, which he had Xie Weirui deliver to Qi. He displayed Jing’s corpse in the market place, where the common people fought to grab a piece to eat until even the bones had all disappeared. The Princess of Liyang also took part in eating him.47

There is a sense of moral retribution here: Hou Jing’s brutal end matches the magnitude of his crime of usurpation. And it is politi-cally significant that the common people, the ultimate arbiters on a ruler’s right to power, are seen to mete out his punishment. But the most shocking image is that of the Princess of Liyang’s par-ticipation in eating her husband’s corpse. Sima Guang has made a revealing editorial decision here. Sanguo dian lüe records that the Princess of Liyang was boiled together with Hou Jing.48 ZZTJ’s kao yi commentary claims that Sima Guang favours Nan shi’s account instead and, in doing so, provides a more explicit moral conclusion to Hou Jing’s marriage.49 The reader is left with a further image of the disruption of social and moral order. Cannibalism represents in grotesque terms the violation of the canonical relationship between husband and wife, although here it works the other way as a wife exacts her revenge.50 Sima Guang’s depiction of Hou Jing’s marriage

46 ZZTJ, 164: 5070-1. Of Sima Guang’s surviving sources, only Nan shi, 8: 233 includes this episode. 47 ZZTJ, 164: 5086. 48 Sanguo dian lüe, in ibid. 49 Nan shi, 80: 2017. 50 The moral implications of this episode can be traced to Mengzi zhushu, Shisan jing zhushu ed., 6B: 50: “when humanity (ren) and righteous conduct (yi) are blocked, it will lead wild beasts to eat men, and men will eat each other.” Hou Han shu provides a historical precedent for a wife eating her husband, Fan Ye, Hou Han shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, repr. 1973), 8: 331. For a general study of cannibalism

zizhi tongjian

217

resorts to a literary conceit that was well-worn by Song times: the destruction of a corrupt and corruptible man by a beautiful woman (who, importantly here, also represents social advancement).51 Sima Guang presents his account with the full force of canonical, historical, and literary allusion, adding weight to his implied moral warning against the violation of established social institutions. For Sima Guang, Hou Jing’s personal moral failings have their roots in the canonical relationships that provided the basis for social and political order in the Confucian system. His capacity to disrupt these relationships gives him power in the first place, but it also produces his rapid downfall. His are more than just moral failings, therefore, they are political ones too: the personal morality of those with power falls into the same ideological scheme in ZZTJ as social and political legitimacy. This relationship is at the heart of Sima Guang’s criticism of Hou Jing. It is why Hou Jing is seen to be excluded from legitimate imperial rule and, in consequence, why Sima Guang disqualifies him from a place in ZZTJ’s chronological framework.

Liang Imperial Rule While Sima Guang reminds the reader of Hou Jing’s disloyal and deceitful nature and sets this character trait in the context of rebel-lion, he does not present it as the central cause of the Liang dynasty’s demise. Hou Jing’s rebellion appears only as a catalyst for Liang political collapse. In ZZTJ, the loss of political power stems from the shortcomings of the holder of that power. Hou Jing’s political and moral failings precipitate his downfall and death after he usurps

in China and its possible moral implications, see Key Ray Chong, Cannibalism in China (Wakefield, NH: Longwood Academic, 1990). 51 A canonical resonance of the threat of beautiful women to political stability appears in Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhengyi (The Zuo commentary on the Spring and Autumn annals), Shisan jing zhushu ed., 52: 416: “Where there is extreme beauty, there will certainly be extreme evil…. When there are women of outstanding beauty, it will be sufficient to change people. Unless there is virtue and righteous conduct (de yi), there will certainly be disaster.” This canonical context implies that Hou Jing lacks “virtue and righteous conduct” and so precipitates his own disaster, an idea that is consistent with his characterisation elsewhere in ZZTJ’s narrative.

218

mark strange

imperial rule; responsibility for the Liang dynasty’s defeat lies in the factionalism and weakness of the court itself. Sima Guang’s first developed introduction to Hou Jing appears under the twelfth month of the first year of zhong da tong (January/ February 547). The account of Hou Jing’s rebellion continues through the three years of the tai qing period (547-549), then the two years of the da bao period (550-551), and ends in the first year of cheng sheng (552).52 In this chronological system, Sima Guang acknowledges only three Liang rulers: Emperor Wu (the da tong and tai qing periods), Emperor Jianwen (the da bao period), and Emperor Yuan (the cheng sheng period).53 To support this narrative focus, he most commonly uses the label ‘emperor’ (shang) to refer to these characters once they have claimed the throne.54 No other character receives this label. Neither Hou Jing (as usurper of imperial power and then as titular emperor of the self-proclaimed Han dynasty) nor the emperor he installs on the Liang throne by force, Xiao Dong, receive imperial titles in ZZTJ and their year titles are excluded from the account’s chronology. They are immediately and obviously denied the right to rule. The issue is not one of dynastic legitimacy. In his theoretical com-ments on the issue, Sima Guang withheld legitimate imperial rule from all political regimes during this period, since none succeeded in fulfilling his main criterion, the unification of the empire.55 But ZZTJ

52

For the purposes of this framework, I take the start of the account as ZZTJ, 159: 4944, when Sima Guang first provides personal details on Hou Jing (it should be noted, however, that the earliest mention in ZZTJ of Hou Jing’s name and title appears on 149: 4645). The account ends with the public display of Hou Jing’s corpse on 164: 5088. This follows the scope of Yuan Shu, Tongjian jishi benmo (Bei-jing: Zhonghua shuju, repr. 1979), 23: 2031-93. 53 Emperor Yuan only took the throne at the end of Hou Jing’s rebellion, and so features more prominently in ZZTJ’s account of the rebellion as an imperial prince, Prince of Xiangdong. This study does not attempt a comprehensive examination of ZZTJ’s portrait of any of the Liang emperors, but only considers their place in the narrative of Hou Jing’s rebellion. Studies on Emperor Wu’s reign that touch upon Hou Jing’s rebellion include: Mori MikisaburÙ, RyÙ no Butei: BukkyÙ ÙchÙ no higeki (KyÙto: Heirakuji shoten, 1956); Xu Hui, “Liang Wudi tongzhi shulun,” Xue hai 5, 1994, 89-94; Luo Sizhong, “Liang Wudi zui yanzhong de shice bu shi naxiang Hou Jing,” Lishi jiaoxue wenti 2, 1996, 11-14. John Marney explores Emperor Jianwen’s life and brief reign in Liang Chien-wen ti (Boston: G.K.Hall, 1976). 54 The use of “shang” to denote the emperor in historical writing is considered in a Han dynasty context in Cai Yong, Du duan, Cong shu ji cheng ed., 1: 1-2. 55 ZZTJ, 69: 2187. Sima Guang recorded in his “Wu gui” (Five regulations) of

zizhi tongjian

219

is a chronological record of the past, and Sima Guang also noted that “the boundaries of division in the empire cannot go without years, seasons, months, and days, in order to distinguish the order of events.”56 While the Liang emperors failed to achieve full impe-rial legitimacy in Sima Guang’s scheme, the choices that informed ZZTJ’s chronological framework—his use of the Liang emperors’ year titles—were still necessarily bound up with his assessment of the dynasty’s rule. With their year titles shaping the chronological structure of ZZTJ, the Liang emperors have a central role to play in Hou Jing’s rebel-lion. But, despite this prominence, the figure of the Liang emperor only functions in relation to other characters in ZZTJ. Most obvi-ously, the emperors’ narrative position is relative to Hou Jing and to other members of the Liang court. In this context, the fall of the imperial palace at Jiankang to Hou Jing marks an important point in the characterisation of Emperors Wu and Jianwen. The dynamic of the power relations between ruler and usurper hinges on this episode. Before the fall of the imperial palace, while the Liang emperors still hold power, their dominant trait is incompetence in leadership and failure to govern their court. At the same time, Hou Jing is seen to grow politically stronger. After Hou Jing’s victory, that dynamic is overturned, with important thematic implications for ZZTJ’s narrative.

Territorial Ambitions The Liang emperors’ most immediate failing before the fall of the imperial palace is their support of Hou Jing in his conflict with Eastern Wei.57 Political short-sightedness and the desire for territorial

1061, a series of prescriptions on imperial rule, that failure to unify the empire for much of China’s history had its cause in the incompetence of past emperors, Chuanjia ji, 21: 2a-4b. The present study’s reading of ZZTJ revisits this argument. 56 ZZTJ, 69: 2187. 57 In his study of Emperor Wu’s reign, Luo Sizhong denies that support for Hou Jing was the main factor that contributed to the Liang’s downfall. Instead, he points to long-term misrule during Emperor Wu’s reign, cf. “Liang Wudi zui yanzhong de shice bu shi naxiang Hou Jing,” 11-14. This argument finds support in ZZTJ, as this study will show, although the acceptance of Hou Jing into Liang territory certainly appears to be an important factor in the dynasty’s demise.

220

mark strange

expansion appear as Emperor Wu’s hubris here, as he allows Hou Jing into Liang territory in the hope of annexing Eastern Wei: The emperor summoned his ministers to hold a discussion at court. The Vice Director of the Department of State Affairs, Xie Ju, and others all declared: “In recent years, we have had peaceful relations with [Eastern] Wei and there have been no incidents along our bor-ders. I think that it would be inappropriate to take in this rebellious minister now.” The emperor said: “Be that as it may, but were we to get Jing then we could bring tranquillity to the areas north of our borders. Such opportunities are hard to come by. What good can it do being so inflexible?” That year, on the yi mao day of the first month [22 February 547], the emperor dreamt that all the regional governors from the central plains came and surrendered their lands to him, and venerated and paid their respects to the court. In the morning he met with the Sec-retariat Drafter Zhu Yi and told him about it, adding that: “I rarely have dreams. If I do, then they must be real.” Yi said: “This is an omen that the whole universe will be united as one.” … Zhu Yi recognised the emperor’s intent and replied: “Both south and north will come to look up to you, my omniscient ruler. It is only because the opportunity has not presented itself in recent events that [the people] have not yet realised their true desires. Now, ever since Hou Jing divided Wei territory in two, surely Heaven has been guiding his loyalty and the people have been cooperating with his schemes.58 If not, how could the present situation have arisen? If we resist him and fail to take him in, then I fear that we will cut short any hopes for the future. This really is readily apparent, and I hope that Your Majesty will have no doubts in the matter.” The emperor then settled the discussion and received Jing.59

Both Liang shu and Nan shi report this matter with little of ZZTJ’s detail and omit the content of the discussions between ministers.60 Brief references to a court discussion appear separately from Emperor

58 The phrase that Sima Guang gives Zhu Yi here, “Heaven has been guiding his loyalty” (tian you qi zhong), has a canonical resonance from Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhengyi, 16: 124. In the original Zuo zhuan passage, the issue is also one of political harmony and unity of the state. 59 ZZTJ, 160: 4949-50. 60 Liang shu, 56: 835, 56: 862; Nan shi, 62: 1517, 80: 1994. Yu Xin also sug-gests that Emperor Wu’s decision to receive Hou Jing resulted from a desire for territory, although none of the narrative details of ZZTJ appear in his account, cf. “Ai Jiangnan fu,” in Yu Zishan jizhu, 2: 117. None of these motivations appears in Jiankang shilu, 17: 689, which states simply that Emperor Wu consented to Hou Jing’s request to surrender.

zizhi tongjian

221

Wu’s dream. Sima Guang, by contrast, links the two events in the structure of his account. This reflects negatively on Emperor Wu, who is seen to take large (and ultimately erroneous) decisions of state not only against the general advice of his court, but also on the basis of the misinterpretation of a dream by a sycophantic minister. Sanguo dian lüe also reports the dream, although it places the whole episode a year earlier than ZZTJ, suggesting that Sima Guang relied on other sources for the details of this incident.61 Sima Guang’s inclusion of the emperor’s dream as well as the content of the court discussions in direct speech gives immediacy and prominence to this episode. The reader already knows of Hou Jing’s usurpative intentions, and so Emperor Wu’s actions here have a ring of dramatic irony. Sima Guang’s implicit criticism of Emperor Wu’s political mis-judgement and his desire to expand Liang territory has resonance in Northern Song politics. In Xin Tang shu (A new history of Tang), which was submitted to the throne in 1060, Ouyang Xiu suggested that “ever since Qin, the power or the demise of a sovereign has had its beginnings in the commanderies and counties of the empire.”62 Sima Guang echoed Ouyang Xiu’s view on the close causal relation-ship between territorial concerns and political stability. In a series of memorials to the throne during the late 1060s, he opposed the Northern Song court’s seizure of territory from neighbouring foreign states, claiming that such attempts at territorial expansion would only weaken Northern Song imperial power.63 These memorials relate closely to Sima Guang’s political rivalry with Wang Anshi. Wang advocated to Emperor Shenzong (r.1067-85) the recovery of territory lost to Northern Song’s foreign neighbours and even claimed in 1073 that “if we were able to transform the

61

The kao yi commentary claims to follow Liang shu for its dating of this epi-sode (cf. ZZTJ, 160: 4950), but this is difficult to accept: Liang shu, 56: 862 dates this dream “during zhong da tong [546].” This is consistent with Sanguo dian lüe (cf. ZZTJ, 160: 4950) but conflicts with ZZTJ, in which Sima Guang is explicit that the dream occurred during the first year of tai qing (547). 62 Ouyang Xiu and Song Qi, Xin Tang shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975), 37: 959. 63 Chuanjia ji, 35: 5b-8b (submitted in 1065), 35: 14a-16b (1065/8/2), 42: 8b-10a (1069/6). Sima Guang also memorialised the throne on this subject on 3 February 1071, cf. ibid., 45: 1a-4b, and again in January/February 1086, ibid., 50: 1a-8a. The chronological span of these memorials, when read together with the criticism of Emperor Wu’s expansionist ambitions in ZZTJ, marks a consistency in Sima Guang’s standpoint on this issue.

222

mark strange

barbarians into Han Chinese, they would not give us cause for con-cern.”64 After becoming Chief Minister, Sima Guang submitted to the throne on 23 December 1085 a memorial in which he attributed many of the causes of state suffering to the use of the military for the purpose of territorial expansion. In particular, he criticised Emperor Shenzong’s “intention to launch military campaigns and open up [new territory]” and willingness to follow Wang Anshi’s policies to expand Northern Song territory to an extent “comparable to the state borders of the Han and Tang dynasties.”65 ZZTJ’s account of Emperor Wu’s political shortcomings fits well in the context of this 1085 memorial. Zhu Yi assumes the role that Sima Guang ascribed to Wang Anshi in the eleventh century, as an advocate of territo-rial expansion and even of the assimilation of foreigners into a Han Chinese state. The result of the adoption of Wang Anshi’s policies, this analogy implies, would be the emergence of a second Hou Jing and a threat to Northern Song imperial stability.

Employment of Ministers In 1061, Sima Guang analysed the traits of a good ruler: I humbly believe that there are three major virtues of a ruler: humanity (ren), clarity (ming), and forcefulness (wu). Humanity is not about caring affectionately for others nor about acting with unquestioning tolerance. Rather it is stimulating the transformative power of education, improv-ing governance, nurturing the common people, and bringing benefit to all. This is the humanity of the ruler. Clarity is not about having a detailed set of exacting policies nor about keeping a close eye on matters. Instead, it is knowledge of the Way and righteous behaviour, alertness to safety and danger, and the ability to differentiate between the worthy and the foolish and to discern right from wrong. This is the clarity of the ruler. Forcefulness is not about suppression through force nor about violence and ruthlessness. It is about being in accord-ance with the Way, determining matters without doubt, remaining undeceived by treachery, and being unmoved by flattery. This is the forcefulness of the ruler. … If all three are there, state rule will be strong. If one is lacking, it will decline. If two are lacking, it will be endangered. If none of these three is present, it will collapse.66

64 65 66

Xu Zizhi tongjian changbian, 245: 5963. Chuanjia ji, 49: 5b-9a, esp. 49: 6a. Chuanjia ji, 20: 2b-4b.

zizhi tongjian

223

In ZZTJ, Emperor Wu’s decision to accept Hou Jing into Liang territory appears to result most immediately from his expansionist ambitions. It also reflects fundamental failings as a ruler. Emperor Wu does not recognise the danger that Hou Jing poses to his state, and he is neither “undeceived by treachery” nor “unmoved by flat-tery” in following Zhu Yi’s interpretation of his dream. According to Sima Guang’s ideological scheme, he therefore lacks clarity and forcefulness. The presentation of Emperor Wu’s political failings early in ZZTJ’s account of Hou Jing’s rebellion prefigures the danger that he eventually brings to his state. At the heart of all this is Emperor Wu’s poor employment of his court ministers. He follows the advice of corrupt ministers and fails to heed the cautions of competent ministers. This appears not only in Emperor Wu’s misinterpretation of his dream, but repeatedly in Sima Guang’s account of Hou Jing’s rebellion before the fall of Jiankang. The competent minister is a figure that reappears in ZZTJ with the same basic character traits and narrative functions. Loyalty to the Liang dynasty is central to these ministers’ characterisation. This finds expression, for example, in Yang Kan’s willingness to sacrifice his son for the benefit of the state.67 Yang Kan’s action is echoed by Liang minister Pei Zhigao’s similar expression of loyalty,68 and marks both men out to the reader as competent ministers.69 In addition to their loyalty—or because of it—competent min-isters in ZZTJ provide accurate and perceptive assessments of a situation, and in this capacity they act as prognosticators of Liang’s fate. When the senior minister Xiao Jie remonstrates at length with

67 ZZTJ, 161: 4988. This appears in Nan shi 63: 1546, but not in Sima Guang’s other extant sources. Yang Kan’s action rings with the canonical resonance of the Chunqiu Zuo zhuan: “great righteousness annuls the bonds of kinship” (da yi mie qin), Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhengyi, 3: 24. Compare Hou Jing’s abandonment of his children in ZZTJ, 160: 4957-8 and 164: 5086. 68 ZZTJ, 161: 4998. Pei Zhigao’s attempt to murder his son, who has been captured by Hou Jing, does not appear in Sima Guang’s surviving sources. 69 In this context, loyalty (zhong) appears for Sima Guang as “a quality that radi-ates through history, transcending class and time,” see Wang Zijin, “Zizhi tongjian zhong de zhengzhi lunli yu zhengzhi daode jiaoyi,” Xueshu jie 56.1, 1996, 63. For the importance of loyalty to Sima Guang’s political ideology, see also Anthony William Sariti, “Monarchy, Bureaucracy, and Absolutism in the Thought of Ssuma Kuang,” Journal of Asian Studies 31.1, 1972, 58-61.

224

mark strange

Emperor Wu on Hou Jing’s threat to Liang stability, Sima Guang tells the reader that “the Emperor exclaimed at his loyalty, but was unable to use [his advice].”70 Xiao Jie turns out to have been right and Emperor Wu’s failure to heed his warning proves politically disastrous. Liang shu records this remonstration, but omits mention of Xiao Jie’s loyalty;71 Nan shi reports that Xiao Jie “sent up a petition delivering a remonstration” but, like Liang shu, is silent on the issue of Xiao Jie’s loyalty;72 other surviving sources omit the remonstration altogether. Through his decision to make an explicit statement of Xiao Jie’s moral worth, in particular his loyalty, Sima Guang offers an implicit judgement on the reliability of Xiao Jie’s advice. Emperor Wu’s failure to follow this loyal, reliable advice and the effects of this failure on the Liang state—its decline and endangerment—revisit the ideological scheme of Sima Guang’s essay of 1061. As a corollary, when the emperor does heed the advice of a wise minister, it is seen to bring with it success. In a reversal of Emperor Wu’s treatment of Xiao Jie, after the fall of Jiankang Emperor Yuan (still an imperial prince at this stage) follows the advice of Lu Fahe, an eremitic regional inspector of Xinzhou with “unusual skills.”73 Some description of Lu Fahe’s ability to recognise omens and portents— what Sima Guang refers to as his “unusual skills”—appears in Bei shi (A history of the North) and Bei Qi shu (A history of Northern Qi), but in none of Sima Guang’s other surviving sources.74 As significant as Sima Guang’s selection of his sources here is his location of his description of Lu Fahe in ZZTJ’s narrative. Sima Guang reference to Lu Fahe’s supernatural abilities immediately precedes his direc-tion of a successful military campaign on Emperor Yuan’s behalf. There is a structural link between Emperor Yuan’s employment of Lu Fahe’s “unusual skills” and military success. With Lu Fahe’s help, Emperor Yuan is able to defeat Hou Jing and eventually takes the imperial throne. Sima Guang’s suggestion that Lu Fahe is clairvoyant offers the most explicit and literal representation in ZZTJ’s account of Hou Jing’s rebellion of the competent minister as a perceptive

70

ZZTJ, 161: 4974. Liang shu, 41: 587-8. 72 Nan shi, 18: 502. 73 ZZTJ, 164: 5067. 74 Li Yanshou, Bei shi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 89: 2941-5; Bei Qi shu, 24: 427-31. 71

zizhi tongjian

225

adviser. Neither Bei shi nor Bei Qi shu makes the same structural or symbolic association; Sima Guang has constructed his narrative to point up a correlation between the Liang emperors’ ability to follow the advice of their competent ministers and their success as rulers. In this context, when Emperors Wu and Jianwen consistently fail to take the advice of the wise ministers before the fall of Jiankang, they are seen to precipitate their own downfall. Their downfall also results from the destructive influence of corrupt members of their court. Not only do the emperors ignore the advice of wise ministers before the fall of Jiankang, they are also vulnerable to the advice of bad ones. The most striking example is Emperor Wu’s treatment of Zhu Yi. As this study has already shown, Zhu Yi’s influence over court decisions appears at an early stage when he prompts the misinterpretation of Emperor Wu’s dream. He also causes the emperor to act against the perceptive advice of ministers such as Yang Kan, Du Bi, and Xiao Jie. Zhu Yi is diametrically opposed to the figure of the competent minister. His advice results in failure—significant military defeats and the failure to respond to the early threat of Hou Jing—and he is seen to act out of self-inter-est rather than loyalty to the state: On the wu xu day [27 September 548], [Hou] Jing rebelled in Shouyang, taking as a pretext the punishment of the Capital Commandant Zhu Yi, the Chamberlain for Palace Revenues Xu Lin, the Commandant of the Crown Prince’s Right Guard Lu Yan, and the Director of the Agency for Governance Zhou Shizhen. [Zhu] Yi and the rest were all treacherous, sycophantic, proud, and avaricious. They had corrupted the ruler and manipulated power (bi zhu nong quan), causing the people of that time to suffer. [Hou] Jing therefore requested to raise an army. … [Zhu] Yi was particularly close to [Xu Lin and Lu Yan]. Their contemporaries referred to them as “the three lice.”75

This is repeated, with similar rhetoric, in a message that Hou Jing presents to the Liang court, in which he claims that “‘Zhu Yi and the others have contemptuously toyed with the authority of the court (mie nong chao quan) and have casually assumed authority and [imperial] favour.’”76 Zhu Yi’s manipulation of court politics offers Hou Jing a political excuse to rebel. And in ZZTJ’s narrative, the

75 76

ZZTJ, 161: 4981. Ibid., 161: 4987.

226

mark strange

favouritism that Emperor Wu shows Zhu Yi and his failure even to recognise the corruption of Zhu Yi’s faction at court—in response to Hou Jing’s accusations, he asks Jianwen ‘“Is there really such a situation?”’—serve to illustrate his own incompetence as a ruler. The inability to distinguish between good and bad ministers—a result of a lack of clarity and forcefulness—is a recurring concern of Sima Guang’s imperial vision: The duties of the ruler are to select the worthy and promote them, assess those with talent and employ them, reward those who establish merit, and punish those who fail in their official capacity. The empire is vast, its population is enormous, and the daily affairs of state are highly complex. Yet it all falls under the possession of the Son of Heaven. If one invariably depends on the eyes, ears, intellect, and strength of a single man to deal with the whole lot, then little will be achieved and much will go neglected. As a result, the clear-sighted ruler will choose assistants to deliberate the business of official administration; they will deliberate the business of official administration to rectify the business of government clerks; they will rectify the business of govern-ment clerks in order to pacify the people. Ordered rule will then be implemented and no matter will go neglected. … Talking about it in this way, none of the practices that the ruler should safeguard is of greater importance than knowing people.77

Sima Guang composed his “Zhi ren lun” (Discussion on knowing people) in 1057. He revisits its basic theme in later memorials: in the fourth of his “Wu gui” (Five regulations) of 1061, Sima Guang claimed that the ruler had a responsibility to recognise moral and political shortcomings in ministers before they had an effect at court;78 in his “Lun fengsu zhazi” (Discussion of popular customs), he emphasized that “knowing and selecting official administrators lies at the crux of order and disorder.”79 The Liang emperors clearly fail in this regard. And, in the context of ZZTJ’s role as a political ‘mirror’, their failings, especially their vulnerability to the influence

77

Chuanjia ji, 65: 1b-3b. Ibid., 21: 9a-11a. In this context, Peter Bol is accurate in his suggestion that Sima Guang believed that “the failures of the ministers are, by definition, failures of the one who employs them,” “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), p. 246 (see esp. n. 202 for other references in ZZTJ to the failures of rulers to appoint appropriate ministers). 79 Chuanjia ji, 42: 10a. 78

zizhi tongjian

227

of bad ministers and conflicting court factions, act as a warning to the principal audience that Sima Guang claimed for his work: the Northern Song emperor. This political message comes into sharp focus when ZZTJ’s account is set against the immediate political circumstances that surrounded its composition. In 1070, Sima Guang left the capital to complete work on ZZTJ. He made his decision a year after Emperor Shen-zong had appointed Wang Anshi as chief minister of state. Although Sima Guang makes no explicit connections, it is tempting to see in his criticism of court factions and the oppositions between wise and corrupt ministers in ZZTJ contemporary echoes of this Northern Song political rivalry. But, as in ZZTJ’s account of Emperor Wu’s treatment of Zhu Yi, the minister (Wang Anshi, in the context of Northern Song politics) does not seem to be final object of Sima Guang’s criticism. Sima Guang implied that Emperor Shenzong lacked the necessary clarity to recognise and deal with the threat of Wang Anshi’s faction. And in ZZTJ’s account of Emperor Wu’s similar employment of bad ministers, with its causal link to Hou Jing’s rebellion, the Northern Song emperor faced a stark descrip-tion of the effects of such a political failing.

Liang Religious Policy Sima Guang places the most direct condemnation of Emperor Wu’s rule in the mouth of Hou Jing. In 549, Hou Jing presented a peti-tion enumerating the emperor’s faults: Jing subsequently sent up a petition, in which he laid out the emperor’s ten shortcomings. In addition, he said: “I resort to disobedience in serving you; the way in which I present my advice is direct and to the point. Your Majesty exalts and glosses over hollow and preposter-ous talk but dislikes hearing accounts of how things really are. You take the strange and the anomalous to be auspicious, and consider Heaven’s reprimands to be without opprobrium. You discourse on the six arts but reject former scholars; this is the way of Wang Mang. You take iron as a commodity and cause the system of weights to have no constancy; this is the law of Gongsun [Shu]. You have seals carved [in a way that enables] people to obtain office by illicit means, and court regulations have been debased and disrupted; this is the corrupting influence of Geng Shi and Zhao Lun. Yuzhang took the emperor as a blood enemy,80 and Shaoling wore a cloth hat despite

228

mark strange the fact that his father was still alive;81 this is the style of Shi Hu. You have restored and commissioned images of the Buddha, and indulged in every degree of extravagance, causing people all around to starve; this is taking over from Zha Rong and Yao Xing.”82

There is evidence of editorial construction here. Liang shu supplies the contents of Hou Jing’s petition on Emperor Wu’s “ten shortcomings,” which does not appear in Sima Guang’s account. But it omits the speech that follows, with its rich historical allusions.83 Nan shi reports only that “[Hou Jing] laid out Emperor Wu’s ten shortcomings in a petition” but does not provide the contents of either the petition or the following speech.84 Sima Guang’s other extant sources do not mention the petition or the speech at all. When set against these sources, one feature stands out from Sima Guang’s narrative. The failings that Hou Jing attributes to Emperor Wu in the petition that appears in Liang shu all focus on the emperor’s political and military incompetence. But Sima Guang suggests that Hou Jing also perceived Emperor Wu’s preoccupation with esoteric religious beliefs, especially Buddhism, to be harmful to the Liang state: references to Emperor Wu’s religious practices run through his other criticisms.85 Hou Jing’s speech presents difficulties for analysis. Throughout his account, Sima Guang portrays Hou Jing as innately untrustworthy, and his criticisms here play an obvious role of political propaganda in his usurpation attempt. But Hou Jing’s criticism of Emperor Wu’s Buddhism finds direct support from Sima Guang himself. In his Linian

80

Xiao Dong (d.552), the eldest grandson of Crown Prince Zhaoming, was enfeoffed as Prince of Yuzhang. He was later instated as emperor by Hou Jing, after the death of Emperor Jianwen. Soon after, he abdicated in favour of Hou Jing himself. He was eventually killed on the orders of Xiao Yi (Prince of Xiangdong), by then installed as Emperor Yuan. 81 A cloth cap was worn as a part of funerary clothing, expressing the fact that “a filial son had a loyal and true heart,” Yi li zhushu, Shisan jing zhushu ed., 28: 1096-9, esp. 28: 1097. In this canonical context, Hou Jing’s criticism seems to refer to Xiao Lun, Prince of Shaoling’s failure to display respect for Emperor Wu. An account of Xiao Lun’s unfilial behaviour opens this study. 82 ZZTJ, 162: 5007. 83 Liang shu, 56: 846-50. 84 Nan shi, 80: 2006. 85 A study of Emperor Wu’s Buddhism appears in Mori MikisaburÙ, RyÙ no Butei, pp.134-69.

zizhi tongjian

229

tu (A chart of historical years), which he submitted to the throne in 1064, Sima Guang makes this assessment of Emperor Wu: He delighted in and honoured culture and refinement, and looked after scholars and senior officials. He could indeed be called a respect-ful, frugal, generous, and wise ruler. Yet when, as emperor, he took up the conduct of áramaÖa, he debased his person and frittered away his state’s wealth by venerating the Buddha. His grace surpassed his authority, and laws and orders did not stand.86

Hou Jing’s criticisms are consistent within ZZTJ, too. Hou Jing’s declaration of the emperor’s tendency to “take the strange and the anomalous to be admirable and auspicious” and to “discourse on the six arts and reject former scholars” echoes accounts of Emperor Wu’s public lectures on Buddhist texts.87 Similarly, his claim that Emperor Wu “restored and had made images of Buddha, and indulged in every degree of extravagance” seems to be corroborated by his ear-lier reference to the luxurious nature of the Buddhist temples and pagodas in Jiankang.88 The reader also learns from Hou Jing that “before my armies had even entered the state, [Emperor Wu] had

86

Sima Guang, Linian tu, in Jigu lu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1991), 14: 130. Emperor Wu’s public lectures are well documented both in ZZTJ and in Sima Guang’s sources. Modern scholar Tang Yongtong counts references to sixteen such public lectures in Nan shi, cf. Han Wei Liang Jin Nanbei chao fojiao shi, Lithograph of Shanghai, Shanghai shangwu yinshuguan, 1938 ed. (Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1962), 2: 44. 88 ZZTJ, 161: 4991. This specific reference does not appear in any of Sima Guang’s extant sources, although general references to the opulence of Buddhist buildings at this time appear widely in accounts of the Liang dynasty. A number of these references appear in Alexander C. Soper, Literary Evidence for Early Buddhist Art in China (New York: Artibus Asiae, 1959), pp.64-82. Nan shi, 70: 1721 cites a memorial by the Liang minister Guo Zushen, in which he claims that “in the capi-tal there are over five hundred Buddhist temples of the greatest scale and beauty, and over a hundred thousand monks and nuns, whose wealth is abundant. Those in the provinces, meanwhile, are too numerous to mention.” The seventh century monk Daoxuan cites Liang ji’s total of 700 monasteries in Jiankang under Liang, a figure that Tang Yongtong also acknowledges: Liang ji, in Daoxuan, Guang hongming ji, TaishÙ shinshå DaizÙkyÙ ed. (Tokyo: TaishÙ shinshå DaizÙkyÙ kankÙkai, repr. 1962), Vol. 52, 2103, 11: 168a; Daoxuan, Shijia fangzhi, TaishÙ shinshå DaizÙkyÙ ed. (Tokyo: TaishÙ shinshå DaizÙkyÙ kankÙkai, repr. 1962), Vol. 51, 2088, B: 974b; Tang Yongtong, Han Wei Liang Jin Nanbei chao fojiao shi, 2: 46. The effect of Liang Buddhist construction on the state economy, a point that Hou Jing raises in his memorial, is examined in Jacques Gernet, Buddhism in Chinese Society: An Economic History from the Fifth to the Tenth Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), esp. pp.3-25. 87

230

mark strange

already renounced the world at the Tongtai Monastery,”89 point-ing to Emperor Wu’s willingness to place religious practices above concerns of state. There is also ample support for Hou Jing’s claims outside Sima Guang’s writings. They find close parallels, for instance, in a con-temporary secular source. In the first half of the sixth century, an acquaintance of Emperor Wu, Xun Ji, submitted to the throne a letter suggesting that Emperor Wu’s preoccupation with Buddhism had damaged the welfare and security of the Liang dynasty.90 His criticisms echo those that Hou Jing proposes in ZZTJ. Xun Ji also predicts the downfall of the Liang dynasty as a result of the influ-ence of Buddhism.91 It is this downfall that Hou Jing precipitates with his rebellion. Finally, there is even evidence to support Hou Jing’s claims in proBuddhist texts. Emperor Wu’s own edict rejecting Daoism, preserved in the seventh-century Buddhist compilation Guang hongming ji (An extended collection [of documents] for propagating enlightenment), claims that “there are ninety-six types of Way, but only the Way of Buddhism is the true Way. The other ninety-five are called heterodox Ways.”92 This seems to support Hou Jing’s claim that Emperor Wu “reject[s] former scholars” in his adoption of Buddhist beliefs. And another seventh-century Buddhist text, Fayuan zhulin (A forest of pearls in the garden of dharma), echoes Hou Jing’s accusation concerning Emperor Wu’s preoccupation with “discourse on the six arts”: “after the Liang founding ancestor [Emperor Wu] had ascended the impe-rial throne, he venerated and placed emphasis on Buddhist doctrines, while he rejected and put an end to Daoism. He would often invite

89 ZZTJ, 161: 4992. The occasion to which Hou Jing refers here is documented in ibid., 160: 4951. Sima Guang also refers to Emperor Wu’s worldly renunciations in 527 (151: 4723) and 529 (153: 4768). Nan shi and Jiankang shilu claim that the emperor renounced the world on four occasions, while three worldly renunciations appear in Liang shu and Shen Qing, Beishan lu, TaishÙ shinshå DaizÙkyÙ ed. (Tokyo: TaishÙ shinshå DaizÙkyÙ kankÙkai, repr. 1962), Vol. 52, 2113, 5: 604, 9: 628. 90 Daoxuan, Guang hongming ji, 7: 128c-131c. Reference to this letter appears in ZZTJ, 160: 4959, but Sima Guang omits the contents of Xun Ji’s criticisms. The exact date of this letter is unclear, but Xun Ji died on 27 September 547, having fled Liang for Eastern Wei (Bei shi, 83: 2786; ZZTJ, 160: 4959; Guang hongming ji, 7: 128c). He therefore must have composed the letter to Emperor Wu before the fall of Jiankang, probably at some point before the outbreak of Hou Jing’s rebellion. 91 Daoxuan, Guang hongming ji, 7: 131b. 92 Ibid., 4: 112a.

zizhi tongjian

231

eminent Buddhist monks to talk about obscure, fine points [of doc-trine].”93 Despite the unreliability of Hou Jing’s character elsewhere in Sima Guang’s account, his criticism of Emperor Wu’s Buddhist activities finds support from a broad range of representations, both elsewhere in ZZTJ and in Sima Guang’s sources. It is important to qualify this reading of Sima Guang’s account, however. Chikusa Masaaki has argued that, while Sima Guang was a critic of Buddhism, his focus was not Buddhist religious practice as a whole. Instead, as Chikusa suggests, Sima Guang’s “criticism was concerned with affairs of state economy.”94 This view finds resonance in the criticisms of Emperor Wu that Sima Guang places in the mouth of Hou Jing and in his own words in Linian tu. It is echoed in a contemporary context in “Qi ba xiu Ganci ta zhazi” (Request to halt repairs to the Stupa of Gratitude for Kindness). He submitted this request to the throne on 2 July 1064, during a period of food shortages that he describes in his memorial: To relieve [the people’s] suffering at a time such as this, Your High-ness should be exercising extreme vigilance and exerting yourself to the utmost. You should be casting off your [elegant clothing] and reducing your intake of food and drink. Yet you are continuing to build this Buddhist stupa and using up the state’s resources. I, your subject, humbly believe that in this business we have lost sight of what is urgent and what is not urgent, what should be placed first and what should come after. Moreover, this stupa has been leaning for a long time. Were it to be left unrepaired for a few more years, would it do the monks and Buddhist followers any real harm? But if the state fails to provide relief while the common people are starving and facing hardship and the situation is precarious, then the corpses of young and old alike will be left unburied in the ditches and the able-bodied will form bands of rebels. At a time such as this, even if there were a thousand stupas, what use would they be?95

93 Daoshi, Fayuan zhulin, TaishÙ shinshå DaizÙkyÙ ed. (Tokyo: TaishÙ shinshå DaizÙkyÙ kankÙkai, repr. 1962), Vol. 53, 2122, 14: 389. 94 Chikusa Masaaki, “Shiba KÙ ˆ Anseki yo bukkyÙ” in Jinian Sima Guang Wang Anshi shishi jiubai zhounian xueshu yantao hui lunwen ji (Taibei: Wenshi zhe chubanshe, 1986), pp. 477-87, esp. p. 483. 95 Chuanjia ji, 31: 14a-b. Two years earlier, on 7 November 1062, Sima Guang had submitted to the throne “Lun si e zhazi” (A discussion of temple numbers), in which he made a similar claim: “the doctrines of the Buddha and Laozi do not benefit an ordered society, but draw together and conceal the indolent and the parasitic among the common people,” ibid., 26: 8a.

232

mark strange

Sima Guang’s decision to include Hou Jing’s criticisms of Emperor Wu’s Buddhism comes into focus in the light of this memorial. Hou Jing claims that Emperor Wu “restored and had made images of Buddha, and indulged in every degree of extravagance, causing people all around to starve.” In 1064, a decade before composing his account of the Liang dynasty, Sima Guang had encountered a similar situation in the Northern Song. He had predicted the emer-gence of rebels and the suffering of the people. His representation of Hou Jing’s rebellion and his descriptions of the suffering in Jiankang under Hou Jing’s siege that opened this study—“corpses were strewn about, filling the streets without any chance of burial”—provide close thematic (and even textual) parallels between the past in ZZTJ and Sima Guang’s contemporary concerns. The construction of ZZTJ’s narrative reinforces those parallels, and functions as a critique of the rule of the Northern Song emperors. Through Hou Jing’s criti-cisms of Emperor Wu, it achieves this with the weight of historical allusion.

Shifting Political Dynamics The success of Hou Jing’s rebellion and the fall of the imperial compound in Jiankang produce significant changes in the relative position of Emperors Wu and Jianwen in ZZTJ’s narrative. This appears most clearly in their relationship with Hou Jing, with whom they are inextricably bound up in a shifting dynamic between ruler and usurper. This study has argued that when Hou Jing reaches the peak of his political power, his personal weaknesses come into clearest focus. Conversely, as the two Liang emperors lose their political power to act as puppets of Hou Jing’s regime, Sima Guang reveals a strength of character in them that does not appear before this point. The shift in the narrative relationship between these characters takes effect immediately after Hou Jing’s victory: Jing went in to have an audience [with Emperor Wu] in the Taiji East Hall with a personal bodyguard of five hundred armed men. Jing kow-towed at the lower end of the hall. … The emperor’s expression did not change as he asked: “You have been in the field for a long time. It must have been a difficult time, was it not?” Jing did not dare to look up. Sweat trickled down, covering his face. [The emperor] spoke again: “What region are you from that you venture to come here? Are your wife and children still in the north?” Jing was unable

zizhi tongjian

233

to respond to anything. … Jing also went to the Yongfu Residence to meet with the Crown Prince. The Crown Prince also showed no sign of fear. His attendants and guards all scattered in fear, and only Palace Cadet Xu Chi and Secretarial Receptionist Yin Buhai of Chen Prefecture stayed by his side in attendance. Chi told Jing: “King Hou should observe proper etiquette when having an audience. How dare you act like this?” Jing prostrated himself in a bow. The Crown Prince spoke with him and once again he was unable to reply.96

The accounts of these encounters are far briefer in Sima Guang’s surviving sources. Neither Liang shu nor Nan shi mention the physi-cal evidence of Hou Jing’s fear, his sweating, although they refer to his inarticulacy when faced with Emperor Wu.97 Nan shi offers a brief description of the encounter with Jianwen while Liang shu omits this second meeting altogether. Sima Guang therefore seems to have constructed his account to portray the two Liang emperors in a positive light and to demean Hou Jing at the same time. The intransigence of the emperors when faced with Hou Jing confers upon them a sense of moral superiority over their tongue-tied and uncouth usurper, which is emphasized by the contrast between them.98 There is also a strong contrast in these episodes between the actions of the Liang emperors and the behaviour of other members of the court. Before the fall of Jiankang and the loss of Liang imperial power, Sima Guang suggests that the emperors are responsible for the rise of court corruption and factionalism. After the fall of the palace compound, once they have lost their political power, they are deserted by members of their court. A distance between ruler and courtiers emerges on a physical, political, and moral level. It is echoed throughout this section of ZZTJ’s narrative; the willingness of the Liang nobility to surrender to Hou Jing is very different to the intransigence that Emperors Wu and Jianwen display after their

96

ZZTJ, 162: 5010. Liang shu, 56: 851; Nan shi, 80: 2007. 98 Sima Guang omits the one instance after the fall of Jiankang in which Hou Jing is seen to gain a moral and intellectual superiority over Jianwen, by this time emperor. Nan shi, 80: 2009 describes a series of ‘pure talk’ (qing tan) encounters in which Hou Jing repeatedly outsmarts the emperor. ‘Pure talk’ was a feature of Six Dynasties’ intellectual life at which an educated man such as Jianwen should have excelled. Sima Guang’s omission of this episode presents the emperor in a more favourable light. As such, it is an editorial decision that remains consistent with his general characterisation of the figure of the Liang emperor during the second section of ZZTJ’s account of Hou Jing’s rebellion. 97

234

mark strange

defeat. The moral failings that previously appeared in the characters of the two emperors now transfer to the Liang imperial princes, who “grew suspicious and envious of each other, losing any further intention of launching punitive campaigns against the rebels.”99 This in-fighting has implications for social and political order. Not only are the Liang princes seen to neglect their duty to their state and their ruler, but they also violate the canonical Confucian relation-ship between brothers. The distance that Sima Guang puts between the Liang emperors and the internecine warfare of their family appears graphically in Emperor Wu’s treatment of the imperial prince, Xiao Zhengde. Xiao Zhengde offers a striking example of Liang disloyalty. During Hou Jing’s siege of Jiankang, he helps the rebels against the Liang regime out of resentment at being passed over as heir to the throne.100 The emperors’ early misjudgements are typified by their failure to recognise Zhengde’s duplicity: there is dramatic irony when Emperor Wu places him in charge of Jiankang’s defences, the position in which he can most effectively undermine the Liang regime.101 But in the second section of ZZTJ’s account, Emperor Wu’s treatment of Zhengde changes: “Zhengde entered to meet Emperor [Wu], and bowed before him in tears. The emperor said: ‘You sob and weep, but to what end?’”102 Emperor Wu occupies a position of political and moral superiority over Zhengde in this exchange. Once he has lost his political power to Hou Jing and is isolated from his court, he no longer appears culpable for the political and moral failings of the Liang dynasty. With the figure of the emperor returned to an irreproachable position, blame now lies instead with the imperial princes. This sets the tone for the remainder of the account. Hou Jing only manages to achieve nominal power over the Liang emperors, while they in fact retain true control over the situation. Sima Guang makes this explicit in his statement that “while externally the emperor

99

ZZTJ, 163: 5041. Ibid., 161: 4979-80. The decision to pass over Xiao Zhengde as heir to the Liang throne appears in 149: 4670. In his commentary, Hu Sanxing makes explicit the link between this and Xiao Zhengde’s later support of Hou Jing. 101 Ibid., 161: 4983. 102 Ibid., 162: 5012. The emperor’s quotation comes from the canonical Mao shi zhengyi, Shisan jing zhushu ed., 4A: 64. 100

zizhi tongjian

235

was controlled by Hou Jing, internally he had not been pacified at all. … Jing was unable to manipulate him by force and inwardly feared him.”103 Order is restored when imperial control is recog-nised externally once more: at the end of Sima Guang’s account, courtiers receive pardons according to the respect that they pay to the emperor (by now, Emperor Yuan) and court etiquette finds its place again.104 As a result, the reader’s impression of the Liang emperors at the end of this narrative sequence is predominantly a positive one. Their intransigence and moral superiority, emphasized through contrast with those around them, fit well with the type of a Confucian gentleman that Sima Guang seems to prescribe as an imperial model. And so Sima Guang finds justification for his use of the Liang emperors as the focus of ZZTJ’s chronological framework, in an account where canonical social and political relationships have a full role to play.

Conclusion Sima Guang’s account of the dynamic between Hou Jing and the Liang dynasty is significant because it lies at the intersection of a number of important issues that had social relevance at the time of its composition. A close reading of ZZTJ is revealing on several levels. First, its central themes play themselves out in the narrative setting of the sixth-century Liang dynasty. Sima Guang draws on a wide range of source texts on this period, many of which have since been lost, and provides the modern reader with descriptions of Liang political life that are often unobtainable elsewhere. Second, Sima Guang used ZZTJ as a political manual—a ‘mir-ror’—for the Northern Song emperor. As a result, his treatment of

103

ZZTJ, 162: 5016. ZZTJ, 164: 5082, 164: 5088. Sima Guang casts Emperor Yuan in a nega-tive light soon after the resolution of Hou Jing’s rebellion, however, as he fails to ensure dynastic stability and unity. In ibid., 165: 5121-2, Sima Guang gives an account of Emperor Yuan’s deliberate destruction of the imperial library in 555 (the emperor’s involvement in this event does not receive universal acknowledgement in Sima Guang’s sources). It marks the beginning of the end of Emperor Yuan’s rule in ZZTJ’s narrative. At this earlier stage, however, Emperor Yuan’s pacification of Hou Jing’s rebellion and restoration of political order (albeit temporary) are seen to qualify him for imperial rule. 104

236

mark strange

Hou Jing’s rebellion moves beyond its Liang context to reflect many of the wider political debates in which Sima Guang was involved in the Northern Song court. Narrative structure is at the centre of ZZTJ’s mirroring effect. Sima Guang’s choice of a chronological form has immediate consequences for the way his readers confront ZZTJ. It signals the influence of Chunqiu and its associated commentaries. Verbal echoes from these canonical works ring throughout ZZTJ’s narrative: there is an obvious imitation of structure, and there is also a wide range of canonical references on points of ideology and rhetoric. In the context of Sima Guang’s rivalry with Wang Anshi this points to a possible conflict between the Old Text School, which focused on the historically-centred Chunqiu, and the New Text School that Wang Anshi supported, with its foundations in the mysticism of Zhou li (The rituals of Zhou).105 This is an area that lies outside the scope of the present study, however, and deserves more detailed consideration elsewhere. Third, the way in which Sima Guang treats the complex themes of his account indicates his own ideological position on questions that extend beyond the scope of this single episode. His representation of Hou Jing’s rebellion brings into focus the criteria that he used to resolve key questions that surrounded Northern Song concepts of imperial rule. At the heart of this is his belief in the importance of political unity to dynastic survival. This serves as the yardstick by which Sima Guang seems to have measured the various contenders for imperial power in his account. He shows Hou Jing failing in his attempt to obtain the right to rule—this is indicated by his absence from ZZTJ’s chronology—not because he usurps Liang titular power, but because he disrupts social order and fails to bring political stabil-ity in the aftermath of his rebellion. Conversely, the Liang emperors temporarily lose power because they fail to ensure political order. They manage to retain their place in ZZTJ’s chronology, however,

105 Several modern scholars have noted this conflict in Sima Guang and Wang Anshi’s affiliation to these two textual traditions, but none seems to have set it in relation to ZZTJ. See James T.C. Liu, Reform in Sung China: Wang An-shih (10211086) and his New Policies (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1959), pp. 30-33; Peter K. Bol, “Government, Society, and State: On the Political Visions of Ssu-ma Kuang and Wang An-shih,” in Robert P. Hymes and Conrad Schirokauer eds., Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), p. 131.

zizhi tongjian

237

by eventually elevating themselves above the factionalism of court politics. As a result, the political dynamic that emerges from ZZTJ’s account never proposes the simple opposition of good and bad, usurped and usurper. These nuances reaffirm the subtlety of the views that Sima Guang developed in his statements on contemporary issues of Northern Song politics. This study has attempted to make explicit these thematic consistencies because they are important for the modern reader in tracing the development of Sima Guang’s personal ideology into the practical form of a general narrative of dynastic activity. The selective use of sources is central to ZZTJ’s political spin. Editorial intervention reveals itself when there is tension between different sources. An examination of these textual tensions—some-thing that this study has attempted to take beyond the comments of the kao yi—reveals Sima Guang’s historiographic and ideological preferences and shows that he constructed his account to provide a highly personal interpretation of Hou Jing’s rebellion. When read in this light, ZZTJ’s narrative parallels the imperial vision that Sima Guang developed in his other political writings. As a result, it rep-resents an important contribution to the debates on imperial power that emerged during the Northern Song. An understanding of this aspect of ZZTJ is central to recognising the complexities of Sima Guang’s political and social ideology as a whole, and the way in which his views fitted into the intellectual context of the society in which he lived.

238

daria berg

CHAPTER EIGHT

FEMALE SELF-FASHIONING IN LATE IMPERIAL CHINA: HOW THE GENTLEWOMAN AND THE COURTESAN EDITED HER STORY AND REWROTE HI/STORY Daria Berg The Concept of Self-fashioning Women in seventeenth-century China publicly set out to fashion the female self—by editing and publishing their own and other women’s writings.1 As Stephen Greenblatt has described in his Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, the idea of self-fashioning is concerned with the “deliberate shaping in the formation and expression of identity.”2 It rests on the perception that “there is in the early modern period a change in the intellectual, social, psy-chological, and aesthetic structures that govern the generation of identities.”3 Moreover, self-fashioning “is always, though not exclu-sively, in language.”4 In late imperial China—an era that includes the time of Shake-speare—we find such accounts, too, of figures who are “engaged in their own acts of selection and shaping and who seem to drive themselves toward the most sensitive regions of their culture, to express and even, by design, to embody its dominant satisfactions and anxieties.”5 Greenblatt concentrates on the stories of middle-

1 This essay is based on a paper “Women and the Publishing Boom in Seven-teenth-Century Jiangnan” presented at the XIVth EACS (European Association of Chinese Studies) conference, Moscow, Russia, August 26-28, 2002. I would like to thank Professors Grace Fong and Richard Hall, and Dr Chloë Starr for their valuable comments. 2 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980, pbk 1984), p. 1. 3 Ibid. 4 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, p. 9. 5 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, p. 6.

female self-fashioning

239

class male writers in the Western world. In this volume Rana Mitter looks at self-fashioning in the modern print and press culture of early twentieth-century China. Focusing on male writers and editors, he tracks changes “in the way in which self-presentation takes place through writing” in China.6 This chapter changes the gender perspective and turns to women writers and editors. In seventeenth-century China, too, we find that art is not created in a vacuum and does not exist without links and references to the world around it: [T]he written word is self-consciously embedded in specific communi-ties, life situations, structures of power. We do not have direct access to these figures or their shared culture, but the operative condition of all human understanding—of the speech of our contemporaries as well as of the writings of the dead—is that we have indirect access or at least that we experience our constructions as the lived equivalent of such access.7

The following discussion aims to gain such access to the lives and culture of two women writers and editors from different social back-grounds—Shen Yixiu (1590-1635),8 a gentlewoman from a rulingclass family and Liu Rushi (1618-1664),9 a celebrated courtesan—in seventeenth-century Jiangnan, the Yangzi delta region, by examining their own words, the cultural discourse that their contemporaries constructed around them, and the historical context that enveloped their lives and their literary works.

6

See Chapter Five of this volume. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, p. 7. 8 Zi: Wanjun. For Ye Shaoyuan’s biography of his wife Shen Yixiu, see Ye Shaoyuan, comp., Wumengtang ji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998) [hereafter: WMTJ], 1: 225-9. On Shen Yixiu and her prominent literary family, see Joseph Poon, “Darling Buds of Ming: Three Sisters in Early Seventeenth-Century China”, unpublished paper presented at the conference on “Perceptions of Gentility in Chinese Literature and History”, University of Durham, UK, March 21-23, 2002; Kang-i Sun Chang and Haun Saussy, eds., Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1999) (hereafter: WWTC), pp. 268-78, 682-6; Dorothy Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seven-teenth-Century China (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1994, pp. 187-202.) 9 Liu Rushi is also known as Liu Shi or Liu Yin. On her changing names, see below. 7

240

daria berg

Fig. 8.1 Portrait of Ye Xiaoluan reading a book. Yan Jiantang, Baimei xinyong, 1804. Reproduced from Guo Qing and Liao Dong, eds., Zhongguo lidai renwu xiangzhuan (Jinan: Qilu shushe, 2002), p. 3171.

female self-fashioning

241

The Gentlewoman Editor We hear the voice of a late Ming (1368-1644) lady telling her hus-band what she wanted: Although our daughters have passed away, we may rejoice in the fact that they were not the only ladies with great literary talent in the world. It is truly regrettable that nowadays, as in the past, their works are lost or remain in obscurity and have rarely been recorded, but should there really be such limits? … 10

The voice belongs to Shen Yixiu of Wujiang near Lake Tai in Suzhou prefecture (modern Jiangsu province), a poetess, gentry wife, and mother of thirteen, among them famous scholars and poet-esses. She is speaking after the deaths of two of her daughters, the poetess and calligrapher Ye Wanwan (1610-1632) and Ye Xiaoluan (1616-1632), a teenage poetess of legendary fame, and before her own demise, sometime between 1632 and 1635.11 The premature deaths of her beloved daughters had affected her badly and she poured out her sorrow in her poetry.12 The pieces written after their deaths are full of dreams about meeting them again, cold sleepless nights spent reminiscing about the past when they were still alive, and her ‘tears of blood’. She thus turns to her husband with the idea of compiling and editing an anthology of women’s writings: Would you help me in an extensive search throughout the empire to gather together those works by women that have not been published yet? In my spare time I would like to compile and edit them so that they will not all perish.13

Such an enterprise would help her remember and immortalize women as talented and erudite as the daughters she had lost. Her voice comes to us after her death and through the conscious-ness of her husband, the genteel but poverty-stricken literatus Ye Shaoyuan (1589-1648),14 as he recorded his recollection of her words 10

Ye Shaoyuan, “Bayu”, in WMTJ, 1: 356. On Ye Wanwan’s death in 1632 (often wrongly given as 1633), see Ji Qin, “Qianyan”, WMTJ, 1: 5. 12 On Shen Yixiu’s life and poetry, see WWTC, pp. 266-78; Wilt Idema and Beata Grant, The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 382-90. 13 Ye Shaoyuan, “Bayu”, WMTJ, 1: 356. 14 On Ye Shaoyuan and his family, see Ye Dehui, comp., Wuzhong Yeshi zupu 11

242

daria berg

in a colophon when editing their daughter’s poetry collection.15 Her voice thus reaches us tinged with his grief and nostalgia, through the filter of his mind and editorial agenda, inscribed with the subtext of his voice, mixing memory and the desire to reproduce her words. Shen Yixiu’s words disclose her aspirations to edit literature. In her days this was something most unusual for a woman. How did she manage to do it? Why should she have bothered and what did she hope to achieve? What was her goal and what were the elements in the society of her time that enabled her to proceed? How did she and others—the men and women around her—perceive such literary activities? What were their significance and consequences? What impact did the contemporary discourse have on her and what influence did she exert on her world? These questions may serve as guidelines as we try to recover the voices and hear the discourse telling the gentlewoman editor’s tale. This tale involves more than one editor at work on various levels: the woman who aspires to edit other women’s works, the men who edit their womenfolk’s voices, and finally the modern historian and critic whose consciousness edits, filters and selects her source material from the past. A caveat at the outset: it is only fair to acknowledge the bias of the modern reader who approaches the subject from within his/her own culture, value system and ethnocentric assumptions.16 We have to tread carefully. Modern scholars agree that women in late imperial China were far from being the repressed victims of a feudal system in desperate need of liberation,17 but still tend to look for elements of modern Western theoretical discourse on power and gender in traditional Chinese culture. This “anachronistic interpretation of women’s literary creativity”, as Susan Mann writes in her critique

(Changsha: n.p., 1911); Xiu Hua and Lin Yan, Feng leng luan hong diao—Ye shi san zimei zhuan (Shijia zhuang: Huashan wenyi chubanshe, 2001); Carrington L. Goodrich and Chao-ying Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368-1644 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976) [hereafter: DMB], pp. 1576-9. 15 Ye Xiaoluan, Fanshengxiang, in WMTJ, 1: 291-381. 16 See, for example, Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 19; Daria Berg, “What the Messenger of Souls has to Say”, p. 187. 17 See e.g. Ko, Teachers, pp. 1-3. The late imperial era extends from the last century of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) to the end of the Qing dynasty (16441911).

female self-fashioning

243

of recent studies of women in traditional China, “is a reminder that contemporary Western feminism may remain parochial in its insistence that its own telos of freedom and agency be at work in every record of women’s lives.”18 On the other hand Mann also acknowledges the pitfalls of an “atheoretical” approach that tends to result in “underanalyzed discussions” of female nature or women’s feelings.19 It is our task, then, to analyse the voices as we can hear them today and the positions of the speakers within their contemporary cultural discourse. Rather than attempting to reconstruct a ‘true’ image of the past or to superimpose modern concepts and jargon onto the world of the past, we need to deconstruct the discourse of that time and place, rethink its cultural context and see how its dynamics shaped and changed the world. This study uses both literary and non-literary sources to retrace the social network of negotiations and exchanges in which late imperial Chinese citizens operated. The sources include prefaces, postscripts and commentaries, such as the colophon by Shen Yixiu’s husband that transmits her voice across time and space, alongside the critical and poetic works through which Shen Yixiu and other women writers and editors speak to us directly. Gender and Tradition When the late Ming gentlewoman Shen Yixiu decides to compile the literary works of women, she becomes one of the first late impe-rial Chinese women known to have joined in the vogue of editing anthologies.20 As an anthologist of poetry and as an editor of women’s writings, she follows not only in the footsteps of men but emulates the very example of Confucius: the Shi jing (Book of odes) would have served as a model, for Shen Yixiu and her contemporaries believed

18 Susan Mann, “Review Essay: The History of Chinese Women before the Age of Orientalism”, Journal of Women’s History 8.4, 1997: 163-76, esp. p. 174. 19 Mann, “Review Essay”, pp. 170, 174. 20 The only other known woman editor who might have been active as early as the late Ming period is Fang Weiyi (1585-1668). The publication dates of her anthologies Gonggui shishi (History of poetry in palace and boudoir), Gonggui wenshi (History of prose writing in palace and boudoir) are unknown; Hu Wenkai, Lidai funü zhuzuo kao (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985) [hereafter: FNZZ], 81, 893.

244

daria berg

that this classic also contains poems by women.21 In following this orthodox and authoritative model, an editor would be able to claim a place within Confucian tradition. Literary anthologies specifically devoted to women’s writings are known to have existed from the fifth century onwards: the modern bibliographer Hu Wenkai lists nine works from the Nanbei chao (Southern and Northern dynasties) period (222-589), one from the Tang dynasty and two from the Song.22 Women’s anthologies appeared in larger numbers only in the Ming dynasty from the 1550s onwards.23 Grace Fong has shown that the late Ming appears to be “the incipient period when more women began to pick up the brush and compose poetry.”24 Although women appeared as the new cultural producers and consumers in the late Ming and may have also played a part in the popularity of women’s anthologies, these works were commonly compiled by male editors and published as commercial ventures intended primarily for a male readership.25 The earliest known late Ming anthology of women’s writings is a collection of poetry and prose entitled Tongguan xinbian (New compila-tion of works by red writing brushes) compiled by Zhang Zhixiang (1507-1587), a native of the cultural centre of Songjiang, in 1554. This collection includes women’s prose and poetry from the Zhou to the Yuan dynasties, but not from the Ming. Only a few years later another anthology appeared that included women’s writings from the Ming dynasty: in 1557 Tian Yiheng (1524- ca.1574) from Qian-tang (Hangzhou Bay), a minor official who retired to the West Lake to pursue his interests in poetry, party games, wine-tasting, the tea

21

Cf. Ann Waltner and Pi-ching Hsu, “Lingering Fragrance: The Poetry of Tu Yaose and Shen Tiansun”, Journal of Women’s History 8.4, 1997: 28-53, esp. p. 28. 22 Nanbei chao anthologies of women’s writings generally appear under the title Furen ji (Women’s collection); the Tang anthology of women’s poetry is entitled Yaochi xinyong (New songs from the Jasper Pond, comp. Cai Shengfeng); the Song dynasty collections are Furen wenzhang, comp. Chen Pengnian, and Song jiu gongren shici, comp. Wang Yuanliang, cf. FNZZ, 875-6. 23 Hu Wenkai’s catalogue identifies thirty-one collections from the Ming dynasty, FNZZ, 876-94. 24 Grace S. Fong, “Gender and the Failure of Canonization: Anthologizing Women’s Poetry in the Late Ming”, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles and Reviews 26, 2004: 129-49, esp. p. 132. 25 Cf. Fong, “Gender”, p. 132; Ko, Teachers, pp. 59-65.

female self-fashioning

245

ceremony and exotic foods, published Shinü shi (A history of women poets) which featured the works of twenty-six Ming poetesses.26 In the preface to his anthology Tian Yiheng, the son of the famous scholar-official and highest degree-holder Tian Rucheng (ca. 1500after 1563, jinshi 1526), reasons: Even when it comes to the composition of couplets at poetry parties, it is the talented ladies who outshine everyone else. Their knack of exploring a topic in great depth upsets the others so much that they put down their writing brushes.27

He maintains that literary talent appears in equal measures in men and women: From the days of the Zhou dynasty onwards, there has been no lack of [talented] people in each dynastic era. The great differences in the prominence [of men’s works] and the obscurity [of women’s works] arise from the very fact that nobody has bothered to collect and col-late the latter.28

The reasons for the new interest in women’s writings are complex: they have their roots in a change of intellectual climate, the forma-tion of new ideals among the literati, the rise in women’s literacy, the creation of a new reading audience, a new market for books and new developments in the publishing industry. These trends in publishing will be discussed in detail below. In Tian Yiheng’s opinion the act of editing women’s poetry equals in importance the composition of the Confucian classic Shi jing.29 For Tian Yiheng, it is not an act of radical innovation but one that remains true to orthodox tradition. Nonetheless Tian Yiheng’s attitude must have sounded iconoclastic to late Ming ears—and it was in tune with the most radical thinkers of his time. A disciple of the Taizhou school of thought, the heretic philosopher Li Zhi (1527-1602) praised popular literature while dismissing the Confucian canon because he considered the former to be better in expressing the author’s “childlike mind” (tongxin).30 Late Ming readers deemed women writers to

26

On Tian Yiheng (zi: Ziyi), see WWTC, p. 733 (which dates Shinü shi to ca. 1570); on Yiheng and his father Tian Rucheng, see DMB, pp. 1268-88. 27 FNZZ, 877. 28 FNZZ, 876. 29 FNZZ, 877. 30 On Li Zhi, see DMB, pp. 807-18; William H. Nienhauser, Jr., ed. and comp.,

246

daria berg

be particularly good at this. Li Zhi’s ideas impressed and inspired his friends, the three Yuan brothers from Gong’an (in modern Hunan province), Yuan Hongdao (1568-1610), Zongdao (1560-1600) and Zhongdao (1570-1624).31 Their Gong’an school of literary criticism won the admiration of other avant-garde artists and intellectuals, including the dramatist of emotions Tang Xianzu (15501616).32 A generation later the literary leader and eminent scholar-official Qian Qianyi (1608-1664, jinshi 1610) and the best-selling poet and anthologist Zhong Xing (1574-1624, jinshi 1610) also joined the Gong’an movement.33 Zhong Xing became the founder of the Jingling school of poetry which postulated that a poet should find inspiration in the vital essence of earlier poetry, its xingling, or native sensibility. This school of poetry also valued originality over imitation.34 He departed from the Gong’an school in seeking refinement in poetry. To advocate his literary choices he published several poetry antholo-gies,35 and he is also credited with the editorship of a comprehensive late Ming anthology of women writers, the Mingyuan shigui (Poetic retrospective of famous ladies, ca. 1626) and the authorship of its preface. Late Ming literati celebrated women’s works, for they perceived them to embody values and qualities they desired but found lacking in men. Concepts such as innocence, or the child-like mind (tongxin), inspirational gusto (xingling), and emotions (qing) converged in the

The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), pp. 533-4. 31 On the Yuan brothers, see Hung Ming-shui, “Yüan Hung-tao and the Late Ming Literary and Intellectual Movement”, PhD thesis: University of Wisconsin, 1974. 32 On the Gong’an school, see Jonathan Chaves, “The expression of self in the Kung-an School: non-romantic individualism”, in Robert E. Hegel and Richard C. Hessney, eds., Expressions of Self in Chinese Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), pp. 123-150; Chou Chih-p’ing, Yuan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 33 On Zhong Xing, see Nienhauser, Indiana Companion, pp. 369-70; DMB, pp. 408-9; Nancy Norton Tomasko, “Chung Hsing (1574-1625): A Literary Name in the Wan-li Era (1573-1620) of Ming China”, PhD thesis, Princeton University, 1995. 34 Cf. Nienhauser, Indiana Companion, p. 369. Zhong was criticised by Qian Qianyi, however. Mao Jin of the prestigious Jiguge publishing house also printed Zhong Xing’s works. 35 Gushi gui (Homecoming to ancient poetry) and Tangshi gui (Homecoming to Tang poetry), both 1617.

female self-fashioning

247

new ideals of stylistic femininity and feminine style. Femininity and its perceived attributes of natural expression, elegance and gentility merged in the imagination of the literati as a new ideal. The rep-resentation of the female sphere and feminine attributes caught the imagination of editors and anthologists such as Tian Yiheng, Zhong Xing, and their contemporaries. Armed with such knowledge, Shen Yixiu set her mind on becoming an editor. At that time anthologies of women’s works had already come into fashion among the literati.36 Aware of her predecessors, Shen Yixiu marks the differences from her own work in the preface to her anthology: In our times there are many anthologies of poetry and prose by famous ladies but they mostly tend to transmit [the works of] the past and do not have the breadth to cover the present.37

Editorship places Shen Yixiu into the tradition of the elite male anthologists.38 She expressed her wish to take their work a step further. Shen Yixiu perceived editorship as something desirable, as her words to her husband that opened this chapter show.39 But what exactly did editorship mean to a woman in late imperial times? In a Gentleman’s World Shen Yixiu’s example shows that editorship began to count among the aspirations of an elite woman at a time when the economic boom helped create a hotbed of cultural activity in early seven-teenth-century Jiangnan. Literary culture in the Yangzi delta in late imperial China traditionally formed part of the gentlemen’s world, the realm of the scholar-officials and the educated elite including the literati (shidafu), or ‘men of culture’ (wenren), whether they held office or not. The intellectual elite moreover included men of letters who had withdrawn from public life and become recluses, and also other fringe groups such as the unprecedented numbers of exami--

36

See Table 2. WMTJ, 1: 538. 38 On literary anthologies by male editors and their social networks in the Ming/Qing, see Tobie Meyer-Fong, “Packaging the Men of Our Times: Literary Anthologies, Friendship Networks, and Political Accommodation in the Early Qing”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 64.1, 2004: 5-56. 39 WMTJ, 1: 356. 37

248

daria berg

Table 2. Anthologies of Women’s Writings from the Late Ming Era (prior to the publication of Shen Yixiu’s Yirensi in 1636) Edited by Male Editors 1554 1557 1567 ca. 1571 1595 ca. 1600 1616 1618 1620 ca. 1626

1621-27 1628 1632

Zhang Zhixiang publishes Tongguan xinbian (New compilation of works by red writing brushes, 8 juan) Tian Yiheng publishes Shi nüshi (Lady scholars of poetry, 14 juan) Li Hu compiles Tongguan yibian (Compilation of works left by red writing brushes, 38 juan) Yu Xian (jinshi 1538) edits Shuxiu zongji (Collected poems by women of purity and beauty, 1 juan, preface dated 1571), an anthology of sixteen Ming poetesses Chishang Ke edits Mingyuan ji’nang (Sack of pearls by famous ladies) which includes the works of twenty-three Ming poetesses Mei Dingzuo edits Qingni lianhua ji (A record of lotus flowers in dark mud, 13 juan; preface dated 1600) Zhang Mengzheng edits Qinglou yunyu (Stylish words from the pleasure quarters, 4 juan), a larger anthology of one hundred and eighty poetesses (including one hundred and fourteen from the Ming) Qu Juesheng edits Nüsao (Poetic elegies by women, 9 juan), a poetesses’ counterpart to the ancient poetry collection Lisao (Encountering sorrow) from the Chu ci (Songs of Chu) Zheng Wen’ang edits Gujin mingyuan huishi (Classified poetry by notable women: ancient and modern, 20 juan) The most famous anthology Mingyuan shigui (Poetic retrospective of famous ladies) appears, featuring the works of one hundred and ten Ming poetesses; its editorship was attributed to the best-selling poet Zhong Xing (1574-1624, jinshi 1610) Jiang Yuanxi edits Yutai wenyuan (Literature from jade terrace, 8 juan) Zhao Shijie from the West Lake publishes Gujin nüshi (Female scribes, ancient and modern), an anthology of fifty-two poetesses Jiang Yuanzuo publishes a sequel to the anthology compiled by his brother Jiang Yuanxi, entitled Xu yutai wenyuan (Sequel to ‘Literature from jade terrace’, 4 juan)

[Sources: FNZZ, 875-94; Fong, “Gender”; Ko, Teachers, pp. 59-65; WWTC, p. 747. Another sixteen undated anthologies presumably published in the late Ming era are listed in FNZZ.]

nation candidates, failed examinees, those scholars who had given up scholarship and gone into business (qiru congshang), and wealthy merchants with cultural aspirations.40 John Meskill describes the peculiarities of the gentlemen’s world in late Ming Jiangnan:

40 On these groups, see Daria Berg, Carnival in China: A Reading of the Xingshi yinyuan zhuan (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002), pp. 225-76.

female self-fashioning

249

The lower Yangtze valley cannot by any statistical legerdemain be offered as a microcosm of imperial China. In all aspects it was unusual. No student of economic history fails to see the signs that have been outlined above of its extraordinary wealth. No student of government and politics fails to notice the powerful representation of the region in the bureaucracy of Peking in the later imperial period. No student of literature can ignore its poets, essayists and fiction writers, who ruled the world of letters. No student of the fine arts need look elsewhere to find almost all the major painters. If the aim is to find regularities and norms, the lower Yangtze valley is not the place to look. Yet if the aim is to observe the life and thoughts of men who were especially favored by the civilization, it offers a rich record.41

Yet the world of the gentlewoman (guixiu)—and those who aspired to this status—appears equally remarkable. The term gentlewoman is taken to denote a ruling-class lady from a gentry or elite family whose fathers, brothers and husbands were higher degree holders and scholar-officials. Modern scholarship has only recently pointed to the dominance of women writers in the Yangzi delta in late imperial times and sparked interest in their world.42 To the literati, scholarship and poetry served the purpose of gaining social recognition. Such pursuits were linked with social advancement through the examination system. Success in literary composition and criticism would translate into a rise within the imperial bureaucracy. Gentlewomen on the other hand would have no such avenues open to them, as all women were barred from entering the examination system and competing for public office. Dorothy Ko has written extensively about the emerging women’s culture in late Ming China as increasing numbers of women became more educated and began to participate in the literary culture of the male elite. In late Ming times, however, it was predominately the courtesans whose educa--

41 John Meskill, Gentlemanly Interests and Wealth on the Yangtze Delta (Ann Arbor: AAS Monographs, 1994), pp. 5-6. 42 For example, see Ann Waltner, “T’an-Yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen: Vision-ary and Bureaucrat in the late Ming”, Late Imperial China 8.1, 1987: 105-33; Ellen Widmer, “The Epistolary World of Female Talent in Seventeenth-Century China”, Late Imperial China 10.2, 1989: 1-43; idem, “Xiaoqing’s Literary Legacy and the Place of the Woman Writer in Late Imperial China”, Late Imperial China 13.1, 1992: 111-55; Ko, Teachers; Ellen Widmer and Kang-i Sun Chang, eds., Writing Women in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997); Susan Mann, Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997); Victoria Baldwin Cass, Dangerous Women: Warriors, Grannies, and Geishas of the Ming (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999).

250

daria berg

tion, scholarship and literary abilities matched those of the literati whom they had to entertain. In the seventeenth century the gentry women, too, emerged on the literary scene as producers and consumers of culture: they com-posed poetry, published their works, produced paintings, taught their daughters, and gained influence in literature and the arts as celebrated authors and artists. Gentlewomen displayed the defining traits of their gentility in public by becoming visible as writers, poets and painters. The term gentility is taken to denote the way of the gentleman and gentlewoman, the perceived quality that marked them as belonging to the social and intellectual elite. The Hangzhou matriarch Gu Ruopu (1592-ca.1681), for example, a renowned poet and writer on statecraft and economics, advocated the importance of women’s literary education.43 She defined her vision of gentility for women in terms of acquiring womanly virtue and gracefulness (shu) by means of education, scholarship and learning. Attitudes among the literati changed as talent, beauty and virtue combined to form a new ideal of femininity and elite men valorized not only the courtesans but also the gentry ladies as intellectual companions. Shen Yixiu and Ye Shaoyuan formed such a companionate married couple, embodying the new romantic ideal of a scholarly husband and a cultured wife.44 For a gentlewoman, editing a literary collection was one way of contributing towards scholarship and taking part in the literary activities of her husband’s world. Shen Yixiu was among the first late imperial Chinese women to undertake such a task. She was well situated to become an editor as she had formed one of the earliest known women’s poetry clubs around her, an informal and domestic network of writing women that mainly consisted of her daughters, relatives and friends.45 When her daughters Wanwan and Xiaoluan died, Shen Yixiu edited the manuscripts they left behind. In 1634 the published volumes were distributed among other women poets in the Yangzi delta area.46 Publishing was important, as it placed poetry and scholarship in

43 On Gu Ruopu, see Ko, Teachers, pp. 139; 163-4; 236-40; 245f; 248; 281; WWTC, pp. 302-313. 44 On the new romantic ideals, see Ko, Teachers, pp. 183ff. 45 On Shen’s domestic poetry club, see Ko, Teachers, pp. 202-7. 46 Cf. Ko, Teachers, p. 212ff.

female self-fashioning

251

the public domain. By publishing a literary collection, the editor had the power to lend visibility, fame and immortality to the works and authors included in it. The modern scholar Ellen Widmer has noted that [W]omen’s editorial work could suppress as well as celebrate female talent, and it tended to emphasize virtue among other evaluative cat-egories; yet there is no doubt that many women writers sought to place their works in the new anthologies of women’s works by women editors.47

As authors, and even more so as editors of poetry, women situated themselves within an imagined tradition of women from the past and created a community among their contemporaries. Editing and publishing meant reaching out towards other women and establish-ing one’s own place within the literary world, carving out a niche for oneself in the world of elite men. Longing for One Far Away: A Gentlewoman’s Selection Shen Yixiu’s editorial efforts resulted in a slim anthology entitled Yirensi (Longing for one far away) comprising two hundred and forty one poems and prose pieces by forty-seven women writers from the Ming era.48 The title alludes to quotations from the Shi jing poems no. 129 and no. 165, which depict a lady longing for her compan-ion, or “that person” (yiren) who is far away, as she stands on the bank of a river among the green rushes and reeds.49 Shen Yixiu by analogy postulates the editor’s search for those far away, in this case, the other gentlewomen who expressed their feelings in their writings and whose works were difficult to come by, but her long-ing might also have been for those far away daughters from whom death had parted her forever and whom she could commemorate and immortalize only in her thoughts and in her literary pursuits. Poetry had the power to connect these women across time and space:

47 Ellen Widmer, “The Rhetoric of Retrospection: May Fourth Literary History and the Ming-Qing Woman Writer”, in Milena Dolezelova-Velingerova and Oldrich Kral, eds., The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China’s May Fourth Project (Cambridge, MA, and London: 2001), pp. 193-225, esp. p. 208. 48 Shen Yixiu, Yirensi, in WMTJ, 1: 527-90. 49 See Ye Shaoyuan’s preface “Yirensi xiaoyin”, in WMTJ, 1: 537; Bernhard Karlgren, trans., The Book of Odes (Stockholm: The Museum of Far Eastern Antiqui-ties, 1950), pp. 83-4, 108-9.

252

daria berg

the gentlewomen who communicated with each other only through their writings and those with whom they could communicate no longer except in their writing. Her husband Ye Shaoyuan published Shen Yixiu’s anthology in 1636, a year after her death.50 When she was gone, he expressed his sadness at the unfinished state of the works she had left behind: “Her testament of posthumous writings lies in her portfolio. I mourn in vain over the manuscripts she left behind.”51 Perhaps he found solace in completing the task of publishing the volume she had been working on during the last years of her life. Shen Yixiu perceived editorship as a long-term enterprise. This is how she mused over the task of compiling women’s writings: After collecting them for a decade or two, we should be able to collate and publish them in one big volume. This would make me so happy! But if their works have been circulating far and wide for a long time, and their reputation has already been firmly established, and their names have been long admired in this world, then I would prefer not to include them alongside the obscure ones.52

Her voice again reaches us only through the filter of her husband’s mind: he remembered and recorded her words—as she might have uttered them in conversation with him—in his postface to the col-lection. Although the anthology remains incomplete and Shen Yixiu did not live to see it in print, the project was probably close to her heart as it gave her the chance to publish works by members of her domestic poetry club—her friends and relatives—as well as her own.53 As the organising principle of her anthology Shen Yixiu chooses to follow the state of publication of the sources, dividing her volume into four main parts and two additional sections: 1. Published works by eighteen authors 2. Unpublished manuscripts by nine authors are listed but two have no entries54

50 Ko conjectures that Shen Yixiu might have died of tuberculosis or during an epidemic that also took the lives of her daughters; see Ko, Teachers, pp. 210, 216. 51 Ye Shaoyuan, “Xu”, WMTJ, 1: 2. 52 Ye Shaoyuan, “Bayu”, WMTJ, 1: 356. 53 On Shen Yixiu’s domestic poetry club, see Ko, Teachers, pp. 202-7. 54 Huang Yuanzhen and Huang Yuanjie are listed by name but have no entries; WMTJ, 1: 573.

female self-fashioning

253

3. Writings by six authors acquired through personal transmission 4. Other works by eleven authors found in miscellaneous jottings (biji) 5. An appendix containing other scattered texts by two authors whose works she acquired by means of séances 6. Shen Yixiu’s own poetic works.

Shen Yixiu’s preface declares the intent of aiming at comprehensive-ness while choosing to omit well-known authors and widely available texts.55 She moreover focuses on contemporary writers, in contrast to most male editors who generally prefer a ‘diachronic’ sweep across the ages, including works from antiquity, as in Zhang Zhixiang’s midsixteenth century anthology.56 Tian Yiheng collected any women’s writings he could find from antiquity to the Ming without paying attention to literary considerations. Li Hu from Kuaiji (Shaoxing), the editor of the anthology of women’s writings Tongguan yibian (Com-pilation of works left by red writing brushes, 1567) organized his material chronologically, too, but subdivided its sections according to moral criteria. Shen Yixiu’s anthology includes texts from different genres: poems (shi), song lyrics (ci), rhapsodies, and prose, but it remains selective. The selection strategy for the anthology works on the principle of ‘exquisite exclusivity’. Shen Yixiu includes contributions by elite ladies only. Her anthology features no works authored by courtesans— despite their leading position among women writers in her time—or anything a late Ming reader might have deemed erotic.57 This selection strategy contrasts with the numerous early seven-teenth-century anthologies of women’s writings compiled by male editors. They show an increasingly comprehensive tendency, tran-scending moral, social, ethnic and even national boundaries.58 For example the 1618 preface to Qu Juesheng’s anthology Nüsao (Poetic elegies by women) announces:

55

Shen Yixiu, “Zixu”, in WMTJ, 1: 538. For a translation, see WWTC, p.

683. 56

On trends in anthologies by male editors, see Fong, “Gender”, p. 133ff. Cf. Kang-i Sun Chang, “Ming and Qing Anthologies of Women’s Poetry and Their Selection Strategies”, in Ellen Widmer and Kang-i Sun Chang, eds., Writing Women in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 147-70. 58 For a list of titles, see Table 2. On early seventeenth-century anthologies, see Fong, “Gender”, p. 141. 57

254

daria berg Included in this anthology are works of all sorts of women, be they chaste or lewd, transcendent or mortal, barbarian or Chinese, respect-able or mean. Their moral character and deeds are not always worth mentioning.59

The popular anthology Mingyuan shigui attributed to Zhong Xing also included the works of gentlewomen, courtesans and a foreign poetess from Korea. Shen Yixiu did not follow the trend towards all-inclusiveness. Even if we regard her volume as an unfinished product that might have included more entries, had she been able to complete it, then it still appears that all-inclusiveness was not her main priority. She focused on including the works of gentlewomen first and foremost. Shen’s anthology features Fang Weiyi (1585-1668) from Tongcheng (Anhui province), the other late Ming gentlewoman active as a poet and editor. Fang Weiyi’s literary anthologies Gonggui shishi (History of poetry in palace and boudoir) and Gonggui wenshi (History of prose writing in palace and boudoir) are no longer extant and their publica-tion dates are not known.60 It is therefore not possible to tell whether she became an editor before or after Shen Yixiu and whether her collections were already published during the Ming dynasty or in the Qing.61 Fang came from a gentry family that had both wealth and prestige but she was widowed in her teens and never remarried. She expressed the perpetual hardship she experienced in her life in the copious literary works she left behind. Yirensi also includes an entry for Tian Yuyan, the daughter of anthologist Tian Yiheng, who did not make it into her father’s col-lection. Shen Yixiu moreover selected works by her relatives: her nieces Zhou Lanxiu and Shen Huiduan, and her son-in-law’s sister Wang Hui. Her anthology leaves out some leading women writers of the Ming but cites others, such as Huang Yuanjie (d. before 1669),62 her sister Huang Yuanzhen, and Wu Shan (ca. 1610-ca. 1671) who

59

WWTC, p. 747; FNZZ, 884-5. The gentlewoman poetess Fang Weiyi (alias Zhongxian) also edited Guifan (Models for the women’s quarters) and Gonggui shiping (Poetry criticism from palace and boudoir), all no longer extant. On Fang Weiyi, see FNZZ, 81-3; Zheng Guanyi et al., ed. Zhongguo lidai cainü shige jianshang cidian (Beijing: Zhongguo gongren chu-banshe, 1991), 1357-63. 61 FNZZ, 81, 893. 62 On Huang Yuanjie (zi: Jieling) from Jiaxing, see FNZZ, 663-4, 936; WWTC, pp. 357-63. 60

female self-fashioning

255

were already established women poets.63 These women counted among Shen Yixiu’s friends as they moved among her husband’s circle but she never actually met them face-to-face.64 It is possi-ble that Shen Yixiu included them mainly for the reason that she knew them. True to her original idea about an anthology that would help immortalize women whose literary talent would have reminded her of her daughters, Shen Yixiu also selected poems by other women whose fates and (mis)fortunes resembled those of her family: mothers who had lost their daughters and talented poetesses who had died young. She thus included the works of women such as the metro-politan degree holder’s wife Wang Fengxian (fl. early seventeenth century) from Huating (Shanghai municipality) and her daughters Zhang Yinyuan and Zhang Yinqing, another scholar’s wife Shen Renlan and her daughter Huang Shude (d. 1626), literatus Tu Long’s (1542-1605, jinshi 1577) daughter Tu Yaose (1576-1601) and his daughter-in-law Shen Tiansun (ca. 1580-1600).65 Shen Yixiu included verses by the painter and poet Zhou Huizhen, a neighbour of hers who also died young.66 Shen Yixiu made it explicit that she selected such authors because of the similarity between her and their life stories. On Zhang Yinyuan’s poem ‘Letter to my Younger Sister’, she remarks: “This resembles closely the feelings shared between my own daughters.”67 On Wang Fengxian’s poem ‘Letter sent on an Autumn Night to my Two Daughters Yuan and Qing’, Shen Yixiu notes: “It resembles my own sorrow, so I record this here.”68

63 Huang Yuanzhen and Huang Yuanjie have entries under their names but no poems; WMTJ, 1: 572; perhaps this testifies to the unfinished state of the anthology. On Wu Shan (zi: Yanzi) of Dangtu county (modern Anhui province), see FNZZ, 298; WWTC, pp. 383-4; Ellen Johnston Laing, “Wives, Daughters, and Lovers: Three Ming Dynasty Women Painters”, in Marsha Weidner, et al., Views from Jade Terrace: Chinese Women Artists, 1300-1912 (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, New York: Rizzoli, 1988), pp. 88-91 64 Cf. Ko, Teachers, p. 213. 65 On Wang Fengxian, see WWTC, pp. 291-98; for a translation of Zhang Yinyuan’s poetry, see WWTC, pp. 298-301; Shen Renlan’s husband was Huang Jiedi; Huang Shude’s husband was the literatus Tu Yaosun; on Tu Long, see DMB, pp. 1324-7; on Tu Yaose and Shen Tiansun (alias Qixiang), see Waltner and Pi-ching Hsu, “Lingering Fragrance”. 66 Zhou Huizhen’s style name was Yifen. 67 WMTJ, 1: 552. 68 WMTJ, 1: 550.

256

daria berg

Shen Yixiu also included those who had sent poems to express their sympathy when her daughters died. Shen Yixiu’s selection of works concerning highly educated women writers who died young, accompanied by eulogistic writings about them, echoes the literati discourse on the cult of the virgin widow that the leading sixteenth-century scholar Wang Shizhen had sparked with his biography of Tanyangzi in the early 1580s.69 Wang Shizhen portrayed Tanyangzi, a young gentry lady from an elite family, as a wise girl who preached to the literati. These men in turn venerated her as an immortal and a goddess. Both the magistrate Tu Long and the scholar-official Shen Maoxue (1539-1582, jinshi 1577), the fathers of the ill-fated young poetesses Tu Yaose and Shen Tian-sun, had participated in this cult.70 The figure of the talented but tragic girl-poet became popular with the female reading audience, too, as the craze of women readers and writers for Du Liniang, the fictional heroine of Tang Xianzu’s drama Mudan ting (Peony pavilion, 1589), in the early seventeenth century shows. Shen Yixiu and her husband venerated their late daughters in a similar way as immortals and goddesses.71 Yirensi perpetuates the literati discourse about the talented but tragic woman of letters as a new idol. Shen Yixiu’s anthology continues this discourse from the perspective of the gentlewoman. Genteel Poverty The daughter of a literati family and the wife of a highest degree holder, Shen Yixiu enjoys elite status.72 Her paternal family also ranked among the local elite in the Ming/Qing era. 73 Her uncle and brothers gained fame as dramatists.74

69 On Tanyangzi, see Waltner, “T’an-Yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen”; Daria Berg, “Der Kult um die Unsterbliche Tanyangzi: Biographie als Bestseller im China der späten Kaiserzeit”, in Dennis Schilling and Jianfei Kralle, eds., Schreiben über Frauen in China: Ihre Literarisierung im historischen Schrifttum und ihr gesellschaftlicher Status in der Geschichte (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004) pp. 285-310. 70 On Shen Maoxue, see DMB, p. 1192. 71 On domestic goddesses, see Ko, Teachers, pp. 200-2. 72 Ye Shaoyuan received the jinshi degree in 1625. 73 Cf. Li Zhenyu, “Wujiang Shenshi shijilu jiwai zuojia huikao”, Wenxian 3, 1990: 44. 74 On her uncle Shen Jing (1553-1610), the leader of the Wujiang school of chuanqi

female self-fashioning

257

Shen Yixiu’s writings nonetheless testify to a life of genteel poverty. “Poverty and illness have been afflicting me for ages, it’s unbear-able,” she confesses in a poem.75 Yet poverty seems to have been the driving force in her writing. The poem on ‘Poverty and Illness’ declares: So bleak, so depressing, I’m ill and I worry that the western wind will be icy, Exacerbating my poverty, extending the autumn days. … The demon of illness wants to get the soul of poetry to make up an apology, But will the devil of poverty ever leave this place?76

Ye Shaoyuan professed that he “never cared to talk about or handle money.”77 He portrays himself as remaining aloof of such worldly matters and more interested in literary aesthetics. He left it to his wife to consider logistics and find solutions for their financial straits. Perhaps in this sense he motivated Shen Yixiu to become an editor. Yet Shen Yixiu, too, internalized gentlemanly attitudes towards money and wealth. In the biography of her deceased daughter Ye Xiaoluan, she expressed her admiration for this attitude in a woman: “She regarded gold and money as filth. She remained indifferent [to desires] and did not have great demands. What she enjoyed most was unadorned elegance.”78 A gentleman would make it clear that there were more important things in life than money and the acquisition of wealth. Devotion to poetry and literary pursuits—even in the face of poverty—counted among the higher aspirations that became the hallmark of gentility. As a gentlewoman Shen Yixiu internalized these cultural aspirations. Literary activity presented one way of converting the family cul-tural capital into prestige or profit.79 Shen Yixiu’s paternal family

drama, see Nienhauser, The Indiana Companion, pp. 675-7; on her brothers Shen Zijin (1583-1665) and Shen Zizheng (1591-1641), see Zhou Shaoliang, “Wujiang Shenshi shijia”, Wenxue yichan zengkan 12 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1963), 48-59. 75 Shen Yixiu, Lichui, in WMTJ, 1: 1-229, esp. 83. 76 Shen Yixiu, Lichui, 83. 77 Ye Xie, Yi qi wenji, in Ye Dehui, ed., Xiyuan quanshu (Changsha: n.p., 1917), 14:1b. 78 Shen Yixiu, “Jinü Qiongzhang zhuan”, in WMTJ, 1: 201-204; For a transla-tion of the biography, see Idema and Grant, Red Brush, p. 402. 79 On cultural capital (the term is taken to include forms of knowledge, skills, education, any advantages that give a person higher social status, high expectations

258

daria berg

had experience in private publishing and her husband had learnt about official publishing when serving as an instructor at the National University in Beijing.80 Literati families would distribute privately published books among friends and family. Such works could estab-lish the author’s literary reputation. This might in turn translate into success with the commercial publishers. The Publishing Industry and the New Market It is difficult to determine whether Shen Yixiu’s family profited from her publications but we do know that her works instantly turned into a commercial success. Commercial publishers reproduced her and her daughters’ highly marketable works as soon as they appeared in print. Reprints of Yirensi appeared in separate volumes and within other anthologies even before the end of the Ming.81 These publishers had begun to cater to a new market. As the urban population exploded in late Ming Jiangnan, women emerged as consumers, producers and subjects of literature in unprecedented numbers.82 Together with merchants, students, successful scholars and failed examination candidates they formed a new reading audi-ence, creating demands for new kinds of books. Works by and about women enjoyed particular popularity. The interests of anthologists and commercial publishers overlapped in the production and promotion of books. Scholars edited not only poetry collections but also an unprecedented number of collected works by individual women writers in the Ming/Qing era. Other literati followed the fashion by compiling writings about women. Handbooks on courtesans appeared from 1600, ranking the beau-ties of Suzhou and Nanjing and eulogising them in prose, verse and song.83 Their authors, editors and intended readers must have found such guidebooks useful and entertaining when they gathered

and cultural aspirations), see Pierre Bourdieu, “Ökonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital”, in Reinhard Kreckel, ed., Soziale Ungleichheiten (Soziale Welt, Sonderheft 2) (Göttingen: Otto Schwartz Co., 1983), pp. 183-98. 80 Cf. Ko, Teachers, p. 216. 81 Ming editions of Shen Yixiu’s Yirensi in National Central Library, Taibei (1636), Library of Congress, Washington DC, and Naikaku bunko, Tokyo. For an extensive discussion of women as a new reading public, see Ko, Teachers, pp. 179-218. 82 Cf. ˆki Yasushi, “Minmatsu KÙnan ni okeru shuppan bunka no kenkyå”, Hiroshima daigaku bungakubu kiyÙ 50, 1991: 74-102.

female self-fashioning

259

in those cities to attend the triennial examinations. In late imperial China works on women guaranteed sales. Evidence of the commercial interest in publishing, the focus on women as literary subjects, and the awareness of an emerging market of female readers had already appeared in the fifteenth century.84 In the middle of the Ming dynasty the publishing industry gradually shifted its centre from Fujian to the cities of Jiangnan, in particular Nanjing, Suzhou and Hangzhou. Individual enterprises and commer-cial bookstores, rather than the official channels, began to dominate the market. Technological advances and changes in the production mode such as the simplification of fonts and the division of labour in wood block cutting made publication faster and more economical. The Huizhou merchants readily supplied Jiangnan publishers with wood from Anhui province.85 The state had cancelled its tax on books as early as 1368, yet books remained expensive and were not common in the days of the early Ming.86 By late Ming times, however, the revolution in pub-lishing resulted in mass printing. During the Wanli period the state made further tax concessions for some trades, such as newspaper publishers, booksellers and stationers, considering their businesses insufficiently profitable to pay shop tax. The Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) marvelled at the circulation of books in China, noting “the exceedingly large number of books in circulation here and the ridiculously low prices at which they are sold.”87 Popular stories and plays had a price tag of no more than 15 to 30 copper cash (qian) per volume;88 a copy of a novel would cost

83 Cf. Patrick Hanan, The Chinese Vernacular Story (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 89-90. In 1617 an anonymous author compiled Wuji baimei (The hundred most beautiful courtesans of Suzhou) under the pen-name of Wanyu Zi. Li Yunxiang published Jinling baimei (The hundred beauties of Nanjing) in Suzhou in 1618. 84 Ye Sheng, Shuidong riji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980), 21.213-4. 85 Cf. ˆki Yasushi, “Shuppan bunka”, 74-102. 86 Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), p. 62ff. 87 Louis J. Gallagher, China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci: 1583-1610 (New York: Random House, 1953), p. 21. 88 Cf. Chun-shu Chang and S. Hsueh-lun Chang, Crisis and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century China: Society, Culture, and Modernity in Li Yü’s World (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1992), p. 161.

260

daria berg

between 1 and 2 silver taels (liang).89 Prices would vary according to booksellers, regions and the rarity of editions.90 Modern scholars conjecture that sixty-five per cent of the male urban population in Jiangnan was literate and that forty per cent of them could afford to purchase works of fiction and drama.91 To give an idea of what such book prices amounted to in real terms, here are some figures for comparison: according to a late Ming source from 1619, a labourer earned 24 to 25 cash (wen) in copper coins per day, hardly enough to keep him alive.92 The price of rice could vary from as little as 25 copper cash per peck (dou, ten catties, or 10.74 litres) in the mid-sixteenth century to one tael per picul (shi, 100 catties) after natural disasters in the early seventeenth century.93 A day worker’s average of 1.5 taels a month would not suffice to purchase warm clothes for his family in winter, let alone books. The literati and merchants, however, would have considered book prices cheap. High-ranking officials earned an annual income of around 152 silver taels, and received gifts from provincial officials amounting to ten times as much.94 Lower-ranking officials might receive no more than 35 taels per annum and go into debt or find other, not always legal, sources of income.95 Late Ming documents inform us that women, too, had cash in hand and participated in the money economy just like men.96 Scholars, officials, merchants and their womenfolk thus emerge as the buyers and consumers of books. Towards the mid-seventeenth century books became even cheaper. While the prices of food and necessities rose during the 1630s and 40s due to hoarding, poor harvests, and speculation, prices for other

See ˆki Yasushi, “Shuppan bunka”, 102-8. ˆki Yasushi, “Shuppan bunka”, 104. 91 Chang and Chang, Crisis, p. 273. 92 Cf. Brook, Confusions, p. 154. 93 Cf. ˆki Yasushi, “Shuppan bunka”, 105; Brook, Confusions, p. 106. 94 Frederic E. Wakeman, Jr., The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth Century China, 2 vols, (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1985), p. 10f. 95 Cf. Miyazaki Ichisada, “TÙyÙteki kinsei”, Ajia shi ronkÙ (Tokyo: Asahi shim-bun shakan, 1975), vol. 1, pp. 240-1; Adam Y.C. Lui, Corruption in China during the Early Ch’ing Period, 1644-1660 (Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1979), p. 6. 96 Brook, Confusions, p. 160. 89 90

female self-fashioning

261

goods fell as inflation gave way to deflation.97 A copy of a household encyclopaedia (riyong leishu), an almanac containing a plethora of practical advice, cost one silver tael at the turn of the seventeenth century but only one qian of copper cash during the last Ming reignperiod (1628-1644).98 Moreover, technical innovations in printing techniques, production and distribution further decreased the prices of books, making them more widely available. The modern Japanese scholar ˆki Yasushi suggests that a mass communication society emerged in the late Ming era. Late Ming pub-lishers and booksellers catered to a mass market: the growing urban population and unprecedented numbers of examination candidates, lower degree holders, failed students, upwardly mobile merchants and literate women. The book trade also tempted bibliophiles to indulge in their passion for amassing private collections. Privately owned libraries—similar to the one in the studio of the great scholar and editor Qian Qianyi and his wife Liu Rushi—could contain up to fifty thousand volumes (juan).99 The garden of scholar-official Qi Biaojia (1602-1645) and his wife, the poetess Shang Jinglan (1604-ca. 1680), contained a multi-storied building that housed a collection of 31,500 volumes.100 Scholars competed in filling dozens of crates, or dozens of rooms with their books, listing them in multi-volume catalogues, and reissuing rare works in collectanea (congshu).101 The passion for collecting books had two important consequences: first, it gave some women—the bibliophiles’ wives, concubines, daugh-ters and sisters—access to grand libraries within their own homes. The libraries enabled them to indulge in literary pursuits for entertainment, study, or professional work. Second, commercial publishers began to make serious money. The owner of the Huanduzhai publishing house in Hangzhou, Wang Qi (ca. 1605-after 1668) watched in amazement

97

Wakeman, The Great Enterprise, p. 6. On prices of books, see ˆki Yasushi, “Shuppan bunka”, 102-8; Shen Jin, “Mingdai fangke tushu zhi liutong yu jiage”, Guojia tushuguan guankan 1, 1996: 10118. 99 Cf. Wu Han, Jiang Zhe cangshujia shilüe (repr. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981). 100 Cf. Joanna F. Handlin Smith, “Gardens in Ch’i Piao-chia’s Social World: Wealth and Values in Late-Ming Kiangnan”, Journal of Asian Studies 51.1, 1992: 55-81, esp. p. 60. 101 Cf. Brook, Confusions, p. 167-8. 98

262

daria berg

as his profit turned “his tadpole studio into a unicorn pavilion”.102 Wang never passed any examinations but as a publisher he found himself in the position to offer employment to the highest degree holders.103 Wang An (1614-after 1694), a relative of Wang Qi’s who also worked in the family publishing business, professed to scholarly aspirations but withdrew from government service when the Ming dynasty fell. His life, occupation and circumstances remain obscure but he described himself as “filthy rich”.104 The seventeenth-century novel Xingshi yinyuan zhuan (Marriage destinies that will bring society to its senses) by a writer with the pseudonym of Xizhou Sheng (Scholar of the Western Zhou) mocks the “poor scholar’s option of making money by opening a book-store”.105 Indeed many scholars followed the trend and gave up book learning to go into business (qiru congshang).106 Famous examples of seventeenth-century poets-turned-publishers include the artist and editor Chen Jiru (1558-1639) in Songjiang,107 the anthologist Feng Menglong (1574-1646) in Suzhou,108 and the dramatist Li Yu (1611ca. 1680) who in 1669 set up his bookstore and printing house, the Mustard Seed Garden (Jiezi yuan), in Nanjing.109 According to a recent estimate, seventeenth-century China boasted 374 major publishers. Suzhou had the largest share with 42 pub-lishing houses while Hangzhou and Nanjing had 31 each. 110 Li

102 Ellen Widmer, “The Huanduzhai of Hangzhou and Suzhou: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Publishing”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 56.1, 1996: 77122, p. 89. 103 Widmer, “Huanduzhai”, 87. 104 Widmer, “Huanduzhai”, 91. 105 Xizhou Sheng, Xingshi yinyuan zhuan, 3 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chu-banshe, 1981, repr. 1985), 33.478-9. 106 On this trend in seventeenth-century China, see Berg, Carnival in China, pp. 247-63. 107 Cf. ˆki Yasushi, “Yamabito Chin Keiju to sono shuppan katsudÙ”, in Min-daishi kenkyåkai ed., Yamane Yukio kyÙju taiken kinen Mindaishi ronsÙ, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kyåko shoin, 1990), 1233-52. 108 On Feng as editor, see ˆki Yasushi, Chågoku Min Shin jidai no bungaku (Tokyo: HÙsÙ daigaku kyÙiku shinkÙkai 2001), 109-114. 109 Chen Jiru from Huating, Jiangsu province, never made it beyond the status of licentiate in his examination career, but he owned a great library and employed a number of poor scholars to assist him in editing a large anthology. On Chen, see Arthur Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, 1644-1912 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1943-44 [hereafter: ECCP]), pp. 83-4. 110 Cf. Chang and Chang, Crisis, p. 273.

female self-fashioning

263

Yu’s enterprise made money producing and selling not only his own writings but also works of popular fiction such as the Shuihu zhuan, Xiyou ji and Jin Ping Mei . Failed examination candidates, too, would seek their luck in the publishing industry, among them Yu Xiangdou (fl. 1599) from Jianyang (Fujian province) who advertised his business by including his portrait in his publications, guide-books to the kind of gentility he aspired to.111 Commercial interests also fuelled the publishers’ search for women’s writings to be included in anthologies.112 Literati attitudes towards money and silver underwent change during the last decades of the Ming. The Roman Catholic Grand Secretary Xu Guangqi (1562-1633) from Shanghai declared in the 1620s that he perceived silver not as wealth but as a means for assess-ing wealth.113 In 1639—only a few years after ending his relationship with the courtesan Liu Rushi—the poet, scholar and anthologist Chen Zilong confirmed his view that silver did not create wealth (in the way land did) but served to concentrate and direct resources.114 These Confucian scholars were, as Timothy Brook concludes, “acknowledg-ing that silver was a fact of late-Ming life and indicating that they were comfortable with that fact.” 115 At that time Chen Zilong had just composed a preface for Liu Rushi’s poetic collection Wuyin cao (Manuscript from the year 1638), helping his former lover to appear in print and perhaps earn money as well as fame. Ye Shaoyuan’s voice evinces his awareness of the new trends and developments in the publishing industry. His preface (dated 1636) to his wife’s anthology explicitly targets a female audience: May her sorrow be transmitted in carved characters, so that it will become known in this world and contribute to the genteel entertain-ment of young ladies and hence be carved onto the wooden printing blocks!116

His comments imply that he was not entirely oblivious to the demands

111 Cf. Ko, Teachers, p. 40. For a detailed depiction, see Brook, Confusions, p. 213; picture reproduced on p. 215. 112 Cf. Ko, Teachers, p. 53. 113 Xu Guangqi, Nongzheng quanshu (1643), 3 vols. (repr. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1979), 1: 237. 114 See Chen Zilong’s preface, in Xu Guangqi, Nongzheng quanshu, 1: 1. 115 Brook, Confusions, p. 210. 116 Ye Shaoyuan, “Yiren si xiaoyin”, in WMTJ, 1: 537.

264

daria berg

of the marketplace, revealing him as an active participant in the exchanges and negotiations around the publication process and the book trade. Cultural Aspirations Editorship enables Shen Yixiu to enter the domain of wen, Confucian elite culture that remained the prerogative of men. Although she inverts traditional gender roles in taking on the role of editor, she complies with conservative values in the way she plays her role. It is difficult to draw conclusions from the text as it stands today, but it is possible to think of several potential explanations. The first is that the text underscores her gentility by incorporating an exclusive selection strategy. It does not include any works by socially inferior or morally dubious women, implicitly endorsing Confucian concepts of morality and virtue and thereby the status quo. Another possible explanation is that Shen Yixiu may simply not have included the works of women whom she did not know. She and her husband had a very close relationship and it is likely that they would have shared social and literary preferences. Ye differed from his more flamboyant, romantic late Ming contemporaries and after the fall of the Ming dynasty he chose an austere life style and became a monk. The couple may not have moved in circles that interacted with courtesans. Yet another factor to bear in mind is the incomplete state of the anthology. Shen Yixiu’s selection might have looked different, had she been able to complete the task in her lifetime.117 Whatever her motives, Shen Yixiu’s selection strategy has the effect of elevating the position of the elite woman writer. She secures a place for herself, her female relatives and friends within the genteel culture of the (male) elite. Her anthology places the gentry poetess on the literary map and in the public consciousness of seventeenthcentury Jiangnan. The fact that Shen Yixiu can afford to omit the courtesans’ works may serve as an indication that her quest for gentility outweighs any other material motivations. By evoking the authority of the Grand Historian Sima Qian (ca. 145-86 BC) in the preface to her anthology, Shen Yixiu defines

117

I am indebted to Grace Fong for ideas expressed here.

female self-fashioning

265

her role in literary history. She states that she seeks to follow his example by not discussing writings from the past or those that are widely available: “I would much rather talk about those affairs that have become dispersed and neglected.”118 Instead: I venture to imitate his intent. Therefore I shall not again select works that feature in other anthologies of [literary] treasures. My husband spread the word about some obscure works and now everybody talks about them with general approval. Other works may already have enjoyed great popularity. As time passes, however, they have fallen into oblivion or met with unfavourable conditions that have hindered their transmission. This is truly regrettable. Now whenever I happened to hear about such splinters of jade, or came across them while randomly leafing through other books, I have included them in my anthology, and do not dare to discard anything! I have endeavoured to spare the time and effort for an extensive search in the hope that the results will show a splendid completeness.119

She thus fashions the female self in the tradition of the Confucian scholar. Like the men around her, she strives for the ideals of literary pursuits and scholarly activity. Her female self-image is fashioned in response to male ideas about cultural aspirations and literary culture. In contrast to the male concept of gentility, the gentlewoman har-bours no political aspirations in her literary pursuits. She positions herself in male literary culture by pursuing literary activities that express her personal history, social interests and cultural connections with other writing women. For both men and women in late imperial China, editorship pre-sented one way to acquire perceived gentility. The editorship of an anthology represented symbolic capital. The late Ming literatus Ge Zhengqi (fl. 1632) put a perceived value on his friend’s efforts to edit a book of women’s poetry: for an editor who tries to collect the works of women, so Ge mused, “discovering a slip of paper from hidden portfolios and incomplete editions of original books no longer extant is just like getting hold of a sliver of jade.”120 Zhong Xing’s antholo-gies of poetry proved so popular that “nearly everyone tried to have a copy in his home and treasured them as if they were revised by

118 119 120

Shen Yixiu, “Zixu”, Yirensi, in WMTJ, 1: 538. Ibid. Ge Zhengqi, Preface to Jiang Yuanzuo, Xu yutai wenyuan, in FNZZ, 887-8.

266

daria berg

Confucius himself.”121 Late Ming minds pitched the perceived value of editorship high. As a woman, Shen Yixiu casts her self-image to comply with such values in a man’s world. Once the editor completed his/her anthology, the volume rep-resented the equivalent of his/her lifetime savings. At that moment an editor found him/herself in the position to negotiate with the publishers and to turn his/her symbolic and cultural capital into monetary currency. This also applies to the prefaces that grace many edited volumes. Modern scholar Naifei Ding explains the function and importance of prefaces in her study of texts on the Jin Ping Mei: Prefaces matter. Their matter is the stuff of literary capital (its accu-mulation, depletion, or exchange from the currency of nearby fields, such as the political or academic), just as it is the stuff of market salespersonship. Since the book markets of the late Ming Jiangnan region, prefaces have helped to ensure the place, price, and circula-tion of their books.122

Such prefaces yield rare data on the discourse involved in such negotiations. Ellen Widmer has remarked that “No literary history is agenda-free”, suggesting that “women’s writings of the Ming and Qing were shaped to serve nonliterary goals”.123 These nonliterary goals as they emerge from our discussion divide into those that may be pronounced and those that may not: the former referring to name, fame and even the iconoclastic idea of establishing an alternative canon; the latter to money, profit and gain. Even in 1797 a woman editor still shied away from making the connection between the two. In the preface to her anthology of women’s poetry Tingqiuguan guizhong tongren ji (Anthology of fellow women writers from the Listening-to-Autumn Studio, 1797), Luo Qilan (ca. 1756-after 1808) tells of her struggle as a widow to scrape a living for herself and her family by teaching and writing.124 But she does not link her financial plight to her editorial mission statement:

121 Albert Chan, The Glory and Fall of the Ming Dynasty (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982), p. 102. 122 Naifei Ding, Obscene Things: Sexual Politics in Jin Ping Mei, (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2002), p. 241. 123 Ellen Widmer, “The Rhetoric of Retrospection”, p. 219. 124 FNZZ, 939. On Luo Qilan, see Robyn Hamilton, “The Pursuit of Fame: Luo Qilan (1755-1813?) and the Debates about Women and Talent in EighteenthCentury Jiangnan”, Late Imperial China 18:1, 1997: 39-71.

female self-fashioning

267

Hence I have compiled and edited the works of women writers and handed the manuscript over to the printers so that the broad masses will realize that the world does not lack talented women but the prob-lem is that it has been twice as hard for them to have their works transmitted. People who do not take others seriously should not find it strange that there is not much evidence [of such writings]. I have edited this volume because my fate has not been as fortunate as that of others but I am lucky in that [my work] appears appended to that of all the gentlewomen.125

Editorship moreover enables Shen Yixiu to create a literary com-munity of women. She exchanges poetry with leading literary ladies whom she has never met and includes their works in her anthology.126 She offers privately published copies of her own and her daughters’ writings as tokens of friendship to other eminent women such as the painter and poetess Wu Shan and two poetesses from Jiaxing, Huang Yuanjie and Huang Dezhen (fl. seventeenth century), who later follow in her footsteps as editors of women’s works. 127 As Dorothy Ko has noted in her pioneering study of women and culture in seventeenth-century China, the contents of Shen Yixiu’s anthology “reflect both the centrality of women’s culture in the lives of the authors and the editor’s awareness of it.”128 A third of all poems in the anthology address other women while only a few are written for men. Shen Yixiu’s anthology also reaches out across time and space, inspiring and encouraging both her contemporaries and later gen-erations of women writers. In 1639, only three years after the pub-lication of her anthology, another elite lady followed suit: Wang Duanshu (1621-c. 1706) of Shaoxing took the concept of female editorship one step further by setting out to become a professional editor.129 The notion of professional editor is here taken to mean

125

FNZZ, 940. Such as Shen Renlan from Jiaxing, the wife of an Administration Vice Com-missioner; see Shen Yixiu, Yirensi, WMTJ 1: 553; Ko, Teachers, pp. 212-3. 127 On Huang Dezhen (zi: Yuehui), see Zheng Guanyi, Zhongguo lidai cainü, 1594-6; for a list of her works, see FNZZ, 665-6. Huang also became an editor, see below. 128 Ko, Teachers, p. 215. 129 On Wang Duanshu, see FNZZ, 248-50; WWTC, pp. 363-6; Widmer, “Epis-tolary World”, pp. 10-11; idem, “Xiaoqing’s Literary Legacy”, pp. 135-8; idem, “Ming Loyalism and the Women’s Voice in Fiction after Hong lou meng”, in Widmer and Chang, eds., Writing Women, pp. 368-73; Ko, Teachers, pp. 129-34; Chang, 126

268

daria berg

that she worked closely with a team of collators and that she used her various literary activities to make a living. Her monumental anthology Mingyuan shiwei (The famous ladies’ Apocryphal Book of Songs, published 1667) became a commercial enterprise and took twenty-five years to complete.130 Shen Yixiu had started a trend, and in the Qing dynasty women carried on compiling, editing and publishing literary anthologies.131 Many decades later, at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, a group of ten women from Shen Yixiu’s native Suzhou followed her enterpris-ing literary spirit and formed the Clear Brook Poetry Club (Qingxi yinshe) whose members were also known as the Ten Poets of Suzhou (Wuzhong shizi).132

The Courtesan Ghost-Editor The story of another seventeenth-century woman shows that it was not only gentlewomen who became literary editors. Legend sur-rounds the life of the famous courtesan Liu Rushi—a friend of the gentlewoman and professional editor Wang Duanshu—who ranks among the most upwardly mobile women writers of seventeenthcentury China. In her teens she gained fame as a poetess, painter

“Ming and Qing Anthologies”, pp. 157-9; Marsha Weidner, ed., Flowering in the Shadows: Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), p. 146; Susan Mann and Yu-Yin Cheng, Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 179-94. 130 Wang Duanshu worked on the anthology from 1639 to 1664. 131 See Table 3. Huang Dezhen co-edited Minggui shixuan (Selection of poetry by famous gentlewomen) together with Gui Shufen (zi: Suying), and Shen Hui (zi: Lanfang); Gui Shufen also co-edited another anthology of twenty-six Ming and forty-five Qing authors Gujin mingyuan baihua shiyu (One hundred flowers of poetry by famous ladies of past and present) (1685) together with Sun Huiyuan (zi: Jingwan, the daughter of Huang Dezhen), Shen Li (zi: Xunzhong) and Sheng Zhenyong (zi: Qiongshan); cf. FNZZ, 784. Wang Duan (1793-1838) edited Ming sanshi jia shixuan (Selected poems of thirty Ming poets, 1822), a collection of writings by male authors only; Wanyan Yun Zhu (1771-1833) edited Guochao guixiu zhengshi ji (Correct beginnings: poems by gentlewomen of our dynasty, 1831), a collection of over 1500 Qing poetesses. 132 On the Ten Wuzhong Poets, see Dorothy Ko, “Lady Scholars at the Door: The Practice of Gender Relations in Eighteenth-Century Suzhou”, in John Hays, ed., Boundaries in China (London: Reaktion Books, 1994), pp. 198-216.

female self-fashioning

269

Table 3. Women Editors’ Anthologies from the Late Ming to the Mid-Qing Era 1636

Shen Yixiu’s (1590-1635) Yirensi (Longing for one far away) is published posthumously mid 17th C Fang Weiyi (1585-1668) edits the anthologies Gonggui shishi (History of poetry in palace and boudoir) and Gonggui wenshi (History of prose writing in palace and boudoir); published before 1652 (exact publication dates are unknown) mid 17th C Wang Wei (ca. 1600-47) edits anthology of travelogues Mingshan ji (Records of famous mountains); published before 1652 (exact publication dates are unknown) 1652 Qian Qianyi publishes Liechao shiji (Collection of poetry from successive reigns); Liu Rushi (1618-1664) involved in editing Runji (Intercalary collection) section from 1646-49 1667 Wang Duanshu (1621-ca. 1706) publishes Mingyuan shiwei (The famous ladies’ apocryphal Book of Odes) after twenty-five years of editorial work late 17th C Huang Dezhen, Gui Shufen and Shen Hui co-edit Minggui shixuan (Selection of poetry by famous gentlewomen) 1685 Gui Shufen, Sun Huiyuan (Huang Dezhen’s daughter), Shen Li and Sheng Zhenyong co-edit Gujin mingyuan baihua shiyu (One hundred flowers of poetry by famous ladies of past and present) 1822 Wang Duan (1793-1838) edits Ming sanshi jia shixuan (Selected poems of thirty Ming poets), a collection of writings by male authors only 1831 Wanyan Yun Zhu (1771-1833) edits Guochao guixiu zhengshi ji (Correct beginnings: Poems by gentlewomen of our dynasty), a collection of over 1500 Qing poetesses [Sources: FNZZ, Fong, “Gender”; Ko, Teachers; WWTC.]

and calligrapher. By the age of twenty-two she had already pub-lished several volumes of her poetry and married into the highest echelons of the elite.133 Following in the footsteps of Shen Yixiu and Wang Duanshu, she, too, edited women’s poetry. Unlike these elite ladies, however, her name never appeared on the title page of the first anthology she helped compile, edit, and annotate. She also composed the literary biographies that are appended to the anthology. It took around three hundred years for her involvement in this work to be recognized and for her to be acknowledged as an author and editor. 134 As a

133 Her early poetry collections include Wuyin cao (Manuscript from the year 1638) Wowenshi yuanyang louci (Songs from the Chamber of Mandarin Ducks by Wowenshi), and Hu shang cao (Poems drafted by the lake, 1640). For a list of Liu Rushi’s publications, see FNZZ, 430-4. 134 FNZZ, 433; Chang, “Ming and Qing Anthologies”, pp. 153-6. A second

270

daria berg

ghost-writer—or perhaps rather a ‘ghost editor’—operating from behind the scenes, she yet again rewrote literary history, redefining the writing woman’s identity. The term ghost-writer here is taken to mean a “person who does creative or artistic work on behalf of another person who takes the credit”.135 As this concept was also known in late imperial China,136 it is appropriate to describe the circumstances in which Liu Rushi contributed to a major literary anthology. Like Shen Yixiu and other women editors, genteel or otherwise, Liu Rushi could become an editor—a position requiring publishing resources and exercising power—mainly through the men around her. In Shen Yixiu’s case, as mentioned before, her relatives and her husband had experience in publishing by virtue of their scholar status and official careers. Liu Rushi, as we shall see, had access to similar resources by virtue of her connections with her lovers from literati and merchant circles, and in particular her husband, one of the most eminent scholar-officials of his time. The Courtesan’s Quest Liu Rushi’s life has received ample documentation.137 The follow-ing brief biographical sketch outlines her editorial activities within the cultural context, retracing the network of social, literary and

anthology of women’s poetry edited by Liu Rushi, entitled Gujin mingyuan shici xuan (Selection of poems and song-lyrics by famous ladies ancient and modern) did not appear until 1937 (Shanghai: Zhongxi shuju), almost three centuries after her lifetime (FNZZ, 434; see also the discussion below). 135 Lesley Brown, ed., The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Prin-ciples, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 1:1086. 136 The Chinese term for ghost-writer zhuodao ren appears, for example, in the story “Zhang Hongjian”, in Pu Songling, Liaozhai zhiyi: huijiao huizhu huiping ben, ed. Zhang Youhe (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1978), 9.1227. 137 For her biography, see Chen Yinke, Liu Rushi biezhuan, 3 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1980) [hereafter LRSBZ]; Zhou Fagao, Liu Rushi shikao (Taibei: Sanmin shuju, 1978); Bian Min, Liu Rushi xinzhuan (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1997); Fan Jingzhong and Zhou Shutian, Liu Rushi shiji (Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2002); Lily Xiao Hong Lee et al., eds., Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: The Qing Period, 1644-1911 (Armonk, N.Y. and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1998) [hereafter BDCW], pp. 146-9; Ko, Teachers, pp. 274-8; Kang-i Sun Chang, The Late-Ming Poet Ch’en Tzu-lung (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 19-37; Cass, Dangerous Women, pp. 3946. (Many details in the entry on Liu in ECCP, pp. 529-30 have been corrected by modern research.)

female self-fashioning

271

Fig. 8.2 Portrait of Liu Rushi in a male scholar’s attire on her first visit to Qian Qianyi. Reproduced from Chen Yinke, Liu Rushi biezhuan, 3 vols., (Shanghai: Shang-hai guji chubanshe, 1980).

272

daria berg

financial negotiations that surrounds her work. Born in either Jiaxing or Wujiang in Jiangsu province, she spent her childhood as a maidservant to a famous courtesan in the pleasure quarters of Guijiayuan in Shengze138 before she became a concubine in the household of the retired grand secretary Zhou Daodeng (d. 1633) in Wujiang—the native town of Shen Yixiu. The old minister educated her in literature and the arts,139 but sold her to a brothel in Shengze in 1631 when his other concubines implicated the teenager in a sex scandal.140 In the early 1630s, at the time when Shen Yixiu was compiling her gentlewomen’s anthology, Liu Rushi trained and worked as an entertainer in the brothels of Suzhou and Songjiang and also visited Jiading.141 She was moving in the circles of China’s intellectual elite. She was only fifteen when she began a love affair with the young poet Chen Zilong (1608-1647, jinshi 1637) in 1633, became his regular paramour and shared his lodgings.142 Chen became her soul-mate and intellectual companion but his wife eventually enforced their separation.143 In 1635 Liu Rushi left Songjiang for a courtesan house in Wujiang—returning to the town in which Shen Yixiu died that year.144 Liu Rushi acquired the status of a mingji (literally, famous prosti-tute) or courtesan, one of the highly trained, specialised performers, artists and entertainers who “were literate and skilled in a variety of entertainment arts, and their services were not confined to the sale of sex”,145 in contrast to the ordinary jinü (prostitutes). The late imperial Chinese courtesan participated in and belonged to the world of letters (wen), the domain of China’s elite men. She was not only a woman who was being written about but also a writing woman herself: in late Ming times courtesans appeared at the centre of elite culture,

138

LRSBZ, 58. LRSBZ, 50. 140 LRSBZ, 52, 82, 117. 141 LRSBZ, 68, 83, 105-6, 121, 328. Liu had a sister who also became a courte-san; LRSBZ, 471. 142 LRSBZ, 105-6, 235, 277, 1105. 143 For an excellent analysis of the relationship and love poetry of Chen and Liu, see Chang, Late-Ming Poet, pp. 40-80. 144 LRSBZ, 57-9, 119, 325, 328. 145 Paul Ropp, “Ambiguous Images of Courtesan Culture in Late Imperial China”, in Widmer and Chang, eds., Writing Women, pp. 17-45, esp. p. 18. 139

female self-fashioning

273

featuring in literature, drama, and poetry while also gaining fame as poetesses, calligraphers and painters.146 Famous courtesans formed intellectual companionships with elite men, sharing their interest in scholarship and working with them in their studios composing poetry, compiling, collating, editing, proofreading and annotating literary writings.147 Courtesans of outstanding literary talent would also acquire the semi-honorific title of ‘collator’ or ‘book reviser’ (jiaoshu).148 In contrast to gentry women, courtesans were able to own prop-erty in their own right, although “this may have been something of a legal grey area”, as Alison Hardie points out.149 Some courtesans did invest their savings in town mansions, country villas and gardens. They used these to entertain elite men, often with a view to making a good match in marriage before their fame declined or old age put an end to their careers.150 146

Courtesans who feature in literary works include: Li Xiangjun in Kong Shangren’s (1648-1718) play Taohuashan (The peach blossom fan, 1699); Lin Tiansu in Li Yu’s (1611-ca. 80) Yizhong yuan (Ideal love-matches, preface 1659); Chen Yuanyuan (1623-95), Bian Sai (zi: Yujing; fl. early seventeenth century) and Dong Xiaowan (zi: Bai, 1625-51) in Wu Weiye’s (1609-71) poems; Dong Xiaowan and Chen Yuanyuan in Mao Xiang’s (1611-93) Yingmei an yiyu (Memoirs of the Plum Shadows Studio); Bian Sai, Ma Shouzhen (zi: Xianglan, 1548-1604), Gu Mei (alias Xu Mei, zi: Meisheng, 1619-64), Kong Baimen and other courtesans of the Qin-huai pleasure quarters in Yu Huai’s (1616-96) Banqiao zaji (Miscellaneous records of the Wooden Bridge); Kou Baimen in a poem by Qian Qianyi; Liu Rushi in Chen Zilong’s and Qian Qianyi’s poetry; on Mao Xiang and the late Ming literati, see ˆki Yasushi, “Senro innen: HÙkyÙken to BÙshÙ”, Nihon Chågoku gakkaihÙ 55, 2003: 166-80. 147 On courtesan culture, see the detailed monograph by ˆki Yasushi, Chågoku yåri kåkan: Min Shin shinwai gijo no sekai (Tokyo: Aonisha, 2002); idem, “Få Muryå to gijo”, Hiroshima daigaku bungakubu kiyÙ 48, 1989: 71-91; Paul Ropp, “Ambiguous Images”, p. 18; Wai-yee Li, “The Late Ming Courtesan: Invention of a Cultural Ideal”, in Widmer and Chang, eds., Writing Women, pp. 46-73; Dorothy Ko, “The Written Word and the Bound Foot: A History of the Courtesan’s Aura”, in Widmer and Chang, eds., Writing Women, pp. 74-100, 78; Cass, Dangerous Women, pp. 25-46. 148 Jiaoshu was first used for the Tang dynasty courtesan Xue Tao (768-831); the late Ming courtesan Xue Susu used the term for herself. Liu Rushi was also referred to as such by other literati (see LRSBZ, 48) and addressed in this way by other women (e.g. Li Yin’s “Two Poems for Lady Collator Liu Rushi”, see Li Yin, Zhuxiao xuan yin cao, 1643 (copy in Gest Library, Princeton University), 1.11a; for a translation, see WWTC, 371. 149 Alison Hardie, “Washing the Wutong Tree: Garden Culture as an Expression of Women’s Gentility in the Late Ming”, in Daria Berg and Chloë Starr, eds., The Quest for Gentility in China: Negotiations beyond Gender and Class (forthcoming). 150 E.g. the town mansion of Li Xiangzhen (alias Li Shiniang, or Tenth Lady),

274

daria berg

In the late 1630s Liu Rushi spent much time travelling around the Yangzi delta region. She visited Hangzhou and the West Lake with a new mentor and lover, the elderly Wang Ranming (1577-1655).151 Wang Ranming, a wealthy and well-connected salt merchant origi-nally from Huizhou (Xin’an) had made his name as a poet, playboy and patron of the arts, gaining fame for the lavish parties on his flower boat on the West Lake.152 He entertained leading literati like Chen Jiru, Dong Qichang (1555-1635) and Li Yu and introduced famous courtesans and professional female artists to each other.153 Here Liu Rushi came into contact with friends of Shen Yixiu and Wang Duanshu, such as Huang Yuanjie and Wu Shan, and other famous courtesans including Lin Tiansu (fl. 1620-1642) from Fujian, and Wang Wei (ca. 1600-1647)154 from Guangling (Yangzhou), both accomplished painters and poetesses. After three years Wang Ranming began to withdraw from his relationship with Liu Rushi, but he also introduced the twenty-twoyear-old to another potential mentor, the scholar and statesman Qian Qianyi, thirty-six years her senior.155 In the autumn of 1640

see Yu Huai, Banqiao zaji, ed. Dai Wenbao (Haikou: Hainan guoji xinwen chuban zhongxin, 1998), p. 66; the country villa of a courtesan described by Shen Defu (1578-1642), see Shen Defu, Wanli yehuo bian, 3 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980), pp. 602-3. 151 On Wang Ranming (zi: Ruqian) and Liu Rushi, see Widmer, “Epistolary World”, pp. 13-14. 152 His most famous boat was called Buxi yuan (The untied garden), cf. LRSBZ, 373-8. The name suggests its pretensions to the aura of the famous literati gardens used for social gatherings and poetry parties. On late Ming gardens, see Craig Clunas, Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China (London: Reaktion Books, 1996), pp. 138-9; Hardie, “Washing the Wutong Tree”. 153 On Chen Jiru, see ˆki Yasushi, “Yamabito Chin Keiju”; ECCP, pp. 83-4; on Dong Qichang, see ECCP, pp. 787-9; on Li Yu, see Patrick Hanan, The Invention of Li Yu (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988); Chang and Chang, Crisis. 154 On Wang Wei (zi: Xiuwei), see Qian Qianyi, Liechao shiji xiaozhuan (Shanghai: Gudian wenxue chubanshe, 1957), pp. 760-1; FNZZ, 88-90, WWTC, pp. 320-9. Lin Tiansu’s style name is Xue. On Liu Rushi’s friendship and artistic teamwork with other courtesans, such as Gu Mei, see the immensely interesting discussion of Gu Mei’s painting of orchids alongside Liu Rushi’s accompanying poems by ˆki Yasushi, “Shindai joryå shijin to Ryå Joshi—ChÙkaidÙ bijutsukan sÙ ‘Ko Bi ga Ryå Joshi sho gÙheki satsu’ ni yosete”, ChÙkaidÙ bijutsukan kenkyå kiyÙ 3, 2002: 7-18. 155 Qian had risen to the ranks of chief supervisor of instruction, junior vicepresident of the Board of Rites, and a reader in the Hanlin Academy; on Qian, see ˆki Yasushi, “Shindai joryå shijin”, 10; ECCP, pp. 148-50. For an exquisite study of Qian’s literary activities in 1640, see ˆki Yasushi, “KÙ botan shikai: Minmatsu Shincho KÙnan bunjin tembyÙ”, TÙhÙgaku 99, 2000: 33-46.

female self-fashioning

275

the courtesan, dressed as a male scholar, visited Qian to show him her poetry. After the fashion of famous courtesans, she proposed to him and within a month moved into his house. On 14 July 1641 Qian married her with all the pomp and ceremony due to a principal wife, although his first wife was still alive.156 Liu Rushi gave birth to their daughter in 1649,157 and remained at his side until his death on 17 June 1664.158 Shortly after Qian Qianyi died, his clan stripped her of her estate, jewellery and servants and demanded three thousand silver taels in cash. Three thousand silver taels counted as a large sum. A man paid this amount to ransom a prize-winning courtesan from Qinhuai in 1639.159 During the last years of the Ming a courtesan’s grand mansion, bought by her as a life-time investment, sold for three thousand taels.160 Liu Rushi tried in vain to appease her husband’s relatives with a bribe of one thousand taels.161 Unable to withstand the pressure, she committed suicide during a banquet at her house on 21 July 1664 in order to secure the future of her child.162 Her final act may point to a deep-seated depression but it also highlights the ambiguity of her social status. Unable to shed her reputation as a courtesan, she remained in a precarious position on the fringe of the elite. Fame and success offered no escape. Even the existence of a male heir and formal son—Qian’s son by his first wife—could not save her.163

156

Qian’s first wife Ms Chen died in 1658; cf. LRSBZ, 35. On the relationship between Liu and her daughter, see Ping-chen Hsiung, “Female Gentility in Transition and Transmission: Mother-Daughter Ties in MingCh’ing China”, in Berg and Starr, eds., The Quest for Gentility in China (forthcom-ing). 158 Cf. Hu Wenkai, Qing Qian furen Liu Rushi nianpu (Taibei: Shangwu yinshu guan, 1981), p. 24. 159 See Yu Huai, Banqiao zaji, 35-6. 160 See Shen Defu, Wanli yehuo bian, 603. 161 Cf. Hu Wenkai, Qing Qian furen, p. 24. 162 Wen Hong and Li Jun, Duli hantang liu: Liu Rushi zhuan, (Shijiazhuang: Huashan wenyi chubanshe, 2001), pp. 390-1. For a discussion of the conflict, see also Pingchen Hsiung, “Female Gentility”; LRSBZ, 1206-17. 163 On widows and formal sons, see Daria Berg, “Reformer, Saint, and Savior: Visions of the Great Mother in the Novel Xingshi yinyuan zhuan and its SeventeenthCentury Chinese Context”, Nan Nü: Men, Women, and Gender in Early and Imperial China 1.2, 1999: 237-67, 252-5; Ping-chen Hsiung, “Constructed Emotions: The Bond between Mothers and Sons in Late Imperial China”, Late Imperial China 15.1, 1994: 87-117, esp. p. 88. 157

276

daria berg

Liu Rushi’s precarious position on the fringe of the elite also shows in her standing as a poetess and writer. As Ellen Widmer has noted, “very famous artists and writers like Liu Shi [Rushi] were actually sought out by publishers, and their works commanded a good price.”164 It was probably due to Liu’s celebrity status that the editors of the three major anthologies of literati letters known as Chidu xinyu (chubian; erbian; guangbian) (Modern letters: First collec-tion, 1663; Second collection, 1667; Enlarged collection, 1668), a commercial publishing enterprise, chose to include two of her pieces among entries by elite women.165 Even so, the three male editors—a highest degree holder, a dramatist, and Wang Ranming’s nephew, the Huizhou merchant and publisher Wang Qi—would include Liu only under the obscure pseudonym Qingji, which did not threaten to reveal her identity.166 The Name as a Mask Liu Rushi had many names. She changed them according to the stages in her life, imitating the literati predilection for sobriquets while reinventing her past and personality.167 Although it was com-monplace to have multiple names, her name changes occurred more frequently than would normally be the case. As a child she was known as Yang Yunjuan (Cloud Beauty). Upon entering brothel life she called herself Yinglian (Pitying My Reflected Image)—expressing her sympathy for the tragic figure of Xiaoqing who was obsessed with her shadow.168 As a teenager she adopted the name Yang Ai (Love)—probably an allusion to the semi-legendary Northern Song dynasty courtesan Yang Aiai from Qiantang whose story had popular currency in late Ming times.169 After her split from Chen Zilong she took the unusual step of

164

Widmer, “Epistolary World”, 21-2. The other editors were the jinshi degree holder, member of the Fu She and Ming loyalist Huang Zhouxing (1611-80) and the dramatist Xu Shijun (1602-81). For an excellent discussion of these collections, see Widmer, “Epistolary World”. 166 FNZZ, 430. 167 See LRSBZ, 28-37; Ko, Teachers, pp. 274-8. 168 For a detailed discussion of Xiaoqing, see Daria Berg, “Miss Emotion: Desire and Death in Seventeenth-Century Jiangnan”, in Paolo Santangelo and Donatella Guida, eds., Love, Hatred and other Passions: Questions and Themes on Emotions in Chinese Civilization (Leiden: E.J. Brill) (forthcoming); Widmer, “Xiaoqing’s Literary Legacy”. 169 LRSBZ, 33. 165

female self-fashioning

277

changing her surname and styled herself Liu Yin (Liu the Recluse).170 Liu claimed in a letter to a friend: “What I want most is to find a quiet place and withdraw into reclusion.”171 Dorothy Ko has drawn attention to the paradox of a number of seventeenth-century cour-tesans and professional artists choosing the character yin (hidden, obscure) for their name, an act that seems to negate the life-style of “the very women who hid neither their presence, their works, nor their name from public view”.172 The name effects irony:173 Far from its literal meaning of resignation or retreat, yin was turned on its head and made into an affirmation of these women’s acclaimed talents. … Through a parody of the didactic [Lienü zhuan] Biographies of Exemplary Women, they were celebrating their education and literary talents.174

Yin also puns on the female principle yin—as opposed to yang, the male principle. Liu and her contemporaries made a point of iden-tifying themselves as China’s hidden talent, the women of letters who would never have public careers but who began to emerge in the public eye as writers, poets and teachers. Solitude, reclusion and the motif of hiding also feature as powerful and frequently recurring images in Liu Rushi’s poetry and prose. She inscribed one of her paintings with these words: Solitude generates poetry, [The choice between] breath and death175 depends on subtlety and awareness Finding le mot juste requires real talent,176 When I am no longer there to hum my verses will anyone still treasure them? The secluded path is hidden under moss.177 170 On yin, see LRSBZ, 34-6, 334; Ko, Teachers, p. 277; Wai-yee Li, “The Late Ming Courtesan”, pp. 55-7. 171 Fifth letter to Wan Ranming; LRSBZ, 384. 172 Ko, Teachers, p. 277. Other women writers who did so were Huang Yuanjie who chose the name Li Yin, and Zhang Wanxian (fl. mid seventeenth century), the daughter-in-law of Shang Jinglan, who chose Xiangyin; cf. LRSBZ, 34. 173 See Liu Xiang, Xinkan gu Lienü zhuan, (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1936), p. 47. 174 Ko, Teachers, p. 277. 175 An allusion to Zhuangzi; see Guo Qingfan, ed., Zhuangzi jishi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961), p. 4. 176 An allusion to a story about Jia Dao (779-843) who asked Han Yu (768-824) which word (tui ‘to push’, or qiao ‘to knock’) to use in one of his poems. 177 Calligraphy on Liu Rushi’s paintings reprinted in Weidner et al., Views from Jade Terrace, p. 226.

278

daria berg

Another inscription reads: Page after page of deep sadness, Time creeps like a shadow inch by inch, Gloomy clouds obliterate the sky, I no longer care about writing poetry.178

In a letter to her lover Wang Ranming she lamented her broken heart when she found herself waiting for him in vain: Only when I came to the shores of the lake, I learned that you were still held up in your hometown. … I had not thought that upon return-ing to the mountains, I would be tormented by my previous painful feelings, leaving me in the doldrums until today. I heard recently that you have already returned—what good fortune—so I am writing this note. The mountains are one of the most beautiful places to behold, but apart from a stove for medicinal herbs and a mattress for medi-tation, there is nothing but the wind in the pine trees and the cassia bark tree on an islet. … Reclining on a cushion made of grass—I just don’t understand.179

In the late 1630s Liu adopted the personal name Shi and the style names Rushi and Wowen jushi (‘I Have Heard Recluse’; both names allude to opening lines in Buddhist sutras).180 She stopped changing names after marriage but her husband gave her one more sobriquet, Hedong jun (Lord of the East of the River). Her predilection for dressing in literati robes also earned her the nickname ‘Confucian gentleman’ (rushi), a pun on Rushi.181 This name epitomises her life and career: it conceals her identity, inverts gender roles and reveals her talent. As the pun suggests, she succeeded in making the step from entertainer and artist to female scholar in the perception of her contemporaries. The Intercalary Collection Liu Rushi acquired her scholarly reputation when she ceased to be merely a poetess and became an editor too. Liu was to stay at her illustrious husband’s side for twenty-four years. Already during the

178

Ibid. LRSBZ, 438. 180 “I heard it said” (rushi wowen); wrongly stated in ECCP, p. 149; cf. Ko, Teach-ers, p. 346, n.77; Chang, Late-Ming Poet, p. 19; LRSBZ, 17-37. 181 Ko, Teachers, p. 278. 179

female self-fashioning

279

first few years of their marriage they embarked together on a major scholarly enterprise. In 1643, three years after they had met, Qian Qianyi built for his new wife a studio and library for their great collection of rare books, the Jiangyun lou (Crimson Gauze Cloud Pavilion) at the foot of the Yu mountains near Changshu. Its name alludes to both Liu’s original name Yunjian and a fourth-century female scholar who lectured to imperial students from behind a crimson gauze curtain.182 From 1646 to 1649 Liu Rushi assisted her husband in editing an extensive anthology of Ming poetry, the Liechao shiji (Collection of poetry from successive reigns) and in compiling an appendix of about two thousand biographies (Liechao shiji xiaozhuan).183 The anthology appeared in print under Qian Qianyi’s name around the year 1652.184 Modern scholarship has only recently credited Liu Rushi with the editorship of the section on female writers Runji (Intercalary collection) in the fourth juan (volume) of Qian’s Liechao shiji and as the author of the appended biographies of women writers and critical appraisal of their works.185 In her study of Ming and Qing anthologies Kangi Sun Chang first admits that she has been “unable to verify” this theory which she traces back to Hu Wenkai.186 She acknowledges in a footnote that Qian Qianyi wrote at least some of the biographical notes in this section, but finally concludes, “I shall simply assume that Liu Shi was the main editor of this section.”187 But can we take it as given? The attribution appears to be based on the following two items: first, Hu Wenkai’s citation of a source, stating that Liu Rushi ‘collated’ (kanding) the women writers’ part of the Runji.188 However kanding could also mean that she ‘read and corrected the text’. And second, her own words in the

182 A fire destroyed both the studio and a large part of the library in 1650; cf. ECCP, p. 530. 183 On the dating, see the foreword by the Shanghai Gudian wenxue chubanshe publishing committee in Qian Qianyi, Liechao shiji xiaozhuan, 1. 184 It was printed by Qian Qianyi’s pupil, the licentiate Mao Jin (1599-1659) who set up a printing business; on Mao Jin, see ECCP, pp. 565-6. 185 On Liu Rushi’s section in the anthology, see FNZZ, 433-4; Kang-i Sun Chang, “A Guide to Ming Ch’ing Anthologies of Women’s Poetry and Their Selec-tion Strategies”, Gest Library Journal 5.2, 1992: 119-60, esp. p. 128; idem, “Ming and Qing Anthologies”, pp. 153-6. 186 Chang, “Ming and Qing Anthologies”, p. 153. 187 Chang, “Ming and Qing Anthologies”, p. 153. 188 FNZZ, 433.

280

daria berg

Runji, here translated by Yu-Shih Chen: My husband asked me to collate and edit (choujiao) ‘poems from the scented trousseaux’. Whenever something caught my attention, I added a collation note.189

The Chinese term choujiao however should be rendered as ‘proofread’ or ‘copyedit’, rather than ‘select’ or ‘compile’. Would Qian Qianyi not have acknowledged in his preface Liu Rushi’s role in the anthology if he had appointed her as the main editor of the section on women poets? Not necessarily, because the monumental anthology was his project and the Runji was but one part of it. Moreover teamwork was accepted practice for literary, editorial and scholarly enterprises. After all, Liu Rushi’s name is not entirely effaced from his work; it does appear, identifying her as the author of the comments on the Korean poetess Xu Jingfan (Hô Kyôngbôn) (1563-1589) in the appended biographical notes. It is conceivable that Qian wrote the opening paragraph and the closing lines to the entry on Xu while Liu composed the interpolated commentary beginning with the phrase, “Liu Rushi said”.190 We may conclude that Liu Rushi certainly became involved in the production of the anthology. The exact scope and limits of her involvement, however, remain difficult to ascertain. We only know for certain that seventeenth-century women of Liu’s calibre did compile and edit anthologies and also that teamwork was common practice in such enterprises, as the examples of Wang Duanshu and other editors show.191 The anthology had a considerable impact on the literary scene. Seventeenth-century readers took the section on women writers seriously.192 Qian Qianyi’s (and Liu Rushi’s) Ming loyalist attitudes, however, gave later Qing dynasty scholars cause for concern. The

189

Liechao shiji xiaozhuan, 814; translated by Yu-Shih Chen, in WWTC, 700. For the ideas expressed here I am indebted to Allan Barr. 191 On the editorial activities of Wang Duanshu, Huang Dezhen, Gui Shufen and others, see above. Liu Rushi must have been aware of other women scholars and editors, too. For example, she critiques Lady Fang of Tongcheng’s history of poetry; FNZZ, 433. 192 As it claimed to have solved the mystery of the legendary poetess Xiaoqing, identifying her as a fictional heroine whose name puns on Miss Emotion (qing), one scholar Shi Yushan (1618-83) even launched an investigation; see Chen Wenshu, comp., Lanyin ji, 1881, repr. as Xihu sannüshi zhuan (Hangzhou: Liuyi shuju, 1928), pp. 8-9. 190

female self-fashioning

281

Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736-1795) had the book proscribed,193 as the biographies provided details on the involvement of some authors— such as Liu Rushi’s friend Wang Wei—in the anti-Manchu resistance movement.194 The Hanlin academician, bibliographer and chief editor of the Siku quanshu (Complete library of the Four Treasuries), Ji Yun (1724-1805, jinshi 1754), wished to see such references removed and the courtesans downgraded.195 Liu Rushi’s contribution however has remained influential until today. The Power of (Editing) Poetry During her early years with Chen Zilong, Liu Rushi associated herself with the Ji She (Seeds Society), a politically active literary club which Chen had set up in Songjiang as a branch of the Fu She (Restoration Society). Envisaging a moral, intellectual and cultural renaissance on the local level, Chen, a patriot and political partisan, aimed to emphasise moral behaviour and encourage criticism of the government.196 He also set out to change the world as a liter-ary editor. In the 1630s he edited the monumental anthology on statecraft Huang Ming jingshi wenbian (Essays on statecraft from the Ming Dynasty, 508 juan, completed 1638); he later compiled a work on agricultural science and a critical anthology of Ming poetry.197 His work and political activism may have served as an inspiration, demonstrating to Liu Rushi the perceived power of editorship. In the Runji Liu Rushi credits the courtesan Wang Wei with the editorship of the anthology of travelogues Mingshan ji (Records of famous mountains).198 The life of Wang Wei who styled herself

193 Cf. Chang, “Ming and Qing Anthologies”, p. 133. On the Qianlong Emperor’s attack on Qian, see Wakeman, The Great Enterprise, vol. 2, p. 1097. 194 Qian Qianyi, Liechao shiji xiaozhuan, pp. 760-1. 195 As in the anthology Mingshi zong (1705) by Zhu Yizun (1629-1709), which received Ji Yun’s praise. On Ji Yun, see ECCP, pp. 120-3; on Zhu Yizun, see ECCP, pp. 182-5. 196 On Chen, see Chang, Late-Ming Poet; ECCP, pp. 102-3. On the Ji She, see Jerry Dennerline, The Chia-ting Loyalists: Confucian Leadership and Social Change in Sev-enteenth-Century China (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981), pp. 169-7; Chang, Late-Ming Poet, pp. 6-7, 20-21. On the Fu She, see W. S. Atwell, “From Education to Politics: The Fu She”, in Wm. Th. de Bary, ed., The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975). 197 Huang Ming jingshi wenbian, in 508 juan (printed 1639); Nongzheng quanshu (46 juan); and Mingshixuan (13 juan). 198 Qian Qianyi, Liechao shiji xiaozhuan, pp. 760-1.

282

daria berg

“Daoist Master in a Straw Coat” (Caoyi daoren) resembles that of Liu Rushi in many respects. The Runji provides the source for her biographical data. Orphaned as a child, Wang Wei, too, joined a brothel, became a famous courtesan, frequented the circle of Wang Ranming, married a Ming loyalist scholar, turned towards Buddhism and gained a reputation as a “lady scholar” (nüshi, literally female historian).199 She cruised the Yangzi delta and journeyed as far as Hunan in a boat that also carried her library.200 She confessed that she was addicted to travelling. Her travels spelt both agony and ecstasy: A boat sails through the endless void … The traveller delves deep into a far-away dream at night Will anyone ever remember the traces of my solitary path? In the expanse of mist, how dismal, the lonely fishing boat.201

Wang Wei’s words resonate with Liu Rushi’s obsession with the woman writer’s solitude and the immortality of her literary output. In writing and editing these women may have found comfort and company, the realization of their dreams and the way to leave an imprint on history.202 Wang Wei’s anthology of travelogues possibly also constituted a commercial venture that catered to the late Ming travel boom and the demand for travel guides and travel diaries.203 The volume contains her preface but modern scholarship has found it difficult to ascertain her role in its production.204 In any case the attribution in itself shows how in the perception of her contemporaries editorship and reputation went hand in hand.

199

Chen Jiru addressed Wang Wei with the honorific ‘Wei Daoren’ (Daoist Adept Wei); see LRSBZ, 431-2; the courtesan Lin Tiansu refers to Wang Wei as lady-scholar in a letter, see LRSBZ, 368-70. Wang Ranming referred to all courtesans as nüshi (and guige for elite poetesses); cf. Ko, “Written Word”, p. 436, n.15. 200 It has been suggested that both Wang Wei and Liu Rushi were ‘boat courte-sans’ (chuanji) in floating establishments; see Zhou Caiquan, Liu Rushi zalun (Huaiyin: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1986), pp. 14-22. Liu Rushi once borrowed a boat from Wang Ranming; cf. LRSBZ, 373. 201 Xie Wuliang, Zhongguo funü wenxue shi, 1916, (repr. Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 1992), p. 342. 202 Like Shen Yixiu, Wang Wei alludes to the image of yiren (that man) in her preface to her poetry collection Wanzai pian (As if I were there); FNZZ, 88. 203 On the travel boom and travel diaries, see Berg, Carnival in China, pp. 223. 204 Ko, Teachers, p. 286.

female self-fashioning

283

Seventeenth-century perceptions of the courtesan-poetess Li Yin (1616-1685) from the Hangzhou area illustrate the power of edi-torship from yet another angle. Li Yin became the concubine of the Ming loyalist poet Ge Zhengqi (d. 1645).205 She, Liu Rushi and Wang Wei became known together as a trio of ‘exceptionally famous courtesans’.206 All three married literati but Li Yin’s name alone appears in literary anthologies under the heading of virtuous wives, rather than in the section of courtesan poetesses. In the eyes of both her contemporaries and later generations she had shed her courtesan origins. Wang Duanshu’s anthology, for example, for no apparent reasons classifies Li Yin, but not the other two, under a more respectable category.207 The nineteenth-century anthology edited by the eminent lady scholar Wanyan Yun Zhu (1771-1833) does likewise and even some modern scholarly works ignore her origins. Li Yin’s case shows the ambiguity of the courtesan’s social position and the potential for promotion in the cultural milieu.208 Poetry and publishing, as noted above, were important for a gentle-man as he could show off his talent, learning and gentility, making them both visible and public. Scholarship, the prerequisite for success in the civil service examinations, would pave a gentleman’s way up the social ladder of success, giving him access to the ranks of the elite. In the case of a woman, a public and political career was out of the question, but the example of Shen Yixiu has shown how an elite woman used poetry and publishing as a means to increase her social network and reach out to other like-minded women of her class who shared some aspects of her life experience and whose trials and tribulations resembled those of her own family. A published volume of poetry would potentially entail visibility, fame and immortality for its authors and editor, be they male or female. For a gentlewoman, it would be one way of marking her intellectual standing among members of the ruling class. For a courtesan, however, it could be

205 On Li Yin, see WWTC, 370-2; Weidner et al., Views from Jade Terrace, pp. 102-5; Tseng Yu-ho Ecke, Wen-jen hua (Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 1988), pp. 33-4; for her painting, see p. 51. On Ge, see WWTC, 753-5. 206 Ellen Widmer, “Introduction”, in Widmer and Chang, eds., Writing Women, pp. 1-14, esp. p. 5. 207 Cf. Widmer, “Introduction”, p. 6. 208 Li Yin wrote poems for Liu Rushi in which the imagery of the boat floating through the mist on the river suggests not only loneliness, as in Wang Wei’s poem discussed above, but also friendship; Li Yin, Zhuxiao xuan yin cao, 1/11a.

284

daria berg

one way of displaying her literary talents, catching the attention of ruling-class men, enthralling her lovers and ultimately gaining entry to the ranks of the elite by means of marriage to a scholar-official. Chen Zilong encouraged Liu Rushi to have her poems published.209 In his preface to her collection Wuyin cao (Manuscript from the year 1638) he praises the gentleness and elegance (wenya) of her poetry: “Now, as to the poetry by Master Liu, how it aspires to purity, how focused and far-sighted it is, how magnificent and grand in scope, how subtle and unrestrained!”210 In a euphemistic reference to her background, Chen also effaces her courtesan origins.211 From Chen’s point of view she stars as a poet and scholar, meriting the honorific ‘Master Liu’ (Liu zi). Her literary success makes her—almost—an honorary member of the literati. Liu Rushi occupies a special place among the many talented and famous courtesan poetesses of the Ming/Qing era for being the only one known to have become an editor. Editorship lent her the power to manipulate contemporary perceptions of (her) gentility. Apart from the Runji, she also compiled an anthology entitled Gujin mingyuan shici xuan (Selected Works of shi and ci poetry by women from ancient times to the Ming), which remained unpublished until 1937, when it appeared in an edition produced by Zhongxi shuju in Shanghai.212 By virtue of editing women’s poetry Liu Rushi inscribed herself and the other courtesan poetesses into history. She not only selected the entries for her husband’s anthology but also composed—or helped compose—the biographies of the women authors included in the Runji. Even if only as her husband’s ‘ghost’, she left her mark on the literary world of her time. The Editor’s Agenda Liu Rushi knew how to make use of the power of editorship. In the Runji she resorts to an unprecedented selection strategy. Her organis-ing principle disregards social criteria, and works by elite ladies and

209

FNZZ, 430-1. LRSBZ, 112. 211 Ibid. Chen uses qingsuo (blue chamber), a clever allusion to the women’s inner chambers, instead of qinglou (blue tower), i.e. the pleasure quarters. 212 FNZZ, 434. Liu Rushi, Gujin mingyuan shici xuan (Shanghai: Zhongxi shuju, 1937). 210

female self-fashioning

285

courtesans appear under the same category. In this way Liu removes moral distinctions and social barriers from her poetic world. She edits her literary world to her preferences. The eclecticism of the collection reflects the wide circle of her social contacts, including other courtesans, among them Wang Wei, Lin Tiansu and Xue Susu (fl. 1575-1635),213 and also gentry ladies such as Huang Yuanjie, Wu Shan and her daughter. In this sense Liu Rushi’s selection appears as radically different from that of Shen Yixiu, but it conforms generally to the trend dis-played in male anthologists’ collections. Alternatively, it could reflect the choice her husband would have made. A male editor would typically select women writers for inclusion according to perceived literary merit, rather than social status.214 He would freely intermingle poems by elite ladies and courtesans. For example, Zhong Xing’s anthology Mingyuan shigui celebrates the works of courtesans and in particular Wang Wei, the only courtesan and one of the few authors to occupy an entire chapter.215 The gentry poetesses in such anthologies were in many cases the wives, sisters and daughters of the scholars who edited such works. But these editors were also the men who frequented the pleasure quarters and became the companions and lovers of the courtesans who featured in their literary collections. Zhong Xing had an affair with Wang Wei, who would entertain him on her boat. Infatuated with his new ex-courtesan wife, Qian Qianyi might have been similarly inclined in his selection of women poets for his anthology. In the case of Qian Qianyi and Liu Rushi’s Runji it is difficult to determine whether the selection was his or her choice. Even if it was her choice, it might well have reflected his predilections, as well as hers. The inclusions are not value-free however. The Runji places the emphasis firmly on the courtesans’ works, giving them pride of place at the expense of the gentry ladies. Liu Rushi moreover stresses the

213 On Xue Susu’s life and works, see Daria Berg, “Amazon, Artist, and Adven-turer: A Courtesan in late Imperial China”, in Ken Hammond, ed., Human Tradition in Modern China (Lanham, Boulder, New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield) (forthcoming). 214 Cf. Dorothy Ko, “The Written Word and the Bound Foot”, p. 88. 215 Cf. WWTC, p. 320. Wang Wei also features prominently in Zhou Zhibiao’s anthology Nüzhong qi caizi lanke ji (Orchid babblings by seven talented poetesses) from the mid-seventeenth century.

286

daria berg

romantic tradition in poetry, favouring works written in courtesan style over those by major and established writers. Her anthology thus elevates and glorifies courtesan poetry. In the biographies and literary appraisals appended to the Runji Liu Rushi has no qualms about voicing criticism. She finds fault with the history of poetry compiled by one of the other seventeenthcentury woman editors Fang Weiyi and her evaluation of late Ming women writers: Lady Fang of Tongcheng has compiled and edited a history of poetry. In her critique of Xu Yuan’s poetry, she condemns all women writers from the Wu [Suzhou] region with one single expression: ‘They’re fish-ing for fame, but lacking in learning.’ Yet she launches into a rambling discourse on Xu’s poems. I utterly fail to see why she did it.216

In the role of editor Liu Rushi positions herself at the very heart of literati culture, collecting, commenting and criticising, but she also plays safe. She includes only two poems by the famous Xu Yuan (1560-1620), a gentry poetess long dead by the time Liu Rushi pens her critique in the first years of the Qing dynasty.217 Another target of her criticism, the Korean poetess Xu Jingfan, also lived in the previous century; moreover, from Liu Rushi’s point of view, her for-eign status makes her role in Chinese literary history marginal.218 In her comparative literary study of Liu Rushi and the elite woman poet Xu Can (ca. 1610-after 1677) from Changzhou (modern Suzhou), modern scholar Kang-i Sun Chang has shown that the courtesan remains more timid and conservative in her choice of style, rhetoric, genre and theme than the gentry lady.219 For the courtesan, more is at stake. Liu, the ex-courtesan, chooses her words with care, yet resorts to radical means in pursuing her agenda and promoting the literary talents of the courtesan—at the expense of the gentlewoman writer. 216

Qian Qianyi, Liechao shiji xiaozhuan, 813-4. Xu Yuan was unconventional among gentry ladies in pursuing intimate friendships with courtesans, such as Xue Susu; see Ko, Teachers, pp. 266-74. 218 Qian Qianyi, Liechao shiji xiaozhuan, 813-4; on Xu Yuan, see WWTC, pp. 209-15. 219 See Chang, “Liu Shih and Hsü Ts’an: Feminine or Feminist”, in Pauline Yu, ed., Voices of the Song Lyric in China (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 169-90, 184-5. On Xu Can, see also WWTC, pp. 337-50. On the Banana Garden Poetry Club, see Daria Berg, “The Banana Garden Poetry Club: Gentility, Books and Business in Seventeenth-Century Jiangnan”, in Berg and Starr, eds., The Quest for Gentility in China (forthcoming). 217

female self-fashioning

287

Copper, Silver and the Gilded Life Ellen Widmer has pointed out that for courtesans, high achievement in literature and the arts “could lead in the desirable direction of marriage with gentry men”,220 but there must have been other goals, too. Many courtesans continued their literary and artistic pursuits or embarked on such tasks after marriage into the elite. Liu Rushi became an editor only after marrying a scholar-official. Scholarship turned into a vehicle for entering the charmed circle of the intel-lectual elite, consolidating one’s reputation and acquiring the aura of perceived gentility. It became a means of social promotion, image making and self-fashioning. Additionally, however, one more aspect came into play: a courtesan also needed cash. One might assume that beauty, talent and fame in a courtesan would ensure wealthy patrons or an elite husband who could provide her with everything she required. Liu Rushi’s diary entries before her marriage however testify to a life of financial desperation.221 At one point during the 1630s she faced imprisonment because she could not settle her debts.222 In 1634 she was accused of being a liu ji (floating i.e. unaffiliated prostitute) and threatened with banishment.223 Dur-ing a particularly difficult time in 1640, just before her marriage to Qian Qianyi, she struggled to cope with illness, poverty and a broken heart when the merchant Wang Ranming lost interest in their love affair.224 And in the end, after Qian’s death, the lack of disposable assets and income sealed her fate. Other courtesans shared her plight. Dong Xiaowan (1624-1651), who counted among the stars of the Qinhuai pleasure quarters in Nanjing, got into serious debt when her father secured loans from Suzhou moneylenders against her name.225 Her lover Mao Xiang 220

Widmer, “Epistolary World”, p. 30. As Liu details in her letters to Wang Ranming, see LRSBZ, 434-9. 222 Cf. Cass, Dangerous Women, p. 44. 223 LRSBZ, 81-2. 224 LRSBZ, 434-9. 225 On Dong Xiaowan (zi: Bai), see Mao Xiang’s memoir Yingmei an yiyu; for a translation, see Mao P’i-chiang, The Reminiscences of Tung Hsiao-wan (Ying-mei an i-yü), translated by Pan Tze-yen (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1986); BDCW, pp. 30-34; for a discussion of her paintings, see Weidner et al., Views from Jade Terrace, pp. 98-9. For an alternative theory explaining Mao Xiang’s tragic story of her early death as a concealment of her abduction around 1650-51 by the Qing government who needed ex-courtesans for a new music bureau at court, see Chang, Late-Ming Poet, p. 135, n.17. 221

288

daria berg

(1611-1693), a poet and a handsome but unsuccessful student,226 failed to gain office and buy her out. Qian Qianyi—who had just married Liu Rushi—had sympathy with Mao Xiang and settled Dong Xiaowan’s debts. He hosted a banquet in 1642 when she left Qinhuai to become Mao’s concubine.227 For Liu Rushi money remained an issue all her life. Although her husband had risen to high office under the Ming dynasty and after its fall collaborated with the Qing government, he relied in later life on his publications for a living. In becoming her husband’s ghost-editor and authoring parts of his literary anthology and the appended biographies for him under his name, Liu would have also helped him secure a livelihood.

Concluding Remarks: Editorial Negotiations Tracing the dynamics of discourse around two women editors from different backgrounds reveals how they fashioned images of the female self across the divides of gender and class. The production and circulation of their works involved financial negotiations as well as the trading of symbolic capital. The activities of an elite woman like Shen Yixiu reveal how she sought to enter literati mainstream culture. Her volume promotes gentlewomen like herself while downgrading the literary achievements of another group of women perceived to differ in social and moral terms—the courtesans. The courtesans, too, sought to enhance their reputation and social status through literary pursuits. They strove to excel in poetry and the arts, often with the goal of marrying into the elite. Scholarship, such as the editing of a poetry collection, served the purpose of gaining social recognition. Editorship meant power: it empowered a gentlewoman editor like Shen Yixiu to immortalize her daughters. It empowered a courtesan editor like Liu Rushi to enhance the literary position of courtesans by giving prominence to their works. And finally, it empowered both the gentlewoman and

226 R. H. van Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), pp. 291ff. On Mao, see ECCP, pp. 566-7; ˆki Yasushi, “Senro innen”; idem, “BÙshÙ ‘Eibai an okugo’ yakuchå” (I, II, III), TÙyÙ bunka kenkyåjo kiyÙ 136, 1998: 49-88, TÙyÙ bunka kenkyåjo kiyÙ 137, 1999: 79-109, TÙyÙ bunka kenkyåjo kiyÙ 138, 1999: 67-108. 227 Cf. Mao P’i-chiang, Reminiscences, p. 28.

female self-fashioning

289

the courtesan to show off and magnify their cultural capital. In sum, the editors of late imperial China who negotiated gentility while transcending the boundaries of gender and class found them-selves within a social network of exchange that traded cash, bodies, social status and prestige, as well as poems and edited volumes. The acts of editing and self-fashioning empowered these women to inscribe the female voice into China’s textual empire and to rewrite literary history—which so far had been conceived and presented as his story—from her point of view. In this process their carefully fashioned images of the female self created bold visions of literary immortality.

290

daria berg

glossary

291

GLOSSARY An Lushanʳ‫ڜ‬ᆂ՞ an tou zhi shuʳூᙰհ஼ Anhui ‫ڜ‬ᚧ Anqing ‫ڜ‬ᐜ Anxi ‫۫ڜ‬ baguwen Զै֮ Baizi shan bieye ‫ۍ‬՗՞ܑᄐ Baizi shan qiao ‫ۍ‬՗՞ᖱ Bankuang ठ‫ٯ‬ Banqiao zajiʳࣨᖯᠧಖ Bayu ၐ፿ Beijing ‫ࠇק‬ beimian pufen fa હ૿ᔮృऄ bi zhu nong quan ᓈ‫ᦞݫ׌‬ Bi Zhuo ฅ࠱ biannian ti ᒳ‫᧯ڣ‬ bijiʳ࿝ಖ bing chen ‫ׇ߭‬ Bingzi shi ‫ׇ‬՗ᇣ Bo Yi ‫ڎ܄‬ Bu Du ji ᇖ݊ಖ Bu gu du jiʳᇖࡤ݊ಖ bu luo yi bi լᆵԫ࿝ buyi ᇖᙊ Cai Chongᓐ‫ך‬ Caiqiu ७ટ caizi jiaren թ՗ࠋԳ caizi zhi bi թ՗հ࿝ʳ Cao furen ඦ֛Գ Cao Xun ඦ‫ۇ‬ caoshe fa ౻๢ऄ ce 㡸 Chang’an ९‫ڜ‬ Changkangʳ९ൈ Changxiu ९ߐ Changzhou ൄ‫ڠ‬ Chen Baxianʳຫ᥹٣ Chen Hongshouʳຫੋፅ Chen Jiru ຫᤉᕢʳ Chen Sen 呇ཤ Chen Zilong ຫ՗ᚊ

Cheng Han ‫ګ‬ዧ chengsheng ࢭᆣ chi shi Zhou su ஍ଇࡌ࿥ Chishang ke ‫ۃ‬Ղড়ʳ Chongzhen ശጜ Chou jun baʳᝲঊ֣ Chu ci ᄑ᢯ Chu yuan ἁႼ chu ‫( נ‬to go out) chu ๠ (place) chuanqi ႚ࡛ʳ chuban shuoming ‫נ‬ठ円ࣔ Chun deng miʳਞᗉᝎ ci ဲʳ Ciqing pai ဲൣ੔ Citan qingwan ဲᕽ堚न Cixi ს᝘ Cui Yingyingʳാᦉᦉ dabao Օᣪ da sima Օ‫್׹‬ da yi mie qin Օᆠᄰᘣ da you gong yu xue Zhonglang zhi shi zhe ye Օ‫࣍פڶ‬ᖂխ૴հ ᇣृՈ Dangtu ᅝჁ dao ሐ daocha fa ଙ༺ऄ Dazhong shenghuo Օ㢺‫س‬੒ de yi ᐚᆠ Denda Akira ႚ‫ض‬ኦ deng chang zhi ju ࿆໱հࠠ dengtan xiwanʳ࿆ᕽᚭन diben ࢍ‫ء‬ ding mao ԭ‫׮‬ dixiu ০ٖ Dong Jinࣟவ Dong Qichang ᇀ࣑ࠡ Dongxian geʳ੐‫ט‬ዚ Dong Xiaowan (Bai) ᇀ՛ࡷΰ‫)ػ‬ Dong Xun ᇀ໐ Donglin ࣟࣥ

292

glossary

Dongyang ࣟၺ Du Bi ‫༘ޙ‬ Du fu ji ݊ഡಖ Du Fu ‫߉ޙ‬ Du jian ݊ᦹ Du ji ݊ಖ Du Zhongyuan ‫ૹޙ‬劔 dubikun ᡫᏗⴋ duheng ‫ޙ‬㔂 dukun ᡫⴋ Dunhuang ཉᅇ duo zhe xiang jian, jiang hua xiao nian 䗕ထଉॊ,ലक़ూᑀ du ݊ Er lao ge Բ‫۔‬Ꮉ Ernü yingxiong zhuan ԴՖ૎ႂ䣠 fanli Յࠏ Fanshengxiang१‫س‬ଉ Fashen ऄ෡ Feidi ᐒ০ feng ge Ꮥዚ Feng Lu’an ႑ຼോ Feng Quan ႑Ꮁ Feng Zhenluan ႑᠜ᦚ Fengyue meng 咾ִ㴤 Fenshu ྡ஼ Fu wang 壂‫׆‬ Fujian 壂৬ Funü zazhi 䩻Ֆ䰎‫ݳ‬ Fu she ༚ष Gao Qi ೏ඔ Ge Zhengqi ᆼᐛ࡛ Gelü pai ௑৳੔ Gong’an ֆ‫ڜ‬ gongren ஐԳ Gu Kaizhi ᥽ჱհ Gu Qiyin 咏㤻ଃ Gu shan ࡰ՞ Gu Yanwu ᥽ङࣳ Guan Shikuan ጥՓ䪩 Guangling ᐖສ guanglu shaoqing ٠ᆂ֟ହ Guanjian ᣂ᝶ Guanjuᣂ⣒ guantu গቹ Gui Shufen (Suying) ូිख़(ై૎)ʳ Guijiayuan ូ୮ೃ

guiqing Ꮇൣ guixiu Ꮇߐ Gujin mingyuan baihua shiyu ‫ײ‬վ‫ټ‬ ໿‫ۍ‬क़ᇣ塒 Gujin mingyuan shici xuan ‫ײ‬վ‫ټ‬໿ ᇣဲᙇ Gujin nüshi ‫ײ‬վՖ‫׾‬ Guling ࡐສ Guo Pu ພᗖ Guowen zhoubao 㧺֮ࡌ㦅 Guyin prefecture ࡐອᗼ Haishang hua liezhuan ௧Ղक़٨䣠 Han Hesheng 呻๛‫س‬ Han Wudi ዧࣳ০ Han ዧ Hangzhou ࣜ‫ڠ‬ Hanlin ᘃࣥ Hanyu dacidian ዧ፿Օဲࠢ hao ᇆ He Biʳ۶់ He Liangjunʳ۶ߜঊ He xiao jiʳࡉៜႃ Hebo ࣾ‫܄‬ Hedong jun ࣾࣟ‫ܩ‬ʳ Henan ࣾত Hongfu ji દࢲಖ Hongniangʳદ୞ Hongzhi ‫ؖ‬ए Hou Ba ঀ᥹ Hou Jin ঀᒀ Hou Jing ঀན Houxu ‫ݧٿ‬ hu hu deng Qin min ֪֪࿛఻‫ا‬ Hu Ping ઺ؓ Hu Sanxing ઺Կઊ Hu shang cao ྋՂ౻ Hushu ྋʳᑵ Hu Zhengyanʳ઺‫ߢإ‬ huagong ֏ՠʳ Huaining ᡖኑ Huaishuo ᡖ஽ Huaizhou ᡖ‫ڠ‬ Huan Wen ௄ᄵ Huan Xuanwu ௄৙ࣳ Huan Yi ௄ឦʳ Huang Dezhen ႓ᐚૣ Huang Linʳ႓ᙤ

glossary Huang Ming jingshi wenbian ઄ࣔᆖ ‫֮׈‬ᒳ Huang Yuanjie ႓໿տ Huang Zhengse ႓‫ۥإ‬ Huang Zongxi ႓ࡲᘂ Huangniao ႓຺ huaniaoʳक़຺ huibing ‫܎ڃ‬ huibu ‫ڃ‬ຝ huifei ‫ॺڃ‬ Huiyu ᚧᅜ Huiyuan ᐝ᎛ Huizhou ᚧ‫ڠ‬ Huizi ‫ڃ‬՗ huke jishizhongʳ֪ઝ࿯ࠃխ Huo Jun ᙥঊ husheng ઺ᢃ Ji Cheng yanjiu ૠ‫ګ‬ઔߒ Ji Chengʳૠ‫ګ‬ ji mao ա‫׮‬ Ji she ༓षʳ Ji yuan ႃႼ Ji Yun ધࣕ Ji Zhongju །٘ᜰ jia shen ‫عظ‬ jia yin ‫ظ‬ഫ Jiading ቯࡳ jian bi shi shang jue ᥑ࢖‫ف‬Ղᘑ jian ru bu neng bu lian ߠ‫ڿ‬լ౨ լᐧ jian ᦸ Jiang Xingyu ᓏਣᅄ Jiang Yingke ‫ۂ‬આઝ Jiangling ‫ۂ‬ສ Jiangnan ‫ۂ‬ত Jiangsu ‫ۂ‬ᤕ Jiangyun lou ࿲ႆᑔ Jiankang ৬ൈ Jianshu ១࠸ jianzhe cha wei Liyuan zhuangshu ߠृᇟ੡රႼᇘ‫ޔ‬ Jiao Ran ญྥ jiaoben ீ‫ء‬ jiarenʳࠋԳ Jiaxing ቯᘋʳ Jin Ping Mei ८෿ම Jin வ

293

Jing fang ᢴ౱ Jinghe ནࡉ jinshi ၞՓ Jintai ८ፕ Jiu fuʳቑᓿ Jiuling caotang ቑᚢ౻ഘ Jizhi ႃհ juan mo ࠴‫أ‬ juan ࠴ Jun zi you jieʳ‫ܩ‬՗‫ڶ‬ᆏ kan ju yu Xianhua yan, su yu Zuying ઎Ꮳ࣍᣸क़᧏Δമ࣍ ల჊ kan shu ઎஼ kao yi ‫ە‬ฆ kaozheng ‫ە‬兓 Kong Chuan ֞ႚ Kong Shangren ֞ࡸٚ Kongʳ֞ Laoshihua ‫۔‬㨕兯 lei ᣊ leishu ᣊ஼ Li shi zhi shu ‫ּޕ‬հ஼ Li Shi ‫ޕ‬Ⴈ Li Tingmoʳ‫᠂ݪޕ‬ Li Yu ‫ޕ‬ድ Li Zhi ‫ޕ‬㋁ li zhongjie ᚐ࢘ᆏ Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji zhenben ‫ܠ࠱ޕ‬٣‫ޅس‬ေ۫ ༖ಖట‫ء‬ Liangඩ liang shu ࠟงʳ Liang Zhang ඩ് libu shangshu ៖ຝࡸ஼ Liechao shiji xiaozhuan ٨ཛᇣႃ ՛ႚ Liechao shiji ٨ཛᇣႃ Lienü zhuan ٨Ֆႚʳ like du jishizhong ‫ٴ‬ઝຟ࿯ࠃխ like you jishizhong ‫ٴ‬ઝ‫׳‬࿯ࠃխ Lin Hejingʳࣥࡉ壃 Lin Tiansu (Xue) ֚ࣥైΰຳα Linchuan ᜯ՟ Lisao ᠦᤵʳ Liu Cang Ꮵପ Liu furen Ꮵ֛Գ

294

glossary

liu ji ੌ‫ݒ‬ʳ Liu Jin Ꮵ੍ Liu Rushi ਻‫ڕ‬ਢ Liu Shi ਻ਢ Liu TaihuaʳᏥ௠ဎ Liu Xiang Ꮵ‫ٻ‬ Liu Xiaobiao Ꮵ‫ݕ‬ᑑ Liu Xin Ꮵ✛ Liu Yin ਻ឆ Liu Zhongli Ꮵ٘៖ Liu Zhongyue Ꮵ᝻ᚣ Liu zi Ꮵ՗ʳ Liudu fangluan gongjieʳఎຟ߻႖ֆ༿ Liyang ᄼၺ Lu Fahe ຬऄࡉ Lu Jia ຬᇸ Lü Jishi ‫ٳܨ‬Փ Luo Qilan ᙻጽᥞʳ Ma Shiying ್Փ૎ Ma shi ್ּ Mao Jin ֻவ Mao Xiang কᝊ Mao Zonggang ֻࡲൂ mao ⏎ Mei Yaochen ම໯‫۝‬ meifu ભഡ Mei gong ઍֆ Mi Fu ‫ۏ‬य़ Mianhe Zhuren ఠ噾‫׌‬Գ mie nong chao quan ᓎ‫ݫ‬ཛᦞ Min Qiji ၰᏘٟ ming nong ࣔል Ming ࣔ ming ࣔ Mingdi ࣔ০ Mingfeng ji ᏓᏕಖ Minggui shixuan ‫ټ‬Ꮇᇣᙇ Minghuang ࣔ઄ Ming-Qing xiaoshuo shibu xilie ࣔ 堚՛円Լຝߓ٨ Mingshan ji ‫ټ‬՞ಖ Mingshi zong ࣔᇣጵ Mingshixuan ࣔᇣᙇ Mingyuan ji’nang ‫ټ‬໿ᗓᦖ Mingyuan shigui ࣔ໿ᇣូ Mingyuan shiwei ࣔ໿ᇣᒮ Mochou hu ๕ღྋ

Monan qu ᗣᣄ‫ڴ‬ Mounihe ‫ٽ؍ۋ‬ mu nu ֵ؉ Mudan ting ߃կॼ Nan jiugong shisan diao qupu ত԰ ୰ԼԿᓳ‫ڴ‬ᢜ Nan Ming yeshiʳতࣔມ‫׾‬ Nan Ming তࣔ Nanjing তࠇ Nanjun তಷ Nankang gongzhu তൈֆ‫׌‬ Nanxi তᄻ Niu Sengru ׄቖ᚞ʳ Niushou shan dalieʳׄଈ՞‫៊ؚ‬ niwo ‫ݺ܃‬ Nongzheng quanshu ልਙ٤஼ Nü xiao jing Ֆ‫ݕ‬ᆖ Nüsao Ֆᤵʳ nüshi (gentlewoman) ՖՓ nüshi (female historian) Ֆ‫׾‬ ˆki YasushiʳՕֵൈ Pei Zhigao ፶հ೏ Pidian huayi Xixiang ‫ޅ‬រ྽რ۫ ༖ pingdian 兖㭠 Pingzi ؓ՗ Pinhua baojian ঴क़㨘募 Pipa ji ྴྵಖ qi er bu xiao, xin er bu xian ࡛ۖ լ᥄Δᄅۖլ᧜ qi miao Ԯᐔ qi shi zhi miao Ԯ‫׈‬հᐔ qian ᑨ qian fang ኼ॑ Qian Qianyi ᙒᝐ墿 Qiangu kuai Տ‫ݶײ‬ Qianhou qi zi ছ৵Ԯ՗ Qianlong ೓ၼ Qiantang ᙒჀ qianxu ছ‫ݧ‬ Qifeng GuanʳದᏕ塢 Qin min ఻‫ا‬ qing (emotion) ൣ qing tan 堚ᓫ Qingʳ堚ʳ Qinglou meng ॹ䀊㴤 Qinglou yunyu ॹᑔᣉ፿

glossary qingyiʳॹ۪ Qinhuai ఻෢ Qingxiʳyinshe 堚ᄻܷष qiru congshang ඵᕢൕ೸ʳ qiu huo zhong ‫׋‬ᚙխ Qiu Yue ‫׋‬ங Qiuhen ટฉ Qixue ting ጽຳॼ qiyan lüshi Ԯߢ৳兩 Qu Juesheng 㗖ᤚ‫س‬ʳ Qu Yuanʳࡹ଺ Quanzhou ੈ‫ڠ‬ Rang du zhou ᦧ݊ࡃ ren ո Rendiʳո০ Rongyu Tangʳ୲ፖഘ Ruan Dacheng ߼Օ⬙ Ruan E ߼㖅 Ruan huzi ߼ᣒ՗ Ruan Ji ߼ᤄ Ruan Xuanwu ߼৙ࣳ Ruan Yixun ߼‫א‬༎ Ruan Yuanhai da you caihua, hen juxin wujing ߼Ⴝ௧Օ‫ڶ‬թဎΔ৿ࡺ ֨֎ᙩ Ruan Zihua ߼۞ဎ Runji ၱႃ rushi wowen ‫ڕ‬ਢ‫ݺ‬ፊ rushi ᕢՓ Rushi ‫ڕ‬ਢ San guo yanyi Կ㧺ዝ㠼 Sanhui Tang Կዒഘ shan zun ՞ᖥ shan ՞ Shang jin xi shu Ղ᠃฾ง Shang meirenࡸભԳ shang Ղ shanshui renwu huace ՞ֽԳढ ྽‫ם‬ shanzhong zaixiang ՞խ୬ઌ Shaoxing ฯᘋ Shen Jing ާᗕ Shen Yixiu ާࡵଥ Shen Zizheng ާ۞ᐛ Sheng Shicai ฐ‫׈‬թ shengdong ‫س‬೯ Shenghuo ‫س‬੒

295

Shengyu ᆣ঒ Shengze ฐᖻ Shi (Liu Rushi) ਢ Shi cuo ren Լᙑᎁ Shi da guji shehui renqing xiaoshuo ԼՕ‫ײ‬ᤄष㢸Գൣ ՛円 shi ᇣ Shibai ping ‫ف‬ਈࡓ Shichao ‫ൃف‬ shidafu ՓՕ֛ Shijian Tang ஃᏠഘ Shi jing ᇣᆖ Shilai ge Լ壠Ꮉ Shinü shi ᇣՖ‫׾‬ shishÙsetsu ߏ՛円 Shizhu zhai shuhua pu Լ‫ێ‬ស஼ ྽ᢜ Shou [xian] (county) ኂᗼ Shouchun ኂਞ shoushi bu lou ‫گ‬ਕլዥ Shouyang ኂၺ Shu Guang งᐖ Shu Qi ࠸Ꮨ Shu Shou ง࠹ shu ง Shuai Ji ১ᖲ Shuangjinbang ᠨ८዆ Shuihu zhuan ֽ⧊ႚ Shuofang ஽ֱ Shuxiu zongji ිߐ᜔ႃ Shu ᇋ Siku quanshu ؄஄٤஼ Sima Guang ‫್׹‬٠ Sima Qian ‫್׹‬ᔢ Song ვ Songjiang ࣪‫ۂ‬ Sui ၹ Sui HeʳỰ۶ Sun Feihuʳ୪ଆॡ Sun Huiyuan ୪ᘏ໿ Sun Meng ୪ෳ Sun’ai ୪ფ Suzhou ᤕ‫ڠ‬ʳ taiqing ֜堚 Taihang shan ֜۩՞ Tai[hu] (lake) ֜θྋι

296

glossary

Taishi ௠ࡨ Tan Kai ᓫჱ Tanaka Issei ‫٘ض‬ԫ‫ګ‬ Tang Hairuo ྏ௧ૉ Tang Xianzu ྏ᧩ల Tao Butuiʳຯլಯ Tao Hongjing ຯ‫ؖ‬ན Tao Qian ຯᑨ Taohua shanʳ௒क़஛ Taohua yuan ௒क़ᄭ Ti Longmen sengfang shiʳᠲᚊ ॰ቖࢪᇣ Tian Rucheng ‫ګڿض‬ Tian Yiheng (Ziyi) ‫ض‬ᢌ㔂ΰ՗ ᢌα tian you qi zhong ֚ᎈࠡ಑ tian ֚ Tianqi ֚ඔ Tianyi ge ֚ԫᎹ Tianzhang ge ֚ີᎹ Tong zhi ຏ‫ݳ‬ Tongcheng ௏ৄ toujin ᙰդ Wang Dao ‫׆‬ᖄ Wang Duanshu ‫׆‬ጤි Wang Dun ‫׆‬ཉ Wang Fangqing ‫ֱ׆‬ᐜ Wang huanghou ‫׆‬઄‫ٿ‬ Wang Ji ‫׆‬ᜎ Wang Jide ‫׆‬ᕧᐚ Wang Jiu ‫⯤׆‬ Wang Ling ‫׆‬ສ Wang Mengji ‫׆‬ኄ‫ٳ‬ Wang Mian ‫׆‬೨ Wang Minru ‫׆‬ඕԵ Wang Qi ޫා Wang Ranming (Ruqian) ޫྥࣔ ΰ‫ڿ‬ᝐα Wang Shaoying ޫฯᄝ Wang Shifu ‫׆‬ኔ߉ Wang Shiheng ޫՓᘝ Wang Shimin ‫׆‬ழඕ Wang Shizhen ‫ૣ׈׆‬ Wang Siren ‫׆‬৸ٚ Wang Songchen ‫߭╾׆‬ Wang Wei (Xiuwei) ‫׆‬პΰଥ პα

Wang Wei ‫׆‬೛ Wang Yangming ‫׆‬ၺࣔ Wang Zao ‫׆‬ᤏ Wanling ࡷສ Wanyan Yun Zhu ‫ݙ‬ᠱ␔ఇ Wanzai pian ࡷ‫ڇ‬ᒧ Wei Chizhu 呸ᅦఇ Wei Dazhong ᠿՕխ Wei Shao’an ᠿ֟‫ڜ‬ Wei Xiufu ᠿߐ‫ݗ‬ Wei Xiuren ᠿߐٚ Wei Zhongxian ᠿ࢘ᔃ Wei ᠿ Wendi֮০ wenren ֮Գ Wenxian ֮᣸ wenxue ben ֮ᖂ‫ء‬ wenya ֮ႁ wo jian you lian ‫ྫߠݺ‬ᐧ Wowen jushi ‫ݺ‬ፊࡺՓ Wowenshi yuanyang louci ‫ݺ‬ፊ৛ᚇ ᚄᑔဲ wu ࣳ wu an ren ‫ڜܠ‬Գ (I arrange the characters) Wu Anren ‫ڜܦ‬ոʳ Wu Chongzu ‫ܦ‬ശల Wu er ‫ࠝܦ‬ wu gui ն๵ Wu Liyang nü ࣳᖵၺՖ Wu shan ‫ܦ‬՞ wu xu ‫کؙ‬ Wu yuan ኗႼ Wu Yuexiu ‫ߐࢂܦ‬ Wujiang [xian] (county) ‫ۂܦ‬θ ᗼι Wumengtang ji ֑ኄഘႃ Wusheng xi ྤᜢᚭ wutai ben ፘ‫ء؀‬ Wuxi ྤᙔ Wuyin cao ‫ؙ‬ഫ౻ Wuzhong shizi ‫ܦ‬խԼ՗ Xian [huanghou] (empress) ᣸઄ ‫ٿ‬ Xian ᣸ Xiang yu ଉᚡ Xiangxue Ju ଉຳࡺ

glossary Xianhua yan ᣸क़᧏ Xianyu Tong ធՊ‫ٵ‬ xianyuan ᔃ໿ Xiao Jie ᘕտ Xiao Lun ᘕፁ Xiao Shao ᘕᏄ Xiao Zhengde ᘕ‫إ‬ᐚ xiaodao ՛ሐ Xiaoqing ՛ॹ Xiaoshuo yuebao ՛円ִ㦅 Xiaowu ‫ࣳݕ‬ Xiari deng Guannong lou he Cui Shijun ୙ֲ࿆ᨠልᑔ၅ ാࠌ‫ܩ‬ Xie An ᝔‫ڜ‬ Xie Yi ᝔৭ Xie Zhangting 冴ີ卪 Xin qingnian ᄅॹ‫ڣ‬ Xin’an ᄅ‫ڜ‬ xing shen du ࢤ੷݊ Xing Yutang ᘋՊା xingbu shilang ٩ຝࠊ૴ xingling ࢤᨋ Xingmeng pianyan ᙌኄᙺߢ xingren ۩Գ Xingshi yinyuan zhuan ᙌ‫׈‬ৗᒴႚ Xinsheng ᄅ‫س‬ Xinxue ֨ᖂ Xiong Tanlang ዼᖣி xiushen ଥߪ Xiuxiang Huayue hen 似ቝक़ִฉ Xixia jushi ᾫដࡺՓ Xixiang ji ۫༖ಖ Xiyou ji ۫ሏಖ Xizhou Sheng ۫ࡌ‫س‬ Xu Can ஊᛞ Xu Du ji ᥛ݊ಖ Xu Fenpeng ஊᕿᣛ Xu Guangqi ஊ٠ඔ Xu Jingfan (Hô Kyôngbôn) ๺ ནᑕ Xu Jinyang qiu ᥛவၺટ Xu Shishuo xinyu ᥛ‫׈‬ᎅᄅ፿ Xu Wei ஊྍ Xu Wenchang ஊ֮९ Xu Yuan ๺໿ Xu yutai wenyuan ᥛ‫֮؀د‬૒

297

Xu Zi ஊ【 xu ‫ݧ‬ Xuancheng ৙ৄ Xue Susu ᜹ైై xueshi dafu ᖂՓՕ֛ Xun ಃ Yan Ge ࢏Ꮉ yan qi ᧏ᾫ yan shang zhi qu ጨՂհ‫ڴ‬ Yan Song ᣤვ Yang Ai ᄘფ Yang Aiai ᄘფფ Yang guifei ᄘ၆‫ڒ‬ Yang huanghou ‫ے‬઄‫ٿ‬ Yang Kan ‫ࠑے‬ Yang meiren ᄘભԳ Yang Ruozeng ᄘૉམ Yang Yunjuan ᄘႆୠ Yang ‫( ے‬name) yang ၺ (male principle) Yangzhouʳཆ‫ڠ‬ Yanmen ႀ॰ yanqing cizao changpian shuobuʳ 倏ൣ兟ᤏ叿ᒧ円ຝ yanqing xiaoshuo 倏ൣ՛円 Yanzhi ࢏հ Yanzi jianʳᗊ՗ጧ Yao Yunzai ৔ւ‫ڇ‬ Ye Shaoyuan ᆺฯಒ Ye Wanwan ᆺẚẚ Ye Xiaoluan ᆺ՛ᩂ Ye Xiaowan ᆺ՛ẚ Ye Xie 㢅ᛝ Ye Zhouʳᆺච yi mao Ԭ‫׮‬ yi ᆠ yin (female principle) ອ yin (hidden) ឆʳ yingge ૎ୂ Yingjiang si ०‫ڝۂ‬ Yinglian ᐙᐧ yingwu 嚀噣 Yingyuan ૎໿ Yin jiu 堬಺ yiren ْԳʳ Yirensi xiaoyin ْԳ৸՛֧ Yirensi ْԳ৸

298

glossary

Yizhen Ꮪట Yizheng Ꮪᐛ Yong huai shiʳူᡖᇣ Yonghuaitang shiʳူᡖഘᇣ Yonghuaitang ူᡖഘ You Jingquan ཾᄃੈ youchuang ઁᒈ Yougui ji ৩Ꮇಖ Yu [shan] (mountain) ᇄθ՞ιʳ Yuʳൌ Yu Chongyuan ൌ‫ޱ‬᎛ Yu Huai (Wuhuai) ‫܇‬ᡖΰྤᡖα Yu Tongzhi ᇄຏհ Yu Xian ყᖆʳ Yu Xin ൌॾ Yuan An ಒ‫ڜ‬ Yuan Hongdao ಒ‫ݛ‬ሐ Yuan Huang ಒ႓ Yuan Tao ಒ⚵ Yuan Zhen ցⱽ Yuan Zhongdao ಒխሐ Yuanhai Ⴝ௧ Yuanming ෘࣔ Yuanye Ⴜ܏ Yuanzi ց՗ Yueʳࢂʳ(name) yue ֳʳ(to say) yuefu ᑗࢌ Yufuʳድ‫׀‬ yuhe guzong fa ඿‫ٽ‬ਚ᜕ऄ Yuhe ji ‫ٽد‬ಖ Yu mu ᾱֵ Yutai wenyuan ‫֮؀د‬૒ Yutai ঒ᴭ Yuzhang ᘵີ za shi ᠧ‫׾‬ zaiyong qianyunʳ٦‫ش‬ছᣉ zanmen হ䣙 zaowu ທढ ze ր Zhang Dai ്ࢁ Zhang Gongʳ്਑ Zhang Mengzheng ്ኄᐛ Zhang Shenzhi ്෡հ Zhang Xiu ്ଥ Zhang Zhupo ്‫ࡕێ‬

Zhao ᎓ zhaoyingʳᅃᚨ Zhejiangʳ௨‫ۂ‬ Zheng Dajie ᔤՕᆏ Zheng Qin ᔤ✱ Zheng Xing ᔤࢤ zhenlie ૣ௺ zhi jin si zhi, bu chi youxian zhenshang menghuan ye ۟վ ৸հΔլ໓ཾ‫ࣞט‬Ղኄ֤Ո Zhidun ֭ሜ zhimu ਐֵ zhishu ॒๬ zhong ࢘ zhongdatong խՕ‫ٵ‬ zhong lin ᤪࣥ zhong xian xiao zhi ฒভూհ Zhong Xing ᝻༤ʳ zhong yi ࢘ᆠ Zhongsiʳㄣཎ Zhongyang Daxue խ؇Օᖂ Zhongyuan yinyun խ଺ଃᣉ Zhou Daodeng ࡌሐ࿆ Zhou Dunyiʳࡌཉᙲ Zhou Lianggongʳࡌॽՠ Zhu Daoqian ाሐᑨ Zhu Daosheng ाሐ‫س‬ Zhu Yi ‫ڹ‬ᪿ Zhu Yizun ‫ڹ‬ឦ༇ Zhuge Yuanzhi 壆ᆼցऴ zhuiyu 刍兿 Zhulin qixianʳ‫ࣥێ‬Ԯᔃ Zhuogu zhai ಼‫ײ‬ស Zhuozhengyuan ࢿਙႼ zi ‫ڗ‬ Zichai ji ࿫ຢಖ Zixiao ji ࿫ៜಖ zixu ۞‫ݧ‬ zonglü ཝᡟ Zongzi ࡲ՗ Zou Tao 㪪呾 Zou Taofen ምᣈ㨇ʳ Zuixiang zhuren ᔨଉ‫׌‬Գ Zuo Liangyu ؐߜ‫د‬ Zutang si ఺ഘ‫ڝ‬

bibliography

299

LIST OF WORKS CITED Sources Cited by Abbreviation BDCW DMB ECCP FNZZ LRSBZ LZ WMTJ WWTC XS XXSKQS ZZTJ

Lily Xiao Hong Lee et al., eds. Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: The Qing Period, 1644-1911. Armonk, N.Y. and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1998. Carrington L. Goodrich and Chao-ying Fang, eds. Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368-1644. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976. Arthur Hummel, ed. Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, 1644-1912. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1943-44. Hu Wenkai. Lidai funü zhuzuo kao. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985. Chen Yinke. Liu Rushi biezhuan, 3 vols. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1980. Pu Songling, Liaozhai zhiyi: huijiao huizhu huiping ben, ed. Zhang Youhe. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1978. Ye Shaoyuan, comp. Wumengtang ji. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 1998. Kang-i Sun Chang and Haun Saussy, eds. Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. Xinsheng (“The Renaissance Weekly”), facsimile edition. Shanghai: n.p., 1984. Xuxiu Siku quanshu. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 19952002. Sima Guang. Zizhi tongjian. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1956.

Other Sources Abe Yasunori. “RyÙsai shii: Shinsho no gåi shÙsetsu.” In Chågoku bungaku ronshå 6, 1977: 22-31. Aina jushi, pseud. Doupeng xianhua. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985. Allen, Joseph. In the Voice of Others: Chinese Music Bureau Poetry. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1992. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983, 2nd ed., 1991. Atwell, W. S. “From Education to Politics: The Fu She.” In The Unfolding of NeoConfucianism, edited by Wm. Th. de Bary, pp. 333-67. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975. Bateson, F. W. “Modern Bibliography and the Literary Artifact.” In English Studies Today, edited by Georges A. Bonnard. Bern: Francke Verlag, 1961. Berg, Daria, and Chloë Starr, eds. The Quest for Gentility in China: Negotiations beyond Gender and Class (forthcoming). Berg, Daria. “Amazon, Artist, and Adventurer: A Courtesan in late Imperial China.”

300

bibliography

In Human Tradition in Modern China, edited by Ken Hammond. Lanham, Boulder, New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield (forthcoming). Berg, Daria. “Der Kult um die Unsterbliche Tanyangzi: Biographie als Bestseller im China der späten Kaiserzeit.” In Schreiben über Frauen in China: Ihre Literarisierung im historischen Schrifttum und ihr gesellschaftlicher Status in der Geschichte, edited by Dennis Schilling and Jianfei Kralle, pp. 285-310. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004. Berg, Daria. “Marvelling at the Wonders of the Metropolis: Perceptions of SeventeenthCentury Chinese Cities in the Novel Xingshi yinyuan zhuan.” In Town and Country in China: Identity and Perception, edited by David Faure and Tao Tao Liu, pp. 17-40. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2002. Berg, Daria. “Miss Emotion: Desire and Death in Seventeenth-Century Jiangnan.” In Love, Hatred and other Passions: Questions and Themes on Emotions in Chinese Civilization, edited by Paolo Santangelo and Donatella Guida. Leiden: E.J. Brill (forthcoming). Berg, Daria. “Reformer, Saint, and Savior: Visions of the Great Mother in the Novel Xingshi yinyuan zhuan and its Seventeenth-Century Chinese Context.” In Nan Nü: Men, Women, and Gender in Early and Imperial China 1.2, 1999, pp. 237-67. Berg, Daria. “The Banana Garden Poetry Club: Gentility, Books and Business in Seventeenth-Century Jiangnan.” In The Quest for Gentility in China, edited by Daria Berg and Chloë Starr (forthcoming). Berg, Daria. “What the Messenger of Souls has to Say: New Historicism and the Poetics of Chinese Culture.” In Reading East Asian Writing: The Limits of Literary Theory, edited by Michel Hockx and Ivo Smits, pp. 171-203. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. Berg, Daria. Carnival in China: A Reading of the Xingshi yinyuan zhuan, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002. Bernhard Karlgren, trans. The Book of Odes. Stockholm: The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950. Bi Yuan. Xu Zizhi tongjian. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1957. Bian Min. Liu Rushi xinzhuan. Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1997. Bickford, Maggie. “Painting: Bamboo, Plum, and Ink-flowers.” In The Grove Dictionary of Art Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed August 30, 2004: Bickford, Maggie. Ink Plum: the Making of a Genre of Chinese Scholar-painting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Bo Juyi and Kong Zhuan. Bo-Kong liutie. Taibei: Xinxing shuju, 1974. Bol, Peter K. “Government, Society, and State: On the Political Visions of Ssu-ma Kuang and Wang An-shih.” In Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China, edited by Robert P. Hymes and Conrad Schirokauer, pp. 128-92. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Bol, Peter K. “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992. Bornstein, George, and Williams, Ralph, eds. Palimpsest: Editorial Theory in the Humanities. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1993. Bourdieu, Pierre. “Ökonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital.” In Soziale Ungleichheiten (Soziale Welt, Sonderheft 2), edited by Reinhard Kreckel, pp. 183-98. Goettingen: Otto Schwartz Co., 1983. Brook, Timothy. Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China. Harvard-Yenching Monograph Series 38, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Brook, Timothy. The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998.

bibliography

301

Brown, Lesley, ed. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 2 vols., 1:1086. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Cai Yong. Du duan. Cong shu ji cheng ed. Cao Jiaqi. “Zizhi tongjian bianxiu kao.” Wen shi, 1978.5, 63-89. Cao Xun. “Ji Cheng yanjiu.” Jianzhushi (The Architect) 13, 1982, 1-16. Cass, Victoria Baldwin. Dangerous Women: Warriors, Grannies, and Geishas of the Ming. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999. Chan, Albert. The Glory and Fall of the Ming Dynasty. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. Chang, Chun-shu, and S. Hsueh-lun Chang. Crisis and Transformation in SeventeenthCentury China: Society, Culture, and Modernity in Li Yü’s World. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992. Chang, Kang-i Sun. “A Guide to Ming-Ch’ing Anthologies of Female Poetry and Their Selection Strategies.” Gest Library Journal 5.2, 1992, pp. 119-60. Chang, Kang-i Sun. “Liu Shih and Hsü Ts’an: Feminine or Feminist.” In Voices of the Song Lyric in China, edited by Pauline Yu, pp. 169-90. Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, 1994. Chang, Kang-i Sun. The Late-Ming Poet Ch’en Tzu-lung. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990. Chao Gongwu. Junzhai dushuzhi jiaozheng. Edited by Sun Meng. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1990. Chartier, Roger. Forms and Meanings. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. Chaves, Jonathan, trans. and ed. The Columbia Book of Later Chinese Poetry: Yüan, Ming and Ch’ing dynasties. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Chaves, Jonathan, trans. and intr. Pilgrim of the Clouds: Poems and Essays by Yüan Hung-tao and His Brothers. New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1978. Chaves, Jonathan. “The Expression of Self in the Kung-an School: Non-romantic Individualism.” In Expressions of Self in Chinese Literature, edited by Robert E. Hegel and Richard C. Hessney, pp. 123-50. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Chen Dengyuan. Gujin dianji jusan kao. Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1983. Chen Dongyuan. Zhongguo funü shenghuo shi. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1937. Chen Wenshu, comp. Lanyin ji, 1881, repr. as Xihu sannüshi zhuan. Hangzhou: Liuyi shuju, 1928. Chen Yongchao. “Xingmeng pianyan muxi Liaozhai zhiyi kao.” Ming Qing xiaoshuo yanjiu 3, 1997, 175-81. Chen Zhensun. Zhizhai shulu jieti. Edited by Xu Xiaoman and Gu Meihua. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1987. Chikusa Masaaki. “Shiba KÙ ˆ Anseki yo bukkyÙ.” In Jinian Sima Guang Wang Anshi shishi jiu bai zhounian xueshu yantao hui lunwen ji, pp. 477-87. Taibei: Wenshi zhe chubanshe, 1986. Chong, Key Ray. Cannibalism in China. Wakefield, NH: Longwood Academic, 1990. Chongwen zongmu. Beijing: Xiandai chubanshe, 1987. Chou, Chih-p’ing. Yüan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan zhushu, Shisan jing zhushu ed. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980. Chunqiu Guliang zhuan zhushu, Shisan jing zhushu ed. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980. Chu qiu Zuo zhuan zhengyi, Shisan jing zhushu ed. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980. Clunas, Craig. Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China. London: Reaktion Books, 1996. Clunas, Craig. Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991.

302

bibliography

Coble, Parks. Facing Japan: Chinese Politics and Japanese Imperialism, 1931-1937. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1991. Cohen, Philip, ed. Texts and Textuality. New York: Garland, 1997. Crawford, Robert. “The Biography of Juan Ta-ch’eng.” Chinese Culture 6.2, 1965, pp. 28-105. Daoshi. Fayuan zhulin, TaishÙ shinshå DaizÙkyÙ ed. Tokyo: TaishÙ shinshå DaizÙkyÙ kankÙkai, repr. 1962. Daoxuan. Guang hongming ji, TaishÙ shinshå DaizÙkyÙ ed. Tokyo: TaishÙ shinshå DaizÙkyÙ kankÙkai, repr. 1962. Daoxuan. Shijia fangzhi, TaishÙ shinshå DaizÙkyÙ ed. Tokyo: TaishÙ shinshå DaizÙkyÙ kankÙkai, repr. 1962. Denda, Akira. “Min kan gen zÙeki Seisho ki moku roku.” TÙyÙgaku Bunken sent§ sÙkan 11. TÙkyÙ: TÙyÙgaku Bunken sent§, 1970. Dennerline, Jerry. The Chia-ting Loyalists: Confucian Leadership and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century China. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981. Des Forges, Alexander. “Building Shanghai, One Page at a Time: The Aesthetics of Instalment Fiction at the Turn of the Century.” Journal Asian Studies 62.3, 2003, pp. 781-810. Des Forges, Alexander. “From Source Text to ‘Reality Observed’: the Creation of the ‘Author’ in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Vernacular Fiction.” CLEAR 22, 2000, pp. 67-84. Ding, Naifei. Obscene Things: Sexual Politics in Jin Ping Mei. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2002. Dittrich, Edith. Hsi-hsiang chi, chinesische Farbholzschnitte von Min Ch’i-chi 1640. Köln: Museum für ostasiatische Kunst der Stadt Köln, 1977. Du Deqiao (Glen Dudbridge) and Zhao Chao. Sanguo dian lüe ji jiao. Taibei: Dongda tushu gongsi, 1998. Du Fu. Du shi pingzhu. Annotated by Qiu Zhao’ao. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979. Dudbridge, Glen. “A Pilgrimage in Seventeenth-Century Fiction: T’ai-shan and the Hsing-shih yin-yüan chuan.”, T’oung Pao 77, 1991.45, pp. 226-52. Dudbridge, Glen. “The Goddess Hua-yüeh San-niang and the Cantonese Ballad Ch’en-hsiang T’ai-tzu.” Chinese Studies 8.1, 1990, pp. 627-46. Dudbridge, Glen. “The Hsi-yu chi Monkey and the Fruits of the Last Ten Years.” Chinese Studies 6.1, 1988, pp. 463-86. Dudbridge, Glen. China’s Vernacular Cultures: Inaugural lecture given before the University of Oxford on 1 June 1995. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Dudbridge, Glen. Lost Books of Medieval China. London: The British Library, 2000. Dudbridge, Glen. Religious Experience and Lay Society in T’ang China: A Reading of Tai Fu’s Kuang-i chi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Dudbridge, Glen. The Hsi-yu chi: A Study of Antecedents to the Sixteenth-Century Chinese Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Dudbridge, Glen. The Legend of Miao-shan. London: Ithaca Press, 1978, rev. edn Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Dudbridge, Glen. The Tale of Li Wa: Study and Critical Edition of a Chinese Story from the Ninth Century. London: Ithaca Press, 1983. Dunhuang and other Central Asian Manuscripts Collected in France (Facang Dunhuang xiyu wenxian). Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2001. Ebrey, Patricia. The Inner Quarters: marriage and the lives of Chinese women in the Sung period. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Fan Jingzhong and Zhou Shutian. Liu Rushi shiji. Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2002. Fan Ye. Hou Han shu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, repr. 1973

bibliography

303

Fang Xuanling et al. Jin shu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974. Feng Jinbo. Guochao huashi. In Xuxiu Siku quanshu, vol. 1081. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1995-2002. Feng Menglong, ed. Gujin xiaoshuo. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1979. Feng Menglong. Gujin tan’gai. Beijing: Wenxue guji, 1955. Fong, Grace S. “Gender and the Failure of Canonization: Anthologizing Women’s Poetry in the Late Ming,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles and Reviews 26, 2004, pp. 129-49. Gallagher, Louis J. China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci: 1583-1610. New York: Random House, 1953. Gao Qi. Qingqiu shiji, in Sibu Beiyao. Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1930. Ge Zhengqi. Preface to Jiang Yuanzuo, Xu yutai wenyuan. In Hu Wenkai, Lidai funü zhuzuo kao. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985, 887-8. Gernet, Jacques. Buddhism in Chinese Society: An Economic History from the Fifth to the Tenth Centuries. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Gimpel, Denise. Lost Voices of Modernity: A Chinese Popular Fiction Magazine in Context. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001. Graham, William. ‘The Lament for the South’: Yü Hsin’s ‘Ai Chiang-nan fu’. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980, pbk 1984. Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Greetham, D. C. Theories of the Text. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Grigely, Joseph. Textualterity. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1995. Gu Qing. “Xingmeng pianyan erkao.” Wenxue yichan 6, 1997, 93-6. Gu Xuejie. Jingu qiguan. Ed. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1979. Gu Zhixing. Zhejiang cangshujia cangshulou. Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1987. Guben xiqu congkan series 1. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1954. Guo Yanli. Zhongguo jindai wenxue fazhan shi. Jinan: Shandong jiaoyu chuban, 1991. Guo Yingde. Ming Qing wenren chuanqi yanjiu. Taibei: Wenjin, 1991. Guy, R. Kent. The Emperor’s Four Treasuries: Scholars and the State in the Late Ch’ien-lung Era. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1987. Hamilton, Robyn. “The Pursuit of Fame: Luo Qilan (1755-1813?) and the Debates about Women and Talent in Eighteenth-Century Jiangnan.” Late Imperial China 18:1, 1997, pp. 39-71. Han Xiduo and Wang Qingyuan. Xiaoshuo shufang lu. Shenyang: Chunfeng wenyi chubanshe, 1987. Hanan, Patrick. “Fengyue meng and the Courtesan Novel.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 58, 1998, pp. 345-72. Hanan, Patrick. A Tower for the Summer Heat. New York: Ballantine, 1982. Hanan, Patrick. The Chinese Vernacular Story. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1981. Hanan, Patrick. The Invention of Li Yu. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Handlin Smith, Joanna F. “Gardens in Ch’i Piao-chia’s Social World: Wealth and Values in Late-Ming Kiangnan.” Journal of Asian Studies 51.1, 1992, pp. 55-81. Hanyu dacidian. Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 1995. Hardie, Alison. “The Awareness Garden of Wang Shiheng in Yizhen.” Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, 24.4, 2004, pp. 272-9.

304

bibliography

Hardie, Alison. “Washing the Wutong Tree: Garden Culture as an Expression of Women’s Gentility in the Late Ming.” In The Quest for Gentility in China, edited by Daria Berg and Chloë Starr (forthcoming). Hawkes, David. Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959. He Liangjun. Siyou Zhai congshuo. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959. Hegel, Robert. Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Henderson, Bill, ed. The Art of Literary Publishing: Editors and their Craft. New York: Pushcart Press, 1980. Ho Delbanco, Dawn. “The Romance of the Western Chamber: Min Qiji’s album in Cologne.” Orientations, 1983, pp. 12-23. Hockx, Michel. “In Defence of the Censor: Literary Authority and State Authority in Shanghai, 1930-1936.” Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 2.1, 1998, pp. 1-30. Holcombe, Charles. In the Shadow of the Han: Literati Thought and Society at the Beginning of the Southern Dynasties. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994. Holzman, Donald. Poetry and Politics: the Life and Works of Juan Chi, AD 210-26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Honey, David. “Lineage as Legitimation in the Rise of Liu Yuan and Shih Le.” Journal of American Oriental Society 110.4, 1990, pp. 616-21. Hong Pian, comp. Qingping shantang huaben. Beijing: Wenxue guji kanxingshe, 1987. Hsiao Li-ling. “Political Loyalty Versus Filial Piety in the Rongyu Tang Edition of Pipa Ji: A Case Study in the Relational Dynamics of Text, Commentary, and Illustration.” Ming Studies 48, 2003, pp. 9-64. Hsiao Li-ling. “The Eternal Present of the Past: Performance, Illustration, and Reading in the Drama Culture of the Wanli Period (1573-1619).” D. Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 2002. Hsiao Li-ling. “Woodblock Prints and Theatre: Characteristics of the ‘Drama Illustrations’ of the Early Wanli Period as Revealed in the Shih-te T’ang Edition of the P’i-p’a Chi,’ Yishu xue 5, 1991, pp. 133-84. Hsiung Ping-chen. “Constructed Emotions: The Bond between Mothers and Sons in Late Imperial China.” Late Imperial China 15.1, 1994, pp. 87-117. Hsiung Ping-chen. “Female Gentility in Transition and Transmission: MotherDaughter Ties in Ming-Ch’ing China.” In The Quest for Gentility in China, edited by Daria Berg and Chloë Starr (forthcoming). Hsiung S. I. The Romance of the Western Chamber. London: Methuen & Co., 1935. Hsu Sung-Peng. A Buddhist Leader in Ming China: The Life and Thought of Han-shan Tech’ing University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1979. Hu Jinwang. “Ruan Dacheng shige de lishi jingyu yu qi shiji banben lunlüe.” Anqing Shifan Xueyuan xuebao (shehui kexue ban) [Journal of Anqing Teachers College (Social Science Edition)] 18.2, 1999, 42-45, 65. Hu Jinwang. “Ruan Dacheng yingzhao shidai fengyun de zhishi shi.” Anqing Shifan Xueyuan xuebao (shehui kexue ban) [Journal of Anqing Teachers College (Social Science Edition)] 19.1, 2000, 52-5. Hu Jinwang. “Teshu xintai de yishu zheshe—Ruan Dacheng huaigu shi lunlüe.” Zhangzhou shifan xueyuan xuebao 4, 2003, 36-40. Hu Wenkai. Qing Qian furen Liu Rushi nianpu. Taibei: Shangwu yinshu guan, 1981. Hu Yinglin. Shaoshi shanfang bicong. In Siku quanshu, vol. 886. Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1986. Hu Zhenyan, ed. Shizhu zhai shuhua pu. Shanghai: Duoyunxuan, 1985, vol. 1. Huang Lin. “Lun Rongyu Tang ben ‘Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping bei Xixiang ji.’” Fudan xuebao 2, 2002, 119-25.

bibliography

305

Huang Yuji. Qianqing tang shumu. In Siku quanshu, vol. 676. Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1986. Huang, Martin W. “Author(ity) and Reader in Traditional Chinese Xiaoshuo Commentary.” CLEAR 16, 1994, pp. 41-67. Huangfu Shi. Huangfu Chizheng ji. In Siku quanshu, vol. 1078. Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1986. Hung Ming-shui. “Yüan Hung-tao and the Late Ming Literary and Intellectual Movement.” PhD thesis: University of Wisconsin, 1974. Huters, Theodore, Wong, R. Bin and Yu, Pauline, eds. Culture and State in Chinese History. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Idema, W.L. Chinese Vernacular Fiction: the Formative Period. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974. Idema, Wilt, and Beata Grant. The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China. Cambridge, MA.and London: Harvard University Press, 2004. Ji Cheng. The Craft of Gardens. Translated by Alison Hardie. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988. Ji Cheng. Yuanye zhushi. Edited by Chen Zhi. Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye chubanshe, 1981, repr. Taibei: Mingwen shuju, 1983. Jiang Shaoshu. Wusheng shishi, 7.13a, in Shugu congchao di 2 ji, edited by Liu Wanrong, n.p., n.d. Jiang Xingyu. “Li Zhuowu pi ben Xixiang ji de tezheng, zhenwei yu yingxiang.” In Ming kanben Xixiang ji yanjiu. Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 1982, 88-103. Jiao Ran. Jiao Ran ji. In Sibu congkan. Shanghai: Hanfen Lou, 1920-22. Jin Shengtan, annot. Di wu caizi shu Shi Nai’an Shuihu zhuan. Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 1985. Jin Xingyao, ed. Ming shi sanbai shou. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1995. Judge, Joan. Print and Politics: ‘Shibao’ and the Culture of Reform in Late Qing China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. Ko, Dorothy. “Lady Scholars at the Door: The Practice of Gender Relations in Eighteenth-Century Suzhou.” In Boundaries in China, edited by John Hays, pp. 198-216. London: Reaktion Books, 1994. Ko, Dorothy. “The Written Word and the Bound Foot: A History of the Courtesan’s Aura.” In Widmer and Chang, eds., Writing Women, pp. 74-100. Ko, Dorothy. Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994. Kobayashi, Hiromitsu. “Kin Koju no hanga katsudÙ Shutei jåni nen (1639) kan ‘Cho Shi-shi senseisei hoku Seisho hihon’ no sashie o chåshin toshita ichi kÙsatsu (I & II).” Kokka, March-April 1983, vols. 1061-2. Kobayashi, Hiromitsu. “Mindai hanga no seka: Keron shiritsu TÙa Bijutsukan shoso shutei jusan nean (1640) kan Bin Seikyu bun Seishoki hanga ni tsuite.” Kobijutsu 85, 1988, 32-50. Kong Shangren. Taohua shan. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1959, repr. 1988. Kordas, Bronislawa. “The Poetic Functions and the Oral Transmission of Chinese Proverbs.” CHINOPERL 15, 1990, pp. 85-94. Kornicki, Peter. The Reform of Fiction in Meiji Japan. London: Athlone Press, 1982. Laing, Ellen Johnston. “Wives, Daughters, and Lovers: Three Ming Dynasty Women Painters.” In Marsha Weidner, et al. Views from Jade Terrace: Chinese Women Artists, 1300-1912. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, New York: Rizzoli, 1988. Lee, Leo Ou-fan, and Andrew Nathan. “The Beginnings of Mass Culture: Journalism and Fiction in the Late Ch’ing and Beyond.” In Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, edited by David Johnson, Andrew J. Nathan, and Evelyn S. Rawski, pp. 360-95. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.

306

bibliography

Lewis, Mark. Writing and Authority in Early China. New York: SUNY, 1999. Li Boyao. Bei Qi shu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1972. Li Fang et al. Taiping guangji. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986. Li Fang et al. Taiping yulan. Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1986. Li Huan. Guochao qixian leizheng chubian. Taibei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1966. Li Mengsheng, ed. Yuan Ming shi xuan. Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 1993. Li Tao. Xu Zizhi tongjian changbian. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985. Li Yanshou. Bei shi. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974. Li Yanshou. Nan shi. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975. Li Yin. Zhuxiao xuan yin cao, 1643 (copy in Gest Library, Princeton University). Li Yu. Rou putuan, Fengshan lou ed. Sinologisch Instituut, Leiden. Li Yu. Shi’er lou. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1986. Li Zhenyu. “Wujiang Shenshi shijilu jiwai zuojia huikao.” Wenxian 3, 1990, 44. Li Zhi. Chutanji. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974. Li Zhi. Fenshu/ Xu Fenshu. Taibei: Hanjing wenhua shiye, 1984. Li, Wai-yee. “The Late Ming Courtesan: Invention of a Cultural Ideal.” In Widmer and Chang, eds., Writing Women, pp. 46-73. Liang Qichao. Yinbing shi wenji. Hong Kong: Tian xing chubanshe, 1949. Ling Mengchu. Erke Pai’an jingqi. Edited by Zhang Peiheng. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1983. Ling Mengchu. Pai’an jingqi. Edited by Zhang Peiheng. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1982. Link, Perry. Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Liu Fu. Qingsuo gaoyi. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1983. Liu Hui. “Jin Ping Mei yu Pu Songling.” Fudan daxue xuebao 1, 1987, 111-12. Liu Jieping. Qingchu guci liqu xuan. Taibei: Zhengzhong shuju, 1968. Liu Rushi. Gujin mingyuan shici xuan. Shanghai: Zhongxi shuju, 1937. Liu Xiang. Xinkan gu Lienü zhuan. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1936. Liu Xu. Jiu Tang shu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975. Liu Yiqing. Shishuo xinyu jiaojian. Edited by Xu Zhen’e. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1984, repr. Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 1987. Liu Yun et al., eds. Huaining xianzhi [1686]. Zhongguo fangzhi congshu: Huadong difang, vol.730. Taibei: Chengwen chubanshe, 1985. Liu Zhiji. Shitong tongshi. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1978. Liu Zhizhong. “Ruan Dacheng jiashi kao.” Wenxian 3, 2004, 193-4, 199. Liu, James T.C. Reform in Sung China: Wang An-shih (1021-1086) and his New Policies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959. Lu Hanchao. Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Life in Early Twentieth-Century Shanghai. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Lu Hsun [Lu Xun]. A Brief History of Chinese Fiction. Translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1976. Lu Xun. Gu xiaoshuo gouchen. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1951. Lu Xun. Zhongguo xiaoshuo shilüe. Beijing: Beiyang, 1925. Lui, Adam Y.C. Corruption in China during the Early Ch’ing Period, 1644-1660. Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1979. Luo Guanzhong. Sanguo yanyi. Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 1959. Luo Sizhong. “Liang Wudi zui yanzhong de shice bu shi naxiang Hou Jing.” Lishi jiaoxue wenti, 1996.2, 11-14. Luo Zhenyu. Luo xuetang xiansheng quanji (sanbian). Taibei: Wenhua chuban gongsi, 1970.

bibliography

307

Luo Zhenyu. Luo Zhenyu jiaokan qunshu xulu. Guangling: Jiangsu Guangling guji keyinshe, 1918, repr. 1997. Ma Zhenfang. ‘ ‘Chen Shuqing xiaoxiang tici’ kaobian.” Wenxue yichan 1, 1985, 1036. Ma Zhenfang. Liaozhai yishu lun. Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1986. Mann, Susan, and Yu-Yin Cheng. Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Mann, Susan. “Review Essay: The History of Chinese Women before the Age of Orientalism.” Journal of Women’s History 8.4, 1997, pp. 163-76. Mann, Susan. Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Mao P’i-chiang. The Reminiscences of Tung Hsiao-wan (Ying-mei an i-yü). Translated by Pan Tze-yen. Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1986. Mao shi zhengyi, Shisan jing zhushu ed. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980. Mao Xiang. Yingmei an yiyu. In Shen Fu, Fusheng liu ji (wai san zhong), edited by Jin Xingyao and Jin Wennan. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2000. Marney, John. Liang Chien-wen ti. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1976. Mather, Richard B., trans. Shih-shuo Hsin-yü: A New Account of Tales of the World. Second edition. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 2000. McGann, Jerome. The Textual Condition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. McKenzie, D.F. Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts: The Panizzi Lectures 1985. London: British Library, 1986. Mei, Chia-ling. “Yiwei yu fude yu caixing zhijian: Shishuo xinyu xianyuan pian de nüxing fengmao.” Funü yu liangxing xuekan 8, 1997.4, 1-28. Mengzi zhushu, Shisan jing zhushu. Ed. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980. Meriweather, James B. “A Proposal for a CEAA Edition of William Faulkner.” In Editing Twentieth Century Texts, edited by Frances G. Halpenny. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1972. Meskill, John Gentlemanly Interests and Wealth on the Yangtze Delta. Ann Arbor. MI: AAS Monographs, 1994. Meyer-Fong, Tobie. “Packaging the Men of Our Times: Literary Anthologies, Friendship Networks, and Political Accommodation in the Early Qing.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 64.1, 2004, pp. 5-56. Mittler, Barbara. A Newspaper for China? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004. Miyazaki Ichisada. “TÙyÙteki kinsei.” Ajia shi ronkÙ, vol. 1, pp. 240-1. Tokyo: Asahi shimbun shakan, 1975. Mori MikisaburÙ. RyÙ no Butei: BukkyÙ ÙchÙ no higeki. KyÙto: Heirakuji shoten, 1956. Nancy Norton Tomasko. “Chung Hsing (1574-1625): A Literary Name in the Wan-li Era (1573-1620) of Ming China.” PhD thesis, Princeton University, 1995. Nansha Sanyu shi [Wang Zhongqi?]. Nan Ming yeshi [1739]. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1930. Nienhauser, William H. Jr., ed. and comp. The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986. ˆki Yasushi. “BÙshÙ ‘Eibai an okugo’ yakuchå” (I, II, III). TÙyÙ bunka kenkyåjo kiyÙ 136, 1998: 49-88, TÙyÙ bunka kenkyåjo kiyÙ 137, 1999: 79-109, TÙyÙ bunka kenkyåjo kiyÙ 138, 1999: 67-108. ˆki Yasushi. “Få Muryå to gijo.” Hiroshima daigaku bungakubu kiyÙ 48, 1989: 71-91 ˆki Yasushi. “KÙ botan shikai: Minmatsu Shincho KÙnan bunjin tembyÙ.” TÙhÙgaku 99, 2000: 33-46. ˆki Yasushi. “Minmatsu KÙnan ni okeru shuppan bunka no kenkyå.” Hiroshima

308

bibliography

daigaku bungakubu kiyÙ 50, 1991: 74-102. ˆki Yasushi. “Senro innen: HÙkyÙken to BÙshÙ.” Nihon Chågoku gakkaihÙ 55, 2003: 166-80. ˆki Yasushi. “Shindai joryå shijin to Ryå Joshi—ChÙkaidÙ bijutsukan sÙ ‘Ko Bi ga Ryå Joshi sho gÙheki satsu’ ni yosete.” ChÙkaidÙ bijutsukan kenkyå kiyÙ 3, 2002: 718. ˆki Yasushi, “Yamabito Chin Keiju to sono shuppan katsudÙ.” In Yamane Yukio kyÙju taiken kinen Mindaishi ronsÙ, vol. 2, edited by Mindaishi kenkyåkai, 1233-52. Tokyo: Kyåko shoin, 1990. ˆki Yasushi. Chågoku Min Shin jidai no bungaku. Tokyo: HÙsÙ daigaku kyÙiku shinkÙkai 2001. ˆki Yasushi. Chågoku yåri kåkan: Min Shin shinwai gijo no sekai. Tokyo: Aonisha, 2002. Oliphant, David and Bradford, Robin, eds. New Directions in Textual Studies. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. Ouyang Xiu and Song Qi. Xin Tang shu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975. Ouyang Xiu. Ouyang Xiu quanji. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2001. Ouyang Xun, Yiwen leiju. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959. Pan Zhiheng, ed. Gen shi, 1626 edn. Rare Books of the National Library of Peiping microfilm. Pao Tao, Chia-lin. “Women and Jealousy in Traditional China.” Zhongguo jinshi shehui wenhuashi lunwenji, vol. 1:531-561. Taibei: Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 1992. Parris, Matthew. Chance Witness. London: Penguin, 2002. Pearce, Scott. “Who, and what, was Hou Jing?” Early Medieval China 6, 2000, pp. 4973. Poon, Joseph. “Darling Buds of Ming: Three Sisters in Early Seventeenth-Century China.” Unpublished paper presented at the conference on “Perceptions of Gentility in Chinese Literature and History”, University of Durham, UK, 21-23 March 2002. Pu Songling. Liaozhai liqu xuan. Edited by Guan Dedong. Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1980. Pu Songling. Pu Songling ij. Compiled by Lu Dahuang. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1986. Pucci, Joseph. The Full-Knowing Reader: Allusion and the Power of the Reader in the Western Literary Tradition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Pulleyblank, E.G. “Chinese Historical Criticism: Liu Chih-chi and Ssu-ma Kuang.” In Historians of China and Japan, edited by W.G. Beasley and E.G. Pulleyblank, pp. 135-66. London: Oxford University Press, 1965. Qian Chengzhi. “Ruan Dacheng benmo xiaoji.” In Suo zhi lu, juan 6, in Xuxiu Siku quanshu,vol.444. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1995-2002. Qian Lin. Wenxianzheng cunlu. Yangzhou: Jiangsu Guangling guji keyinshe, 1987. Qian Qianyi. Liechao shiji xiaozhuan. Shanghai: Gudian wenxue chubanshe, 1957. Qian Qianyi. Liechao shiji xiaozhuan. Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1961. Qian Zhonglian, ed. Ming Qing shi jingxuan. Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1992. Qian Zhongshu. Guanzhui bian. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979. Qiao Li, ed. Ming shi sanbai shou yixi. Changchun: Jilin wenshi chubanshe, 1993. Qu Yuan. Chu ci, in Sibu congkan chubian. Shanghai: Hanfen lou, 1920-1922. Qu Yuan. Ch’u Tz’u: The Song of the South. Translated by David Hawkes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959. Qu Yuan. Lisao jing zhangju. Annotated by Wang Yi. In Chu ci buzhu, edited by Hong Xingzu. Taibei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1973. Quan Song ci. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1965. Quan Tang shi, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1960.

bibliography

309

Quan Zuwang. “Er lao ge cangshu ji.” In Jieqi ting ji waipian, in Xuxiu Siku quanshu, vol. 1429. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1995-2002. Rolston, David L. Traditional Chinese Fiction and Fiction Commentary. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Ropp, Paul. “Ambiguous Images of Courtesan Culture in Late Imperial China.” In Writing Women in Late Imperial China, edited by Ellen Widmer and Kang-i Sun Chang, pp. 17-45. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Roy, David Tod, trans. The Plum in the Golden Vase, or Chin P’ing Mei, Volume One, Princeton. NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Ruan Dacheng. Ruan Dacheng xiqu sizhong. Edited by Xu Lingyun and Hu Jinwang. Hefei: Huangshan shushe, 1993. Ruan Dacheng. Yanzi jian. Edited by Liu Yihe and Zhang Anquan. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1986. Ruan Dacheng. Yonghuaitang shi. Taibei: Taiwan Zhonghua shuju, 1971. Ruan Yuan. Tianyi ge shumu. In Xuxiu Siku quanshu, vol. 920. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1995-2002. Saich, Tony, and Hans van de Ven, eds. New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995. Sariti, Anthony William. “Monarchy, Bureaucracy, and Absolutism in the Thought of Ssu-ma Kuang.” The Journal of Asian Studies 31.1, 1972, pp. 53-76. Shang shu zhengyi, Shisan jing zhushu ed. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980. Sharpe, Kevin. Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Shen Bojun. “Pu Songling de Sanguo ticai zhushu.” In Liaozhai xue yanjiu lunji, edited by Zhang Yongzheng and Sheng Wei, pp. 302-13. Beijing: Zhongguo wenlian chubanshe, 2001. Shen Chu et al. Zhejiang caiji yishu zonglu (shiji). In Guji banben tiji, edited by Luo Weiguo and Hu Ping. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1991. Shen Defu. Wanli yehuo bian, 3 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980. Shen Jin. “Mingdai fangke tushu zhi liutong yu jiage.” Guojia tushuguan guankan 1, 1996: 101-18. Shen Qing. Beishan lu, TaishÙ shinshå DaizÙkyÙ ed. Tokyo: TaishÙ shinshå DaizÙkyÙ kankÙkai, repr. 1962. Shen Yixiu. “Jinü Qiongzhang zhuan.” In Wumengtang ji, (preface 1636), Vol. 1, edited by Ye Shaoyuan, pp. 201-4. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998. Shen Yixiu. Lichui. In Wumengtang ji (preface 1636), Vol. 1, edited by Ye Shaoyuan, pp. 1-229, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998. Shen Yixiu. Yirensi. In Wumengtang ji (preface 1636), Vol. 1, edited by Ye Shaoyuan, pp. 527-90. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998. Shen Yue, Song shu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974. Sheng Wei, “ Jin Ping Mei dui Pu Songling chuangzuo de yingxiang.” Pu Songling yanjiu 11: 3-4, 1993: 107-22. Sheng Wei. “Liaozhai liqu yu Jin Ping Mei.” Pu Songling yanjiu 4, 1991: 127-37. Shillingsburg, Peter. Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age: Theory and Practice. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1986. Sieber, Patricia. Theaters of Desire: Authors, Readers, and the Reproduction of Early Chinese Song-Drama, 1300-2000. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Sima Guang. Chuanjia ji. In Siku quanshu, vol. 1094. Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1986. Sima Guang. Linian tu. In Jigu lu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1991. Sima Qian. Shiji. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959, repr. 1972.

310

bibliography

Soper, Alexander C. Literary Evidence for Early Buddhist Art in China. New York: Artibus Asiae, 1959. Spade, Beatrice. “The Education of Women in China during the Southern Dynasties.” Journal of Asian History 13.1, 1979, pp. 15-41. Starr, Chloë. “The Late Qing Courtesan Novel as Text and Fiction.” DPhil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1999. Su Shi. Su Shi shiji. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1982. Sun Kaidi. Zhongguo tongsu xiaoshuo shumu. Tokyo: Kyûko shoin, 1984. Tanaka. Issei. “Jyågo roku seiki o chåshin tosuru KÙnan chihÙku no henshitsu ni tsuite—Meidai KÙnan engeki ni okeru gazoku bunkai no shinkÙ.” TÙyÙ Bunka kenkyå jo kiyÙ 72, 1977:129-440. Tang Changru. Wei Jin Nanbei chao shilun cong. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1955. Tang Yongtong. Han Wei Liang Jin Nanbei chao fojiao shi. Lithograph of Shanghai: Shanghai shangwu yinshuguan, 1938 ed. Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1962. Tang, Xianzu. Zichai ji. In Zhang Maoxun, Linchuan simeng. Diaochong Guan, 1618, now in the Taiwan Central Library. Tanselle, G. Thomas, ed. Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1990. Tao Muning. Qinglou wenxue yu Zhongguo wenhua. Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe, 1993. Tao Qian. Tao Yuanming ji. Edited by Lu Qinli. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979, repr. 1982. Tian Hao (Hoyt Cleveland Tillman). “Shixue yu wenhua sixiang: Sima Guang dui Zhuge Liang gushi de chongjian,” Zhongyang yangjiuyuan lishi yanjiusuo jikan 73.1, 2002, pp. 165-95. Tian Rucheng. Xihu youlan zhi. Wulin zhanggu congbian edition, reprinted, Qiantang: Jaihui Tang, 1897, vol. 22. Tillman, Hoyt Cleveland. “Textual Liberties and Restraints in Rewriting China’s Histories: The Case of Ssu-ma Kuang’s Re-construction of Chu-ko Liang’s Story.” In The New and the Multiple: Sung Senses of the Past. Edited by Thomas H.C. Lee, pp. 61-106. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2004. Tseng Yu-ho Ecke. Wen-jen hua. Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 1988. Tsien Tsuen-hsuin. Paper and Printing. In Science and Civilisation in China, edited by Joseph Needham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), vol.5, Part 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Tuo Tuo et al. Song shi. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1977. van Gulik, R. H. Sexual Life in Ancient China. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974. Wakeman, Frederic E. Jr. The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth Century China, 2 vols. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1985. Waley, Arthur. One Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems. London: Jonathan Cape, 1969. Waltner, Ann, and Pi-ching Hsu. “Lingering Fragrance: The Poetry of Tu Yaose and Shen Tiansun.” Journal of Women’s History 8.4, 1997, pp. 28-53. Waltner, Ann. “T’an-Yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen: Visionary and Bureaucrat in the late Ming.” Late Imperial China 8.1, 1987, pp. 105-33. Wang Linshu. “Tan Shuihu yu Liaozhai.” Pu Songling yanjiu 4, 1991: 101-2. Wang Qi. San cai tuhui. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1988. Wang Shifu, Yuanben chuxiang bei Xixiang ji. Anhui: Qifeng Guan, 1610. Now in the Shanghai Library. Wang Shifu. Bei Xixiang ji. Corrected and published by He Bi, 1616, in the collection of Shanghai Library.

bibliography

311

Wang Shifu. Bei Xixiang ji. Edited by Li Tingmo. Shanyin: Yan Ge, 1630. Now in the Beijing Library. Wang Shifu. Chongke dingzheng yuanben pidian huayi bei Xixiang. Now in the Palace Museum, Taibei. Wang Shifu. Chongke yuanben tiping yinshi Xixiang ji. Corrected by Yu Ludong. Qiaoshan Tang edition, in Guben Xiqu Congkan series 1. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1954. Wang Shifu. Congke yuanben tiping yinshi Xixiang ji. Corrected by Yu Ludong. Fujian: Zhongzheng Tang, 1592. Now in the Naikaku Bunko, Japan. Wang Shifu. Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping bei Xixiang. Rongyu Tang, 1610. In Guben Xiqu Congkan series 1. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1954. Wang Shifu. Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji zhenben. Hangzhou: Tianzhang Ge, 1640. Now in the National Central Library, Taibei. Wang Shifu. San xiansheng heping bei Xixiang. Commented on by Tang Xianzu, Li Zhi and Xu Wei. Guling: Jiangjin Tang. Now in the Palace Museum, Taibei. Wang Shifu. Xin jiaozhu guben Xixiang ji. Annotated by Wang Jide and Xiangxue Ju. 1614 ed. Reprinted Taibei: Palace Museum, 1988. Wang Shifu. Xinke dazi uiben quanxiang canding qimiao zhushi Xixiang ji. Jintai: The Yue family, 1498. Now in Beijing University Library. Reprinted in Guben xiqu congkan series 1. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1954. Wang Shifu. Zhang Shenzhi xiansheng zheng bei Xixiang miben. Zhang Shenzhi, 1639. In Guben xiqu congkan series 1. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1954. Wang Shizhen. Qu zao, in Zhongguo gudian xiqu lunzhu jicheng, v. 2. Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 1959. Wang Siren. “Shi cuoren chundengmi ji xu.” In Qiankun zhengqi ji, 41 vols., edited by Pan Xi’en, vol.35: 505.23b-24a., n.p., 1875. Wang Tingna. Shihou ji. In Liushizhong qu, compiled by Mao Jin. Beijing: Wenxue guji chubanshe, 1955. Wang Zhongmin. Dunhuang guji xulu. Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1958. Wang Zijin. “Zizhi tongjian zhong de zhengzhi lunli yu zhengzhi daode jiaoyi.” Xue shu jie, 1996, 56.1:60-5. Wang, David Der-wei. Fin-de-Siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849-1911. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Wang, Richard G. “The Cult of Qing: Romanticism in the Late Ming Period and in the Novel Jiao Hong Ji.”’ Ming Studies 33, 1994, pp. 12-55. Wei Shou. Wei shu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974. Wei Xiuren. Huayue hen. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1996. Wei Xiuren. Huayue hen. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1994. Wei Zheng. Sui shu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1973. Weidner, Marsha, ed., Flowering in the Shadows: Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990. Wen Hong and Li Jun. Duli hantang liu: Liu Rushi zhuan. Shijiazhuang: Huashan wenyi chubanshe, 2001. West, Stephen, H. and Idema, Wilt L., trans. and ed. The Moon and the Zither: The Story of the Western Wing. With a study of its woodblock illustrations by Yao Dajuin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. West, Stephen, H. and Idema, Wilt L., trans. and ed. The Story of the Western Wing, Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1995. Widmer, Ellen, and Chang, Kang-i Sun, eds. Writing Women in Late Imperial China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Widmer, Ellen. “Ming Loyalism and the Women’s Voice in Fiction after ‘Hong lou meng’.” In Writing Women, edited by Widmer and Chang, pp. 368-73.

312

bibliography

Widmer, Ellen. “The Epistolary World of Female Talent in Seventeenth-Century China.”’ Late Imperial China 10.2, 1989, pp. 1-43. Widmer, Ellen. “The Huanduzhai of Hangzhou and Suzhou: A Study in SeventeenthCentury Publishing.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 56.1, 1996, pp. 77-122. Widmer, Ellen. “The Rhetoric of Retrospection: May Fourth Literary History and the Ming-Qing Woman Writer.” In The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China’s May Fourth Project, edited by Milena Dolezelova-Velingerova and Oldrich Kral, pp. 193-225. Cambridge, MA., and London: 2001. Widmer, Ellen. “Xiaoqing’s Literary Legacy and the Place of the Woman Writer in Late Imperial China.” Late Imperial China 13.1, 1992, pp. 111-55. Wood, Alan T. Limits to Autocracy: From Sung Neo-Confucianism to a Doctrine of Political Rights. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1995. Wu Han. Jiang Zhe cangshujia shilüe. Repr. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981. Wu Hung. The Double Screen: Medium and Representation in Chinese Painting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Wu Liquan. Zhongguo yanqing shi. Beijing: Shangwu chubanshe, 1995. Wu Pei-yi. The Confucian’s Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. Wu Shu. Shileifu zhu, in Beijing tushuguan guji zhenben congkan, vol. 75. Beijing: Shumu wenxian chubanshe, 1987. Wu Weiye. “A Record of Personally Ploughing in Gui Village.” In Wu Meicun quanji, edited by Li Xueying, pp. 828-829. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1990. Wu, Yenna, The Chinese Virago: A Literary Theme. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Wu, Yenna. The Lioness Roars: Shrew Stories from Late Imperial China. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University East Asia Program, 1995. Xizhou Sheng. Xingshi yinyuan zhuan, 3 vols. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1981, repr. 1985. Xia Wanchun, Xu xingcun lu, 12b. In Yangzhou shiri ji, edited by Zhongguo lishi yanjiushe, Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1982. Xie Wuliang. Zhongguo funü wenxue shi, 1916. Reprinted Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 1992. Xingshi qiyan (or, Xingmeng pianyan). Edited by Hai Bo. Beijing: Beijing yanshan chubanshe, 1992. Xiu Hua and Lin Yan. Feng leng luan hong diao—Ye shi san zimei zhuan. Shijiazhuang: Huashan wenyi chubanshe, 2001. Xiyou ji. Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 1972. Xu Fuling. Xingshi yinyuan zhuan zuozhe he yuyan kao lun. Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1993. Xu Fuming. “Shilun Ming Qing chuanqi fumo kaichang.”’ In Zhongguo gudian xiaoshuo xiqu lunji, edited by Zhao Jingshen, pp. 140-57. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985. Xu Guangqi. Nongzheng quanshu (1643), 3 vols. Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1979. Xu Hui. “Liang Wudi tongzhi shulun.” Xue hai 5, 1994: 89-94. Xu Shen. Shuowen jiezi. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1963, repr. 1965. Xu Song. Jiankang shilu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986. Xu Zi. Xiaotian jinian fukao. Edited by Wang Chongwu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1957. Xue Fucheng. Tianyi ge jiancun shumu. Taibei: Jinxue shuju, 1970. Yamamoto Noriko. “Hokuchôkei fujin no toki ni tsuite: Hokugi o chûshin toshite.” Ritsumeikan bungaku 270, 1967: 78-104. Yang Liu. Liaozhai zhiyi yanjiu. Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 1985. Yao Dajuin. “The Pleasure of Reading Drama: Illustrations to the Hongzhi edition

bibliography

313

of The Story of the Western Wing.” In The Moon and the Zither, edited by S. West and W. Idema, pp. 437-68. Yao Silian, Liang shu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1973. Yao Silian. Chen shu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1972. Yao Weiyuan. Beichao hu xing kao. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1958. Ye Dehui, comp. Wuzhong Yeshi zupu. Changsha: n.p., 1911. Ye Shaoyuan. “Yiren si xiaoyin.” In Wumengtang ji (preface 1636), vol. 1, edited by Ye Shaoyuan, p. 537. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998. Ye Sheng. Shuidong riji. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980. Ye Xi. Yi qi wenji. In Xiyuan quanshu, edited by Ye Dehui. Changsha: n.p., 1917. Ye Xiaoluan, Fanshengxiang. In Wumengtang ji (preface 1636), Vol. 1, edited by Ye Shaoyuan, pp. 291-381. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998. Yeh Wen-hsin. “Progressive Journalism and Shanghai’s Petty Urbanites: Zou Taofen and the Shenghuo Weekly, 1926-1945.” In Frederic Wakeman, Jr. and Wen-hsin Yeh, Shanghai Sojourners. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1992. Yi li zhushu, Shisan jing zhushu ed. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980. Yong Rong et al., eds. Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1933. You Mao. Suichu tang shumu. In Siku quanshu, vol. 674. Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1986. Yü Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming Synthesis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. Yu Huai. Banqiao zaji. Edited by Dai Wenbao. Haikou: Hainan guoji xinwen chuban zhongxin, 1998. Yu Jiaxi. Shishuo xinyu jianshu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983. Yu Xin. Ai Jiangnan fu. In Yu Zishan jizhu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980. Yuan Ke. Shanhai jing jiaozhu. Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 1993. Yuan Shishuo. Pu Songling shiji zhushu xinkao. Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1988. Yuan Shu. Tongjian jishi benmo. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, repr. 1979. Yuan Zhongdao. “Ruan Jizhi shi xu.” In Kexuezhai ji, vol.1: 462. Edited by Qian Bocheng. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1989. Yuan Zhongdao. Youju feilu. Song Ming Qing xiaopin wenji jizhu, annotated by Bu Wenying. Shanghai: Shanghai yuandong chubanshe, 1996. Zhang Chunfan. Jiuwei gui. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1994. Zhang Dai. Tao’an mengyi & Xihu mengxun, ed. Li Ren, Ming Qing xingling wenxue zhenpin. Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 1995. Zhang Fangping. Lequan ji. In Siku quanshu, vol. 1104. Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1986. Zhang Peiheng. Zhongguo wenxue shi. Shanghai: Fudan daxue chuban, 1996. Zhang Tingyu, ed. Ming shi. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974. Zhang Xuhou. Tongjian xue. Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe, repr. 1982. Zhang Yanyuan. Lidai minghua ji. Taibei: Wenshizhe chubanshe, 1980. Zhang Yuan. “Tongjian zhong de nanbei zhanzheng.” In Jinian Sima Guang Wang Anshi shishi jiubai zhounian xueshu yantao hui lunwen ji. Taibei: Wenshizhe chubanshe, 1986. Zhao Erxun. Qing shi gao. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1977. Zheng Guanyi et al., eds. Zhongguo lidai cainü shige jianshang cidian. Beijing: Zhongguo gongren chubanshe, 1991. Zheng Qiao. Tongzhi. In Siku quanshu, vols. 372-381. Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1986. Zhongyang tushuguan, ed. Guoli Zhongyang tushuguan shanben xuba jilu—ji bu. Taibei: National Central Library, 1994.

314

bibliography

Zhou Caiquan. Liu Rushi zalun. Huaiyin: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1986. Zhou Dunyi. Zhou Lianxi xiansheng quanji. In Congshu jicheng chubia, vol. 1891. Taibei: Yiwen, 1960s. Zhou Fagao. Liu Rushi shikao. Taibei: Sanmin shuju, 1978. Zhou Lianggong. Shuying. Shanghai: Gudian wenxue chubanshe, 1957. Zhou Shaoliang. “Wujiang Shenshi shijia.” Wenxue yichan zengkan 12: 48-59. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1963. Zhou Wenqi. Kaiyanlu. In Xuxiu Siku quanshu, vol. 1272. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1995-2002. Zhou yi zhengyi, Shisan jing zhushu ed. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980. Zhu Baojiong and Xie Peilin, eds. Ming Qing jinshi timing beilu suoyin. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1980. Zhu Dawei. “Wei Jin Nanbei chao de jiben tezheng.” Wenshizhe 3, 1993: 39-46. Zhu Dongrun, ed. Mei Yaochen biannian jiaozhu. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1980. Zhu Jincheng. Bo Juyi ji jianjiao. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1988. Zhu Wanshu. “Li Zhuowu piping quben kao.” Wenxian 93, 2002/3: 107-23. Zhuangzi jishi. Edited by Guo Qingfan. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961. Zurndorfer, Harriet. “Women in the Epistemological Strategy of Chinese Encyclopedia: Preliminary Observations from some Sung, Ming and Ch’ing Works.” In Chinese Women in the Imperial Past, edited by Harriet Zurndorfer, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999.

index

315

INDEX A New Account, see Shishuo xinyu Accompanied reading, 74 Allen, Joseph, 72 Amended Record, see Bu Du ji An Lushan, 61 an tou zhi shu, 39 Ancestor’s Hall Temple (Zutang si), 119, 130-31 Anqing, 112-3, 118-9, 138, 141, 143 Apter, David, 151 Assembly Garden (Ji yuan), 119, 128130, 132, 134-6, 144-5 Awareness Garden (Wu yuan), 118 Baizi Hill Villa (Baizi shan bieye), 119, 125-7, 134-5, 139-140, 142 Bao Tingbo, 193 Barr, Allan, H., xv-xvi Beauty Shang, 196 Beauty Yang, 196 Bei Qi shu, 224-5 Bei shi, 224-5 Beijing Library, 38 Beijing, 40, 42, 46, 114, 116, 258 Berg, Daria, xix, 139 bibliographic codes, xvii, 81, 84, 101, 104 bibliographic text, 102, 104 Bickford, Maggie, 58 Bo Juyi, 173, 185-6, 188 book prices, 259-61 book reviser, 273 Brook, Timothy, 263 Bu Du ji, 190-197 Buddhism, Buddhists, 124, 136-7, 145, 228-32, 282 Butterfly works, 96 caizi jiaren, 96 Cao Xun, 120 Celestial Unity Pavilion (Tian yi ge), 194-5 Chang, Kang-i Sun, 279, 286 Changkang, 49 Chao Gongwu, 190-91, 195 Chartier, Roger, 86

Chen Baxian, 202 Chen Di, 193 Chen Dongyuan, 175 Chen Duxiu, 149 Chen dynasty, 202 Chen Hongshou, 61, 72 Chen Jiru, 44, 47, 262, 274 Chen Zhensun, 190-91, 195 Chen Zilong, 263, 272, 276, 281, 284 Chidu xinyu, 276 Chikusa Masaaki, 231 China’s Vernacular Cultures, xiv Chishang Ke, 248 Chou jun ba, 4 chronological history, 205-6, 218-9, 236 Chu ci, 50, 60 Chuanqi, 7 Chun deng mi, 117, 137 Chunqiu Guliang zhuan, 210 Chunqiu, 205-6, 236 Citan qingwan, 44 Clear Brook Poetry Club, 268 Clunas, Craig, 45 collator, 273 Collection, see Yiwen leiju commentator, 74, 89-90, 95, 99 Confucianism, 161-3 Continuation, see Xu Du ji courtesan works, 82, 96, 107, 110 Crawford, Robert, 112-3 critical edition, xvii, 80, 83 Cui Yingying, 37, 51, 53 Dazhong shenghuo, 153, 154 Dong Qichang, 274 Dong Xiaowan, 115, 287 Dong Xun, 201 Dongxian ge, 58 Dove Ridge Thatched Hall (Jiuling caotang), 119, 122, 139-41, 144 Du Bi, 211-2, 225 Du Fu, 60-61 Du ji, xviii, 170, 172-183, 188-97 Du Liniang, 256 Du Zhongyuan, xvii-xviii, 151, 154-60, 163, 167-8

316

index

Dudbridge, Glen, xiii-xiv, xix-xx Dunhuang, xviii early Qing, xvi, xix, 7, 9, 36, 46 Eastern Grove (Donglin), 111-5, 123 Eastern Wei dynasty, 201, 211, 219-20 Emperor Ming (Liu Song, r. 465-471), 175-6 Emperor Ren (Song, r. 1023-1063), 196 Empress Xian, 181 Empress Yang, 181 Er lao ge, see Two Old Gentlemen Pavilion Ernü yingxiong zhuan, 76 Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period, 72 ethnicity, 208-9, 221-2 factionalism, 225-7 Fang Weiyi, 254, 269, 286 Fayuan zhulin, 230 Feng Menglong, 6, 11, 28, 33, 189, 262 Feng Quan (Lu’an), 126, 135 Feng Zhenluan, 9, 23-4 Fengyue meng, 102, 105 Fenshu, 46 fictionality, 80 Fong, Grace, 244 Ford, Carolyn, xviii Fu she, see Revival Society, Restoration Society Fujian, 114 Funü zazhi, 149 Gao Qi, 59 Ge Zhengqi, 265, 283 Geng Shi, 227 gentility, 247, 250, 257, 263-5, 283-4, 287, 289 ghost-editor, 268, 284, 288 ghost-writer, 270, 284 Gimpel, Denise, 150, 152 Gong’an school, 67, 111, 116, 133, 135, 140, 143, 246 Gonggui shishi, 254, 269 Gonggui wenshi, 254, 269 Gongsun Shu, 227 Good Beginning Garden (Chu yuan), 119, 132-3, 144 Greenblatt, Stephen, 159, 238 Gu Kaizhi, 49 Gu Qiyin, 98 Gu Ruopu, 250

Guang hongming ji, 230 Gui Shufen, 269 guiqing, 60-61 guixiu, 249 Gujin mingyuan baihua shiyu, 269 Gujin mingyuan huishi, 248 Gujin mingyuan shici xuan, 284 Gujin nüshi, 248 Gujin tan’gai, 189 Guling, 45 Guochao guixiu zhengshi ji, 269 Gushan, 58 Hall of Chanting What is in my Heart (Yonghuai tang), 116, 119, 123 Han dynasty, 174, 181, 208-9, 218, 222 Hanan, Patrick, 11, 18, 20 handbooks on courtesans, 258 Hangzhou, xvi, 37, 193, 244, 250, 259, 261-2, 274, 283 Hanyu dacidian, 54 Hardie, Alison, xvii, 273 He Bi, 41 He Liangjun, 67 Hebo, 60 Hedong jun, 278 Hegel, Robert, 87 Henan, 12, 117 Holzman, Donald, 116 Hongfu ji, 46 Honglou meng, 76-77, 87, 96, 101, 103, 105 Hongniang, 61, 65 Hou Ba, 208 Hou Biao, 207-8 Hou Jin, xviii-xix, 208 Hou Jing, xviii-xix, 200-37 Hsiao, Li-ling, xvi Hsiung, S. I., 53 Hu Jinwang, 143 Hu Wenkai, 244, 279 Hu Yinglin, 193, 194 Hu Zhengyan, 63 Huaining, 113, 119, 124, 140, 144 Huan Wen, 170, 176, 178-183, 187-8, 197 Huanduzhai publishing house, 261 Huang Dezhen, 267, 269 Huang Lin, 46 Huang Ming jingshi wenbian, 281 Huang Shude, 255 Huang Yuanjie, 254, 267, 274, 285

index Huang Yuanzhen, 254 Huang Yuji, 191 Huang Zongxi, 194 Huating, 255 Huaying jinzhen, 72 Huayue hen, xvi-xvii, 75-9, 81-2, 84-7, 90-100, 102-6, 108 human-sentiment novels, 81-2 Idema, Wilt, 54-5, 57, 63 imperial ancestral sacrifice, 207, 209-10 Ji Cheng, xvii, 59, 111-2, 118-20 Ji She, 281 Ji Yun, 281 Ji Zhongju, 131 Jiang Xiaru, 166 Jiang Xingyu, 46 Jiang Yingke, 116 Jiang Yuanxi, 248 Jiang Yuanzuo, 248 Jiangling, 202, 216 Jiangnan, xix, 34, 160, 188, 239, 247-8, 258-60, 264, 266 Jiangyun lou, 279 Jiankang, 202, 204, 207, 214, 216, 219, 223-5, 229, 232-4 Jianwen, Emperor of Liang, 202, 215-6, 218-9, 225-6, 232-4 Jiao Ran, 65 Jiaren, 60 Jiaxing, 267, 272 Jiezi yuan, see Mustard Seed Garden Jin dynasty, 208-9, 212 Jin Ping Mei, 4, 6, 18, 263, 266 Jin Shengtan, 9-10 Jingling school of poetry, 246 Jingu qiguan, 6, 15, 25-8, 30-31 Jintai, 40 Jiu fu, 119, 144 Judge, Joan, 152 kao yi commentary, 203-4, 216, 237 kaozheng, 85, 94 King Hui of Chu, 60 Ko, Dorothy, 249, 267, 277 Kong Shangren, 115 lady scholar (nüshi), 282 late Ming, xvi, xvii, xix, 9, 11-2, 37-9, 40, 44-5, 47, 49, 51, 53, 57, 67, 73, 87, 111, 114, 118, 124, 134, 141-2,

317

144, 146, 194, 241, 243-6, 248-9, 253-4, 258-61, 263-6, 269, 272, 276, 282, 286 late Qing, 81, 84, 91, 97, 103, 107, 152, 163, 193 Later Liang dynasty, 202 Li Dazhao, 149 Li Hu, 248, 253 Li Shi’s daughter, see Miss Li Li Tingmo, 43 Li Yin, 283 Li Yu, 22-4, 262, 274 Li Zhi (Zhuowu), xvi, 37, 41, 44-50, 188-9, 245-6, Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji zhenben, 37, 44, Li Zhuowu xiansheng piping Xixiang ji, xvi Liang dynasty, 201-2, 208-19, 220-25, 227-8, 230, 232-6 Liang Qichao, 163 Liang shu, 208, 220, 224, 228, 233 Liaozhai zhiyi, xv-xvi, 3-5, 7, 10, 15, 178, 20-21, 24-8, 31, 34, 36; —tales: ‘Chen Xijiu,’ 16; ‘Danan,’ 24, 28; ‘Fengyang shiren,’ 22; ‘Gengniang,’ 12, 15; ‘Gu’er,’ 27; ‘Hengniang,’ 22; ‘Hu Siniang,’ 16, 19; ‘Hua bi’, 27; ‘Hujia nü,’ 10; ‘Huo nü,’ 34; ‘Jiangcheng,’ 14; ‘Luocha haishi,’ 22; ‘Nianyang,’ 17; ‘Nie Zheng,’ 6; ‘Qiaoniang,’ 18, 20; ‘Qingmei,’ 24; ‘Qinse,’ 26-7; ‘Qiu Daniang,’ 2930; ‘Qu guai,’ 22; ‘San sheng,’ 28; ‘Shanhu,’ 18, 26; ‘Shao Jiuniang,’ 7; ‘Shi Qingxu,’ 27; ‘Wang Cheng,’ 15; ‘Wang Gui’an,’ 28; ‘Xianren dao,’ 5, 18; ‘Xiaocui,’ 14; ‘Xihou,’ 28; ‘Xia xue,’ 6; ‘Xing Ziyi,’ 24; ‘Yun Cuixian,’ 31-2; ‘Zeng Youyu,’ 18, 21; ‘Zhang Cheng,’ 28 Liechao shiji xiaozhuan, 279 Liechao shiji, 269, 279 Lienü zhuan, 171, 181, 192, 277 Lin Hejing, 58, 60 Lin Tiansu 274, 285 Linchuan Princess (Liu Song dynasty), 175-6 Ling Mengchu, 6, 11, 15, 25 Linian tu, 228-9, 231 Lisao, 248 Liu Cang, 65

318

index

Liu Changxiu, 125, 139 Liu Jin, 201, 204 Liu Rushi, 239, 261, 263, 268-70, 272, 274-6, 278-88; —Liu Rushi: and Chen Zilong, 263, 284; and Qian Qianyi, 275, 288; and Wang Wei, 282-3; as editor, 278-81, 287-8; as ghost editor, 270, 287-8; early life, 272; travels, 274, her library, 261; names, 276; selection strategy, 285-6 Liu Taihua, 45 Liu Xiaobiao, 183 Liu Yin, 277 Liu Yiqing, 179 Liu Zhiji, 206 Liu Zhongli, 200-1, 203-4 Liu zi, 284 Liudu fangluan gongjie, 114, 145 Liyang, Princess of, 215-6 Lost Books of Medieval China, xiv loyalty, 201, 203-4, 217, 220, 223-5, 234 Lu Fahe, 224 Lü Jishi, 131 Lu Xun, 81, 96, 109, 149, 166 Lu Yan, 225 Lun fengsu zhazi, 226 Luo Qilan, 266 Luo Zhenyu, 180-81 Ma Shiying, 114, 138 Manchurian crisis, 154, 156, 158, 163 Mann, Susan, 243 Mao Xiang, 115, 287-8 Mao Zonggang, 9 May Fourth (1919), 152, 159, 161-4, 166-8 McGann, Jerome, 82 Mei Dingzuo, 248 Mei Yaochen, 173, 186-8 Meigong, 47 Meiji era, 163-4 Mi Fu, 136 Min Qiji, 69 Ming sanshi jia shixuan, 269 Mingfeng ji, 145 Minggui shixuan, 269 Mingshan ji, 269, 281 Mingyuan ji’nang, 248 Mingyuan shigui, 246, 248 Mingyuan shiwei, 268-9 Miss Li, 170, 178-83, 185, 188, 197 Mitter, Rana, xvii-xviii, 239

Monan qu, 4 Mudan ting, 39 Mustard Seed Garden, 262 Naifei Ding, 266 Nan jiugong shisan diao qupu, 43 Nan shi, 203-4, 208, 215-6, 220, 224, 228, 233 Nanjing, 112, 114-5, 119, 122, 130, 1368, 145, 258-9, 262, 287 Nankang Princess, 170, 178-83, 185-9, 197 Nanqu, 43 narrative frame, 95 narrator, 74, 77-9, 95, 109 National Central Library, 38 nineteenth-century literature, 107 Niu Sengru, 7 Northern Qi dynasty, 216 Northern Song dynasty, xix, 202, 2057, 209, 213, 217, 221-2, 227, 232, 235-7 Northern Zhou dynasty, 202 Nü xiao jing, 171 Nüsao, 248, 253 ˆki Yasushi, 46, 261 Ouyang Xiu, 221 Ouyang Xun, 182-3, 192 Pai’an jingqi, 25 Pan Zhiheng, 11 Peach Blossom Spring (Taohua yuan), 126, 134-6, 139, 145-6 Pei Zhigao, 223 Pelliot, Paul, 180 Pidian huayi Xixiang, 43 pingdian, 94 Pinhua Baojian, 96 Pipa ji, 46 political hierarchy, 211-4 Prince of Fu (Fu wang), 114 Proclamation of Nanjing, see Liudu fangluan gongjie Pu Songling, xvi, 3-5, 7, 9-10, 12, 15-20, 22-8, 31-3, 36 Qi ba xiu Ganci ta zhazi, 231 Qi Biaojia, 261 Qian Qianyi, 113-4, 246, 261, 269, 2745, 279-80, 285, 287-8 Qian Zhongshu, 7

index Qiangu kuai, 4 Qianlong emperor, 194, 281 Qiantang, 244, 276 Qifeng guan, 45-6 qing (emotion), 61, 67, 246 Qinglou meng, 77, 94, 96, 104 Qinglou yunyu, 248 Qingni lianhua ji, 248 Qingxi yinshe, see Clear Brook Poetry Club Qinhuai, 275, 287-8 qiru congshang, 248, 262 Qu Juesheng, 248, 253 Qu Yuan, 50, 60 Rang du zhou, 5 Record, see Du ji red-light fiction, 75-7, 100, 102, 108 Religious Experience and Lay Society in Tang China: A Reading of Tai Fu’s Kuang-i chi, xiii-xiv Restoration Society (see Revival Society, Fu she), 281 Revival Society (Restoration Society, Fu she), 114-5, 136, 145, 281 Ricci, Matteo, 259 Rongyu tang, 45-6 Rou putuan, 22 Ruan Dacheng, xvii, 111-46 Ruan E, 113, 145 Ruan Ji, 116-7, 119, 136, 144 Ruan Yixun, 119, 124 Ruan Zihua, 113, 124 Runji, 269, 279-82, 284-6 rushi (Confucian gentleman), 278 Rushi (Liu Rushi), 278 Sanguo dian lüe, 203, 216, 221 Sanguo yanyi, 4 Sanhui tang, 45 Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, 116, 129, 136 Shang jin xi shu, 212-3 Shang Jinglan, 261 Shang shu, 210 Shanhai jing, 171, 177-8 Shanyin, 43 Shaoling, Prince of, see Xiao Lun Shen Hui, 269 Shen Huiduan, 254 Shen Jing, 39, 43 Shen Li, 269

319

Shen Maoxue, 256 Shen Renlan, 255 Shen Tiansun, 255-6 Shen Yixiu, 239, 241, 243, 247, 2507, 264, 266-70, 272, 282-3, 285, 288; —Shen Yixiu: and Liu Rushi, 239, 269-70, 272, 274, 285; and Ye Shaoyuan, 250; as editor, 247, 250-2, 257, 264, 267-8, 283, 288; as gentlewoman, 257; biography, 241; selection strategy, 253-6, 264; selfimage, 266; voice and poetic works, 243 Shenbao, 149 Sheng Shicai, 168 Sheng Zhenyong, 269 Shenghuo, 153-8, 161, 163-5, 167-8 Shenzong, Emperor of Song, 221-2, 227 Shi cuo ren, see Chun deng mi Shi Hu, 228 Shi jing, 171, 243, 245, 251 Shi’er lou, 22 Shibao, 152 shidafu, 247 Shijian tang, 42 Shinü shi, 245 Shisantang shumu, 193 Shishuo xinyu, xviii, 172-3, 177, 179-81, 183, 188 Shizhu zhai shuhua pu, 63, 72 Shuai Ji, 39 Shuihu zhuan, 4, 9-11, 46, 263 Shuozhou, 207 Shuxiu zongji, 248 Siku quanshu, 194-6, 281 Sima Guang, xviii-xix, 200-37 Sima Qian, 264 Song Maocheng, 11 Songjiang, 244, 262, 272, 281 Starr, Chloë, xvi-xvii Stone Nest (Shi chao), 119-21, 124, 135, 138, 140 Strange, Mark, xviii Su Shi, 58 Sui dynasty, 202 Sun Feihu, 63 Sun Huiyuan, 269 Suzhou, 140-1, 258-9, 262, 268, 272, 286-7 Taibei, 38, 46 Taiji Hall, 200, 232

320

index

Taiping guangji, 173, 178 Taiping yulan, 173, 178 Taiqing ji, 203 Taizhou school of thought, 67, 245 Tang dynasty, 209, 222 Tang Emperor Minghuang, 63 Tang Xianzu, 39, 42, 44-5, 50, 115-6, 246, 256 Tanyangzi, 256 Tao Butui, 49 Tao Hongjing, 132, 144 Tao Qian (Yuanming), 50, 120-21, 1345, 139-40, 145-6 Taohua shan, 115 Taoism, Taoists, 48, 132, 135-6, 144 Ten Bamboo Studio, 63 Ten Endowments Belvedere (Shilai ge), 119, 128, 132, 136, 144 Ten Poets of Suzhou, 268 textual modernisation, 94 textuality, 76, 80, 85 The Hsi-yu chi: A Study of Antecedents to the Sixteenth-Century Chinese Novel, xiv The Legend of Miao-shan, xiv The Tale of Li Wa: Study and Critical Edition of a Chinese Story from the Ninth Century, xiv Ti Longmeng sengfang shi, 65 Tian Rucheng, 245 Tian yi ge, see Celestial Unity Pavilion Tian Yiheng, 244-5, 247-8, 253-4 Tianzhang ge, xvi, 37-8, 40-42, 44-6, 51, 68-9, 72-3 Tingqiuguan guizhong tongren ji, 266 Tong zhi, 205-6 Tongcheng, 113, 254, 286 Tongguan xinbian, 244, 248 Tongguan yibian, 248, 253 tongxin, 245-6 Tu Long, 255-6 Tu Yaose, 255-6 Two Old Gentlemen Pavilion, 194-7

Wang Duanshu, 267-9, 274, 280 Wang Dun, 176 Wang Fengxian, 255 Wang Hui, 254 Wang Ji, 191, 195 Wang Jide, 40, 42, 44 Wang Jiu, 17 Wang Mang, 227 Wang Mian, 58 Wang Minru, 17 Wang Qi, 261-2, 276 Wang Ranming, 274, 278, 282, 287 Wang Sengbian, 216 Wang Shifu, 45, 63, 65 Wang Shiheng, 118 Wang Shizhen, 45, 67, 145, 256 Wang Siren, 115 Wang Wei (courtesan, ca. 1600-1647), 269, 274, 281-3, 285 Wang Wei, 207-8, 216 Wang Zao, 175-6 Wang Zhongmin, 180-81 Wanyan Yun Zhu, 269, 283 Wei Dazhong, 113 Wei Xiuren, 79, 87, 89, 95, 97-9 Wei Zhongxian, xvii, 111, 113, 145 Wenchang, 43, 47 wenren, 247 West, Stephen, 54-5, 57, 63 Western Wei dynasty, 201-2 Widmer, Ellen, 251, 266, 276, 287 Wowen jushi, 278 Wu Chongzu, 175 Wu gui, 226 Wu Shan, 254, 267, 274, 285 Wu Yuexiu, 123 Wu, Emperor of Liang, 200-2, 215, 218-35 Wujiang, 241, 272 Wusheng xi, 22 Wuyin cao, 263, 284 Wuzhong shizi, see Ten Poets of Suzhou

University of Oxford, xiiv-xiv

Xiangxue ju, 40 Xiao Dong, 218, 227 Xiao Gang, see Jianwen, Emperor of Liang Xiao Jian, 201 Xiao Jie, 223-5 Xiao Jun, 200 Xiao Lun, 200-201, 203, 227 Xiao Que, 201

Van de Ven, Hans, 151 van Gulik, R. H., 72 Vimalakirti Sutra, 131, 136 Wang An, 262 Wang Anshi, 221-2, 227, 236 Wang Duan, 269

index

321

Xiao Yi, see Yuan, Emperor of Liang Xiao Zhengde, 234 Xiaoqing, 276 Xiaoshuo yuebao, 150, 152 Xiari deng Guangnong Lou he Cui Shijun, 65 Xie An, 178 Xie Ju, 220 Xie Weirui, 216 Xie Yi, 178 Xin qingnian, 149, 155 Xin Tang shu, 221 xingling, 116, 246 Xingmeng pianyan, 36 Xingshi yinyuan zhuan, 5, 262 Xinjiang, 168 Xinsheng, xvii, 149, 151, 153-69 Xiong Tanlang, 201 Xixiang ji, xvi, 37-8, 40, 42-5, 68-9, 72-3 Xiyou ji, 4, 6, 263 Xizhou Sheng, 5, 262 Xu Bo, 193 Xu Can, 286 Xu Chi, 233 Xu Du ji, 190, 192 Xu Fenpeng, 43-4 Xu Guangqi, 263 Xu Jingfan, 280, 286 Xu Lin, 225 Xu Shishuo xinyu, 190 Xu Sihui, 216 Xu Wei, 43-5, 47 Xu Yuan, 286 Xu yutai wenyuan, 248 Xu Zi, 115 Xue Susu, 285 Xun Ji, 230

Ye Wanwan, 241, 250 Ye Xiaoluan, 240-41, 250, 257 Ye Zhou, 46 Yeh, Wen-hsin, 153 yin (female principle), 186, 277 yin (hidden, obscure), 277 Yin Buhai, 233 Yinglian, 276 Yingying, 51, 53-7, 60-61, 63, 65, 67, 72 Yingzong, Emperor of Song, 205-6 Yirensi, 248, 251, 256, 258, 269 Yiwen leiju, xviii, 172, 177-8, 182-3, 185, 189, 211 Yizhen (Yizheng), 118 Yong huai shi, 116 Yonghuaitang shi, 116 You Jingquan, 45 You Mao, 191 Yougui ji, 46 Yu Chongyuan, 175 Yu Dafu, 164 Yu Jiaxi, 180 Yu Tongzhi, xviii, 176, 191, 195 Yu Xian, 248 Yu Xiangdou, 263 Yuan An, 139 Yuan Hongdao, 116, 143, 246 Yuan Tao, 175-6 Yuan Zhen, 185 Yuan Zhongdao, 116, 142-3, 246 Yuan, Emperor of Liang, 202, 218, 224, 235 Yuanye, 59, 111, 118 Yuhe ji, 46 Yu-Shih Chen, 280 Yutai wenyuan, 248 Yuzhang, Prince of, see Xiao Dong

Yan ge, 43 yan shang zhi qu, 39 Yan Song, 113, 145 Yang Ai, 276 Yang guifei, 63, 65 Yang Kan, 223, 225 Yang Liu, 3 Yang Ruozeng, 191 Yang Yunjuan, 276 Yanzi jian, 115, 117 Yao Dajuin, 68 Yao Xing, 228 Yao Yunzai, 131 Ye Shaoyuan, 241, 250, 252, 257, 263

Zaiyong qianyun, 58 Zha Rong, 228 Zhang Dai, 115, 131, 136-7, 145 Zhang Gong, 53, 56, 60-61, 63, 65, 67 Zhang Mengzheng, 248 Zhang Shenzhi, 72 Zhang Xiu, 122, 144 Zhang Yinqing, 255 Zhang Yinyuan, 255 Zhang Zhixiang, 244, 248, 253 Zhang Zhupo, 9 Zhao Erzhan, 133, 144-5 Zhao Lun, 227 Zhao Shijie, 248

322 Zhejiang Provincial Library, 45 Zheng Dajie, 195 Zheng Jie, 193 Zheng Qin, 194 Zheng Wen’ang, 248 Zheng Xing, 194 Zhi ren lun, 226 Zhong Xing, 246-8, 254, 265, 285 Zhongyuan yinyun, 43 Zhou Daodeng, 272 Zhou Dunyi, 65 Zhou Huizhen, 255 Zhou Lanxiu, 254

index Zhou li, 236 Zhou Lianggong, 46 Zhou Shizhen, 225 Zhou yi, 212 Zhu Daosheng, 136 Zhu Wanshu, 46 Zhu Yi, 220, 222-3, 225-7 Zhu Yizun, 193 Zichai ji, 39 Zixiao ji, 40 Zizhi tongjian, xviii-xix, 200-37 Zou Tao, 104, 109 Zou Taofen, xviii, 153-5, 157, 161, 165, 168

CHINA STUDIES ISSN 1570–1344 1. Berg, D. Carnival in China. A Reading of the Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12426 8 2. Hockx, M. Questions of Style. Literary Societies and Literary Journals in Modern China, 1911-1937. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12915 4 3. Seiwert, H. Popular Religious Movements and Heterodox Sects in Chinese History. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13146 9 4. Heberer, T. Private Entrepreneurs in China and Vietnam. Social and Political Functioning of Strategic Groups. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12857 3 5. Xiang, B. Transcending Boundaries. Zhejiangcun: the Story of a Migrant Village in Beijing. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14201 0 6. Huang, N. Women, War, Domesticity. Shanghai Literature and Popular Culture of the 1940s. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14242 8 7. Dudbridge, G. Books, Tales and Vernacular Culture. Selected Papers on China. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14770 5 8. Cook, C.A. Death in Ancient China. The Tale of One Man’s Journey. 2006. ISBN-10: 90 04 15312 8, ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15312 7 9. Sleeboom-Faulkner, M. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). Shaping the Reforms, Academia and China (1977-2003). 2007. ISBN-10: 90 04 15323 3, ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15323 3 10. Berg, D. (ed.) Reading China. Fiction, History and the Dynamics of Discourse. Essays in Honour of Professor Glen Dudbridge. 2007. ISBN-10: 90 04 15483 3, ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15483 4 11. Hillenbrand, M. Literature and the Practice of Resistance. Japanese and Taiwanese Fiction, 1960-1990. 2007. ISBN-10: 90 04 15478 7, ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15478 0