Within the Human Realm: The Poetry of Huang Zunxian, 1848-1905 (Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature and Institutions)

Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature and Institutions General Editor, Denis Twitchett WITHIN THE HUMAN REALM This book is a study of the poetry of Huang Zunxian, one of the most famous authors of late nineteenth-century China. The first part consists of a detailed biography outlining Huang's literary and political career. This is followed by a critical discussion on Huang's poetry, including such topics as his theory of literature, his traditional verse, his highly original poetry on foreign lands, his political satire, and his scientific verse. The book concludes with a generous sampling of his poetry in translation.

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Within the Human Realm: The Poetry of Huang Zunxian 1848-1905 J. D. Schmidt University of British Columbia

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521462716 © Cambridge University Press 1994 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1994 This digitally printed version (with corrections) 2007 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Schmidt, J. D. 1946Within the human realm: the poetry of Huang Zunxian, 1848-1905 / J. D. Schmidt. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-521-46271-1 1. Huang, Tsun-hsien, 1848-1905 - Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. PL2710.U3Z88 1994 895.1'148-dc20 93-50082 CIP ISBN 978-0-521-46271-6 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-03666-5 paperback

For Professor Qian Zhonglian i (Esun) # 1 ^ and Weiwei

Contents

Preface vii I 1 2 3

The poet as a young man 3 Huang, the diplomat 20 Reform and reaction 35 II

4

Biography

Criticism

The theory of the Poetic Revolution 47 5 The practice of revolution 58 6

9

Traditional themes 78 7 Foreign climes 93 8 The brave new world 114 The development of Huang Zunxian's satire 143 10 The late satirical poetry 159 11 Huang Zunxian and modern science 181 12

Quatrains of 1899 195 13 Fin de siecle 207 III

Translations

14 Early verse (ca. 1864-1868) 217 15 The growing talent (1868-1877) 223 17

16 Tokyo (1877-1882) 232 San Francisco (1882-1885) 242

Contents

18 Return to China (1885-1890)

254

19 The empire on which the sun never sets (1890-1892) 20 Singapore (1891-1894) 278 21 War and reform (1894-1899) 22

Retirement (1899-1905) Notes 305 Bibliography 338 Index 349

VI

283 296

266

Preface

We normally associate late nineteenth-century China with catastrophic change, not cultural creativity. Western scholars have written detailed accounts of such national disasters as the Taiping Revolution, the SinoJapanese War, and the Boxer Rebellion, but even many specialists on nineteenth-century China would be hard put to name one painter or writer from the final decades of China's last imperial dynasty. Only during the preceding ten years or so has this picture begun to change. A few exhibition catalogues and studies of nineteenth-century painting have appeared; musicologists have begun to examine the emergence of Beijing opera and many other regional operas during the late Qing dynasty; and scholars of Chinese fiction have started to explore the Chinese novel at the turn of the century. But so far, the art most revered by nineteenth-century intellectuals, namely, poetry in the classical language, has been almost completely neglected by Western scholars. In the present age, poetry may seem a remote and even esoteric art to the general reading public in the West, but the situation was very different in premodern China. Practically all the major political and intellectual figures of nineteenth-century China wrote poetry in the classical language. Zeng Guofan, the scholar-general who saved his dynasty from the Taiping Rebels during the 1860s, and Zhang Zhidong, one of the pillars of the Self-strengthening Movement, were accomplished poets; and all the leaders of the late nineteenth-century Reform Movement, such as Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and Huang Zunxian, created highly original verse. For these intellectuals, poetry in the ancient ski form was the supreme literary art, the form they used to express their deepest and most personal thoughts. Many contemporary Chinese critics consider Huang Zunxian to be the most distinguished poet among the late nineteenth-century reformers. Although these evaluations are frequently based on extraliterary criteria (e.g., Huang's progressive thought or his patriotism), his poems are an vii

Preface

excellent introduction to the literature of the age, no matter what rank we assign them, for more than any other author of the period Huang managed to transcend the bounds of time and geography. His vast knowledge of the Chinese literary tradition allowed him to sum up three thousand years of poetry in his own writings, at the same time as he looked forward to the twentieth century. He was as familiar with the first-millennium B.C. anthology The Classic ofPoetry or the medieval Tangdynasty masters as he was with the latest nineteenth-century authors, and he proposed practically all the ideas of the Vernacular Literature Movement initiated by Hu Shi in 1917, at the same time as he anticipated the May Fourth authors of the 1920s in his approach to writing (particularly his iconoclasm and commitment to political change). His position as one of the leaders of the late Qing-dynasty Reform Movement makes his poetry an important source of information about nineteenth-century Chinese politics, and few Chinese writers possessed the insight into society's shortcomings (and the gift for satire) that enabled him to dissect late nineteenth-century China with such witty results. But his knowledge of the world was hardly limited to China; his extensive experience as a diplomat in Japan, the United States, England, and Singapore meant that he was the first Chinese poet to write in any detail about non-Chinese societies. He was also the first Chinese writer to embrace the new international technological culture taking shape at the end of the last century, as we can see from the large number of poems he wrote on scientific themes. The special character of Huang Zunxian's poetry requires a somewhat different approach from that employed for most other Chinese poets. Most pre-twentieth-century Chinese poets served in the government, so the connection between poetry and politics has always been close in China, but it was particularly close in Huang Zunxian's case. Thus, in Part I (Chapters 1-3), a brief biography of the poet, special attention has been paid to the influence Huang's career as a diplomat and reformer had upon the evolution of his poetry. However, in Part II (Chapters 4-13) I have attempted to make up for the excessively political approach to Huang Zunxian's poetry adopted by most Chinese scholars, concentrating instead on the more purely literary aspects of his creations. In Part II I examine the theory and practice of Huang Zunxian's late Qing-dynasty Poetic Revolution, study his poetry on traditional themes, and conclude with chapters concerning his more original verse on foreign lands, contemporary Chinese politics, and modern science. A principal emphasis of this study is to see how Huang Zunxian adapted traditional poetic devices to depict a new world that his classical models could never have envisioned, and therefore I constantly viii

Preface

ask how Huang's poetry fits into the history of Chinese literature as a whole. Part III, which contains my translations of a selection of the poems, is the first extensive translation of Huang Zunxian's poetry into a Western language. I make no claims to be a master of translation, but within the limits of my abilities I have attempted to make the translations as enjoyable as possible for both specialist and nonspecialist readers. Some specialists may complain that the renderings are not literal enough, but my earlier attempts at literal translations of Huang Zunxian's poetry convinced me that an overly narrow approach would not work. Huang Zunxian's poetry is difficult, being particularly famous for its deft use of allusions to earlier Chinese literature, and a literal rendering of these would likely mystify all but the most learned specialists. Hence I have attempted to render Huang Zunxian's allusions with equivalent English expressions, or, when this is impossible, by circumlocutions that explain the meaning of the original. In spite of the freedoms that have been taken with the original, the translations are not as free as they might appear on the surface; all of them follow the Chinese closely, line by line, even preserving the original word order when consistent with good English usage. Generally speaking, whenever the translations differ enough from the original to confuse someone reading along in Chinese, footnotes with a more literal version are appended. In the interest of readability, the footnotes to the translations have been kept fairly short; important literary and historical allusions necessary for the understanding of poems have been identified, but allusions that merely involve the echoing of earlier works are rarely noted. In line with recent publications, placenames and names of persons are identified only if necessary to the understanding of a poem. This book has adopted the pinyin system of romanizing Chinese words, in order to be consistent with all works published in China today and practically all Western-language newspapers, periodicals, and even scholarly works on China. Since much pre-1970s scholarship on nineteenth-century China used the Wade-Giles system, readers will notice discrepancies between names cited in the main body of the book and earlier Westernlanguage references, but these should not cause too many difficulties. Except where noted, all specific dates have been indicated on the Chinese lunar calendar. The coexistence of the Gregorian and the Chinese lunar calendar in late nineteenth-century China is confusing for Western and Chinese readers, so the more important lunar dates have been converted to their Western equivalents and put in parentheses, but it was felt that Chinese poetry is too closely linked with the lunar calendar to make wholesale conversion desirable.

Preface

The debt of this work to Professor Qian Esun's (Zhonglian) lifetime of scholarship on Huang Zunxian should be apparent to anyone who reads the footnotes to the poems. Qian Esun is one of the few scholars with a fully traditional background still alive in China, and during two visits to his home on the campus of Suzhou University, I was constantly amazed by the breadth and depth of his learning concerning all aspects of premodern Chinese culture. Without his detailed annotations of Huang Zunxian's collected poems, this work would have been next to impossible to write, and I can never fully express my gratitude to this great scholar. Undoubtedly, many mistakes remain in these translations of one of China's most challenging poets, but these are certainly the result of my inability to understand Professor Qian's learned comments or to comprehend the subtleties of the Changshu dialect he speaks. In any case, I shall be grateful to any critics who point out the remaining errors. Finally, I wish to recommend an approach to this book for nonspecialists who are averse to reading literary criticism. They may want to read Part I, Huang Zunxian's biography, first and then skip over to Part III, the translated poems. The notes to the translations contain cross-references to the critical section, and nonspecialists who do not intend to read this in its entirety can easily select the sections of interest to them. I would like to thank the Committee for Cultural Planning I&M t i t tic H i t H*, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China, for generous assistance with the translation portions of this work, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for an earlier grant that allowed me to do initial research. This book would not have seen the light of day without the liberal publication subsidies of Paul Y. Wong, M.D., of Albany, Oregon, grandnephew of Huang Zunxian; Dr. Susan X. Xu-Wong, his wife; Michael D. Wong, great-grandnephew of Huang Zunxian; and the Canadian Federation of the Humanities using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I owe a special debt of gratitude to those scholars who took out valuable time to read my manuscript: Yeh Chia-ying ^M1^:, Professor Emerita, University of British Columbia; Irving Yu-cheng Lo JHIfPlE, Professor Emeritus, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Department of Comparative Literature, University of Indiana; William Schultz, Professor Emeritus, University of Arizona; and Professor Denis Twitchett, Department of East Asian Studies, Princeton University. I also thank the three anonymous readers who evaluated the manuscript for Cambridge University Press and the Canadian Federation for the Humanities. My work has benefited greatly from their many learned comments and criticisms.

Preface

I also would like to thank the following individuals who provided me assistance or hospitality during the long gestation period of this work: Huang Jingchang Hcl&II, Meixian, Huang Zunxian's great-grandson; C. S. Wong ilciSl? (55®), Vancouver, Huang Zunxian's grandson; the staff of the museum at Huang Zunxian's former study, the Hut within the Human Realm (Renjinglu A ^ J S ) , Meixian; Professor Ma Yazhong Jf i2 tf*, Suzhou University; Professor Cao Xu Wttfi, Shanghai Normal University; Professor Qi Senhua ^ ^ ^ , East China Normal University; Professor Shi Zhicun jffiUHiP, East China Normal University; Professor Zheng Hailin JtPJSIS, Shenzhen University; Professor Zhong Xianpei £tlfin, South China Normal University; Professor Wu Hung-i (Wu Hongyi) ^ S ^ , National Taiwan University; Dr. Wei Zhongyou Si&^te, Donghai University; Mr. Zhang Tangqi ^ft^lf of the Central Daily News, Taipei; Ms. Rui-lan Ku Wu $3^111, Center for Chinese Studies, National Central Library, Taipei; Professor Cheng Tsu-yu (Zheng Ziyu) HP^P3ij, Institute of Chinese Culture, Chinese University of Hong Kong; Professor Lai Wood-yan IllftSt, Department of Chinese, University of Hong Kong; E. G. Pulleyblank, Professor Emeritus, Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia; and Cyril Birch, Professor Emeritus, Department of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. I apologize to anyone I have forgotten and to those scholars who would prefer to have their names written in a romanization system other than piny in.

I am also grateful to the Sri Lanka High Commission in Ottawa for information about the site of Kelaniya; the secretarial staff (especially Mrs. Enid Graham) of my own Asian Studies Department; Ms. Linda Joe, Head, and Mr. Hsieh Yim of our Asian Studies Library; Ms. Rachael Winfree, Assistant Editor, Camilla Palmer, Production Editor, and Christie Lerch, Copyeditor, of Cambridge University Press for their care in editing my work. Needless to say, I also owe much to my family and our good friends, the Bakongos. The Estate of Leonard Bernstein, as represented by the legal firm Proskauer, Rose Goetz, and Mendelsohn, and Stereo Review, Hachette Filipacchi Magazines, Inc., have kindly given permission to use material from Leonard Bernstein's article "Mahler: His Time Has Come." Last but not least, I would like to thank Professor Qian Zhonglian HH41 Wt of Suzhou University, the greatest living expert on Huang Zunxian's poetry and Qing-dynasty poetry in general. I shall never forget his warm hospitality and all the assistance he gave me over the years. His erudition and scholarship underlie practically every page of this book, and it is for this reason that I dedicate this work to him. XI

Parti Biography

1 The poet as a young man

Youth Nowadays, Huang Zunxian's iklAM birthplace, the city of Meizhou (also called Meixian 1§ii), is best known in China for its champion soccer teams and large concentration of overseas Chinese retirees, but any traveler wishing to escape the twentieth-century glitter of office buildings and hotels can stroll down its narrow alleys to admire the many imposing old mansions with gray tile roofs, sturdy stone pillars, and intricately carved wooden doors (mostly in an advanced state of decay), all witnesses of a long and colorful history.1 Meizhou was first mentioned, by the name "Chengxiang" ©$$, during the fifth century of our era and received its present name during the tenth century under the Song dynasty. Today it is the most populous city in China dominated by Hakkas (Mandarin, Kejia § ^ , or "Strangers"), descendants of Chinese who migrated from northern China to the South during the upheavals at the end of the Tang dynasty, eventually settling in the marginal agricultural lands of Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Jiangxi, and Hunan provinces. Since they rarely intermarried with their neighbors, the Hakkas retained their own dialect of Chinese and many distinct customs, which gave them a strong sense of uniqueness.2 They first settled in Meizhou during the Song dynasty, but the city became almost completely Hakka in population after large numbers of them fled from western Fujian province to escape the Mongol invasions during the thirteenth century.3 By that time, Meizhou had become the economic center of northeastern Guangdong province, largely due to its location on a broad plain at the confluence of three rivers, the most important being the turbulent Meijiang $$tL, which connects Meizhou directly with the coastal cities Chaozhou Wh)M and Shantou flljll (formerly Swatow) and indirectly with Guangzhou (formerly Canton), the capital and largest city of Guangdong

Biography

province. In spite of its excellent water transport, even today Meizhou lies in a fairly remote area, and most travelers go there by airplane from Guangzhou or endure a bone-rattling twenty-four-hour bus journey, compensated by glorious views of emerald mountains, clad with luxuriant ferns and stately pine trees, and interspersed with narrow valleys watered by fast-flowing streams, where peasants living in round, fortresslike villages scratch a meager living from the stony soil. Life has always been so hard in northeastern Guangdong that its people have tended to look to the outside world to supplement their incomes. Even after the Mongol threat receded, the peasants of the region were frequently on the move, some of them settling in Taiwan during the seventeenth century, many more thousands abandoning their native land for Southeast Asia at the end of the last.4 Nor were members of well-to-do families immune from this wanderlust; while their womenfolk worked at home, many of the men became traveling merchants or served as officials in the Chinese imperial government. In their openness to the outside world and their spirit of adventure, the Hakkas resemble the other inhabitants of Guangdong province, who have been looked down upon by northern Chinese as "Southern Barbarians" (Nanman) for centuries, but who gradually grew in prosperity and began to blossom culturally by the eighteenth century. While the culture of the Qing imperial Court in its northern capital Beijing basked in the late afternoon sunshine of the classical tradition, much of China from the Yangzi Basin southward was more open to innovation, and over a century before Huang Zunxian's birth formerly backward Guangdong became a center for artists who were willing to go beyond stale formulas and for literary figures who refused to be bound by orthodoxy.5 This cultural ferment in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Guangdong was further stimulated by contacts with Western countries, which became increasingly frequent as the nineteenth century progressed. Guangzhou was the only port open to European traders before the First Opium War (1841-2), and by the middle of the nineteenth century Guangdong had become the principal center for the transmission of foreign ideas to China. It is no coincidence that some of the most famous reformers and revolutionaries of late Qing China, such as Huang Zunxian, Kang Yuwei M^U (1858-1927), Liang Qichao ^J&lg (1873-1929), and Sun Yatsen (Mandarin, Sun Yixian H^lfllj), (1855-1925), all hailed from Guangdong province and that two of these, Huang and Sun Yatsen, were of Hakka background.6 Huang Zunxian was born on the twenty-seventh day of the fourth lunar month (May 29), 1848, when Meizhou was called Jiayingzhou ^SriSl^H and the Daoguang emperor had little more than two years left to his

The poet as a young man 7

thirty-year reign. Huang was born into a gentry family that had prospered through commercial activities and investment in land. His great-greatgrandfather, Huang Run Hc^PI, who is reported to have lived to be a hundred, eked out a living by writing livestock contracts at country markets and distinguishing authentic foreign money from counterfeit for local merchants, but by the time of Huang Zunxian's great-grandfather, Huang Xueshi ]INPfiTF, Hakka perseverance and frugality had greatly multiplied the family's wealth. Huang Xueshi's wife, Madame Li ^ K (1774-1858), a woman who was to have a strong influence on Huang Zunxian's youth and in whose mansion he was born (room no. 4), was the first member of the Huang family to come from a scholar-official background. Huang's grandfather, Huang Jisheng ]ic$!jl|?- (1809-91), was a leading figure among the local gentry of Jiayingzhou. He assisted with relief efforts during a devastating famine in 1865, and, according to the local gazeteer of Jiayingzhou, the common people of the district continued to sing his praises long after his death. 8 Huang's father, Huang Hongzao HcftiS! (1828-91), was the first member of the family to succeed in the civil service examinations, and after obtaining the degree of Provincial Graduate (juren) in 1856, he began a long and distinguished official career, gaining praise for his skill in arranging the transport of supplies to the Chinese army in southern Guangdong and northern Vietnam during the Sino-French War. Huang Hongzao was also considered an accomplished poet during his lifetime, and his example must have encouraged Huang Zunxian's early endeavors in composing verse.9 Huang Zunxian grew up in a large household, which consisted of his great-grandmother, his grandparents, a host of uncles and aunts, as well as three younger brothers and two younger sisters by his father's first wife, along with one younger brother and two younger sisters born to his father's two concubines. His father's success in official life ensured that Huang would pursue a classical education in preparation for the civil service examinations, but the relative who exerted the strongest influence on his early education was his great-grandmother, Madame Li. At the age of seventy-five this remarkable woman took complete charge of Huang Zunxian's upbringing, after his younger brother Zunmo UltJI (18491917) and his younger sister Zhenyu 3^3L (born 1850) were born in quick succession, arousing concern that their mother's milk would not be sufficient for all three children. According to a poem written years later when Huang Zunxian made offerings at his great-grandmother's tomb, she Plucked me from Mother's breast and carried me away. From that moment on I never left her side;

Biography

And she cuddled me hundreds of times each day. With her very own hands she cut damask and silk, To tailor an outfit for her little great-grandson. She mixed crystal sugar with snow-white flour And baked sweet tarts for her baby to eat. When my hair was disheveled, she combed it straight; When my feet got dirty, she heated bathwater. She bought rouge and makeup in the marketplace, And then powdered my face until it became fragrant. She coaxed my hair up into a little topknot And then decked me with earrings that glowed like the moon. She dressed me in a red skirt and a crimson blouse, So I looked like a baby girl in every respect!10 Thankfully, Huang Zunxian's great-grandmother did not merely spoil him, for her own upbringing in a scholar-official family had impressed on her the importance of a literary education, and she began teaching Huang to sing Hakka folk songs and to chant poems from the widely read classical anthology, Poems of the Thousand Masters ^ P ^ B V , soon after he could talk. His great-grandmother's intuition that he would become a famous scholar-official some day instilled the self-confidence that enabled Huang to surmount the many hurdles lying in his path, and her efforts to teach him the rudiments of classical poetry formed the basis for his later endeavors in the field of literature. Although Huang's great-grandmother arranged for him to begin his studies under a tutor soon after he could walk well, his formal education in the art of poetry commenced when he was about ten years old. According to Huang's later account, his teacher discovered the young boy's extraordinary literary talent when he asked him to compose a couplet in response to the famous concluding line of a poem by the Tang poet Du Fu (712-70) about an imagined ascent to the summit of the holy mountain Taishan: I take one look down and all the other mountains become small.11 Huang wrote: The entire world is really small after all; Why do you just speak of the mountains around you?12 This couplet is a remarkable feat for a ten-year-old boy. On the purely literary level, it demonstrates Huang's skill at employing the poetic device known a.sfan'an fB^I (literally, "turning over the table"), by which an 6

The poet as a young man

author overturns the line of an earlier master.13 Du Fu's original line evokes the feeling of transcendence that he would experience after ascending Mount Tai, but Huang chides Du for his failure to realize that Mount Tai and the mountains around it are really nothing remarkable when viewed in a larger world context. On the intellectual level, the line is even more noteworthy, for it suggests that as a young boy Huang already took delight in unconventional ideas and was beginning to formulate a broader view of the world that eventually developed into the internationalism of his mature literary creations. Huang's precocity startled his teacher, and his neighbors began to predict a brilliant future for him. The young boy must have been stimulated to greater endeavors by all this praise, for by the age of seventeen he had composed a set of three satirical poems, entitled "Meditations," which he later deemed worthy of inclusion in his collected writings (see the translation of the first poem, on page 217). The verbal wit that Huang had displayed as a boy blossoms for the first time in these poems, and his intellect has already been honed sharp by extensive reading in Qing-dynasty philosophy. The third poem of the series, which contains a brief history of Confucianism from the death of its founder down to the beginning years of the nineteenth century allows us to form a reasonably clear picture of Huang's intellectual affiliations. Huang pokes fun at a number of postZhou-dynasty Confucian thinkers in the work, but he reserves special scorn for Song-dynasty neo-Confucianism, which culminated in the grand synthesis of the Southern Song thinker, Zhu Xi 7 ^ ^ (1130-1200). 14 Zhu's commentaries on the Confucian classics had been elevated to the status of official orthodoxy by the Qing Court, but the pragmatically minded Huang Zunxian had little use for Zhu's mysticism and metaphysical speculation: The Song Confucians came along a thousand years later And rummaged around in the cavern of Principle. They boasted to everyone that they had revived lost doctrines, Which they really had stolen from Zisi and Mencius! Their lectures on the Way were eccentric and far-fetched; Their discussions of affairs especially impractical. A thousand heads swarmed after position and fame; All those fellows ever thought about was currying favor!15 Huang Zunxian owed both his pragmatism and his dislike of Zhu Xi's metaphysics to his study of earlier Qing-dynasty thinkers belonging to the so-called Han Learning, especially its founder Gu Yanwu Mi^Ki (1613—82), who advocated practical learning aimed at solving political and social problems and favored a systematic, philologically based study of

Biography

the Confucian classics along the lines initiated by Han-dynasty scholars.16 Thus, it is no coincidence that Huang's condemnation of Zhu Xi is followed by a passage praising the efforts of Gu and his followers Yan Ruoqu M3=?M (1636-1704), DuanYucaii&3EiSc (1735-1815), and Wang Niansun z E ^ J ^ (1744—1832) to explicate the Confucian classics: Gu and Yan first blazed the new trail, Which Duan and Wang brought to a glorious conclusion. By careful study they interpreted the ancient commentaries, Making all the obscure passages crystal clear!17 In spite of his admiration for Gu Yanwu and his followers, Huang's praise of Han Learning is not without qualifications, for he felt that their philological studies sometimes led them to ignore the practical applications of Confucius' thought: These thinkers only serve to occupy space on your bookshelf; There's nothing useful you could do with their works. Yes, the Way of Confucius is truly great, For it embraces the thought of all schools of philosophy!18 Huang's criticisms of both Song neo-Confucianism and the school of Han Learning are closely related to the satire of the first poem (translated on page 217), the series' masterpiece, which pokes fun at the many impractical nineteenth-century scholars who slavishly followed ancient models when attempting to solve contemporary problems. We shall look closely at Huang's hilarious portrait of a late Qing pedant in this poem when we examine the development of his early satirical technique in Chapter 9, but at this point we should note the debt that his biting wit owes to the revival of literary satire led by the poets Gong Zizhen p | ^ (1792-1841) and Wei Yuan IfeM (1794-1857) in the first half of the nineteenth century. Huang owed a particularly large debt to Gong Zizhen's verse, but during this early period he drew inspiration from Wei Yuan's writings too, and his later interest in foreign cultures must have owed a good deal to Wei's well-known research on foreign geography.19 The second poem of the series is quite different from the other two, for its satire is more restrained, probably because it treats the highly sensitive topic of the Qing dynasty's decline. In the first four lines, Huang describes the dynasty's founding in glowing terms: After the Qing house answered Heaven's call to rule, Its love and grace lasted two hundred years. 8

The poet as a young man

A half dozen wise rulers ascended the throne, Equal in virtue to our ancient sages.20 But the golden age of the Qing dynasty had drawn to a close: Recently rebels have spread throughout our realm; Holy China has been sullied by foreign filth. When a government lasts long, disorder follows; Laws have defects, none are perfect.21 In the passage that follows, Huang blames lazy officials and conservative scholars for the outbreak of the Taiping Rebellion and China's defeat during the Opium War and then concludes the poem with an announcement of his determination to help reform the Qing political system: But I never stop yearning to end these disorders; It is my duty to repair our dynasty's defects. I will moisten my finest brush from Wu Greek And draft a proclamation to celebrate our revival!22 Already at the age of seventeen Huang Zunxian possessed a strong sense of mission, which was to motivate most of his actions for the rest of his life and inspire much of his best poetry. In the tenth month of 1865, when he was eighteen years old, Huang Zunxian married a young woman surnamed "Ye" III. Perhaps, Huang was recollecting his wedding day when he composed a series of charming quatrains about the private thoughts of a bashful bride some years later: The newly married bride (one quatrain of fifty-one)

I'm so shy my young passions seem locked between my brows, Although I've arrived at the ripe age of sixteen. When people come to gossip about my new groom's family, I bow my head, stitch my bride's shoes, and just play dumb.23 Unfortunately, nineteenth-century China did not tolerate young lovers' dreams for long, and only a few days after Huang's marriage disaster struck the family. Family misfortunes The China into which Huang Zunxian had been born in the year 1848 was a nation on the brink of catastrophic and revolutionary change. The

Biography

Qing dynasty had been founded by Manchu warriors in 1644, and during the next century and a half it provided one of the most efficient and stable governments China or any other nation of comparable size had ever enjoyed.24 More than a century of peace and prosperity lulled the majority of Chinese into a false sense of security, but by the end of the reign of the Qianlong emperor (reg. 1736—96), signs of decay were evident to a minority of concerned intellectuals. The first major disaster did not strike the Qing empire until 1839, when the English humiliated the Chinese army and navy during the First Opium War.25 But the war was only a minor, transitory blow compared to the Taiping Rebellion, a popular uprising that shook the traditional imperial order to its very foundations. The armies of the Taiping were crushed only after fourteen years of bitter warfare, by which time large areas of southern China lay in ruins and millions of Chinese had perished in battle and in the ensuing famines.26 European aggression continued, and in 1858 and i860 the Western powers launched the Second Opium War, burning the Chinese emperor's Summer Palace outside of Beijing. To most outside observers it seemed that the once glorious Qing empire was drawing its last breaths. 27 Jiayingzhou did not suffer as badly as some other areas of southern China during the early years of the Taiping Rebellion, but in 1864 Qing forces drove the rebels from their capital at Nanjing, and Taiping soldiers fled south into Guangdong, burning and looting everything in their path.28 In the fourth month of 1865, a serious famine had ravaged the region surrounding Jiayingzhou, so when rebel forces occupied the town at the end of the tenth month, few people were able to offer resistance, and some of the poorer members of society were attracted to the Taiping side by rebel propaganda against the old regime. Caught up in the midst of this upheaval, the Huang family fled down the river in a small boat to the town of Sanhe ^"M, about 50 kilometers east of Jiayingzhou, but when Sanhe itself came under threat of attack they were forced to travel farther downriver to the city of Chaozhou MJM (now known as Chao'an M $ ) . On the way to Chaozhou they were nearly murdered by river pirates, who stole the few possessions they had managed to take with them (see "Ballad of Chaozhou," translated on page 219). When the Taiping soldiers retreated in 1865 and the family set out for Jiayingzhou, they were keen to consign the preceding year's horrors to oblivion. During the journey home, Huang Zunxian wrote: Returning home after the disorder

Finally we experience the joy of homecoming; The vicious rebels are now totally subdued. 1O

The poet as a young man

Our mouths open wide, cheek to cheek, with grins; One stroke of the oar, and we've left Chaozhou port. We brothers and sisters sit around in a circle, Traveling at ease midst wind and wave. Our nerves are on edge, we haven't settled down, So in the middle of the night, please, no talk of war!29

When the Huangs arrived back in Jiayingzhou, they discovered that their ancestral home lay in ruins: One torch reduced everything to a heap of scorched earth; Here stood the humble dwelling my grandfather built. We do have a home, but only the walls stand now; There aren't any trees left to sleep in at night. My young wife weeps when she opens her trunk, But the boys are still glad to shoulder their hoes. The moss andflowersflourishafter a rain Loose pages of books flutter all around the house.30 The family had survived the uprising, but now it experienced straitened circumstances never known to its younger members. A poem that Huang addressed to his younger sister on the occasion of her wedding, shortly after the family's return to Jiayingzhou, describes his family's economic difficulties: My family was prosperous in days gone by, But year after year we met with disorder. For generations we collected gems and pearls, But nothing remains after all these disasters. Formerly, the storerooms in our family pawnshops Glittered with piles of other people's clothes. Now we must pawn our personal wardrobes; I wonder who owns those storerooms now! We sweep up leaves to make do for firewood And cook coarse grains instead of rice. A few yards of cloth remain for sewing, But now Mother must do the labor herself.31 But the Taiping Rebellion did not just force Huang Zunxian to experience economic deprivation; it also compelled him to think more carefully about the political and social problems that bedeviled the Qing dynasty in the middle of the nineteenth century. Huang's earliest surviving poetry, the "Meditations" series, expressed his profound dissatisfaction with prevailing intellectual and political tendencies, but in spite of the three 11

Biography

poems' many excellent qualities, the works seem excessively abstract, a defect that one might expect in poems written by a youth of seventeen whose pragmatism has been derived from reading books. Huang's bitter experiences during the Taiping Rebellion enabled him to see the problems of his own society with greater clarity. In common with most intellectuals from a gentry background, Huang violently opposed the Taiping Rebels themselves (see his "Songs of the Taiping Rebels," translated on page 218), but when he observed the Qing imperial army's campaign against the rebels at first hand, he was shocked by the troops' incompetence and barbarity. His first poem about the Taiping assault on Jiayingzhou ("In the eleventh month of 1865 we escape from the rebellion to Three Rivers in Dapu County," translated on page 218) pokes fun at the Qing army's inability to repel the enemy and compares its aged commander to the Zhou-dynasty general Lianpo JKM (third century B.C.), who was refused military command because old age made him visit the toilet three times in the course of one evening. Huang was thoroughly disgusted by the cruelties the Qing army inflicted upon the peasantry, who were suspected of supporting the rebels: The pleasures of army life

When the rebel troops fled yesterday, Our army followed close at their heels. A woman was weeping by the side of the road, But our soldiers carried her off on horseback. Her husband had died the day before of wounds, And she had been sent to offer libations. Her parents wanted to clutch her by the robe, But their trembling hands did not dare save her. Our soldiers will report this splendid victory today, Presenting these people's heads for the body count.32 Here was no abstract discussion of philosophical principals but a scathing indictment of the Qing army's inhumanity to the emperor's subjects. In poems like this Huang was beginning to move away from the didactic verse of his youth to satirical poetry inspired by earlier nineteenth-century and even pre-Qing-dynasty models.

Broadened horizons Huang Zunxian's parents had been training him to pursue an official career, but now the family's financial difficulties made it even more im12

The poet as a young man

perative that he seek advancement in the bureaucracy. In the spring of 1867, Huang took and passed the prefectural examination (yuanshi), and his first success probably seemed the auspicious beginning of a political life that would enable him to improve his family's economic condition and fulfill his own ambition to help reform the Qing government. But when Huang traveled to Guangzhou (Canton) for the provincial examination (xiangshi) later in the same year, he met with failure, an experience that must have galled such an ambitious young man, for, on his twentieth birthday, celebrated before his departure to Guangzhou, he had written: Twenty years old

On the day I was born and joined our family, The world was peaceful, and everyone celebrated spring. Since my birth, one disaster has followed another, Nor am I as vigorous as other men are. I live in an age of separation and disorder, With a body wracked by poverty and sadness. Still I caress the sword that dangles from my waist; A dragon nature like mine cannot be tamed!33

Huang Zunxian's failure in the provincial examinations strongly influenced the evolution of his political thought and gave him much new material for his poetry, for now he began to comprehend the defects of the civil service examination system that had been the focus of Chinese intellectual life for more than a millennium. During the following year Huang composed a number of poems in which he criticized the impracticality of the examinations and went so far as to suggest that classical Chinese learning could not solve the problems of the present age. (See the poems from the series "Mixed Emotions," on page 223.) One of the principal targets of Huang's satire in these poems is the "eight-legged essay," a highly restrictive prose form used for answering examination questions during Ming and Qing times. During the Ming dynasty, the scope of the examinations had been limited to questions about the Four Books (Analects of Confucius; Mencius; The great learning; and

The mean), which had to be answered in an essay consisting of three sections: an opening (poti), a transition (chengti); and an exposition (qijiang). The exposition consisted of eight sections (or "legs"), arranged in four pairs, each composed in strict parallel structure. The amount of useless booklearning that the form inflicted upon Chinese intellectuals evoked unfavorable criticism well before the nineteenth century, but few authors had expressed their revulsion to the eight-legged essays with Huang Zunxian's vehemence:

Biography

Since then vulgar scholars have gotten set in their ways And do not repent with even old age or death. Their vitality is sapped by incessant reading; They compete for vainglory and scholars' caps. They labor and sweat over a few lines of prose; Four-score and twenty years slip by before they know it. As soon as young scholars bind their hair and start school, They're no better off than prisoners in handcuffs.34 Huang believed that the eight-legged essay style was so detrimental to Chinese intellectual life that sometime in the future the examination system as he knew it would cease to exist: In later ages when a sage-king arises, He will cast out his nets tofindwise and heroic men. But he certainly won't make use of essays to find them; This is the truth, and I dare to believe it!35 Proposing such a radical reform of Chinese education and the official recruitment system was a daring act for an unknown young man from a backwater of southern China, because Huang's prophecy flew in the face of more than a thousand years of Chinese tradition. But Huang was still in no position to alter the status quo of Qing China, and after his failure in the examinations he had no alternative but to return home and continue his studies. During his leisure time, he began studying the folk poetry ofJiayingzhou, recording a number of poems that were popular with his neighbors and composing others in imitation. One day he encountered an itinerant beggar, who sang: There are only twenty-four hours in every day Each hour I can beg from only two or three houses. From each family I get just a few copper coins; Blue heaven! Blue heaven! Have pity upon me!36 Huang was so moved by this beggar that he gave him a generous sum of money, and not only did Huang's study of folk poetry during this period suggest vernacular alternatives to the classical verse he was writing, but he also began asking himself why the imperial system allowed the mass of people to live in such degrading poverty. In the year 1868, Huang Zunxian's first child, his eldest son Boyuan itiTL, was born, putting him under even greater pressure to succeed, and in the sixth month of 1870 Huang set off to Guangzhou to take the provincial examinations for the second time but with the same dismal result. 14

The poet as a young man

This time Huang did not return to Jiayingzhou immediately but took a short side trip to Hong Kong, where he first encountered Western culture, and he was so impressed by Hong Kong's prosperous life-style that he wrote a series often poems about the city (see translations on page 226). At the beginning of the first poem in the series, Huang describes the astounding growth of Hong Kong from a minor fishing village into a bustling seaport in the space of two decades: With a magicalflickof a finger, buildings appear; From what faraway land did this mountain fly here? For whom was this wasteland all cleared away, So that opium poppies could sprout all over?37 Here Huang Zunxian compares the Crown Colony's amazing growth to the Buddha Maitreya's conjuring up towers and pavilions, as well as to the magical flight of a holy Buddhist peak in India to the region of West Lake in China. At the same time, Huang's enthusiasm was tempered by his knowledge that Hong Kong had been ceded to England after the Opium War, a conflict fought to preserve the British right to sell opium to the Chinese people, and that the city could serve as a base for further attacks on Chinese sovereignty. His understanding of Western culture was still limited, but he would have much more to say about it in his future poetry. An important incident in China's relations with the Western powers also attracted Huang's attention during his trip away from home. The French Sisters of Charity had aroused the wrath of the people of Tianjin (Tientsin) by offering cash rewards for orphans to be raised in their orphanage, and thus unwittingly encouraging Chinese criminals to kidnap children whose parents were still alive. A Chinese crowd, led by the local magistrate, assembled in front of the French consulate, and the consul and other French citizens were torn to pieces after the consul fired a shot at the Chinese magistrate. Only the outbreak of the FrancoPrussian War kept the French from attacking a defenseless China, but even so, the so-called Tianjin Massacre provoked a strong reaction among educated Chinese.38 Huang himself became increasingly interested in foreign affairs and started reading the Globe Magazine (Wanguo gongbao S S ^ w ) , a Chinese-language periodical edited by Western missionaries for the diffusion of Western knowledge. He also began studying Western books newly translated by the Jiangnan Arsenal, which was under the patronage of Li Hongzhang ^$kM (1823-1901), the de facto foreign minister of China. 39 Li was the most distinguished leader of the Self-strengthening Movement (Yangwu Yundong #i£lSlKj, ca. 1861-95), which promoted the use of Western military technology to resist foreign encroachments. 40

Biography

Huang's growing interest in foreign affairs did not allay his anxiety over his repeated failures in the examinations, and at the end of a long poem to a friend, composed after he returned to Jiayingzhou, he wrote: Why do I bother writing poetry about the wind and the moon? I want to soar on the whirlwind, straight up ninety thousand miles! I'm not content to bury my head in a rundown shack; No! Alas! Not content to bury my head in a rundown shack.41 If he were to help his family and realize his political ideals, Huang had to continue his quest for an official position, and in 1871 he placed first in an examination required of scholars who had passed the prefectural examination and was granted the rank of Stipend Student (linshansheng, or linsheng), a title that enabled him to receive an allowance from the government. After two more years of study, Huang also obtained the title Senior Licentiate of the First Degree (bagongsheng), which gave him the right to take part in a special examination held every twelve years in Beijing. But before trying out his fortunes in the capital, he proceeded to Guangzhou again to take the Guangdong provincial examinations in the seventh month of 1873, only to fail once more at the age of twenty-eight. His discouragement about this failure was tempered only by his friendship with one Hu Xi iJiWt (1844-1907), a poet with whom he frequently exchanged verse in later years.42 After his return to Jiayingzhou, Huang Zunxian consoled himself by enjoying the natural beauties of the surrounding countryside, as countless generations of Chinese intellectuals had done before him. Toward the beginning of 1874 he constructed a small study next to his residence, which he named the "Hut within the Human Realm" (Renjinglu), an expression derived from a famous line by Tao Qian $HW (365-427), generally considered China's first nature poet.43 Huang Zunxian had dubbed his residence Zaiqintang ftifj^t, or "Hall of Diligence." The name he chose for the study suggests a shift in interest from activist Confucianism toward the eremitic tradition represented by Tao Qian's Daoistinfluenced quietism. The series of ten poems (only eight preserved in his printed works) that Huang wrote about his study and its idyllic surroundings (partially translated on page 228) portrays the joys of reclusion and the charms of the Chinese countryside with the same sensitivity that Chinese readers have enjoyed for so many centuries in Tao Qian's works. However, this series' links with Song-dynasty poetry are just as striking, and although I shall defer a detailed discussion of this topic until Chapter 6, we should note that Huang had already shown leanings toward 16

The poet as a young man

Song verse in three poems about a visit to West Lake near Huizhou 3U+I in Guangdong province (see the translations of two of these on pages 81 and 221) in 1867 on his way to his first try at the provincial examination, as well as another poem about a second visit to the same lake in 1870 on the way to his second failure. Huang Zunxian's early nature poetry was mostly written just before or after unsuccessful examinations, in common with many scholar-officials before his age, who sought solace in nature when they were subjected to high levels of stress during their search for political advancement. One could view these works as vehicles for escape from unpleasant reality, but they actually played a major role in Huang Zunxian's literary development. Most of Huang's earlier poetry was derived from the Qing tradition of didactic or satirical verse, but his exploration of Song-dynasty authors and earlier masters such as Tao Qian greatly enriched his own poetic practice at about this time. Huang was hardly alone among nineteenth-century authors in searching for models in ancient literature, but his study of tradition inspired his creativity rather than leading to the sterile imitation of antiquity found in many of his contemporaries. Huang's appreciation for his natural surroundings does not seem to have allayed his sense of desperation for long, for in 1874 he decided to travel to Beijing to take part in the court examinations (tingshi), which were open to him because of his position as Senior Licentiate. Huang rode a steamer from southern China to the seaport Tianjin and then traveled overland to Beijing, but coming from lush, semitropical Guangdong, he found the dry, dusty landscape of northern China thoroughly depressing: The sky does extend to this cold, barren land, But the mountains are too lazy to embellish the scenery. You can barely see the sun through the dense clouds of dust, And the trees are so bare you'd swear it was autumn. An unending road merely drags out my torture; A dull setting sun only increases my sorrow. Just to think that this is the best season down south, And I didn't stay home to eat my lychees!44 The gloom of the northern Chinese countryside only strengthened Huang's fears that he was embarking on another hopeless search for official position, and shortly before his arrival in Beijing he wrote: I turn eight or nine bends on this never-ending dike, As drums beat the fourth, then the fifth watch of night. A cool breeze blows my robe, and I lie hugging my blanket; The waning moon dangles from a tree, and a raven caws. 17

Biography

The east glows with a hue between night and dawn; Two or three stars shimmer faintly on top the Big Dipper. I'm a useless pedant, prey to hunger and cold; I hurry my carriage along, muttering "On! On! On!"45 Nor was his pessimism without foundation, for later that year Huang failed the court examination too. Rather than return immediately to Jiayingzhou, Huang decided to remain in Beijing, where his father was serving in the Ministry of Revenue. He had to live on a limited budget in Beijing, but in spite of the many complaints about life in the capital that appear in his poetry from this period, Huang benefited greatly from the time he spent in northern China. His good friend Hu Xi happened to be residing near him, and Huang formed friendships with a number of younger intellectuals from his own generation. His father introduced him to several senior figures in the Self-strengthening Movement, including He Ruzhang fcJ$PJ$ (183891) and Deng Chengxiu § P ^ j ^ (1841-91), both of whom came from Jiayingzhou.46 On a trip with his father to Yantai $SLn, in 1876, Huang Zunxian met Li Hongzhang, who was carrying out negotiations with the British about compensation for the murder of the English translator Margary by tribesmen in Yunnan province in 1875.47 Huang admired Li's attempts to employ Western military technology to counter foreign imperialism, but Li was also impressed by Huang Zunxian, declaring that the young man was "an outstanding talent [bacai]."*8 In later years Huang Zunxian rejected the Self-strengthening Movement's narrow approach to China's problems, and he even criticized the diplomatic blunders of Li's old age, but for the time being Huang was a receptive student of Li Hongzhang and other proponents of the Self-strengthening Movement.49 Huang continued his classical studies during his stay in northern China, but he probably took a keener interest in reading books about Western culture and discussing the current situation with other intellectuals concerned about China's fate. His growing understanding of foreign affairs is demonstrated by his reaction to the Margary Incident, which he must have discussed with Li Hongzhang during his visit to Yantai. Li's negotiations with the English in Yantai resulted in the signing of the humiliating Chefoo Agreement of 1876, which required Chinese representatives to travel to London to beg pardon from the British Court for the murder of Margary. Huang Zunxian did not give in to the xenophobia that the agreement aroused in most other Chinese intellectuals, and in a series of poems he wrote about the Margary Incident some years later, he 18

The poet as a young man

admitted that the Chinese government was largely responsible for the tragic event: The Margary Incident (one poem of four)

We can no longer promote the expulsion of foreigners, For East and West are one family now. Because our local officials took no precautions, We must send a delegation to beg their forgiveness. If our own ambassador had been on a mission, We would not have allowed foreigners to attack his party. Today a thousand nations have all become one, And China is no longer the center of the world!50

The Margary Incident had forced Huang to rethink his traditional sinocentrism and accept the idea that China was now only one member of the family of nations. But 1876 was a turning in his life in more than one way, for in that year Huang passed the provincial examination (shuntian xiangshi) held in Beijing and obtained the degree of Provincial Graduate (juren), which finally gave him the opportunity to put his thoughts on China's future into practice.

2 Huang, the diplomat

In Meiji Japan Huang Zunxian's family hoped that he would assume a local administrative post until he could climb even higher on the examination ladder, but luckily he did not follow their wishes. Chen Lanbin (Liqiu) l^tHf^ 0th%k) (Metropolitan Graduate, 1853), a fellow Cantonese, had been appointed to lead a mission to the United States and strongly urged Huang to join him as his assistant, but Huang's family was aghast when it learned of this idea, and his father forbade Huang to travel to such a distant land. At about the same time, He Ruzhang, whom Huang had met earlier in Beijing, was appointed ambassador to Japan, and when He requested Huang to be his assistant, Huang's family acquiesced, because Japan was not as remote as the United States and He was a native of Jiayingzhou.1 Huang Zunxian was certainly taking a risk by embarking on a diplomatic career, for the newly formed Chinese foreign service was not highly regarded by most Chinese officials, and his decision to accept the government's offer was probably made after long and careful deliberation. His stay in northern China had already familiarized him with the stubborn conservatism of high Court officials, and he must have realized that if he stayed in China his innovative ideas would cause him be to shunted off into some insignificant secretarial post. His earlier trip to Hong Kong had already aroused his interest in foreign cultures, and he had learned much about the outside world by reading Western books in Chinese translation, but he was eager to see foreign countries with his own eyes. That Huang expected his overseas service to lead to a higher position in China can be inferred from a poem he wrote to his friends just before his departure to Japan: 20

Huang, the diplomat When I was about to leavefor Japan, I wrote this on a half-length photograph of myself which I mailed to friends

With a head like mine and a belly like mine, What a miracle I can travel ten thousand miles! You haven't seen me kick with my pointed boots yet Just wait 'till I've washed my feet in the Sea ofJapan!2

In the eighth month of 1877, Huang Zunxian journeyed to Shanghai, and at dusk on the twenty-third of the tenth month (November 26) he boarded the ship HaVan ?§:&:, together with He Ruzhang and his entourage. The journey to Japan was smooth, and four days later the members of the embassy landed at Nagasaki, where they burned incense to the Heavenly Empress at the temple in the local Chinese guild house. From Nagasaki they sailed to Kobe, from where they visited Osaka and Kyoto, after which they sailed on to Yokohama. On the twenty-fourth of the eleventh month, He Ruzhang presented his credentials to the Meiji emperor in the Imperial Palace at Tokyo. The Japan that He Ruzhang and his assistant Huang Zunxian saw in 1877 was in the midst of one of the most profound transformations in human history. In 1868 the feudal, isolationist government of the Tokugawa shogunate, which had ruled Japan ever since 1603, was overthrown, and the Japanese emperor regained his position as the head of state to guide the nation through the so-called Meiji Restoration, named after the emperor's new reign period, Meiji ^?FI (literally, "Enlightened Government"). The leaders of the coup against the shogun had rebelled in order to prevent growing Western influence in Japan, but the new government pursued a course of action that led to the wholesale adoption of Western political and social institutions. By the time Huang Zunxian arrived in Japan, the Meiji Restoration was only nine years old, but Japan was already on its way to taking a place among the major powers of the world, a situation that contrasted starkly with China's military weakness and economic backwardness.3 After he took up residence in Tokyo, Huang Zunxian began studying the written Japanese language (he seems never to have mastered spoken Japanese), a task which was made easier by the large number of Chinese characters still in use during the late nineteenth century. Huang's knowledge of written Japanese enabled him to study the political and economic developments of late Tokugawa and Meiji Japan, as well as to sample the growing number of books translated from Western languages into Japanese. He does not seem to have been attracted by the many translations of Western literature, which probably would have been beyond his linguistic competence, but applied himself to a study of Western political 21

Biography

and legal philosophy, especially the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) and Charles de Montesquieu (1689-1755), which he read during the years 1880 and 1881. 4 Brought up in the Chinese tradition of autocratic government, he found the Western-inspired political innovations ofJapan confusing and troubling at first, but as he gradually familiarized himself with Western democratic thought, he concluded that the form of government Montesquieu and Rousseau espoused was superior to the Japanese feudalism of the Tokugawa shogunate and expressed dissatisfaction with the Meiji government's hesitation to adopt Western democratic institutions: Criminal law has been codified, and Western law has been used to prohibit the people's crimes. Schools have been established, employing Western law to encourage the people's pursuit of knowledge. Yet the government has been slow about the most important concern of Western law, namely, the establishment of a parliament. The authorities say: "The essence of our country is different [from the West]" or "Our people are not enlightened enough yet," but such ideas are wrong, and people are already showing signs of their dissatisfaction.5 At the age of seventeen Huang had already realized that the Qing government needed a thorough reform, but his stay in Japan and his reading of Western political theory finally provided him with a model for his later program for change. Years later, when he recounted the development of his thought to his friend Liang Qichao, Huang wrote that after reading Rousseau and Montesquieu he realized that "a peaceful world can only come from democracy."6 Huang Zunxian's contact with Meiji Japan and the Western ideals that underlay most of its reforms had a profound effect on the evolution of his political thought, but he also saw Meiji Japan through a poet's eyes, and his Assorted Quatrains on Japan (Riben zashi shi), a series of 154 heptasyllabic quatrains, the first extensive body of poems he wrote about a foreign culture, was immensely popular with Japanese and Chinese readers of classical Chinese verse.7 Huang lived in a room in the Chinese Embassy with glass windows that rattled in the slightest breeze, and after experiencing a typhoon, he wrote: Temples to Shinto gods loom in the sky; A typhoon blows wildly with house-crushing winds. Waves roar around me and deafen my ears; All year long I live here among frothing waves!8 Huang's frequently witty vignettes of life in Meiji Japan are among the most attractive poems in the series, but many Japanese and Chinese read22

Huang, the diplomat

ers were just as interested in the many quatrains that discussed Japanese politics: This ancient land of jeweled walls marks its revival; A thousand laws whirl into action, following world trends. Japanese looms may be bare, but their clothing dazzles me; These men of the East have become Western men!9 Huang Zunxian appended the following prose note to this quatrain: Once the Japanese realized that the foreigners could not be driven away, they sent high officials on embassies to the countries of Europe and America, in the fourth year of the Meiji period [1871], and after their return eagerly imitated Western law, proclaiming a "restoration." The excellent political measures they adopted were many. Since their opening up to foreign commerce, the amount by which exports passing through customs exceed imports is said to reach 8 million silver pieces a year. As a result, they have changed to a Western style of clothing and built palaces and mansions; everything is brand new.10

Many of these political poems exhibit the same high level of craftmanship underlying Huang's quatrains about Japan's natural wonders or its traditional folklore, but most nineteenth-century readers studied them to learn how Japan was succeeding in using Western political ideals to transform itself into a modern country. The friends that Huang made in Japan exercised a decisive influence on the evolution of his political thought and poetry during this period. The Chinese embassy in Tokyo was a popular gathering place for sinophile Japanese scholars eager to improve their knowledge of Chinese language and culture, and, although Huang could not speak Japanese, he was able to communicate with them by means of "brush conversations" (bitan) in classical Chinese, a language that most Japanese intellectuals still knew well.11 Huang Zunxian also wrote a number of classical Chinese poems for his Japanese friends and composed prefaces to books that they had written in classical Chinese.12 Many of the Japanese scholars whom Huang befriended were highly conservative individuals who had little use for the Meiji Restoration, but a number of them were more open to innovation. Shigeno Yasutsugu 1S5F:?C fp (1827-1910) was one of the founders of modern Japanese historical scholarship, and Aoyama Nobutoshi Wi-UMiH (1820-1906) was a leading scholar of the Mito School of historical research, the teachings of which had been instrumental in the success of the Meiji Restoration.13 Nakamura Masanao ^WiESt (1832-91) translated John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and advocated the adoption of Western political and ethical values, while Ito Hirobumiffi]$$W3C(1841-1909) was a leading figure in 23

Biography

the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate and later served as prime minister ofJapan.14 Huang met some progressive Chinese residing or traveling in Japan too, among whom Wang Tao I f S (1828-97), the founder of modern Chinese journalism and the publisher of the second edition (1880) of Huang's Assorted Quatrains on Japan, is the most renowned.15 Wang had traveled together with the Chinese sinologue James Legge to England and continental Europe from 1867 to 1880 and now promoted parliamentary democracy and modern economic development for China. After they were introduced in 1879, Huang and Wang soon became fast friends, meeting together every few days to exchange ideas about Meiji Japan and contemporary China. Since Huang was starting his study of Western political writings about this time, his rejection of traditional Chinese absolutism in favor of Western democracy must have owed a good deal to his association with Wang. Not only did Huang's Japanese friends stimulate the development of his political thought, but they also encouraged his literary activities. Huang revised his draft of the Assorted Quatrains four times in response to his friends' criticisms and suggestions, and he was highly gratified by their praise for the poems.16 His massive prose work, Monographs on Japan (Riben guozhi), was not completed until five years after he left Japan, but Huang relied heavily on assistance from his Japanese historian friends in writing the work, gathering practically all of his source materials in Japan with their help and writing drafts of fourteen chapters while he was still serving in Tokyo.17 Nor did Huang stint literary advice solicited by Japanese scholars, and when his friends asked how they could raise the level of Japanese poetry written in classical Chinese he urged them to study the works of Tang authors like Du Fu and Han Yu WM (768-824).18 He also encouraged them to read the eighteenth-century vernacular Chinese novel The Dream of the Red Chamber, for his own study of the work had convinced him that it was one of the masterpieces of Chinese literature, a view that was not widely shared by Chinese scholars until the early twentieth century. When his Japanese friends urged him to read Japan's most famous novel, The Tale ofGenji (Genji monogatari), he could only express his regrets that he did not know the Japanese language well enough to appreciate it.19 However, Huang Zunxian's stay in Japan was not without its unpleasant moments. Shortly after their arrival in Japan, He Ruzhang and his entourage were approached by a secret embassy from the Ryukyu Islands, a tribute state of China that the Japanese had taken over in 1872.20 The Ryukyu representative begged for Chinese assistance to counter Japanese aggression, and He Ruzhang asked Huang to draft letters to the Qing 24

Huang, the diplomat

government urging forceful action to restore Chinese sovereignty over the Ryukyus, which could serve as a base for future encroachments on Taiwan and the southeastern coast of the Chinese mainland. The Qing government did not act on any of Huang's proposals, and Huang must have realized that although the political achievements of the Meiji Restoration were admirable, Japan might be able to threaten Chinese sovereignty one day, if the Qing empire did not put its own house in order.21 Huang's disquiet over the ineffectiveness of Chinese diplomacy could only have been aggravated by Ambassador He Ruzhang's weak qualifications for his post. According to one account, "Ambassador He frequently changed his plans and was lacking in resolution, but Huang Zunxian mulled over each problem carefully and stuck to his decisions, so much of the embassy's business had to be decided by him."22 The freedom of action that He Ruzhang's indecisiveness gave to Huang Zunxian stimulated the growth of his diplomatic skills, but he must have been discouraged by the seeming inability of respected officials like He to appreciate the significance of the Meiji experiment in Westernization. When someone asked He, after his return to China, what he thought about the Meiji Restoration, he replied: "The scenery in that country is very nice, and there is a lot of good material for poetry, but as far as those reforms are concerned, well, I'm afraid I don't know anything about them." 23 Huang Zunxian in San Francisco In the first month of 1882, Huang Zunxian was appointed Chinese consul general to the United States in San Francisco, and although he was loath to depart from Japan he was excited by the prospect of observing a Western country at first hand.24 After his Japanese friends held a going-away banquet for Huang in Tokyo, he left Yokohama by steamer on the eighteenth of the first month and arrived in San Francisco on the twelfth of the second month (March 30, 1882). While he was still on the ship, Huang penned a series of quatrains entitled "Thoughts about an Ocean Voyage," the following of which was written when he crossed the International Date Line: I hate drifting like the wind during my middle years; I waste half my life journeying in foreign lands. To cope with my depression I start recording my diary, Only to discover I can celebrate the Flower Festival two days in a row!25 Unfortunately, Huang Zunxian traveled to the United States in a most inauspicious year, for Congress enacted the Exclusion Act, a law

Biography

prohibiting Chinese immigration, on May 6, 1882, shortly after Huang's arrival in San Francisco, and the state of California itself was in the throes of a campaign of virulent anti-Chinese racism.26 Chinese settlers had begun arriving on the western coast of the United States soon after the discovery of gold in California in 1848. They were tolerated at first, because they were needed for heavy labor in the gold mines and to help construct railroads, but diligent Chinese miners, farmers, and businessmen soon began competing successfully with local whites, and anti-Chinese sentiment grew, particularly during periodic downturns in the California economy. The California State Assembly levied a license tax against "foreign miners," who were almost entirely Chinese, on March 30, 1853. The California Immigrant Tax, of April 28, 1855, charged ship owners fifty dollars a head for each alien they brought to California, and finally, on April 26, 1858, Chinese were prohibited from immigrating to California. California court decisions of 1854 and 1871 ruled that Chinese could not testify against members of the white race. The basis of the 1854 decision was that since the law forbade Indians from giving testimony against whites, and since Columbus thought he had landed near China when he discovered America, the Chinese people should be treated the same as American Indians.27 Finally, in 1880 it became a misdemeanor to employ Chinese workers. A report on Chinese immigration published by the California state Senate typifies the racist hysteria of the age: Their [the Chinese immigrants'] place of domicile isfilthyin the extreme, and to a degree that cleansing is impossible except by the absolute destruction of the dwellings they occupy. But for the healthfulness of our climate our city populations would have long since been decimated by pestilence from these causes . . . of all this vast horde, not fbur hundred have been brought to a realization of the truths of Christianity. . . . It is safe to say that where one soul has been saved, placed to the credit side, by reason of the presence of the heathen hordes on this coast, a hundred white have been lost by the contamination of their presence. . . . Already, to the minds of many, this immigration begins to assume the nature and proportions of a dangerous unarmed invasion of our soil. Twenty years of increasing Chinese immigration will occupy the entire Pacific Coast to the exclusion of the white population. Many of our people are confident that the whole coast is yet to become a mere colony of China.28 In spite of the many legal and judicial measures taken to counter the "oriental menace" to California, state laws against Chinese immigration failed to prevent Chinese from entering via ports outside California, and anti-Chinese interests in the state began to lobby for a national prohibition on Chinese immigration. The Exclusion Act of 1882, signed into law 26

Huang, the diplomat

by President Benjamin Harrison and not repealed until December 17, 1943, was the climax of this agitation. Huang Zunxian arrived in San Francisco in the middle of a diplomatic and political maelstrom. Congress's actions were in direct contravention of the 1868 Burlingame Treaty, which the United States and China had signed to regulate the immigration of coolies to America for the building of the Central Pacific Railroad, and in which the U.S. government had guaranteed the equality of Chinese and whites.29 As consul general, Huang Zunxian was responsible for the welfare and safety of all Chinese citizens in California, but the national debate over the Exclusion Act and its successful passage in Congress had only heightened anti-Chinese feelings among the general population and seemed to justify mistreatment of Chinese by ordinary citizens and law enforcement officers. During this period, the "Cubic Air" Ordinance of 1870 was commonly used by San Francisco police to harass Chinese immigrants. This law made it a criminal offense to reside in a room or house that did not have at least 500 cubic feet of air for each adult person, and although the aims of this ordinance were laudable in theory, it was an ideal tool for racist police officers, who could arrest impoverished Chinese laborers living in overcrowded housing whenever they wished. According to a story preserved by Liang Qichao, Huang was summoned to a local jail when a number of Chinese were detained in San Francisco for residing in unhygienic and overcrowded housing. When an American police officer escorted Huang to the prisoners' cell and explained the charges to him, Huang indignantly asked the officer if the prison was less crowded and dirty than the prisoners' home, and the embarrassed policeman is said to have released all the Chinese prisoners immediately. Liang Qichao tells us that the means Huang used to combat American discrimination against California Chinese were "marvelous beyond words" and that the local Chinese still remembered Huang Zunxian's efforts on their behalf many years later.30 Liang Qichao's story seems almost too good to be true, but it does suggest the sort of legal battles that Huang continuously waged against local and federal authorities in San Francisco. Huang's brother Huang Zunkai liclilfi1 (d. 1917) tells us about some other things he did to assist the local Chinese: He was in constant anxiety for their sake, always thinking of ways to assist them. The Chinese merchants who traveled to China all applied to the consulate for passports to allow their return to the United States. Huang also retained lawyers to appeal decisions and to rescind the new regulations. Thus, Chinese merchants coming from other countries to the United States or former residents of the United States who wanted to return from China to the United States met with no difficulties. Even Chinese workers who wished to pass through San Francisco on 27

Biography

their way back and forth to Honolulu, Victoria, British Columbia, or Panama did not encounter any problems.31 In a later poem, Huang himself wrote that he "spent several years laboring for the sake of my compatriots." 32 Nor was Huang's stay in San Francisco without personal danger to him. In a note to a poem written years later, Huang tells us that when he and Col. Frederic A. Bee, an attorney for the Chinese Six Companies, were surrounded by a mob of white Americans, someone pulled a pistol on them and shouted: "If you dare allow more Chinese to enter our country, I'll give you a taste of this." Colonel Bee pulled his own pistol from his boot, smiled at the man, and replied, "Do you dare?" after which the man backed down. Years later Huang still admired the coolness and bravery of this colleague who may have saved his life.33 Huang Zunxian's stay in San Francisco must have been doubly disillusioning to him. First of all, any hopes that he still harbored about making the Qing government adopt a more aggressive policy against Western imperialism must have vanished when he observed how impotent it was to deal with such a serious affront to its own citizens. Huang Zunxian had already caught wind of possible changes in American policy regarding Chinese immigration in 1881, while he was still serving in Japan. When the treaty regulating Chinese immigration to the United States was up for renewal, the American government dispatched a three-man delegation to China to discuss new terms, and during their stopover in Tokyo Huang learned that only one of them was strongly opposed to Chinese immigration, whereas the other two were more favorably disposed to the continued settlement of Chinese workers in America. Huang immediately suggested to the Chinese government that it could exploit these differences, if it would only adopt a less compliant attitude to American proposals, but his government was not interested in Huang's proposals, for it wished to avoid all conflict with Western powers.34 After his experience with the Qing Court over the Ryukyu affair, Huang might have been able to predict the outcome of Chinese negotiations with the United States, but the second way his stay in San Francisco disillusioned him must have caused considerably more anguish. Huang had begun reading journals about Western culture by 1870, and both his reaction to the Margary Incident and his promotion of parliamentary democracy in Japan suggest that he held positive attitudes toward Western culture and politics before he arrived in San Francisco. He must have realized that the situation in California was not representative of the entire Western world, but his unpleasant experiences in San Francisco created doubts in his mind about the late nineteenth-century version of 28

Huang, the diplomat

government he saw in the United States. At the end of a long poem about the anti-Chinese movement in California (for complete translation, see page 242), Huang wrote: I sigh when I think of America's George Washington And the noble ideals that this great leader upheld. He announced to all the American people That a vast wilderness stretched far off to the west. Men of all nations, folk of every country, Were free to settle in those frontier lands. The yellow, white, red, and Negro races Would live on equal terms with the American people. But not even a century has elapsed since his time, And the government is not ashamed to dishonor his pledge.35

Huang still admired the ideals that lay behind the American experiment with popular government, but it must have greatly troubled him that the ideals that he thought might provide a solution to China's own problems could not inspire the white inhabitants of California to rise above their sordid racial prejudices. The heartbreak and incessant labor of Huang's three years of service in San Francisco had a stultifying effect on his development as a poet.36 His stay in Japan had inspired a large quantity of excellent verse, but none of the poems about his American experience contained in Chapter 4 of his collected works seems to have been written earlier than six years after he left the United States.37 Still, his stay in San Francisco bore rich literary fruit; his long poem on the anti-Chinese movement in California is one of the more stirring creations of late Qing literature, and his wonderful satires on the 1884 American presidential election (translated on page 247) deserve to stand side by side with Mark Twain's own witty evocations of late nineteenth-century political chicanery. Huang's powers of observation seem even more remarkable when one remembers that he probably knew no more than a few words of English and that he wrote these poems years after he left San Francisco. Return to China Huang Zunxian's mother died in 1884, but because he was still indispensable in San Francisco, the Chinese government would not allow him to return home to attend her funeral, and it was not until the eighth month of 1885 that he was permitted to leave his post in California and return to Jiayingzhou. One can sense his relief at being released from his onerous duties in a poem that he wrote shortly after his arrival at home: 29

Biography Returning from a distant land

When we see each other, we all break into smiles; I've brought the spring wind back through China's Jade Pass. Neighbors show their concern by asking about my luggage; Young boys clap their hands and sing: "Welcome home!" I plan to moor my boat by the bank of our stream; The others will talk eagerly about my embassy to the Big Dipper. I have seen all of the famous mountains worth seeing overseas; Now I'll lean on my staff and go visit my homeland's mountains!38

We have already noted Huang Zunxian's tendency to write nature poetry during and after periods of stress, and the large number of poems he wrote about the scenic landscape of Jiayingzhou after his return home allowed him to recuperate from the labors of his post in San Francisco. (See, for example, the translation on page 258.) However, Huang did much more than indulge the traditional Chinese poet's love of rural landscapes during this period of voluntary retirement, and in spite of the traditionalflavorof much of his poetry from these years, he also began experimenting with new literary approaches. Particularly striking is his creative use of narrative technique in "I invite neighbors to drink with me one spring evening" (translated on page 256 and discussed on page 153) or in the long autobiographical work "I made offerings at the tomb of my great-grandmother" (translated on page 259 and discussed on page 155). Huang's desire to make his overseas experiences known to his compatriots also caused him to work unceasingly on his Monographs on Japan. When he completed the book, in 1887, Huang prepared four copies of his manuscript. He retained one copy for himself, sent the second to the Zongli Yamen (the nineteenth-century equivalent of the Department of Foreign Affairs), and dispatched the third and fourth to the two most powerful members of the Self-strengthening Movement, the de facto foreign minister Li Hongzhang, and Zhang Zhidong 3H;2I?IR1 (1837-1909), general governor of Guangdong and Guangxi.39 The Zongli Yamen was not interested in a book on Meiji Japan, but when Huang's work was finally published in Guangzhou, about 1890, it aroused a good deal of excitement among Chinese reformers, and in 1894 one of the leaders of the reform group, Liang Qichao, wrote: Previously, Japan was nothing more than a tiny pebble, but today it is one of the great powers. Within thirty years it has turned its misfortune into fortune and its weakness into strength, seizing our Ryukyu Islands with one blow and occupying Taiwan with another. Yet the scholars of our country have not awoken from their slumber, and when they gaze at these amazing events, they are struck dumb and cannot understand the reasons. Nor is our government able to learn from its past 30

Huang, the diplomat

mistakes. After reading the Monographs on Japan, I feel that as far as politics, the Japanese people, Japanese geography, and the methods of the Meiji Restoration and its reforms are concerned, I have been able to enter their women's quarters and count their rice and salt! . . . Did not our sage Mencius say: "Those who wish to become great kings will certainly follow the course of action [I have suggested]"? Ah, this book of Huang Zunxian. How can it be viewed as mere history? Mere history?40 Huang's book was the most extensive work yet written by a Chinese scholar on a non-Chinese culture, consisting of twelve subdivisions in forty chapters that treated the normal topics of traditional Chinese historiography, such as political history, foreign relations, geography, and scholarship, but also included more unusual subjects, like the Japanese economy, criminal law, popular customs, and handicrafts. Huang's book was not merely of scholarly interest, for the many comments that he inserted in the text provided ideas for the reform programs proposed with increasing urgency by progressives during the 1890s.41 In London and Singapore In 1890, Huang Zunxian's powerful friend Yuan Chang MM, (18461900), who had recently been named senior secretary of the Zongli Yamen (zongli geguo shuyamen zongzhangjing) and who had a high opinion of Huang's Monographs on Japan, recommended that he accompany Xue Fucheng lH^S J$L (1838-94), the Chinese ambassador to England, France, Italy, and Belgium, and one of the leaders of the Self-strengthening Movement, on a mission to Europe, with London as their destination.42 Xue and Huang stopped in Saigon, Singapore, Colombo, Port Suez, Marseilles, and Paris on the way, and everywhere they traveled the power and wealth of European civilization overawed them. In spite of his admiration for British political institutions, Huang found the cold, gloomy London climate particularly depressing, and the damp weather had an adverse effect on his lungs. A poem he sent from London to his cousin Liang Jushi HcSjtf (Provincial Graduate, 1889), who also served as a diplomat, suggests that his low spirits were occasioned by more than a change in climate or worsening health: I've roamed half the world during the last twenty years, But no one I met is equal to you. How many men in this world are really my friends? A home letter from you is worth millions in gold. Some day we'll soar together like wild geese to the Milky Way; Can fish forget companions that swam the same rivers and lakes? 31

Biography

I merely idle away my life and fall farther and farther behind others; Little sense in trying to catch up with the likes of me!43

Previously, Huang had teased Liang for following the pattern of his official career by obtaining his Provincial Graduate degree four years after his Senior Licentiate, but now Huang was discouraged by his failure to advance in the bureaucracy.44 He had been at the center of attention in San Francisco, but in London he was given only the most routine secretarial duties. The inability of the Chinese government to take innovators like him seriously augured poorly for the reform program he had outlined in his Monographs on Japan.

Huang's growing dissatisfaction with the status quo had a positive effect on his development as a poet, for Liang Qichao tells us that Huang's frustration over the Chinese government's slowness in initiating reforms caused him to devote more and more time to his poetry.45 During his stay in London, Huang completely revised his Assorted Quatrains on Japan, eliminating nine poems altogether and adding fifty-five new ones. In some cases, the changes that Huang made were of a literary nature, but his growing commitment to democratic government, particularly Britishstyle parliamentary monarchy, caused him to abandon the more conservative stance of some poems he had written in Tokyo. Huang also began editing the manuscripts of the many poems he had written before his stay in London, none of which he had published so far.46 The new verse Huang wrote in London and on his journeys through Europe and Asia is even more significant for the future development of his poetry. Although he had already created some excellent poetry on foreign countries before his sojourn in London, almost all of it had been composed in shorter forms. Many of these works are remarkable for the conciseness of their thought and imagery, but short poetry was not a suitable vehicle for Huang's expanding view of the world. He had begun experimenting with longer forms for his poetry about foreign countries during his years of retirement injiayingzhou, but only after his arrival in Europe did he achieve complete success in writing longer poems about his new environment. The range of new poetry that he created during this period is really quite breathtaking. Some of the poems are experiments in using the ideas of modern science and technology to inject renewed vigor into time-worn themes (see "Modern Parting," translated on page 269, and the discussion of such works in Chapter 11). Some are vivid descriptions of Huang's diplomatic life ("An Audience at Windsor Palace," translated on page 268), and some are clever literary jokes ("The Great London Fog," page 268), but a substantial number employ Huang's knowledge of foreign 32

Huang, the diplomat

cultures to discuss serious political and social topics (see "On Climbing the Eiffel Tower," page 275). Huang may have found his stay in London boring and irksome, but he achieved a stylistic breakthrough that provided a departure point for the poetry of his later years, and he marked this event by writing a preface to his collected works that contains most of the ideas of his mature literary theory.47 In the eighth month of 1891, Huang was appointed consul general to Singapore, and once again he passed through the possessions of the empire on which the sun never set, writing two poems on the Suez Canal and one on Port Said (translations on page 277). Only a few months after Huang arrived in Singapore, his father passed away at the age of sixtythree, so Huang was granted a one hundred-day leave to return home and arrange his father's funeral. Finally, in the fourth month of 1892, he assumed his new post in Singapore, and, never having lived in the tropics before, he soon began exploring his new environment with a poet's eye, particularly keen in his shorter poems from this period: No place is so marvelous as this land of the durian, Where the durian's subtle flavor must be slowly relished. An abundance of fruit sprouts from the lychee tree's twigs; People present betel for good luck at weddings. Rice wrapped in plum paper turns red when you steam it; A brown shell seals in the coconut's liquor. The people here pawn every piece of their finery, Just to keep their mouths fragrant with durian for three days!48 Huang was able to taste such tropical fruits as the durian for the first time in Singapore, but the city's tropical climate harmed his already frail health, and during the second year of his term he came down with a nearly fatal case of malaria. Huang's wife came to nurse him, and the attending physician urged that he take a rest from official duties, so he moved to Penang, where he and his family lived in the villa of a rich Chinese merchant. While he was still ill, Huang Zunxian conceived one of his best series of heptasyllabic quatrains, Assorted Poems on Recovering from Malaria (translated on page 280). Not only do these poems provide a vivid portrait of life in Malaysia and Singapore at the end of the nineteenth century, within the limits of the restrictive quatrain form, but a number of the works about Huang's slow recuperation display a sense of humor that contrasts with the self-pity of much traditional Chinese verse on the subject of illness: I have swept clean all the lice left residing in my pants; Mosquitoes circle my temples but don't even bother to buzz. 33

Biography

I lie on a tall pillow, not a worry in my heart; I never slept once - how come it's already dawn?49

Before his illness, Huang Zunxian became deeply involved in the politics of the Malay Peninsula. Large numbers of Chinese had moved there during the nineteenth century to find work in the tin mines and rubber plantations, but, lacking the protection of the Chinese government, they were frequently victimized by unscrupulous British officials and Malay outlaws. Since many of the boat landings used by Chinese travelers lacked proper docking facilities, the Chinese had to anchor their junks far from shore and hire small boats to carry passengers ashore. When the local people observed the valuable goods that some Chinese merchants carried, they rowed to secluded harbors, where they stole the goods and murdered their passengers. Soon after his arrival in Singapore, Huang Zunxian put an end to this criminal activity by informing the British officials that in future, boats unloading Chinese passengers would be required to register and post a bond of one thousand dollars.50 Huang Zunxian was the only representative of the Chinese government in the entire Malay Peninsula, and, since he normally resided in Singapore, he was unable to attend to the interests of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese living outside the Straits Settlements. Therefore, in a letter written to his superior Xue Fucheng, who had originally recommended Huang's appointment to his post, Huang suggested that the Chinese government approach the British to appoint vice-consuls for Kuala Lumpur and other cities with a large Chinese population.51 He urged that swift action be taken, because the current governor of the Straits Settlements, Sir Cecil C. Smith, was sympathetic to the plight of the Chinese, having gone so far as to allow them to be subject to the Qing legal code rather than the laws of England. Xue Fucheng concurred, and after complex and time-consuming negotiations Huang finally managed to obtain British agreement to the establishment of vice-consulates in the more important cities of the Malaysian mainland.

34

3 Reform and reaction

The Reform Movement In the eleventh month of 1894, Huang Zunxian's term of office in Singapore came to an end, and Zhang Zhidong, now governor general of Jiangsu, Anhui, andjiangxi (Liangjiang zongdu), had him summoned back to China to serve as one of his advisers. However, when Huang visited Zhang in Nanjing his Western directness displeased the elder statesman, and Zhang refused to give him major responsibilities, assigning him the thankless task of resolving the many legal conflicts between foreign missionaries and Chinese citizens in southern China.1 In spite of the complex issues involved, Huang was able to settle many of these cases by insisting that both foreign missionaries and Chinese be governed by the relevant treaties between Western countries and China. Huang's brother, Huang Zunkai, informs us that he "observed all the agreements, and examined all the evidence, making concessions when concessions were called for but refusing to do so when that was appropriate. He was just like Zhuangzi's fabled butcher chopping up an ox, cleaving the meat in two at the touch of his blade!"2 Shortly before Huang's return to China, a rebellion in Korea had sparked Sino-Japanese hostilities, and on the first of the seventh month, 1894 (August 1), China and Japan formally declared war.3 The Japanese easily occupied Pyongyang (see Huang's poem on page 283) and then attacked Manchuria. The first major naval battle between the countries, fought on the sixteenth of the eighth month (September 17), near the mouth of the Yalu River (see Huang's poem on page 284), resulted in the almost total annihilation of the Chinese North Fleet. Most of the rest of China's sea forces were holed up in the port of Weihaiwei j|5c$Hlf (modern Weihai, Shandong), but the Japanese surrounded the city by sea and land, and after they had captured the powerful Chinese guns that guarded the port's entrances, they pulverized the Chinese navy and forced 35

Biography

the remaining troops to surrender (see "A Lament for Weihai," page 285). By the terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed on the twenty-third of the third month (April 17, 1895), China lost Taiwan, along with the Liaodong Peninsula, and was forced to recognize Korean independence, which was tantamount to allowing a Japanese takeover of that country. The humiliating defeat of the Chinese military by a cultural colony of China shocked the entire country, and now even many conservatives admitted that reform was imperative. When news of the Treaty of Shimonoseki became known in Beijing, the best-known leader of the Reform Movement, Kang Youwei, supported by more than twelve hundred provincial graduates, presented a "Ten Thousand-Word Memorial" in which he advocated rejection of the treaty, protracted warfare against Japan, and a radical transformation of the Chinese government. 4 Kang's appeal fell on deaf ears, but concerned officials in Beijing, led by Wen Tingshi ^ t S S ; (1856-1904) and Kang, organized the Ziqianghui il 3S1!*, or Self-strengthening Society, for the purpose of using Western political methods and technology to strengthen China's defenses. Two months later, Kang traveled to Shanghai to establish a branch of the society, which was supposed to promote the translation of foreign books, publish its own Western-style journal, set up a library, and even open a study hall for the discussion of contemporary affairs. At about this period Huang Zunxian traveled to Shanghai, where he met Kang for the first time, engaging in many lively discussions with him about current affairs and becoming active in the activities of the Selfstrengthening Society. Unfortunately, at the beginning of 1896 court conservatives had both the Beijing and Shanghai branches of the society closed, but the reformers were not discouraged, and, together with Wang Kangnian HiJSt^ (1860-1911), Huang Zunxian established the Shiwubao Nfi^flx., or Journal for Contemporary Affairs, to promote the reformist program. 5 Huang invited Liang Qichao to Shanghai to become editor of the journal, initiating a friendship between the two men that lasted until Huang's death and had a major influence on the literary activities of both men. From the summer of 1896 until nearly two years later, the journal was published every tenth day and included reprints of government documents, reformist editorials, and even a serialized biography of George Washington. It was immensely popular, with a run of more than ten thousand copies, and is usually considered the first modern Chinese magazine. In the meantime, Huang Zunxian had one more try at diplomacy. After the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, the Japanese felt that they now had a golden opportunity to expand their control within China, so they began to press for new concessions in Suzhou. Because of his well-known 36

Reform and reaction

experience in Japanese affairs, Huang was given authority to negotiate with the Japanese consul at Suzhou, Arakawa Motoji ^J'lB^C, in 1896. Armed with the diplomatic skills he had acquired during his long overseas career, Huang was able to get the better of Arakawa, and the Japanese foreign minister was enraged when he learned of the agreement Arakawa had concluded with Huang. Even after a stern rebuke from Tokyo, Arakawa continued to support Huang's proposals, and finally the frustrated Japanese authorities shifted the site of negotiations away from Suzhou to Beijing, where they found the officials more amenable.6 One of Huang Zunxian's most bizarre poems was at least partially a product of the intense pressure he was under during this period (translated on page 293). Huang's increasing gloom over China's future prospects lifted partially when he was summoned to Beijing and granted the rare privilege of an audience with the Guangxu emperor in the eighth month of 1896. On the way to Beijing, Huang met Yan Fu JScfJt (1853-1921), who translated Thomas Huxley's Evolution and Ethics into Chinese and who was the principal advocate of Western philosophy and science in late nineteenthcentury China. Huang maintained a correspondence with Yan, and during his later years his liberal, democratic convictions were somewhat tempered by his fascination with the ideas of social Darwinism espoused by Yan Fu.7 During Huang's audience with the young emperor, Guangxu asked Huang why the Western countries were more powerful than China. Huang replied that their strength arose from political reform and that when he was serving in London he had been told that only a century earlier England had been weaker than China. The emperor smiled when he realized that legal reform might enable China to catch up with the West, and it is quite likely that this interview was a major factor in his eventual support of the Reform Movement.8 While in the capital, Huang also met with the powerful pro-reform statesman, Weng Tonghe ft 1^3 M (1830-1904), president of the Board of Revenue and Guangxu's tutor, presenting him with a copy of his Monographs on Japan.9 Huang must have made a favorable impression in Beijing, because the Chinese government informed the Germans that it wished to name him ambassador to Germany, but the German government rejected him (possibly because they feared his resistance to their planned takeover of Jiaozhouwan ®4+|$f), and the appointment fell through.10 Huang expressed his bitter disappointment at this blow in a number of poems from this period, but he must have felt some relief when Weng Tonghe supported his appointment as salt intendant of Hunan province (Hunan yanfadao), an influential position that put him in control of the 37

Biography

government salt monopoly in Hunan. On the way from Beijing to Hunan, Huang passed through Shanghai, where he and Wang Kangnian got into a violent argument over the management of their journal. Huang also stopped in Nanjing, where he met Tan Sitong H^l^] (1865-98), a philosopher and poet who strongly supported reform.11 It may seem strange that by 1897 Hunan was a major center of reform, because it was farther from Western contact than the coastal regions of China and was noted for the conservatism of the majority of its intellectuals, but as Liang Qichao observed in later years: "Other provinces lacked real conservatives and real reformers, but in Hunan real conservatives were many, so real reformers were not few."12 The current governor of Hunan (from 1895), Chen Baozhen SHjH (1831-1900), a Hakka, and his progressive son, the poet Chen Sanli l^niAL (1852-1936), who had already met Huang in Shanghai, were carrying out reforms in the province and supporting the activities of a reformist periodical known as the Xiangxue xinbao ltl^0f$S., or New Journal ofHunan Studies, which had been

founded by Tang Caichang M^^ (1867-1900) and Jiang Biao tl|K (1860-99), t n e progressive provincial director of education of Hunan.13 Huang Zunxian arrived in the provincial capital, Changsha, just when the reformist tide was reaching its apex. He immediately joined the province's political life, helping to found the Shiwuxuetang B^fl^r^^, or Study Hall for Contemporary Affairs, a school intended to teach modern knowledge to students who would later study overseas, and the Nanxuehui 1 % ^ ^ , or Society for Southern Studies, which eventually functioned like a provincial assembly.14 In these tasks Huang was assisted by Tan Sitong, who had given up his official position to participate in the Reform Movement full time, and Xiong Xiling ,fl^f^ (1870-1937), later prime minister of the Republic of China. By the tenth month of 1897, Liang Qichao too wished to leave Shanghai and settle in Hunan, because he suspected that Zhang Zhidong was opposed to any real reforms and was manipulating the Journal of Contemporary Affairs for his own private purposes.15 When an invitation came to serve as dean of Chinese studies at the Study Hall for Contemporary Affairs, Liang immediately relinquished his editorial post to Wang Kangnian and joined the reformers in Changsha. In contrast to the nearly moribund central government in Beijing, these Hunan reformers could point to real accomplishments in a few years, for they initiated the construction of the Guangzhou-Changsha Railway, established a local militia, promoted an end to the binding of women's feet, and opened up new mines.16 It was no wonder that Huang Zunxian and other Hunan reformers began advocating autonomy for Hunan, and in one speech delivered before the Study Hall for Contemporary Affairs Huang 38

Reform and reaction

attacked the aloofness of the imperial Court and the gulf that separated local officials appointed by the central government from the people they governed, urging the men of Hunan to rule their own province.17 By advocating self-government for Hunan through an elected assembly, Huang was reaffirming his admiration for Western parliamentary government, but he was dangerously close to rebellion against the Qing authorities. These reforms greatly worried the Hunan conservatives. In the intercalary third month of 1898, Liang Dingfen He^{5? (1859-1919) sent a letter to a leader of the Hunan conservatives, the textual scholar Wang Xianqian ZE5tet$t (1842-1917), charging that Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, who promote heterodox teachings, are availing themselves of this opportunity to incite disorder with their promotion of legal reform. It just happens that the crafty and ruthless Huang Zunxian and the absurd and wicked Xu Renzhu are gathered together with them in the same place, helping each other in their evil. They claim that they are discussing scholarly matters, but, in fact, they are no different from bandits.18 In the following months these attacks increased in ferocity, but Huang Zunxian, Tan Sitong, and Liang Qichao continued with their reform program, while Kang Youwei was still trying to make himself heard in Beijing. When the Germans occupied Jiaozhouwan in Shandong, at the end of 1897, Kang sent up another memorial pleading for drastic change, but once again the Court ignored him. But in the fourth month of 1898, Kang was summoned to an imperial audience to explain his reform policies, while an imperial edict ordered Huang Zunxian, Liang Qichao, Tan Sitong, and other reformers from Hunan and elsewhere to the capital. During the next three months (the "Hundred Days of Reform"), the Guangxu emperor, advised by the more prominent reformers, issued more than forty reform edicts, concerning virtually every aspect of Chinese government and society.19 The traditional essays of the old civil service examination questions were abolished, a central bureau for railroads and mines was established, government banks were opened, Western-style schools were created, freedom of criticism was allowed, and a large number of excess officials were cashiered. Huang Zunxian had not joined his friends in Beijing, because he fell ill with dysentery before he could leave Hunan, but the Guangxu emperor requested a copy of his Monographs on Japan, to serve as a blueprint for reforming the government.20 It also happened that when the reformers were summoned to Beijing, the Chinese ambassador to Japan was finishing his term in office, and, sensing the beginning of a new chapter in Chinese history, Japanese representatives arrived in Beijing, urging that 39

Biography

Huang Zunxian be named the new ambassador to Tokyo. In the sixth month of 1898, Huang was appointed Chinese ambassador to Japan, but when he arrived in Shanghai in preparation for traveling to his post, he had a relapse of dysentery and became so ill that he had to turn down his new assignment. Thus, when the Reform Movement reached fever pitch in Beijing, Huang was lying on his sickbed in Shanghai. Deeply depressed by his declining health, Huang wrote: The invalid

Before I lift the great trophy, my knees give way; I can't help laughing at my sickly body. I'm at the end of life's road and not fit for the world; The only thing left for me now is to keep writing poetry. I regret my clumsiness in slaying evil dragons; I am frightened again by the approach of year's end. I would cut open my breast and offer my hot blood for my country, But I fear it has changed to a vast galaxy of dust.21 Actually, Huang Zunxian was fortunate that poor health prevented him from joining his friends in Beijing, for on the seventh of the ninth month (September 21), the empress dowager Cixi W>W* launched a coup d'etat, seizing the Guangxu emperor and ordering the arrest of the reformers.22 Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao barely escaped to Japan, but Kang's younger brother Kang Guangren J i t J i t t (1867-98) and Tan Sitong were beheaded, along with four other reformers. The entire Reform Movement collapsed, and the empress dowager scrapped practically all the new measures. China would have to wait until the 1911 Revolution for a thorough transformation of its political life. Since there were rumors that Huang Zunxian was hiding Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao in his residence, the local governor dispatched two hundred soldiers to surround and search Huang's house. While under house arrest Huang Zunxian wrote: A record of events

The stars of Heaven's Prison glitter in unison; The sky's dark canopy arches over the evening. Autumn beats time and howls a sad tune; A bell's tone knells through the rainy night. How could you begin discussing the history of China? Later generations will repay our own century's debts. A double row of sentries surrounds me with a forest of rifles; As I sit here tonight, the watches drag on.2^ 40

Reform and reaction

Luckily, the former Japanese prime minister, Ito Hirobumi, whom Huang had befriended in Japan years before, had visited China recently, and when he and the British interceded on Huang's behalf, the local governor withdrew his troops. Huang's former patron, Yuan Chang, urged that no more action be taken against him, and since Huang had not hidden any of the reformers in his residence and had not participated in the reform activities in Beijing, he was allowed to retire to Jiayingzhou.24 Retirement Huang returned home in a depressed state of mind. He had escaped from the empress dowager's clutches, and his health started to improve, but he had been unable to save the Reform Movement from disaster, and his official career had come to an abrupt end. His bitterness over Cixi's suppression of the Reform Movement forms the theme of many poems that he wrote during this period: Moved by events

Dignified ceremonies solemnized our emperor's enthronement; Sage Yao's teachings on government provided his model. Who thought the empress dowager would try to reign behind the scenes? Now the emperor obeys his elders, like antiquity's King Cheng. China's holy tripods cry in unison, and auspicious pheasants shriek, The court offers a thousand gold pieces for an imperial physician. White-haired old men debate these happenings in total bewilderment; When they recollect Emperors Qianlong and Jiaqing, they can only weep.25 Here Huang condemns the empress dowager for usurping power from the Guangxu emperor on the flimsy pretext that he had suddenly become ill (hence, the need for an "imperial physician"). China's holy tripods (bronze vessels that are symbols of imperial power) are enraged by the empress dowager's violation of the rules of succession, and experienced statesmen, who can remember the past glories of the emperors Qianlong and Jiaqing, can only mourn the imminent ruin of the empire. Huang knew that he could do nothing to influence court policy as long as Cixi and her supporters were in power, and some poems he wrote after his return to Jiayingzhou suggest that he was relieved to be free from the burdens of official life: I hale from north, south, east, and west; All my life I've been known as a man of wind and waves; I spent half a century wandering the world's continents; Now fifty springs remain for my family's gardens!26 41

Biography

Now he could direct his attention to the subtle beauties of the Guangdong countryside, as he had done after his return from the United States, and reaffirm his links with the witty nature poetry of the Song masters: Old but still healthy, you must feast your eyes with mountains, But who can find enough time to look at them all? You've broken your date with the gibbons and cranes too often; Better hurry! Or the mountain god will soon laugh at your feebleness!27 To celebrate his return home, Huang completely rebuilt his Hut within the Human Realm, creating a two-storied structure with large glass windows, Victorian-style furniture, and a tablet on the front door inscribed with the calligraphy of a Japanese friend. In the garden he grew a large variety of plants, including roses from England and German chrysanthemums. 28 However, even in his most pastoral moments the dark shadow of the Reform Movement's grisly end flickered through his mind, and in the same series of quatrains from which the preceding poem comes, we read a commemoration of his fellow reformer Tan Sitong: The undried blood still glistens dully on your neck; Your body conceals a loyal heart dedicated to our cause. I would encase it in a jade box with a brocade cover, To bequeath to the descendants of the Japanese martyr.29 Yoshida Shoin 1^69 fept^ (1830-59), the "Japanese martyr," was a scholar of foreign learning who had sacrificed his life after educating many of the leaders of the Meiji Restoration, but the contrast between Yoshida and Tan was too bleak too contemplate, for Yoshida's sacrifice had ushered in an era of progress and prosperity for Japan, whereas Tan's death seemed to presage a further descent into darkness.30 In spite of his reaffirmation of the ideal of reclusion in some of his more traditional poetry, Huang Zunxian was still deeply interested in the outside world. After he restored communications with Liang Qichao in about 1902, he sent a large number of poems and letters to Liang, most of which were published in the Chinese journals Liang edited in Japan. 31 He was frequently in touch with a number of other important intellectual figures besides Liang, receiving visits from the reformist Hakka poet Qiu Fengjia SftlH^ (1864-1912), the leader of military resistance to the Japanese occupation of Taiwan in 1894 after the Sino-Japanese War.32 During these years of retirement, Huang voiced some of his most radical opinions on Chinese politics and culture. He maintained his belief 42

Reform and reaction

in parliamentary democracy to the end, but he gradually became convinced that the Qing dynasty would fail to reform itself and might be overthrown by violent revolution.33 He was particularly concerned about conservative tendencies in Kang Youwei's and Liang Qichao's thought and wrote Liang a number of times, chastising him for his promotion of traditional ideals and strongly disagreeing with both his and Kang's efforts to establish a Confucian religion.34 In his last years he took particular interest in education, running a small school in which he oversaw the development of a modern curriculum for his relatives and setting up a normal school to train teachers for Jiayingzhou.35 He also concerned himself with wider questions relevant to education, proposing a simplification of the Chinese language and the development of a literature in the vernacular that would be accessible to the common people.36 But Huang Zunxian's principal activity during these later years was writing poetry. He had experienced a breakthrough in his literary career while serving in London, but he did not fully develop the potential of his new style until after he was forced from office. All of Chapters 9 through 11 of his collected works, or approximately one-fifth of his collected poems, can be assigned to the last six years of his life, but this is only a partial picture of his phenomenal output after his retirement, for many of his most famous long poems about his earlier experiences were written at this time too. The manuscript evidence does not allow us to give precise dates for these works, but it is possible that together with the poems of the last three chapters they comprise between one-third to two-fifths of his collected verse. The variety of poetry composed during these last six years is just as amazing as the quantity. Huang's Assorted Quatrains of i8gg (the subject of our Chapter 12) look back to both the Song dynasty and the first half of the nineteenth century at the same time as they look forward to the modern age of science and technology. His satirical poetry in shorter forms (the topic of our Chapter 10) is unexcelled for compactness and subtlety in the Chinese literary tradition, whereas the long narrative poems, such as the "Reclining Buddha of Ceylon" (translated on page 266) or the "Song of General Nie" (not translated) are without precedent in any earlier period.37 By the end of 1902, Huang had finished editing the manuscript from which the first printed edition of his collected poems was to be posthumously prepared in 1910. In the spring of 1904, it rained continuously in Jiayingzhou for sixty days, and the condition of Huang's lungs, never good since his stay in London, became more serious. Still he continued with his work, penning letters to Liang Qichao on a number of topics and writing more poems, which were later added to the final manuscript. On 43

Biography

the eighteenth of the first month, sensing that the end was near, he sent the following to Liang: My view on death is different from yours. I believe that as soon as one dies everything ends and is entirely obliterated. But as long as one breath remains in a man's body, he still has the duty of a live man, and if he is not able to fulfill his responsibilities in this respect and he is unable to benefit others, his six-foot body is useless, and although his mortal frame still exists, he is no different from a corpse.38

On the twenty-third of the second month, 1905 (March 28), Huang died in the peaceful surroundings of his home. His Hut within the Human Realm was badly damaged during the Cultural Revolution but has been rebuilt in recent years and now houses part of his private library. The Qing dynasty was overthrown in 1911, and even though Huang Zunxian's lifetime of labor on behalf of his government came to nought, his poetry remains as one of the most vivid and moving records of his turbulent age.

44

Part II Criticism

4 The theory of the Poetic Revolution On revolution At the present time, the literary movement with which we normally identify Huang Zunxian is called the "late Qing Poetic Revolution," or more simply the "Poetic Revolution" (Shijie geming R^FJ^^PPP). Although this term was already in use by the end of the nineteenth century, it does not occur in any of Huang Zunxian's extant writings. It seems to have been coined by Huang's close friend and fellow reformer, Liang Qichao, in 1899 and was first used extensively in Liang's widely read work on poetic criticism, Poetry Talksfrom an Ice-Drinker's Studio (Yinbingshi shihua f^ftK^B^IS). In these Poetry Talks, Liang frequently praises the originality of Huang Zunxian's poetry, and in one passage he states that "Huang Zunxian's poetry has opened up a new realm. He stands alone in the world of twentieth-century poetry, and all consider him a great author." 1 Liang does not use the term "revolution" in this passage, but his statement that Huang's poetry has created "a new realm" corresponds to our modern understanding of a literary revolution. However, other passages in Liang's critical comments do not seem to match our modern idea of revolution: In a transitional age there must be revolution. But when speaking of revolution, we mean revolutionizing the spirit of something, not the form. Recently our party has talked a lot about a Poetic Revolution. However, if one considers piling up new expressions on a page revolutionary, this is the same as the Manchu government's "reform" of laws or "restoration." If one can use old poetic forms to contain new ideas, this is really putting revolution into practice.2 Here Liang does use the word "revolution," but his insistence on retaining old forms and his apparent hostility to new language may puzzle modern readers familiar with the revolutionary stylistic and linguistic innovations of James Joyce's (1882-1941) novels or Ezra Pound's (1885-1972) poetry. 47

Criticism

Hence, we must first discuss what Liang Qichao (and by extension Huang Zunxian) meant by the word "revolution." The meaning of the modern Chinese word for "revolution" (geming, literally, "stripping the Mandate [of Heaven]) has undergone great changes since Liang Qichao's time as a result of the Western-inspired Nationalist (1911) and Marxist (1949) revolutions of twentieth-century China, but geming is not just a nineteenth-century neologism created after the pattern of European languages. It appears for the first time in the Classic of Changes (Yijing, sometime after 1000 B.C.), where we read: "The kings Tang and Wu stripped the Mandate [of Heaven]. They were in harmony with Heaven and responsive to the people."3 Tang (reg. 1766 B.C. [?]-i753B.c. [?]) andWu (reg. 1122 B.C. [ ? ] - n i 5 B.C. [?]) were the founders of the Shang and Zhou dynasties respectively, and, according to traditional Chinese historical sources, each set up his new dynasty after defeating the evil last king of the dynasty before him (i.e., stripping away his evil predecessor's Mandate to rule, which was received from Heaven). In earlier times, the term "Mandate of Heaven" (tianming) may have meant "Command of God," but in later times, as is clear from the quotation just given, a ruler's possession of the Mandate arose from his harmony with the ethical structure of the universe (not necessarily a personal god) and his responsiveness to the people's will. A ruling dynasty retained the Mandate of Heaven as long as it remained in harmony with the universe and its subjects, so premodern Chinese "revolutions" theoretically involved the restoration of a preexisting order. The founder of a new dynasty might resort to drastic political and economic measures to restore harmony, but the ancient Chinese term geming did not refer to the kind of violent political and social upheaval that the word "revolution" has implied in the West since the French Revolution or in China since the Marxist-Leninist revolution of 1949. What Liang meant by a "Poetic Revolution" was not a violent rejection of the entire Chinese literary heritage but merely an extensive reform of Chinese poetry and, most important of all, a restoration of values he felt had been lost by poets of recent centuries. Huang never even used the term "Poetic Revolution" in his own writings, but a quatrain (1897) he addressed to Zeng Guangjun • § S ^ f (Metropolitan Graduate, 1889), the grandson of Zeng Guofan H B ^ I (1811-72), the Hunanese military leader who had defeated the Taiping Rebels, suggests that his approach was similar to that of Liang Qichao: You've spent a month of your paperwork time To read my lengthy, new-style poems. 48

Theory of the Poetic Revolution

Poetry isn't declining, and good literature arises More marvelous since the reigns of Daoguang and Xianfeng.4 Huang does consider his poems to be "new," so we would be mistaken if we were to approach them as a mere continuation of earlier literature, but at the same time he stresses that his poetry has developed from the literature of the Daoguang $0t (1821-51) and Xianfeng JiKit (185162) reign periods and is not just an isolated phenomenon. Just as the ancient "revolutions" of Kings Tang and Wu cannot be understood outside of the historical contexts of the dynasties preceding them, Huang Zunxian's innovations in Chinese poetry were a logical development of trends already existing in the first half of the nineteenth century. Tradition and originality Both Liang Qichao and Huang Zunxian emphasize the importance of originality and self-expression to any reform of Chinese poetry. In his own critical writings, Liang frequently deplores the imitation of ancient masters practiced by Chinese poets in later centuries: Although I am not a good poet, I enjoy discussing poetry, yet I believe the realm of poetry has been monopolized by "parrots" for the last thousand years or more. They have written good lines and even stanzas, but as soon as you read their works you have the feeling that you have seen their lines in some other poet's collected works, something which I find detestable. If you do not intend to write poetry, then you need not concern yourself further with this problem, but if you do intend to write poetry in our present age, then you certainly need to be a Columbus or Magellan within the realm of poetry.5 Liang's negative critique of all post-Tang poetry seems quite unfair and runs contrary to Huang Zunxian's self-professed debt to his early nineteenth-century masters, but Liang's attack on the literary conservatism of later ages is largely valid, for too much of Ming and Qing literary criticism involves arguments between poets over whether one should imitate Tang or Song verse rather than about how to create a style of one's own. Huang Zunxian also attacked slavish imitation of past literature in some of his earliest works, and a poem that he wrote about 1868 (see complete translation on page 224) satirizes scholars who "worship antiquity," heaping particular scorn on writers who were afraid to use language not found in the Confucian classics. Huang Zunxian did not contribute anything new to the battle against literary conservatism in this youthful work, since most of his ideas were drawn from earlier antitraditionalist critics such as Yuan Hongdao J?;§li[ (1568-1610) and Yuan Mei MJ$L (171649

Criticism

98), but his assertion that the distinction between ancient and modern is artificial and that in a thousand years men will be startled by his own works' "hoary antiquity" is a clever reassertion of the need for literary innovation.6 Only a few years after this early poem, Huang developed his ideas on poetic creativity in a letter addressed to his friend Zhou Gun JSlJIs (d. 1873), a n assistant to the Guangdong provincial education commissioner (Guangdong tixueshi), whom Huang had met at the 1872 examination in Guangzhou: If a person cannot command his true [nature] but instead abandons his inner self to follow behind others and says that he is writing poetry in the Han [206 B.C.—A.D. 220], Wei [220-65], Six Dynasties [265-618], Tang [618-907], or Song [9601280] style, his error is manifest, for if in sculpture or painting one strives for exact verisimilitude and even succeeds in reproducing the outward form of something, there may be a resemblance to the orginal all right, but the artist has lost his own inner self. If he forgets his own inner self and the sound emanating from his mind is actually the sound of other men, then where is the so-called poetry to be found? The Han had no need for the [Zhou dynasty, 1122(?) B.C.-206 B.C.] poems of the the Classic ofPoetry; the Wei dynasty had no need for the Han; the Six Dynasties had no need for the Wei; the Tang had no need for the Six Dynasties; and the Song had no need for the Tang. It was only because each of these dynasties did not model itself on the other that they were able to create distinctive styles. For this reason, those men who rely upon the ancients in discussing poetry, pilfering theories and echoing each other, are worthless characters.7

Many of the arguments and even some of the language of this letter can be traced back to earlier antitraditionalist critics, but it does contain some original observations on the relation between past and present. In the early poem just mentioned, Huang had suggested that there is no real difference between ancient and modern poetry, because it is impossible to draw a clear boundary between past and present. In his letter to Zhou Gun, Huang goes one step farther by denying the whole concept of influence, an idea that was central to the literary theories of Qing critics who advocated imitation of ancient models. According to Huang, one can attempt to imitate the writings of ancient authors, but the results will never be anything more than a dead image of the originals, because true poetry can only arise from the author's inner self. The logical conclusion of this radical literary theory is that tradition is irrelevant to true poets and that each creative period in Chinese poetry has "no need" for the preceding age, since it already possesses all of the conditions necessary for the writing of great verse. Unfortunately, Huang Zunxian said nothing further about this problem for many years, and by the time he penned his well-known 1891 preface to

Theory of the Poetic Revolution

a draft collection of his poetry in London, his attitude toward tradition had undergone profound changes. Some of these changes can be attributed to his practical experience as a poet, and the opening lines of the preface were written by an older-but-wiser poet confronted with the vexing problem of creating original poetry within a three-thousand-year literary tradition: I was born after the ancients, and among ancient poets those who can be considered great poets with their own individual styles are certainly well over one hundred in number, so that if you wish to discard the dregs of the ancients and not be bound by antiquity, your task is certainly difficult in the extreme.8 Even in his letter to Zhou Gun, Huang had admitted that tradition could provide a prop to a poet whose creative genius flags: "Sometimes I discover that my strength is inadequate, and then I cannot avoid relying on the ancients to support myself and expand my efforts."9 However, by the time he wrote his London preface, Huang Zunxian no longer looked upon tradition as merely something he could fall back upon when his talent failed but announced to his readers that his new-style poetry had come into being through a creative remolding of China's literary heritage: I have established a [new] realm of poetry within my own mind. One part of this is to revive the substance of metaphor and allegory employed by the ancients. Another is to use the spirit of nonparallel writing to enliven the form of parallel verse. Yet another is to employ the spirit of "Encountering Sorrow" [by Qu Yuan S J S (34O?-278 B.C.) and ancient ballads without copying their outward form. And the last is to use the Ancient Prose masters' [principally Han Yu, Liu Zongyuan $P 7^7t (773-819), and Su Shi $?$£ (1037-1101)] methods of "expansion and contraction" along with "separating and joining" for the writing of poetry.10 Huang's reference to reviving "the substance of metaphor and allegory" has political implications that would seem to place his poetry securely in the mainstream of traditional verse, but the models he has chosen for his new verse are quite peculiar. All the works and authors that he mentions are highly regarded by traditional critics, but only the "ancient ballads" were written in the shi form of poetry that makes up the overwhelming bulk of his own writings. Qu Yuan's "Encountering Sorrow" is written in the sao |S£ style, which is ancestral to Han-dynasty^/w, a form that has so much in common with prose that in traditional Chinese literary anthologies it is normally classified with prose works; "nonparallel" writing and the essays of the Ancient Prose masters clearly belong to the category of prose writing.11 Huang's unusual selection of traditional literature to serve as the basis for his poetic revolution becomes even more evident when he discusses the sources for the themes and language of his poetry: 51

Criticism

When I select my materials, I take some from the Confucian classics and the Three Histories [i.e., the Records of the Grand Historian (before 85 B.C.), History of the Han

(late first century), and History ofthe Latter Han (before 445)], and even include the works of Zhou- and Qin- [221 B.C-206 B.C.] dynasty philosophers along with the commentaries of the philologists Xu Shen Ifrtll [30-124] and Zheng Xuan HPX [127-200], selecting and utilizing whatever terms for events and objects are relevant to our present age. As for the subjects I treat, I make use of modern official documents, compilations of regulations, regional dialects, and vulgar maxims, in addition to objects which did not exist in antiquity and realms previously unexplored, writing down whatever my eyes and ears experience.12 Although Huang's reliance on traditional sources might seem to compromise his claim to originality, the models that he selects for his new verse are so different from those used by earlier poets that the resulting works were apt to be highly individual. As a result of years of practical literary experience, Huang had come to the conclusion that it was impossible to escape the influence of tradition but that a skillful poet could manipulate tradition in ways that had never occurred to earlier authors. Still, how does Huang avoid creating a mere pasticcio of elements borrowed helter-skelter from the earlier literary tradition? The answer lies in his reaffirmation of the ultimate primacy of the individual, which was central to the literary theory he advanced in his letter to Zhou Gun: When I cultivate a style, I do not name it after any previous author or exclusively imitate the form of Cao Zhi Wtt [192-232], Bao Zhao JlfiM [4i4(?)~466], Tao Qian, Xie Lingyun StUM [385-443], Li Bai $ 6 [701-762], Du Fu, Han Yu, Su Shi, along with minor authors of recent times. What is most important is that I do not fail to write my own poetry, and if I truly write in this fashion I need not clamber hastily behind the ancients and will be able to stand completely on my own.13 But this individual is not as self-contained as the ideal poet described in Huang's letter to Zhou Gun, for he derives most of his inspiration from the world around him, and, since the world we live in is constantly changing, his poems will be easily distinguished from the writings of ancient men: Nonetheless, I have always felt that beyond poetry there is a [world of real] phenomena and that within poetry is to be found the individual human being. The world of today is different from antiquity, so why must the men of today be the same as the ancients?14 Literary theory and practice rarely match precisely, and many later critics such as Wang Guoyuan t £ H f e (1866-?) took Huang Zunxian to task for failing to break with tradition completely: Xia Cengyou J t ' e t e [1861-1924] loved to inject philosophical concepts into his poems, and his notable works are particularly numerous. Liang Qichao promoted him, along with Huang Zunxian and Jiang Zhiyou ^FH? S [1865-1929], as the 52

Theory of the Poetic Revolution

three leaders of the Poetic Revolution, but, in fact, all three men imitated the ancients and were not able to abandon tradition and stand independently.15

Wang's comments benefit from a historical hindsight that was not available to Huang at the end of the nineteenth century, but his criticism of the Poetic Revolution is not entirely baseless, as we shall see in later chapters. Nonetheless, the modern scholar Qian Esun Ist^rJ^ (Zhonglian WWt 1908-), who has spent much of his life studying Huang's poetry, seems fairer to Huang: In his creation of new ideas and receptivity to old rules, Huang Zunxian did not copy antiquity or become infatuated with modernity. . . . Those who wrangle with one another while flattering Tang poetry or fawning on Song poetry and who use their slavish views to criticize Huang's poetry [i.e., two late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century approaches that stressed imitation of Tang or Song poetry] are certainly incapable of understanding Huang Zunxian. On the other hand, those who can only wave about the banner of innovation . . . are even less able to understand Huang.16

Qian's defense of Huang was written in 1936, more than a decade after the Western-inspired May Fourth Movement had radically transformed the Chinese literary scene. By that time the "brave new world" of modernity was not as inviting to some Chinese intellectuals as it had been earlier, and it was possible for educated young men like Qian to sympathize with the middle path between the reactionary dogma of conservative authors in the classical language and the radical sloganeering of the more extreme May Fourth authors writing in vernacular Chinese.17 The originality that Huang had espoused in the 1860s did not seem as striking as it had at the end of the last century, but at least he and other authors of the Poetic Revolution had demonstrated that it was possible to innovate without scrapping everything that had come before them. Poetry as a direct record of experience The idea of poetry as a direct record of the poet's experience is fundamental to Huang Zunxian's approach to literature, and in his letter to Zhou Gun we read Huang's most complete statement of his musings on this subject: I maintain that poetry has flourished from antiquity to the present and that its transformations are limitless. Although there are outstanding [modern] scholars of unusual talent and uncommon ability who direct their minds to the most abstruse thoughts, they are still unable to transcend the sphere [of the ancients]. In spite of this, there is, indeed, no such thing as ancient and modern in poetry. If one is able to absorb instantaneously what the body experiences, what the eye sees, and

53

Criticism

what the ears hear, and then write this down as poetry, what need do we have of the ancients? My own poetry is already present in my Self. When sound takes on literary form, we call it poetry, and in the realm of our heaven and earth, everything possessed of sound is poetry. Even the cursing and swearing in the market or by wells, the playing of children, and the wrangling and nagging of women all possess a True Meaning in themselves and are all a supreme literary expression of heaven and earth. . . . In the age which I encounter today, the environment which I experience, the men of whom I think, and the thoughts which I conceive, / am at all times present. I gaze upon the ancients in front of me and look upon the men of the future following me, but neither of these can contend with me\ls

In this letter Huang describes both the inner and outer sources of poetry, asserting that the principal task of the poet is to give form to the poetry that already resides in his own being and in the world around him. If he casts aside the restrictions of tradition and merely responds directly to the unique internal and external experiences of each moment, he will inevitably create original works, because he is a unique human being, living in a phenomenal world that is constantly changing. Huang never completely abandoned this view of literature, and in his London preface he mentions both the internal and external sources of poetry, stating that "poetry is to be found in the individual human being" and that he himself writes "down whatever my eyes and ears experience."19 However, by this time his emphasis had changed, for both comments are embedded in long passages about the various literary sources of his poetic revolution, and it is obvious that he no longer trusted his ability to create poetry merely from the instantaneous recording of his inner and outer experience. Long years of writing had taught him that even the most inspired author cannot create great poetry from his inner thoughts without the assistance of tradition and that, although the universe may be a wonderful symphony of sound, it is impossible to mold the discrete phenomena of the external world into an artistic whole without the discipline of language and form bequeathed to us by earlier authors. But in spite of this major change in emphasis, he still affirmed that a poet must never forget that his creations are based upon a real world of external experience, or, as he put it in his London preface, "I have always felt that beyond poetry there is a [world of real] phenomena."20 The "world of real phenomena" that lay behind Huang Zunxian's later poetry was more often the world of late nineteenth-century social and political life rather than the world of "cursing and swearing in the market or by wells, the playing of children, and the wrangling and nagging of women" that he had glorified in his letter to Zhou Gun, but it still remained his 54

Theory of the Poetic Revolution

principal weapon against the excessive imitation of his ancient models, as he stated in a letter written to Liang Qichao in 1902, just three years before his death: Only poetry can be called true literature, for its tones interpenetrate with music, and it arouses men deeply. However, I feel that ever since the Song dynasty, poets have become shallow and narrow, losing the true significance of metaphor and allegory, ignoring the purpose of arousing and observing the resentments of the people, and hence [their works] are unworthy of study. I strongly desire to sweep away all the stale and imitative language of these poetasters, and therefore I will use the ideas understood by modern men, the objects they employ, and the age which they experience, lodging all of these within my poetry. I will strive to put the individual back into poetry and cause poetry to refer to things of the real world, so that my poetry cannot be ascribed to another age or attributed to a person other than myself.21

In spite of the changes that took place in Huang Zunxian's literary ideals as he became older, his emphasis upon poetry as a record of the poet's experience had a profound effect on his entire literary output. Whereas his ideas concerning the relation between creativity and tradition were sometimes quite difficult to put into practice, his appeal to the world of experience is seen in practically every aspect of his literary creation, from his use of language to the themes of his poems. Patriotism and social criticism After a string of humiliating defeats at the hands of foreign powers, starting with the Opium War, more and more Chinese intellectuals realized that only drastic changes in Chinese social and political life would ensure their nation's survival in the new world order of the late nineteenth century. Since Chinese poetry has always been inextricably bound up with political life, it was only natural that Huang Zunxian should attempt to use poetry as a tool to arouse the Chinese people to resist foreign aggression and to encourage a wholesale reformation of society. The series of ten poems that Huang wrote at the age of twenty-three about his experiences in Hong Kong already give voice to his indignation at the threat to China's sovereignty that the Crown Colony represented. Still later, when he was serving in the Tokyo embassy, the Japanese people's strong sense of national identity deeply impressed him, and some time after he left Japan he composed a number of works praising the courage and patriotism of those nineteenth-century Japanese heroes who made the Meiji Restoration possible. 55

Criticism

His preface to a series of ten poems on the martyrs of the restoration describes his motives in writing such poetry: Finally, when foreign ships began harassingjapan and the Japanese lost numerous battles, there arose men who discussed coastal defense, who argued for the construction of cannons and warships, or who desired to study overseas, but the Tokugawa shogunate strictly prohibited all such activities. It was considered a serious offense to propose restoring the power of the emperor, while anyone who promoted relations with foreigners was guilty of a great crime, and the shogun sent down a decree that all such people should be arrested. Persecutions multiplied, and those implicated were numerous, and yet men of vision rose one after the other, following closely in each other's footsteps, all viewing their own deaths as a homecoming. Some died by execution, some died in prison, some died while on the run, some died only because they were suspected, and others were assassinated, their numbers beyond reckoning. Yet in the end they were able to accomplish the regeneration of Japan and bring to fruition the Meiji Restoration, a glorious accomplishment. . . . I have selected ten of the more illustrious heroes as subjects for my poems, in the hope of inspiring the patriotic gentlemen of our own party.22 Huang Zunxian intended his readers to draw parallels between the situation in late Tokugawa Japan and late Qing-dynasty China, in the hope that they would take vigorous action to reform their society and repel foreign aggression, even if it meant destroying the old political order. All the poets of the Poetic Revolution believed that poetry should encourage the patriotism necessary for national survival, and Liang Qichao was particularly enthusiastic about the role that literature could play in creating a martial spirit among the Chinese people: There are many reasons for the lack of a martial spirit among the Chinese, but the gentleness of Chinese music is certainly one, a fact about which all knowledgeable men of the present age are in agreement. Formerly, when the Spartans were besieged and begged assistance from Athens, the Athenians responded by sending a one-eyed, lame schoolteacher, which greatly puzzled the Spartans. But just before a battle, this teacher composed military songs, which, sung by the Spartans, increased their valor a hundredfold, enabling them to win a victory. How deeply music is able to move men! However, China has never had many military songs . . . , and this is not only a defect in our fatherland's literature but is also closely related to the decline in our national fortunes. Previously, when I read Huang Zunxian's "Four Marching Songs," I was deliriously happy . . . , for the accomplishments of our Poetic Revolution have reached a new highpoint here. To sum up in one sentence, I must say that anyone who can read these poems without dancing is not a real man!23 The desire to excite the patriotism of the Chinese masses was merely one item on the agenda of the poets of the late Qing-dynasty Poetic 56

Theory of the Poetic Revolution

Revolution, who hoped that their writings would promote the total reform of Chinese government and society. We have already noted the link between poetry and politics suggested by Huang's desire to "revive the substance of metaphor and allegory" in his 1891 London preface, where the terms "metaphor" and "allegory" (bixing) usually refer to poetry with concealed political messages. In a letter written to Qiu Weixuan I r ^ H (1873-1941) in 1902, Huang stated that "Although poetry is but a minor path, European poets, brandishing their pens in the encouragement of civilization, have been able to render great services to the world," and in the same year he died (1905) Huang wrote to Liang Qichao: "In discussing poetry, I have taken expression of ideals as the substance and the inspiration of men as the function."24 Practically all the comments that Huang Zunxian's fellow reformers made about his poetry emphasize the political aspect of his literary creations. Liang Qichao tells us that Huang began compiling his collected works out of frustration with the contemporary political situation: Huang Zunxian once told me that he had carelessly lost most of his works written before he was forty. In the early 1890s, when he was posted to Europe, he became infuriated with the futility of doing anything about the contemporary situation and frustated by his lack of personal success in life. Only then did he begin systematically collecting his poems.25 Kang Youwei believed that Huang's late poetry was mostly created in response to the tragic defeat of the Hundred Days of Reform: After the disaster of our reform party, Huang was almost arrested in Shanghai, but the former Japanese prime minister, Ito Hirobumi, rescued him, so that his life was spared. From that time on he was completely neglected and never again employed in the government, so Huang applied himself even more diligently to poetry. He was moved by the calamities of our country, grieved by the humiliation of his race, and saddened by the condition of the masses.26 I shall modify Liang's and Kang's excessively political interpretation of Huang Zunxian's literary development in the following chapters, but it is fair to say that all the authors of the late Qing Poetic Revolution would have agreed that poetry came second to their political agenda. At the end of a long poem addressed to Liang Qichao a few months before he died, Huang wrote: "I feel ashamed before Cavour / While you envy Mazzini," comparing himself and Liang to the two most famous political figures of the Italian Risorgimento rather than to two Italian poets of the nineteenth century.27

57

5 The practice of revolution Problems of poetic form In our examination of the theory of the Poetic Revolution, we saw that Liang Qichao advocated "revolutionizing the spirit" of Chinese poetry but "not the form," and therefore it is not surprising that the highest praise he could lavish on Huang Zunxian was that "among contemporary poets he is the most skilled at casting new ideas into old poetic forms."1 The following statement is a succinct summary of what Liang Qichao expected from the authors of the Poetic Revolution: If you write poetry, you must be a Columbus or Magellan of the poetic realm. When the fertility of Europe's soils was exhausted and there was a surplus of industrial production, the Europeans had to search for new land in America and on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. If you wish to be a Columbus or Magellan of the poetic realm, you must first develop three strengths. First, you need a new realm of ideas. Second, you need new language, and third, you must incorporate the first two into the forms of the ancients. Then and only then can you perfect the writing of poetry, for otherwise it will be the same as moving animals from Jupiter or Venus to America. They will certainly be rare and valuable, but they will seem somewhat out of place!2 Liang Qichao's promotion of traditional form as a vehicle for modern ideas and language seems highly questionable in the light of subsequent Chinese literary history and the Western experience. For example, how was a poet supposed to write about modern life in classical Chinese, the grammar and basic vocabulary of which had changed so little during the past two thousand years that it was as remote from spoken Chinese as medieval Latin is from modern European tongues? Could poetry in the shi genre, which appeared just before the first millennium B.C. and had not changed substantially since the rise of "modern-style" (jinti) shi T&Wt&f during the seventh century, really reflect the realities of the modern world?3 58

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Certain types of traditional shi poetry seemed particularly unsuitable for the Poetic Revolution. Most shi can be classified into two broad categories. The older and freer of these is called "ancient-style" verse to distinguish it from the later "modern-style" poetry, characterized by complex rules regarding the sequence of tones in a line and the deft use of antithetically parallel couplets. Modern-style verse is further subdivided into eight-line "regulated" poetry and quatrains. Modern-style poetry, the glory of Tang- and Song-dynasty literature, with its exacting technical demands, seems an especially poor vehicle for the "new ideas" of the Poetic Revolution, and it is no surprise that the scholar Lin Gengbai #j9tE=| (1897-1941) and others felt that Huang Zunxian's modern-style verse is markedly inferior to his ancient-style poetry.4 In the next chapter we shall reconsider Lin's evaluation, but Huang himself may have shared Lin's opinion, for in a letter to Liang Qichao in 1902 he boasts that his "pentasyllabic ancient-style poetry surpasses [the works of] antiquity" and that his "heptasyllabic ancient-style poems are a bit superior to Bai Juyi fiSil [772-846] andWuWeiye 5kWM [1609-72]," but he remains strangely silent about his modern-style poetry.5 Huang's allegiance to traditional poetic forms prevented him from rejecting either modern- or ancient-style poetry, but after the poetic breakthrough of his London period he tended to favor the freer structure of ancient-style verse for his more original creations. When he did write in the more restrictive modern style, he did not always adhere closely to the accepted rules, as he admits in the preface to the first edition of his collection of heptasyllabic quatrains, the Assorted Quatrains on Japan (1880): I am not good at quatrains. My purpose in writing this book is to state the facts [about the Meiji Restoration]. Following the examples of the Miscellaneous Poems of the Southern Song and Miscellaneous Songs ofLuanyang, I managed to shape my writing

into the form of poetry. My Japanese friends who might perchance see these poems will be amused by their clumsiness.6 Huang's comments about the deficiencies of his quatrains are at least partially attributable to the modesty expected of Chinese intellectuals, but the main point of Huang's preface is that the new "ideas" and "language" of his poetry do not always fit well into the "old form" of the quatrain and that he is willing to sacrifice perfect form for the sake of making a point. Huang Zunxian never abandoned traditional forms, but he did exercise a great deal of freedom in his use of them. His ancient-style poetry generally adheres to the traditional pattern of either pentasyllabic or heptasyllabic lines, but some poems are highly irregular in line length, and one long poem is written entirely in lines of three syllables, a meter that is 59

Criticism

rare in ancient poetry (translated on page 285). Huang's use of rhyme is still more unorthodox. Most shi poems rhyme on the last syllable of evennumbered lines, but in one poem Huang uses rhymes in every single line, and in another he organizes his rhymes in groups of three lines. (See the discussion in Chapter 10.) Huang Zunxian's long poems Precedents exist for most of Huang Zunxian's departures from poetic form, but the large proportion of long poems he wrote is unique in Chinese literature, and even Huang called himself a "wordy" poet.7 For those who come from the tradition of the Iliad and Paradise Lost, the creation of long poems may not seem unusual, but when we view Huang's poetry within the context of classical Chinese verse we can understand Liang Qichao's excitement over his friend's long poems: In recent ages poets such as Shakespeare, Milton, and Tennyson frequently wrote poems of many thousands of words, which are truly outstanding. Even if one does not take into account these poems' literary elegance, their spirit alone is enough to overwhelm a person. China has fallen behind others in everything, and it seems that she can contend with the West only in the field of literature. However, our most commonly read long poems are Du Fu's "Northern Journey" and Han Yu's "South Mountain," which were praised by Song-dynasty scholars, who claimed they could vie with the sun or moon in brilliance, but actually they are deficient in subtlety, complexity, power, and beauty. The ancient ballad "The Peacock Flies Southeast" [early third century] consists of more than one thousand seven hundred words, so that it has been called the longest [Chinese] poem of all time, but although the poem is quite unusual it is concerned with nothing more than an adolescent love affair and has had no impact on the affairs of the world. . . . In all my life of discussing poetry, I have been most enchanted by Huang Zunxian, and I always regretted that I could not copy out his complete works. Recently I copied an old poem of his from a certain journal of Southeast Asia, which was a dazzling creation of more than two thousand words and truly deserves being named a rare creation without precedent. 8

Few modern readers would concur with Liang's equation of length with excellence in Western poetry, nor would many students of Chinese literature agree that Du Fu's "Northern Journey" and Han Yu's "South Mountain" are deficient in comparison with the creations of the major English poets he names, but he is correct about the unique position of Huang Zunxian's long poems in a tradition that has always emphasized the virtues of compactness and brevity.9 Huang's long poems were among his most successful creations, but even here he seems to have encountered problems in fitting his progressive 60

The practice of revolution

wine into the old bottles of traditional poetic form. According to Qian Esun, Huang planned to write a poem of more than ten thousand words about the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, but although he had already gathered all the materials for this epic work he never finished the poem.10 His deteriorating health may have slowed down his writing, but it is also likely that the difficulty of writing long poetry in the classical Chinese language was the decisive factor in his failure to complete this stupendous labor. Some of the difficulties that Huang encountered are suggested by Liang Qichao's comments, possibly reflecting conversations that Liang had with Huang about this problem: Composing long poems with variable line length is not difficult, but long poems of five syllables per line are most difficult. Long poems with bizarre language and gaudy imagery are not difficult to write, but long poems with serious language and proper style are most difficult. n The monosyllabic structure of classical Chinese demands great effort from a poet trying to write long poems in pentasyllabic verse. In polysyllabic languages, such as ancient Greek and modern English, a skilled poet can introduce an almost infinite metrical variety into a long poem, but extended passages of pentasyllabic classical Chinese poetry, in which each syllable carries equal weight, tend to bore even the most dedicated reader. Some Chinese poets who wrote long poems employed variable line length to relieve the monotony, but excessive freedom in line length upsets a poem's balance and tends to disrupt the flow of thought. One way out of this problem is to resort to what Liang calls "bizarre language and gaudy imagery," the approach adopted in Han Yu's extremely long poem, "South Mountain." Han's dazzling description of mountain peaks south of the Tang capital Chang'an captures and holds the reader's interest with its eccentric vocabulary and outlandish imagery, but, in common with a number of pre-nineteenth-century critics, Liang disapproves of Han Yu's stylistic innovations, preferring the "serious language and proper style of long poems like Du Fu's "Northern Journey." "Northern Journey" may very well be a greater poem than "South Mountain," but only a few Chinese poets have been able to create long poems of similar quality. The reasons for this failure are not difficult to see. The monosyllabic structure of the classical Chinese language requires that each word in a poem be chosen with the utmost care, a labor hard enough in a short poem but impossible for all but the most talented writers in long works. The "proper style" that Liang valued so highly also demands that a poet incorporate numerous allusions to earlier literature in his poetry, but although many writers have used the device of literary allusion skillfully in shorter 61

Criticism

poems, only authors with Du Fu's and Huang Zunxian's special talents have been successful in writing long allusive verse. Not only do such works make great demands on their creators, but they also require great effort from their readers, who may not be able to follow a long string of erudite allusions that might have been stimulating in a shorter work. Language: Vernacular versus classical Traditional verse forms presented numerous difficulties to poets who wished to express modern ideas, but an even more pressing problem of late nineteenth-century poetry was the huge gap between the classical language of most literatus poetry and the vernacular Chinese that everyone used in daily life. Even the Tang and Song masters had injected many spoken expressions into their poetry, but as the distance between the vernacular and written languages widened over the centuries, no major poet dared to break with the classical linguistic heritage, and by Huang Zuxian's time poets were still writing in a language that Confucius could have understood. By the nineteenth century, fiction and drama in the vernacular were flourishing, but with the exception of certain popular forms like the southern tanci WW\ ("accompanied narratives") and the northern guci i£1ml ("drum narratives"), which most intellectuals did not take seriously, Chinese poetry had made little creative use of the spoken language.12 At the age of twenty-one, Huang Zunxian had already voiced dissatisfaction with writers who avoided using "words not found in the Confucian classics" and promoted the idea of employing "my very own language."13 As he said in a poem written at the same time, the gulf between the classical language and spoken Chinese made the former an unsuitable tool for communication: The language of antiquity and our modern speech Are more remote from each other than alien countries. Ancient Chinese is a message translated over and over, Which must be deciphered like some barbaric tongue.14 Huang felt that the classical language was so far removed from spoken Chinese that its use interfered with the clear communication of ideas, and that the difficulty of mastering it placed a tremendous burden on all intellectuals: The night writing was invented, the ghosts all wept, Just to show how much they pitied mankind.

The practice of revolution

The men of our world die in sacrifice to words (Ample proof of human folly)! The authors of yore were pitiful creatures, Vexing themselves day and night as they scribbled away. They matched pairs of words intofloweryphrases; Characters squirmed on their manuscripts like earthworms in anguish.15 One alternative to the complex creations of the scholar-poet was folk poetry in the vernacular, which had been imitated over the centuries by many upper-class authors in search of more "natural" models. During his youth, Huang Zunxian transcribed Hakka folk poetry from the region of Jiayingzhou, and in a colophon (1891) attached to a collection of such poems, he wrote: The Airs of the Fifteen States [i.e., the Guofeng or Airs section of the Shijing, China's

oldest collection of poetry] are the most marvelous poems from antiquity to the present, and this is precisely because they were the natural utterances of women and young girls. If you were to ask a scholar to take writing brush in hand and create such poems, he would find it impossible. This is because artificial music is easy to compose, but the music of nature is difficult to imitate. I left my home a long time ago and have gradually forgotten the dialect of my native land, so when I attempt to record its songs and ballads, it takes me a long time to write down a single word, no matter how hard I rack my brains. Therefore, I frequently think what great talent the peasants possess, for they never rest from their singing the whole day as they carry loads on bamboo poles up ridges and over creeks.16 The approach to writing suggested by this preface strongly resembles the naturalistic literary philosophy of Huang's much earlier letter to Zhou Gun, but here Huang's emphasis has shifted to advocating the study and imitation of the peasants' "natural" poetry. Huang valued the longer, narrative forms of Chinese folk poetry just as highly as the shorter, lyrical Hakka folk songs, and in a late letter to Liang Qichao (1902) he made the truly revolutionary suggestion that literati should compose imitations of the vernacular tanci and Yue'ou ("Cantonese ballads"): Your journal cannot dispense with poetry, but I feel that there is no need to imitate Baijuyi's [772-846] New Music Bureau Poems or You Tong's [1618-1704] New Music Bureau Poems on Ming History. We ought to carefully consider using the tanci or Cantonese ballads with a poetic line of three, five, seven, or nine syllables, some lines long, some lines short. . . . We should change the ancient name "music bureau poetry" to "miscellaneous ballads," abandoning historical topics in favor of contemporary events . . . , but I am unable to do this, so please try discussing this with those who are able.17

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Tanci were long narrative poems, sometimes linked together with extended prose passages, written in a relatively straightforward vernacular language, on religious or romantic topics. They had been popular in the lower Yangzi Basin (particularly the region around Suzhou) since late Ming times at least. Yue'ou were similar works, from Guangdong province, which probably do not date back much before the beginning of the nineteenth century. Both tanci and Yue'ou belong to the category of popular literature known as "song-art" (quyi fH]i!), since they were sung to the accompaniment of musical instruments and were acted out by the narrator, who would change his voice and facial expression to match the particular role he was playing at the moment. By Huang's time a vast popular literature in these forms already existed, but many scholars looked down upon these popular entertainments, imitating the works of literatus poets like Baijuyi and You Tong, when they wrote long narrative poems. In line with his dissatisfaction with traditional verse forms, Huang coupled his promotion of vernacular poetry with an appeal for greater flexibility in prosody, but his dedication to the politically inspired literary theory of the Poetic Revolution caused him to see the new literary form he proposed as a vehicle for writing about "contemporary events," a goal closer to the ideals of Baijuyi and You Tong than to tanci or Yue'ou.18 Huang Zunxian admired all forms of vernacular literature, and in a written "conversation" (bitan) with a Japanese scholar in 1878, he encouraged his Japanese friends to study The Dream of the Red Chamber, China's most famous novel from the eighteenth century: The Dream of the Red Chamber created a new world, and it is the best novel from antiquity to the present, able to vie with the sun and moon for brilliance, a work that will never be blotted out for myriad ages. . . . Its style is as marvelous as the Chronicles q/Zuo [ca. fifth century B.C.], The Speeches of the States [ca. fourth century B.C.], The Records of the Grand Historian, and The History of the Han Dynasty.19

The novel was the most popular form of vernacular literature in nineteenth-century China, but many Chinese intellectuals still felt that fiction in the spoken language was inferior to poetry or prose in the classical language. In contrast to most literati of his age, Huang equates the accomplishments of The Dream of the Red Chamber with the greatest works of Chinese historical writing from the third century B.C. down to the first century A.D., a comment that may seem puzzling to modern Western readers who do not share Confucian scholars' enthusiasm for history texts, which were, after all, the most outstanding narrative texts in Chinese before the rise of the novel in the fourteenth century. Huang Zunxian was not the only progressive nineteenth-century author to admire The Dream of the Red Chamber, but his suggestion that classical 64

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Chinese should be replaced by the vernacular was many years ahead of his age. During the late 1870s, Huang wrote: I have heard that in ancient Rome only Latin was used, but because the spoken language of each country was different, the people were troubled by Latin's complexities. Only when the French discarded Latin in favor of French and the English discarded Latin in favor of English did French and English literature begin to flourish. . . . Since the Zhou and Qin dynasties, the form of our language has changed a number of times, and in the present age memorials, proclamations, announcements, and critiques are written in a clear style with an emphasis on expressing ideas, a form of writing which did not exist in antiquity. In addition, our novelists employ the spoken language only, which they transcribe in written form, thus creating an almost perfect unity between speech and writing. I know that in the future a literary style which is as suitable to its age and as current as the vulgar tongue will develop. Yes, I want all peasants, workers, merchants, women, and children to be able to enjoy the advantages of literacy, and for this it will be necessary to employ a simplified writing method.20 Huang Zunxian wrote these lines at least a decade before Hu Shi (1891-1962), the leader of the twentieth-century Vernacular Literature Movement, was born and about four decades before Hu published his manifesto of the movement ("Eight Principles of Literature") in 1916.21 Just like the later advocates of vernacular Chinese, Huang formulated his ideas under the influence of his European experience, but his clear understanding of the relation between the language issue and the spread of knowledge among the still largely illiterate masses is nevertheless remarkable for his period. However, the contributions of Hu Shi and others should not be underestimated, because, although Huang Zunxian anticipated practically all the ideas of the Vernacular Literature Movement's program, he was unable to apply his theories to his own poetry. Some of his works were written in a vernacular style, but the overwhelming majority of his poems are couched in a classical Chinese that would not have seemed peculiar to Tang-dynasty readers. In fact, his youthful poems that criticize the intricacies of the classical language are quite difficult works themselves, and without the assistance of Qian Esun's detailed commentary much of Huang's poetry would be incomprehensible even to specialists in classical Chinese. In fairness to Huang, we should not forget that Hu Shi's original essays promoting vernacular Chinese were themselves written in the classical language, just as Dante's defense of Italian over Latin, De vulgare eloquentia (1303 or 1304), was composed in Latin. Modern Chinese scholars who have studied Huang Zunxian's promotion of the vernacular language always stress the importance of the poems that 65

Criticism

he wrote in imitation of Hakka folk songs as a young man (the ones referred to in the preface just translated). 22 However, the position of these poems in Huang's oeuvre needs to be reevaluated, for although Huang's admiration of vernacular literature never wavered during his lifetime, his attitude toward his own vernacular poetry seems to have chanqed quite dramatically. The entire series of vernacular quatrains entitled "The Newly Married Bride" and two poems in imitation of Taiping Rebel songs did not make it into his collected works, and Huang also excluded four out of the total of fifteen Hakka folk songs he originally wrote.23 Furthermore, practically all of Huang's vernacular poems were written before middle age, and it seems that he gradually lost interest in composing poetry in the spoken language. Nor are Huang's imitations of Hakka folk songs quite as vernacular as some critics might have us believe. The second and third poems of the series translated in this book (see page 225) do contain some vernacular expressions and resemble folk songs in other ways, but the infusion of vernacular language into classical forms started during the Tang dynasty, and literatus poets began imitating folk poetry long before then. The vernacular expressions of these works can all be found in medieval authors, and compared to a poet such as Yang Wanli 1H!?M (1127-1206), Huang's use of the vernacular seems rather tame.24 In fact, a number of Huang's Hakka "folk songs" contain little or no vernacular vocabulary, as in the following work: The cock crows before schedule, drives my lover from home; I send him off eastward at the fork in the river. I probably can't make the waterflowwest back to me, From now on I won't raise cocks that crow the night long!25 About the only expressions that seem even remotely vernacular in this work are wufa IfSSc ("can't"), in line 3, and congjin $ t ^ ("from now on"), in line 4, but both occur in classical verse long before the nineteenth century. The third line of the earliest known version of this poem was considerably more vernacular than it is now, but in spite of Huang's theoretical commitment to vernacular literature, he changed it to the more classical version that is translated here.26 Nor does the poem's content specifically identify it as a product of popular culture. The crowing of cocks and the flow of river water eastward are common topoi of upper-class "parting poetry," and although folk poets used the same stock images (a good example of what some German scholars of folk music call herabgesunkenes Kulturgut), the upper-class origin of the poem is betrayed by the conceit in the third line, where the woman 66

The practice of revolution

wishes to reverse the flow of the river to bring back her lover, and by the ingenious use of the expression wugengji (literally, "five-watches chicken") in the closing line, an erudite allusion to a classical text about a kind of cock used by officials to tell time because it crows at each of the five watches.27 In fact, many of Huang Zunxian's Hakka "folk songs" are rather difficult works, as can be seen from Qian Esun's detailed commentaries, which identify numerous allusions to classical literature and explain sophisticated puns that even the educated reader might miss. Huang Zunxian obviously found it difficult to resist the temptation of creating complex works within the relatively simple framework that he obtained from the popular tradition, and although his Hakka folk songs contain a higher percentage of vernacular vocabulary than most of his other works, they should not be considered vernacular literature. Only during the last few years of his life did Huang Zunxian write any real vernacular poems, among which are a series of songs to encourage primary education, published in the December 1902 edition of Liang Qichao's magazine, New Fiction: Songsfor attending kindergarten (three poems often) I The spring wind rises And blossoms fill the branches. A boy tugs his mother's clothes; Weaned recently, he doesn't cry. Mother buys him pears and dates And awaits his return from school. Go to school! Don't be late! II The teacher hits a boy Who cries he wasn't guilty. He cries he wasn't guilty And wants to play hooky. But today the teacher won't hit you; Reading is mankind's greatest pleasure. Go to school, my son; Quick! Quick! Go to school! Ill Go to school! Don't delay! Tomorrow you play arm in arm:

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Sister "rides lamb"; Brother "rides ox." One beats a clapper, Another hides hooks. The lazy boy next door was punished yesterday; Now he can't join your games - for shame! for shame! Go to school! Don't delay!28 It is difficult to believe that Huang Zunxian expected educated people to take these poems seriously as works of literature (they were left out of his collected works), but they provide an example of what he probably had in mind when he broached the idea of creating a popular literature for "all peasants, workers, merchants, women, and children" back in the 1870s. Although classical expressions are not absent, the poems are written in a fairly pure vernacular style, resembling true folk poetry (especially, socalled children's songs, or erge JTEIK). They are also completely different from Huang Zunxian's classical Chinese verse in form, with considerable flexibility in rhyming patterns and line length. It may be unfair to judge these poems by the standards of Huang's classical verse, but even by the standards of Chinese folk poetry they are rather feeble creations. The modern reader is particularly troubled by their close resemblance to the edifying "children's poetry" that Chinese children are subjected to today, and their heavy-handed didacticism is to be found in much of the "popular" literature created by writers serving modern Chinese regimes that decide what sort of poetry is best for the "masses" under their control.29 We can only regret that Huang never tried to write more serious verse utilizing vernacular language and freer verse forms, but perhaps his protestations that he was incapable of writing such poetry are to be taken at face value. The change from classical Chinese to the vernacular would have to wait until the 1920s. Foreign terms and neologisms Huang Zunxian and his contemporaries failed to develop vernacular poetry in anything more than a rudimentary fashion, but in Liang Qichao's view the introduction of foreign ideas and vocabulary into the framework of classical verse was of more importance to the Poetic Revolution: If you wish to transform poetry, you must explore Europe, for the European realm of ideas and language is extremely rich and exotic, and if you succeed in this quest, you will be able to tread a thousand past ages under foot and encompass everything 68

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in the world in your poetry. . . . Among the literati of our age able to write poet's poetry and zealously striving to create a new "nation" of poetry, none are equal to Huang Zunxian. In his collected works appear "Modern Parting, Four Poems" and "A Birthday Poem for Madame Wu," which were created by the employment of the European realm of ideas.30 We may beg to differ with Liang Qichao's contention that the Chinese poet must turn to the West for his "new realm of ideas and language," but Huang's use of foreign vocabulary certainly contributes to the originality and freshness of his work. Earlier Chinese poets had occasionally introduced lexical items of foreign origin into their poems (especially Buddhist Sanskrit terms), but no poet before Huang Zunxian's age admitted nonChinese words into his verse so readily. The foreign vocabulary that Huang Zunxian used can be divided into two broad categories: transliterations of foreign words into Chinese, and neologisms coined on the pattern of European languages. As we might expect from Huang's service in the diplomatic corps, transliterations of the names of foreign places — Russia (Eluosi), Persia (Bosi), Greece (Xila), America (Meilijian), Poland (Bolan), London (Lundun) — are abundant in his verse.31 Huang read many accounts of foreign history, so names of famous non-Chinese people — Ulysses S. Grant (Gelantuo), Muhammad (Mohemo), Napoleon (Napolun), George Washington (Huashengdun), Jesus (Yesu), and Mazzini (Mazhini) - are also common, whereas "cultural" terms like "captain" (jiabidan) and Koran (Kelan) are a bit rarer.32 As one might expect, the incorporation of words from European languages created problems for the poet writing in classical Chinese. One need only compare the original Western-language words with their Chinese transcriptions to see how difficult it was to reproduce their sounds in Chinese, but this was a minor problem compared with the difficulty of fitting polysyllabic European words into the monosyllabic structure of classical Chinese verse, which usually requires that each syllable count as a full unit of meaning.33 In spite of his enthusiasm for Western languages, Liang Qichao understood the difficulties that foreign transliterations presented: At the time, so-called new poets delighted in beating about for new words to display their originality. In 1896-7 a number of the members of our party loved to write in this style, and the man who promoted it most was Xia Cengyou, although Tan Sitong was addicted to this, too. . . . His "Listening to a Discussion of the Buddhist Law at Jinling" reads: "The natural bonds and relationships were made cruel by kasite [Chinese transliteration of "caste"] / This meeting of the [Buddhist] law surpasses a balimen [transliteration of "parliament"]. . . . Xia sent me poems which read: [Two unfathomable quotations from Xia's verse follow]. This is incomprehensible language!34 69

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The Chinese language borrows foreign words directly into its vocabulary only with difficulty, but it does possess a great facility for creating new terms, and most linguistic borrowing, whether from Buddhist Sanskrit or modern European languages, has been in the form of translation rather than phonetic transcription. Therefore, the majority of "new" terms that occur in Huang Zunxian's poetry are not transliterations of Western words but rather neologisms created from the rich resources of the classical Chinese language. Huang Zunxian was particularly interested in the creation of new words. In a letter to Yan Fu (1902), he discussed a number of guidelines Yan could follow in his translations of Western philosophy, including the radical proposal that he should coin new Chinese characters for foreign terms that were difficult to translate by other means. At the conclusion of his letter Huang wrote: Today we live in the world of the twentieth century, and the civilizations of East and West are linked with each other, so that the translation of books is certainly an important task for the sake of communicating our feelings and elucidating ancient and modern learning. . . . You say there are no revolutions in the world of literature, but I think that although there may be no revolutions, there are reforms [weixin]. For example, the [early Buddhist translation] of the Sutra in Forty-two Chapters [compiled in the second century] was merely an old form, but as soon as the translator Kumarajiva [344-413] appeared, Buddhist scriptures developed into a distinct literary form, and Buddhism itself reached a new height.35 Huang intended his remarks to be applied to translations of foreign works into Chinese, but their relevance to other forms of literature would have been obvious to Yan Fu and himself. The introduction of Indian Buddhism into China at the end of the Han dynasty eventually brought about changes in Chinese thought just as profound as those caused by Western ideas at the end of the nineteenth century, but the earliest translators of Buddhist scriptures aroused little interest among Chinese scholars, because, according to Huang, they failed to create terms that faithfully rendered the ideas of Buddhism into readable Chinese. As soon as Kumarajiva created a new Chinese Buddhist vocabulary, his translations were able to capture the attention of Chinese intellectuals, and Buddhism began to flourish among the upper classes and in the imperial court. For Huang Zunxian, conservative poets who ignored the new words streaming into the language resembled the translators of the Sutra in Forty-two Chapters, for they were still writing in an old form that was out of touch with modern life. Huang did not coin any new words, as Kumarajiva had done, but his poems abound in translated words of Western origin, 70

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such as "balloon" (qiqiu), "overseas student" (liuxuesheng), "geometry" (jihe), "eyeglasses" (janjing), "equator" (chidao), "parliament" (guohui), and "Crusaders" (shizijun), to name only a few, and it behooves us to ask exactly what affect the introduction of so many foreign lexical items had on his writings.36 One might imagine that poetry composed by an intellectual like Huang, who traveled widely and who was so deeply interested in the modern world, would quite naturally contain many neologisms of non-Chinese origin, but Huang's use of foreign words is not as fortuitous as such a view suggests. We have seen how from his youth Huang Zunxian was struggling to establish his own identity within the three thousand—year tradition of Chinese poetry, and as his knowledge of foreign cultures grew he discovered that one of the best ways to accomplish his goal was to use Western loanwords that had been unavailable to earlier poets. Huang realized that such vocabulary identified him as a "modern man," living in an age profoundly different from antiquity; in other words, they were a banner of his modernity, signaling to his audience that his creations were different from anything they had read before. Huang's Assorted Quatrains on Japan were the first poems in which he exploited the "modern" feel that neologisms could give his poems, but even in his first experiments along this line he sought literary effects that transcend mere linguistic novelty: The Meiji Restoration

Their sword's luster is restored; the royal mirror is polished clean; The Japanese emperor returns to power after six hundred years. No sooner does the imperial sun return to its rightful spot in the sky Than the people demand democracy - American-style!37 The success of this quatrain owes much to its wonderful sense of historical irony. The Japanese emperors have ruled the country only in name for the last six centuries, because the shoguns held real authority, but now that the Tokugawa shogunate has been overthrown and the emperor has been restored to power, the foreign idea of democracy comes along to threaten the emperor's rule again. However, when we read the quatrain a bit more closely, we discover that its wit derives to a large extent from the clever way Huang closes the poem with the neologism gonghe ("republic" or "democracy," here translated "democracy, American-style," for emphasis). The reader works his way through two rather obscure allusions about swords and mirrors serving as imperial emblems in the first line, a difficult reference to an ancient Chinese sword (TaVa) as a symbol for a ruler's authority in the second line, 71

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and an ingenious combination of Chinese legends about Japan being situated where the sun rises and the revival of the Japanese imperial "sun" in the third line, only to be startled by the vernacular directness of the foreign term gonghe in the poem's last two syllables. Huang Zunxian used foreign borrowings and neologisms to add force to his poetic closures in a number of his Japanese quatrains, but one of the most successful examples of this practice occurs in the last line of the first poem of the "Modern Parting" series, created shortly after his poetic breakthrough in London (translated on page 269). After describing how the friends of a rushed modern traveler barely have enough time to wish him farewell, Huang closes his poem by expressing their wish for him to return by the fastest form of transport available then: But when in the future you actually do return, They beg you toflyback on a hydrogen balloon! Much of the pleasure that the reader of traditional poetry derives from this closure is a result of his surprise in finding a parting poem, one of the most stereotyped genres of classical verse, concluded with a reference to a journey by hydrogen balloon. But a good deal of his enjoyment also arises from the term qingqiqiu ^MM (literally, "light-gas balloon") itself. All the lines that precede the closure are written in monosyllabic classical Chinese, which the reader absorbs syllable by syllable, but the three syllables of the neologism qingqiqiuflashesthrough his mind as a single unit, heightening the wit of the final line and skillfully reproducing the exhilarating sensation of riding in a balloon. Much of the pleasure that this closure provides is lost in translation, because in English we cannot reproduce the sudden shift from the highly compact classical Chinese of the poem's main body to the vernacular neologism of its closure. Although Huang Zunxian occasionally used foreign words for the sake of mere novelty, his poetic sensibility usually enabled him to control the potentially disruptive effects of neologisms. For example, the last section of Huang's "The Great London Fog" (see page 269 for translation) contains such neologisms as diqiu ("globe"), Yingshu ("British Commonwealth"), and diqi ("atmosphere"), but they do not seem at all out of place, because Huang diminishes their strangeness by using a large number of almost equally unusual Buddhist terms (see discussion on page 117) in the first part of the poem. Buddhist terms are ultimately of foreign (Sanskrit) origin too and were used sparingly by most major poets, but since they had been current for more than a thousand years, they were more acceptable to Huang's readers and could serve as a bridge to the more "alien" Western borrowings of the poem's concluding section. 72

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Without this smooth transition, the poem would be considerably less effective, for a good deal of its wit revolves around the contrast between its Sanskrit-based mythological opening and the tongue-in-cheek "scientific" conclusion, expressed through the medium of Western neologisms. Huang uses the same device even more successfully in his famous allegory on racial harmony, "I wrote this poem after arranging lotuses, chrysanthemums, and peach flowers together in the same vase" (translated on page 278). Just as in the "Great London Fog," the Sanskritbased words of the poem's first part (gongyang i^^k ["offer"] ;zhantan Ifift [a transcription of Sanskrit candana, "sandalwood"]; tian ^C [normally meaning "Heaven," but here a translation of deva, or "god"], etc.) pave the way for the Western neologisms of its conclusion (huagong ["chemist"]; dongwu ["animal"]; zhiwu ["plant"]; liushisi zhi ["sixty-four elements"], etc.). But in this poem the shift from Buddhist to Western borrowings serves a much more serious purpose than in the "Great London Fog." The Buddhist section of this work (principally lines 13—22) uses Buddhist vocabulary to describe the tremendous variety of flowers (i.e., human beings) lying in disorder on Huang's table (a symbol for the world), setting the scene for the next section in which the poet recounts the grief that racial strife causes his lotuses, chrysanthemums, and peaches (i.e., the white, yellow, and black races). In the concluding "Western" section, the voice of reason, in the person of Huang Zunxian, enters the scene to arrange the flowers in a fair and equitable manner and ensure that they will live in peace and harmony in the future. Huang does not completely eliminate Buddhist vocabulary from this concluding section, thereby suggesting that the traditional Buddhist view of the world can coexist with and perhaps even enrich the Western scientific approach to life. In spite of Huang Zunxian's creative use of neologisms, Liang Qichao seems to have been somewhat troubled that they were not more frequent in Huang's works, and in the same passage in which he advocated the wholesale adoption of European "language" by the authors of the Poetic Revolution, he observed: "New language in his poems is still limited, probably because new language and old poetic forms may clash with each other, and since Huang Zunxian valued form, he strove to avoid this problem."38 One has only to think of the strange effect that Ezra Pound's Chinese borrowings (particularly the Chinese characters) produce in his Canticles to understand why transliterations of Western words might not fit into classical Chinese poetry, but why did Huang Zunxian restrict his use of neologisms?39 The problem of incorporating polysyllabic vocabulary into a basically monosyllabic idiom seems to have been paramount again. 73

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Chinese neologisms are not as "empty" of meaning as transcriptions of foreign words, since each syllable of a neologism has its separate meaning, but the modern Chinese mind thinks of such words as a unit in the same way that the English mind does not normally analyze words of Latin origin syllabically into roots, prefixes, and suffixes. For example, each syllable of the neologism wangyuanjing ("telescope") has an independent meaning, but when one reads this word in Chinese one does not think "gaze" (wang) "far" (yuan) "mirror" (jing) but perceives all three syllables as a single unit. We have already seen how Huang occasionally exploited the contrast between monosyllabic classical Chinese and this lumping of syllables together in modern Chinese neologisms to produce striking poetic effects, but an uncontrolled intrusion of modern vocabulary into his classical verse would have seemed as bizarre as the widespread borrowing of Germanic vocabulary is in some medieval Latin writing. The problem was resolved once Chinese poets started writing in the vernacular in the 1920s, but even well into the 1930s many Chinese writers preferred the classical language, and the question of what to do about modern developments in the Chinese language was still controversial, as can be seen by the remarks of the conservative poet and scholar of the Republican period, Wu Fangji ^ ^ " p f (1896-1932): There were five routes followed by the new poetry [in the classical language], the first of which was to use new terms to write poetry, an example of which is Huang Zunxian's poetry of the Hut within the Human Realm. . . . Maintaining that one can create a new poetry by using new terms, one obscures the fundamental essence of poetry by one's new terms and ignores the fact that the authenticity of poetry is unrelated to whether its language is new or old. . . . The reason that the new school commits this error is that it does not discern the fundamental essence of poetry but strives for secondary skills, which is just like looking at a flower in the fog and confusing the fog for the flower!40 Wu's remarks seem rather unfair, because he fails to prove that Huang was so infatuated with "new terms" that he ignored "the fundamental essence of poetry," but one suspects that Huang himself felt almost as uneasy about his linguistic innovations as Wu did, for in his later poetry foreign borrowings and neologisms become less and less common. If Huang was so cautious about using the vocabulary of modern life in his classical poems, why is his later poetry so successful at evoking the late nineteenth-century world in which he lived? The key word here is "evoking," for although Huang Zunxian may not have been able to incorporate large numbers of Western neologisms into his poetry, classical Chinese has such rich resources that in many poems he could "evoke" the modern world without using a single modern word. 74

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For example, the Chinese neologism for "telescope" (wangyuanjing) just mentioned does not fit well into monosyllabic classical verse, but Huang's well-known poem "Climbing the Tower at Yueyang" (translated on page 294), which describes his anxiety over China's possible partition, concludes with a description of nefarious foreigners who "climb up Yueyang Tower, a telescope clutched in their hands!" Literally, Huang writes that the foreigners climb Yueyang Tower with a "mirror" (jing) in their hands, but the reader mentally translates "mirror" to "telescope," since it would make no sense for the foreigners to be holding mirrors in their hands and the neologism for "telescope" has the graph "mirror" as its last syllable. Nor is it necessary for the ancient word that Huang employs to be part of the neologism he wants to suggest to his readers. For example, Huang does not use any neologism for "elevator" (dianti, literally, "lightning ladder," or shengjiangji, "rise-descend machine") in his poem on the Eiffel Tower (translated on page 275) but suggests the device with the good old classical expression lulu HHS (originally, "well winch"). Rather than encumber his 1885 poem on his ocean journey from San Francisco to China (translated on page 254) with a clumsy neologism like luoxuanjiang 4*I$JEIS ("propeller"), Huang allows his readers the pleasure of associating the word lun ("wheel") with the ship's screw, and the resulting ambiguity enables him to make a witty comparison between the "wheel" turning behind the ship and the wheel-shaped moon in the sky. I shall say more about the way Huang exploits the ambiguities between the old and new meanings of his classical vocabulary when we examine the effects of modern science and technology on his poetry in Chapter 11, but it already should be apparent that the difficulty of using neologisms in his classical verse is not quite as limiting as it might seem at first sight. Of course, there were obvious drawbacks to evoking modern concepts with ancient vocabulary. For example, the same ancient word "mirror" (jing) with which Huang translates "telescope" in his poem about Yueyang Tower is also used in his series "Modern Parting" to suggest the word "camera."41 The connection is not quite as farfetched as it might seem to Western minds, for the modern Chinese term for "camera" (zhaoxiangji, literally, "reflect-image machine") demonstrates the connection between mirrors and photography in the Chinese mind, but there always was the danger that Huang's readers might not understand what he meant when he could not use a neologism because of poetic considerations. Even more troubling than unintended ambiguity is the frequent anachronism that such usage frequently entails. In Huang's poem on General Feng Zicai M^M (1818-1908) (translated on page 252), the military hero of the Sino-French War is described as brandishing an "8-yard snake lance" (translated as "8-yard lance like a viper" in line 20), 75

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a weapon that, according to Qian Esun, was used back in the Jin ^=t dynasty (265-420) and certainly would not have been found in a late nineteenthcentury arsenal. Similarly, in line 14, Feng's loyal troops wave clubs (ting) rather than the "weapons" that the English language dictates, in spite of the fact that the Chinese army's overwhelming victory over the French suggests they were armed with something more lethal than tree branches. The late nineteenth-century reader would have automatically translated these anachronistic terms in his mind, and he might even have relished the allusions to classical poetry on warfare which they imply, but they may trouble the modern reader somewhat more, since the most up-to-date word Huang had in his classical poet's military vocabulary was "cannon" (pao), a weapon that the ancient Chinese invented.42 Conclusion Throughout our study of Huang Zunxian's and Liang Qichao's Poetic Revolution, certain patterns have emerged. Again and again, Huang and Liang proposed radical changes in Chinese literary practice, only to discover they were unable to transform Chinese poetry in the way that they hoped. During his youth, Huang had advocated an almost complete rejection of the poetic tradition, but by the time he wrote his London preface he had profoundly changed his approach to poetry and gladly listed his many models. Huang Zunxian advocated the transformation of classical poetic form, the use of vernacular Chinese in place of classical, and the creation of a new poetic vocabulary at one time or the other, but after experiments in all these areas he found himself unable to break with the past. One might respond that Huang's failure to do so is of little account, for Liang Qichao, the principal theorist of the Poetic Revolution, had clearly enunciated the Poetic Revolution's allegiance to traditional form, but this response begs the question, for Huang Zunxian frequently complained about how difficult it was to express modern ideas within the limits of traditional form. Moreover, Liang's Poetry Talks were published from 1902 to 1905, years after Huang Zunxian's most important poetry was written, and Liang's literary pronouncements frequently give one the impression of a rearguard action to defend the Poetic Revolution against critics who pointed out shortcomings that even the movement's staunchest adherents admitted. Huang's failure to create a completely new poetry is probably best understood by reference to the deeply rooted Chinese conservatism in literary form. We have already mentioned that shi poetry did not change substantially in form after the seventh century, and the last new genre of Chinese verse (sanqu, or songs) came into being during the thirteenth and 76

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fourteenth centuries, after which no new significant verse forms were introduced until the 1920s, when most creative poets abandoned the classical Chinese language to write vernacular verse inspired by late nineteenth-century European models. However, Chinese conservatism in poetic form after the seventh century did not impede the development of the art of poetry during the Tang and Song dynasties, and most of the greatest masters of those two dynasties did not indulge in experiments in verse forms but were satisfied to express their ideas within the metrical structures and with the classical language they had received from earlier generations. Is it then surprising that innovative nineteenth-century poets such as Huang Zunxian held onto traditional forms so tenaciously? Huang could push the forms he had inherited to their uttermost limits, imitate genres of writing neglected by earlier authors, expand ancient-style shi to unprecedented lengths, and infuse his poetry with large numbers of neologisms unknown to antiquity, but for him poetry meant poetry in classical Chinese, written in the forms that the old masters had used. To desert these forms would have been tantamount to abandoning literature itself.

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6 Traditional themes

Huang's traditional verse Modern Chinese critics rarely mention the large quantity of verse on traditional themes that Huang Zunxian wrote, although much of it is of exceptional quality. These critics have probably felt disinclined to study this poetry, since it does not seem relevant to their interest in Huang as a forerunner of modern Chinese literature, but their attitude is faulty for a number of reasons. First of all, by ignoring Huang's more traditional poetry, we run the risk of presenting an unfair and distorted picture of his poetic output. No one can do full justice to Huang's poetry in a single volume, but since his traditional verse comprises a significant portion of his collected works, it would be foolhardy to ignore it just because it does not fit our preconceived notions about Huang being a "modern poet." Secondly, an examination of Huang's more traditional poetry may reveal affiliations with earlier literature that may assist us in explaining his more original verse. We shall examine some of the literary sources for Huang's poetry on modern themes in later chapters, but these are even easier to trace in traditional poems that are much closer to his original models. But most important of all, it seems wrongheaded to reject poems on traditional themes just because they are not as "up-to-date" as other works by Huang. Huang Zunxian's most enjoyable creations are mostly on themes that earlier Chinese authors had not explored, but many of his traditional works are as good as anything written by the Tang and Song masters and clearly demand our attention. Huang Zunxian was one of the most widely read authors in a tradition noted for its erudition. The many allusions to earlier works that appear in his poetry prove not only that he studied most of the historical, geographical, philosophical, and religious literature of premodern China but also that he had an intimate knowledge of every significant poet before his

Traditional themes

own age. However, in spite of Huang Zunxian's incredibly catholic taste, he was most strongly influenced by the authors of the Song dynasty, particularly those who lived during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Song poetry and Qing poetry Ever since the Ming dynasty, Chinese critics have tended to divide Chinese poetry from the seventh century onward into two schools, Tang poetry and Song poetry. Such a division ignores the great diversity of writing during both dynasties, but one must admit that it does possess a certain validity, and even such a prominent Japanese scholar of Chinese poetry as Yoshikawa Kqjiro ]=f Jl|^#C§P (1904-81) continues the division in his own work. According to Yoshikawa, the primary difference between Tang and Song poetry is that Tang poets emphasized sentiment, whereas Song poets favored intellect.1 Tang poetry does not lack ideas, nor are Song authors deficient in feeling, but Yoshikawa and earlier Chinese critics have based their separation of Tang from Song poetry on easily discernible differences between the approaches of authors during the two periods. Nonetheless, in certain respects it might be better to call Song poetry a poetry of wit rather than a poetry of intellect, because the term "wit" embraces a wider variety of literary phenomena than the term "intellect."2 For example, we can recognize the wit of a Song poem that is distinguished by a clever turn of phrase or a humorous image, but we might be hard put to say much about its intellectual qualities. Let us look at one short poem by the twelfth-century author Yang Wanli to illustrate this point: Picking snowy plum flowers under candlelight

Brother Plum dashes through the snow to visit me; Snowflakes cover his beard and even his face. All his life, Plum's been skinny, but now he seems fat (Or perhaps it's because I can't distinguish Plum from the snow). I call him in and look him over by lamplight; Now I really don't know if there's any snow or not. All I see is his jade countenance, wet with beads of sweat; The sweat covers his face and drips down his beard!3 This poem is full of clever conceits, most of which are connected with Yang's witty use of personification. Yang creates an entire poem around a fancied resemblance between a plum flower with long stamens and a whiskered friend, "Brother Plum," who "dashes" through the snow to "visit" the poet and is subjected to the usual examination of body weight that is a duty of traditional Chinese hosts. Yang's personification of the

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plum flower gives rise to a number of delightful ambiguities, such as the confusion between the snow and the white "complexion" of the plum blossom, or between the melting snow and Plum's sweat. All these conceits reach their climax in the last line (as in any good joke), and although no English translation can do justice to the clever language of the original (which involves the sounds of words, particularly the final rhyme), even in English we are pleasantly surprised by the unexpected dripping of the snow / sweat of the plum blossom / face onto the stamens / beard. The wit of Yang's work also operates on a more fundamental structural level. The late Qing critic Chen Yan Bltfi (1856-1937) commented on the "twists and turns" that characterize Yang's poetry, and much of the cleverness of this poem derives from sudden changes that resemble the jabs and feints of a skilled boxer.4 Thus, Plum has always been skinny but now he seems fat, and yet his apparent fatness maybe a result of confusion between the snow and his face. However, when Yang calls him in, he cannot see any snow on his face (contrary to what he just said), so he must really be fat. Finally, although Yang clearly saw snowflakes on his beard and face, now his face is covered with sweat (How do you sweat when it is so cold?), and this "sweat" is dripping down on his beard. Such poetry is not meant to appeal to the emotions, as so much Tang verse is, nor does it serve the deeper intellectual purposes that Yoshikawa ascribes to Song verse; it is merely very witty. Interest in witty Song verse declined under Mongol rule and reached its nadir during the nearly two and a half centuries of the Ming dynasty, but the Qing dynasty witnessed a remarkable rebirth of Song-dynasty poetry. The first stage in this revival was marked by the publication in 1670 of an extensive collection of Jottings from Song Poetry {Songshichao ^mw), Song verse.5 By the time another major anthology, the Recorded Occasions in Song Poetry (Songshi jishi ^PTf&SIP-), was published in 1764, Song poetry had been restored to its rightful position in Chinese literature, and although some critics continued to promote Tang poetry to the exclusion of Song, a number of prominent eighteenth-century authors such as Yuan Mei and Zhao Yi S I S (1727-1814) manifested their emulation of Song poetic techniques in their own poems.6 By the nineteenth century, the status of Song poetry continued to grow. The famous nineteenth-century calligrapher-poet He Shaoji fa ^ 8 8 (1799-1873) wrote works that are sometimes difficult to distinguish from his Song prototypes: A contrary wind

A cold rain beats the river, and the wind's contrary, too; The boatmen get mad at me for constantly opening the door. 80

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"Listen, fellows," I say, "if it weren't for the mountains' green hues, Do you think I'd be bouncing around in the middle of whitecaps?"7 The quatrain form of this poem and the eight-line regulated form of Yang Wanli's work make somewhat different demands on an author, but both creations are linked by their fundamentally witty approach. The wit of He's poem centers on the idea of contrariness: The wind is contrary; the boatmen are contrary; and even He is contrary, concluding his poem with an angry outburst straight from a long tradition of humorous outbursts in Song literature. 8 He does not build his entire poem around the pathetic fallacy, in the manner of Yang Wanli, but the theme of contrariness cleverly connects the natural and human worlds. Huang's earliest Song-style verse Song-dynasty poetry was a source of inspiration for many Qing-dynasty authors, but its influence is not readily apparent in Huang Zunxian's earliest works, which followed closely in the footsteps of earlier nineteenth-century didactic and satirical poetry. A series of three poems entitled "A Trip to Lake Abundant," which Huang wrote about an outing to West Lake (also called Lake Abundant) near Huizhou MJM, Guangdong province, are the first works to exhibit unmistakable Song influence. The influence is evident in the second poem of the series (translated on page 221), but the first poem exhibits its affinities with Song poetry even more clearly: A trip to Lake Abundant (first poem of three)

I've never traveled to Hangzhou's West Lake But seem to have met it in my dreams someplace: A vague and indistinct expanse of water and clouds, Where lotus leaves merge with weeping-willow branches. Now that I see Lake Abundant lying before me, Ten thousand hectares of blue glazed tiles, I would love to address this question to Master Su: "Is Hangzhou's West Lake better than the West Lake of Yingzhou?" More than a week I've been suffering from summer heat, When this marvelous lake splashes its light on my eyes. I suddenly suspect I'm in the middle of some painting And wonder if I might have just awakened from a dream. Whatever is the meaning of human existence, That I should race around frantically for fourscore years? 8l

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Brown dust buries the head of my horse, And I labor on and on without knowing I'm exhausted. Alas! I cannot sprout an immortal's wings; I cannot avoid the trammels of the mundane world. I desire to reserve a plot of land for myself, Some property where I can make plans for the approach of old age. Clouds float at leisure around the lake; I cannot sleep, because I long for them. Gulls and herons, I just vowed to become a recluse — Please,flyup and announce my intentions to heaven!9

One of the more obvious Song qualities of this poem is its wit. In lines 7 and 8, Huang presses the long-deceased Song-dynasty poet Su Shi (Huang's "Master Su") for an unequivocal answer to the question of whether he prefers Hangzhou's West Lake to the West Lake of Yingzhou Sf^H, Anhui province (and by extension the West Lake Huang is describing), in spite of the fact that after residing near all three West Lakes, Su had written: "I cannot yet know if Hangzhou's or Yingzhou's [West Lake] is superior."10 Placed where it is, Huang's tongue-in-cheek challenge to Su interferes somewhat with his poem's smooth development, but it shows he was continuing to develop his mastery offan'an, the Song device that had won him so much praise as a young boy. Huang's personification of the gulls and herons at the end of his poem is considerably less imaginative than Yang Wanli's personification of a plum flower, but it also illustrates the beginning of his imitation of Song techniques. However, Huang's debt to Song verse is manifested on an even more basic level in this work, for according to Qian Esun's commentary, lines 3, 8, and 10 all echo poems by Su Shi, and line 16 derives from a line by Huang Tingjian it" jUil (1045-1105). One of the poem's most striking images (line 10) is nothing more than a skillful rewording of Su Shi's original "I gaze at the lake from the mountain peak, and its light splashes against my eyes."11 Furthermore, Huang's close observation of the lotuses and willows resembles Song verse (compare Yang Wanli's description of the plum), and the decorative metaphor for the lake's blue surface, in line 6, resembles the style of Southern Song masters, although the line actually alludes to a poem by Du Fu.12 Huang was just beginning his study of Song poetry when he wrote his works on Lake Abundant, as we can see from the clumsy way he integrates the inner didactic section of his poem (lines 13-20) with its opening and close. Song-dynasty authors do occasionally insert brief didactic sections in poems of reclusion, but Huang's didactic section resembles the nineteenth-century poetry of ideas rather too closely, suggesting that 82

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Huang had not learned how to harmonize his Qing background with the Song poetry that he admired so much. The small quantity of modern-style poetry from Huang's early years does not owe much to Song poetry, but from around 1870, when he was twenty-three years old, this situation began to change, as we can see from the following regulated poem addressed to his cousin Liang Jushi: I was missing Liang fushi and sent this to him when I was staying at an inn in Shantou

Autumn's voice rustles through the dry leaves on the trees And enters my heart, sighing in a hundred mournful ways. Though a fierce wind stops the ferry, the bells still can speak; I look alone at the ancient moon, hanging in the sky like a mirror. Not yet middle-aged, my joys and sorrows are complete; I'm not in tune with most people, so leaving you is difficult. I circle the inn's eaves and pace my room a thousand times; I was just facing my lone lamp; now I'm leaning on the railing again!13 The brevity of regulated poetry does not allow Huang to combine nineteenth-century didacticism with Song lyricism here, and this poem is much better integrated than his description of Lake Abundant. The work contains only one allusion to a Song poem (again by Su Shi), but it has moved even closer to the Song-dynasty style.14 First of all, we note Huang's personification of the bell, in line 3, the line that happens to be inspired by Su Shi. Second, line 5 is an example of skiWtulfan'an, overturning a statement by the famous general Xie An ttf:£: (320-85), who, according to an account preserved in the Shishuo xinyu {New account oftales of the world, compiled about 430), said that he had reached middle age and therefore suffered from an abundance of joys and sorrows.15 To this Huang humorously retorts that he has not yet reached middle age but is already brimming over with joys and sorrows. The poem also closes in a typical Song fashion, displaying Yang Wanli's "twisting and turning" structure in its last two lines, where the author first paces a thousand times from outside the inn to the room and then suddenly reverses the pattern, in the last line, by going from the lamp to the railing. Huang Zunxian does not adopt Yang's structure throughout his entire poem, but the wit of the ending largely results from these shifts. The promise of this early regulated poem was realized in a set of ten regulated poems, entitled Assorted Poemsfrom a Hut within the Human Realm, dating from about the beginning of 1874, the first of Huang's many excellent series of regulated verse. The quality of these poems is admittedly uneven, and two of them were omitted from the final edition of Huang's 83

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works, but he must have realized their importance, for in later years he extensively revised them.16 In my account of Huang's life, I mentioned that the name of his study, the Hut within the Human Realm, was inspired by a poem of Tao Qian, which begins: I built a hut in the human realm; But there is no sound of cart or horse. You may ask how this is possible If your mind is far away, a place becomes remote by itself.17 Tao Qian, the most famous eremite in Chinese literature, retired from public service after he became disgusted by official corruption, and in later times these lines were considered the most perfect statement of the ideal of reclusion that underlies the entire series of Huang's poems. The connection between Tao Qian's poetry and the following work by Huang could not be any clearer: Two or three trees rise in front of my gate: Beyond the trees stands a pavilion of thatch. Fish glide through the water carrying willowfluffin their mouths; Birds worry about their nests as they escort their young. Moonlight seeps through my trellis of melons; Flowers entwine as they invade the railing. Now, for the first time, I can fathom why Hermit Tao Moved from the capital to live in the suburbs!18 In this work we discover the same sensitive portrayal of the joys of reclusion set against the charms of the Chinese countryside that East Asian readers have enjoyed for so many centuries in Tao Qian's own poetry, not to speak of the direct allusion to Tao's well-known poem "Moving My Residence" in the last two lines.19 However, the influence of the Song masters on this poem is equally important. The last two lines may allude to a poem by Tao Qian, but their impact on the reader owes little to Tao's original, arising instead from an unexpected shift from the relatively impersonal description of Huang Zunxian's beautiful surroundings, in the first part of the poem, to his own personal comments about his appreciation of Tao at the end. This sudden change is reinforced on the purely verbal level, for in the original Chinese, the impersonal descriptions of the first section are couched in highly compact classical Chinese, arranged in perfectly parallel couplets, but the second-to-last line (literally, "No wonder Recruit Tao") shifts abruptly to a more vernacular style, marked by the spoken expression nanguai ("no wonder"). The connection between this shift and YangWanli's "twists and

Traditional themes

turns" should be apparent, and, in fact, Yang frequently exploited sudden shifts from classical to vernacular in his own closures.20 The wit of the other poems in the series is less conspicuous, for they are written in the quieter mode of Song verse (Yoshikawa's poetry of "serenity"), reminding one particularly of a Southern Song poet such as Fan Chengda ^EwLsZ (1126—91). The sixth poem of the series (translated on page 229) is an especially fine example of this type of poetry, betraying its Song ancestry in the fine detail of its descriptions and profound sense of transcendence. The work echoes a number of Tang poems, but in Tang poetry one would expect such an autumnal poem to reflect the conventional sadness of the season, something suppressed by Huang through his avoidance of emotive language. We have noted that Huang revised this series for the final draft of his collected poems, and this work is no exception, the last two lines of the original reading: Somber, somber my courtyard is silent; I sit until the third watch of night.21 This ending is considerably less successful than the present closure, for the language is much more conventional and does not reproduce the subtle shift in lighting that is so satisfying in the final version. Huang's revisions not only provide evidence of his growing talent as a poet, but they also indicate an increasing mastery of Song techniques for describing the minor details of life that reminds one of an author like Chen Yuyi SJ^Iist (1090-1139), whom Yoshikawa has praised for his "sensitivity to the change of light."22 Song-dynasty poetry in Japan One would expect that Huang's period of service in Japan would have diminished his interest in Song poetry, but in fact exactly the reverse happened. Huang's Assorted Quatrains on Japan are his best-known poems from his Tokyo period, and I shall have more to say about the influence of Song poetry on them in Chapter 7. However, he also wrote a number of other excellent poems in Japan, among which the best are a series of four works about a trip to Hakone (see page 235 for translations of three), still a favorite destination of Japanese and foreign tourists. These works are so different from his Assorted Quatrains that it is difficult to imagine they were composed at roughly the same time. Some of these differences may result from the fact that the Hakone poems were written in the ancient style, with freedom from the many restrictions that govern quatrains, but the private nature of the Hakone poems seems even more decisive. Huang had 85

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no reason to display his erudition in poems created for his own enjoyment, and although they do echo quite a few earlier Chinese poems, their allusions are relatively straightforward, making them much easier to read than the Assorted Quatrains. Finally, Huang makes no effort to emphasize the peculiarly Japanese qualities of Hakone, and although, at the beginning of the first poem he does present a highly realistic and comical picture of the Japanese sedan carriers, most of the others could just as easily have taken place in China. The links between the Hakone poems and Song verse are especially strong. Allusions to Su Shi's verse are numerous, but Huang also echoes the works of other Song authors, such as Yang Yi HHi> (970-1020 or 1021) and Fan Zhongyan fSfr/S (989-1052). 23 Qian Esun has not noticed any allusions to Southern Song authors, but poem I of the series displays strong similarities to the poems written by Fan Chengda during his difficult journey through the Yangzi Gorges in 1174, especially his "Where Snakes Slide Back," another amusing description of a harrowing mountain climb.24 Su Shi's influence is particularly marked in poem II of the group. Huang's comparison of the thunder's sound to an infant's cry, in line 20, comes from a prose preface by Su, and the striking idea of gathering a cloud into a container probably derives from the following short preface to another of Su Shi's poems: When I returned from the city, mist from the mountain had come onto the road, and it resembled a herd of horses galloping about. I grabbed some, opened a cage, and put it inside. When I returned home, mist filled the cage, and I opened the cage to let the mist go.25 Su's original idea is already rather strange, but Huang used it to create one of the most unusual poems he had written to date. A modern Western reader might complain that Huang does not fully develop the nightmarish qualities of his account of how a cloud flies straight toward him and forces its way through his hut's cracks, but the way he closes his work by allowing his dream of a red dragon (a symbol for drought in northwestern China, according to his note) crashing "into a deep bank of clouds" is quite striking. The clever wit of these poems, as well as their highly realistic descriptions, clearly derive from Song poetry, but in this second poem Huang is already beginning to transcend his masters. The mastery of traditional forms A large proportion of the traditional poems we have considered treat the age-old theme of withdrawal from official service to a life of reclusion in 86

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the countryside, but the stereotyped nature of such poetry makes it difficult to gauge how sincere Huang Zunxian was about his profession of the eremitic ideal. After his return to China from the difficult period of his service in the United States, he did refuse offers of official position from the government, and it is possible that he toyed with the idea of withdrawal from society. In any case, during the period between his return from San Francisco and his next posting in Europe, Huang wrote an unusual quantity of high-quality traditional verse, on the themes of nature and reclusion. Riding a Boat Downstream (translated on page 258) is certainly one of the most accomplished among the ancient-style poems of this genre, its exhuberantjoitf de vivre that reminds one of Song-dynasty boating poems by Su Shi and Yang Wanli.26 Qian Esun identifies many allusions to earlier literature in this poem, but Huang Zunxian employs them so deftly that they do not interfere with the freedom of the ancient style, as we can see from his treatment of allusions to Su Shi.27 The striking metaphors for Huang's swift boat ride, in the fourth and fifth lines, seem to have been patterned on Su Shi's famous description of a waterfall: It is like a hare running from a swooping hawk; Like stallions galloping down a ten thousand-foot slope. It's a string snapping from its peg, an arrow shooting from a hand; Lightning flashing by a crack, water pearls leaping from a lotus leaf.28 More specifically, the fourth line of Huang's poem ("It rolls like a wheel downhill, an arrow shot from a bowstring") is an ingenious remolding of the following lines from Su Shi and his brother Su Zhe HfrWi (1039-1112): The months and years flit by like a wheel rolling down a hill. [Su Shi]29 The letter races as fast as an arrow shot from a bowstring. [Su Zhe]30 By alluding to these two lines, Huang improves on his principal model, accomplishing in four lines what it took Su Shi four lines to do. His series of vivid metaphors can be easily understood by readers unfamiliar with their literary sources, and the resulting compression of imagery gives his description the kind of energy that is found in only the best ancient-style verse. The increasing perfection of Huang's ancient-style poems on traditional themes at this time is matched by a corresponding rise in the quality of his regulated poems. The poet Chen Sanli, who associated with Huang in the Hunan Reform Movement, was particularly impressed by the excellence of the heptasyllabic regulated verse that Huang wrote during his years of 87

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retirement: "The heptasyllabic regulated poems of this chapter are all in the category of [poems] that embody power in simplicity, adversity in agreeability, or flux in orderliness, and it is suitable that the author was pleased by them."31 The two poems "My Little Daughter" (translated on page 258) and "Impromptu" (translated on page 258) are especially well-written heptasyllabic regulated poems from this period that have earned the praise of traditional Chinese critics. About these two poems, the scholar Fan Dangshi ?E^ttt (1854-1904) wrote: "Heptasyllabic regulated verse is the hardest to rhyme in a natural way and yet possess transformations that you do not expect. I can savor these two quatrains again and again without becoming tired of them."32 Furthermore, the Sichuan scholar-official Wu Dexiao ^iH^lt (Senior Licentiate, 1873), who was a close friend of Huang Zunxian, wrote: "They always shrink back after extending, always return after venturing forth, opening and closing, moving and shaking, creating their own realm; they are truly masterpieces."33 All three critics' praise of the changes within Huang's regulated poetry from this period resemble Chen Yan's appreciation of Yang Wanli's "twists and turns," and the Song influence on these works is also apparent from their allusions to Su Shi's poetry, the last line of "My Little Daughter" and line 7 of the "Impromptu" deriving from the Song master's works.34 The changes that the critics praise occur both within single lines and throughout the poems as a whole. The most notable twists within single lines are found in lines 3 and 4 of "Impromptu" ("Ready to leave but returning, the wind blows the willowfluff;/ Suddenly warm, then cold again, the spring nurtures her flowers"), where three distinct actions are described in each line. "My Little Daughter" handles change within an entire poem even more deftly than "Impromptu," with its wonderful cycle of change leading from the peaceful surroundings of the first two lines to the daughter's clamorous insistence that her questions be answered, back to the tranquillity of the ending. Neither of these poems develops the witty side of Song verse, but there are numerous witty poems in Chapter 5, the best example of which may be "Closing My Gate" (see page 259). One of this poem's most impressive achievements is the way that it incorporates Huang's overseas adventures (alluded to with the expression "fairy mountains") in the traditional form of pentasyllable regulated verse in the Song style. One could say that this fusion of old and new summarizes Huang Zunxian's experience with regulated poetry up to this time and looks forward to how he was to develop his more traditional regulated verse in the future. Contrary to what one would expect from our examination of the problems of poetic form in Chapter 5, 88

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most of Huang's poetry about foreign cultures was written in the highly restrictive "modern" style before his return to Jiayingzhou, and although he was beginning to explore new ways to treat such themes in ancient-style verse at this time, some of his best regulated verse of later years was written on foreign themes, too. Tradition overseas The chronology of the two best groups of poems in this category, Evening Outings to Lake Shinobazu, about Ueno Park in Tokyo (translated on page 232), and Assorted Poems on Recovering from Malaria (translated on page 238), about his experiences in Singapore and Malaysia, is far from clear, but the sophistication of the Ueno Park poems and the manuscript evidence suggest that they were written many years after Huang's visit to Japan, whereas the Singapore poems may not have been finished until his forced retirement from politics.35 On the technical level, these poems do not represent an advance over the regulated poetry of Chapter 5, simply because no Qing poet wrote better short poetry within the limits of the Song tradition, but they are certainly the best quatrains that Huang ever wrote on foreign countries. That they are still largely within the Song tradition is demonstrated by their many allusions to Song authors and the fact that quite a few of them could be readjust as well as poems about premodern China as poems on foreign countries (e.g., poems II, IV, and V of the Ueno Park poems). That Huang himself probably saw the link between these works and his earlier Song-inspired nature poetry is suggested by the following Ueno Park poem in which he alludes to the earliest Song-style nature poems he wrote: One cicada hums in the shadows of a million green leaves; A vague mist transforms into a fog covering the lake. For no reason it blows my dreams of Lake Abundant down; I've not visited Lake Abundant for ten years now!36 In spite of their traditional qualities, many of the poems in both series are clearly about Japan or Malaysia. Although I reserve discussion of Huang's poetry on foreign countries to the next two chapters, I should say something here about how he depicts foreign scenes in these two sets of quatrains, because his technique is quite different from his other verse of this category. First of all, in the Ueno Park poems, we search in vain for the many foreign vocabulary items of the Assorted Quatrains on Japan. For example, in poem II the word "geisha" of our translation is only suggested by the Chinese word wu ("dance"), and in poem III the word "sashimi" has 89

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been inferred from the expression zhipianyu ("paper [-thin] slices offish"). In line l of poem III, Huang does use a term derived from Japanese ("cherry tea"), but although this beverage did not exist in China, cherries and tea were certainly well known, and even a medieval Chinese reader could have easily inferred what Huang meant. In general, the "foreign" atmosphere of the Ueno Park poems relies heavily on what the reader reads into the poems. This subtle suggestion of foreign atmosphere was easier in the poems on Japan, because Japan is closer to China, both geographically and culturally, but the situation with Singapore and Malaysia was rather different. In some of his Assorted Poems on Recovering from My Illness (e.g., our

numbers I—III, VIII-IX) Huang created works that are practically indistinguishable from Song-style verse composed in China. Su Shi is still his favorite source of allusions, but he also borrows from Zhu Xi, Wang Anshi 1:5:5 (1021-86), and Zhang Lei fjR;^ (1054-1114).37These last three are noted for their quatrains in the more peaceful Song style that has been mentioned earlier, and the wonderful tranquillity of the best Singapore poems is clearly derived from this source, as well as from the Tang poets Wang Wei I $ t (701-61) and Wei Yingwu #ffi^J (737-ca. 792), whom Huang also echoes.38 However, in some of the Singapore poems Huang does let us know that we are not in China. Poem IV starts as any Song-dynasty quatrain might, but when Huang sends his tame monkey to fetch him coconuts, we realize we have left China far behind. Similarly, poem VII begins like countless earlier spring poems, with its peach blossoms and willow fluff and its scenes of boats plying rivers, but, when we least expect it, Huang's grandson comes home dragging a crocodile behind his boat. This poem could not have taken place in Jiayingzhou, but its witty ending is still Song in inspiration. Huang has instilled life into the stale formula of spring poems by injecting a foreign image into the last line of the poem, but the technique itself is thoroughly rooted in the past. In most of Huang's Singapore poems, the foreign element is much less intrusive. The reader who is not familiar with astronomy might miss Huang's reference to the South Dipper in poem V, so he would not realize that the poem is set in a country far south of China. Similarly, in poem XI the red turbans and white robes of the Malays, in line 3, flicker by us so rapidly that we hardly notice them, ample proof of Huang's skill at incorporating foreign experiences into his verses without interfering with the basic qualities of Song-inspired quatrains. In fact, Huang would continue to write quatrains and regulated poetry on traditional topics until his old age, and not until his Assorted Quatrains 0/1899, which we shall take up in

Traditional themes

Chapter 12, did he add more to the tradition of such poetry. His failure to innovate was not due to any lack of talent or skill. On the contrary, his quatrains and regulated poems from these years are so technically perfect, when judged by traditional standards, that little could have been done to improve upon them. Why Song poetry? Anyone familiar with the literary theory of the Poetic Revolution may well ask why Huang Zunxian continued to write on traditional themes throughout his life and why the Song style exerted such a strong influence on him. One answer to the first question is that in some cases Huang was obliged to write on traditional topics, because in China the writing of poetry was not just an act of individual expression but also a basic part of every educated man's social life. Many of his earlier traditional poems were composed in response to poems from friends, and social decorum dictated that he not depart too greatly from their style, although, like many earlier poets of talent, he was sometimes able to transcend such restrictions to create fresh and original works. However, social pressure would hardly explain why he continued writing traditional verse in his later years, particularly since most of the poems we have just been examining must have been created for his own enjoyment. We have noted that many of Huang's traditional works describe the beauties of nature and the pleasures of reclusion, and although some of his earlier poems on such themes are probably nothing more than imitations of earlier authors, it is likely that in later years such poetry allowed Huang to withdraw from the pressures of his political career and the anxieties of life overseas. Writing poetry has always been a favorite recreation for Chinese scholar-officials, and in Huang's case traditional verse may very well have been a welcome escape from the unpleasant realities of modern life. But why Song-dynasty verse? The most obvious answer is that Huang was merely continuing the literary fashion that he had received from his nineteenth-century predecessors. Earlier in this chapter we saw that interest in Song poetry revived at the beginning of the Qing dynasty, and by Huang's time many poets who wrote on traditional themes imitated Song masters. However, Huang's adherence to traditional models does not completely explain his fascination with Song poetry. In later chapters we shall see that the influence of the Song masters underlies practically everything that Huang Zunxian wrote, not just the more traditional poetry we have 91

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studied here. Thus, we must attempt to explain why Song verse is the departure point for most of the other poetry that Huang created throughout his life. Here again, Song wit suggests an answer. In the introduction to this chapter I touched upon the close connection between wit and intellect, and it is no coincidence that the dynasty that valued literary wit so much happens to have been one of the high points of Chinese rationalism, a period when neo-Confucianism flourished and when, according to Joseph Needham, Chinese science and technology experienced their golden age.39 Nor is this connection between wit and rationalism limited to China, for the witty creations of Dryden (1631-1700) and Pope (1688-1744) were contemporary with the great age of English rationalist philosophy and the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution in Europe. Huang Zunxian's rationalistic approach to life is apparent in his earliest poems, and the intellectual spirit of much Song-dynasty verse suited rationalists like him perfectly. His overseas experiences changed his mind about many traditional values, but his faith in the rationalism he had inherited from his Qing and Song masters never faltered, and, as he learned ever more about the outside world, Song-style verse must have seemed the only form of poetry suitable for describing the modern age of Western science and technology. It was as if the new international culture of the late nineteenth century was confirming much of what he knew already.

7 Foreign climes

Traditional poetry on foreign countries Most of Huang Zunxian's poetry on traditional themes remained quite close to previous models, both in style and content, but his verse on foreign lands was strikingly different from works by earlier Chinese writers, fully realizing Liang Qichao's desire that the ideal poet should be a "Columbus or Magellan within the realm of poetry." It is true that Huang's foreign poems were couched in the forms he inherited from his tradition and utilized all the devices of the classical authors, but a comparison with earlier Chinese poetry on foreign cultures clearly reveals his contributions to this genre. Detailed references to non-Chinese peoples do not exist in Chinese literature before the Qin dynasty's unification of the country in 221 B.C., and it was not until the following Han dynasty that Chinese historians began writing accounts of some of the different nations that bordered on their empire.1 These prose accounts became even more frequent with the introduction of Buddhism during the third and fourth centuries, but references to foreigners are quite meager in Chinese poetry until the Tang dynasty was founded in the seventh century. Even though the Tang dynasty is usually regarded as one of the more cosmopolitan periods in Chinese history, with significant settlements of foreigners in its capital, Changan (modern Xian), and in major trading centers like Guangzhou, foreign cultures do not play an important role in the poetic literature of the age. Tang poets such as Gao Shi r^ilS (706?65) and Cen Shen ^ J l (715-70?) are best known for their "frontier poetry" about life in the steppelands occupied by non-Chinese nomadic tribes, but much of their poetry treats military themes, and the poems that describe the nomad cultures tend to concentrate on such narrow topics as non-Chinese dances or musical performances.2 The Song dynasty has a reputation for being less cosmopolitan than the Tang, but it is the first period in which we have fairly detailed literary 93

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depictions of non-Chinese peoples. After the occupation of northern China by the Jin, in 1127, many Southern Song intellectuals were sent on missions to the North, and some of them have left us elegantly written prose travel diaries, as well as a sizable number of poems about their journeys. Probably the most accomplished of these authors is Fan Chengda, who wrote both a travel diary (the Lanpei lu, or Record of holding the carriage reins) and a series of seventy-two exquisite quatrains about his mission to the Jin in 1170. 3 Considering the political situation of the time, it is understandable that some of Fan's poems are concerned with military problems and that he frequently paints northern China under Jin rule in an especially somber light, but he is also capable of seeing signs of nobility in China's enemies, as in the following poem about the tomb of a famous Tang general who sacrificed his life for his emperor: Lei Wanchun's Tomb

Even if he died nine times, his fame would never die; He strides the age like a collossus, alive to this day. You say that our enemy does not value loyalty and good faith? Just watch them dismount and walk past his tomb in respect!4 This poem seems to be among the first to recognize that non-Chinese people may be the moral equals of the Chinese, but even more interesting to the modern reader are the many poems that paint vivid portraits of life under the Jin: The Xiangguo Temple

On a tablet in the temple there is still an inscription by our Emperor Huizong. The goods sold in the temple are the sort of things that would appeal to the Tartars. Eaves sag, roof decorations decay, but the imperial inscription remains; Old dust obscures the Buddhist temple's gold and blue tiles. They announced the temple market is open for business this morning; Sheepskin coats and wolf-fur caps scurry after the latest fashions!5 This poem is not devoid of political significance, for the decay of a temple displaying an inscription by the last effective emperor of the Northern Song implies criticism of the military blunders that led to the Jin occupation of northern China, but the last two lines describe non-Chinese customs with a realism and impartiality rare in earlier Chinese poetry. The compactness of the quatrain form makes Fan Chengda's poems a limited vehicle for the presentation of foreign cultures to his Chinese 94

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audience, but his powers of observation and his sense of fairness helped produce some of the most satisfying poetry on a foreign culture in Chinese history. The Mongols conquered China in the final decades of the thirteenth century, and the country was ruled by the Manchus from 1644 until 1911, but poetry on foreign cultures did not develop much beyond the level of Fan Chengda, for the most part being written in short forms like the heptasyllabic quatrain.6 No one has ever studied the reasons for this, but since most countries that bordered on the Chinese empire tacitly recognized the relative poverty of their own traditions by imitating Chinese culture, Chinese intellectuals may have felt little curiosity concerning nations that seemed to endorse traditional views about the centrality of the Chinese empire. By the latter half of the nineteenth century, the situation had changed dramatically. Now China was confronted with European societies that considered themselves superior to China, and after the Meiji Restoration one of China's staunchest imitators was busily learning from the West. At first most Chinese intellectuals viewed Western culture with disdain, but China's long string of military disasters at the hands of Western armies and the annihilation of her navy by her former pupil, Japan, during the Sino-Japanese War proved that China could not afford to ignore the outside world any longer. The Hong Kong poems Huang had his first meaningful contact with a foreign culture during his visit to Hong Kong, in 1870, when he was only twenty-three years old, and in the same year he wrote ten regulated-style poems entitled "Reactions to Hong Kong" (translated on page 226), couched in a form that is in some ways more demanding than the quatrains of Fan Chengda's mission to the Jin. Like Fan, Huang used his account of his stay in Hong Kong as an occasion to criticize past political and military blunders, but since he was writing for his own consumption, his poems are more openly critical than Fan's, the first mourning the cession of Hong Kong to the British as an outcome of China's defeat in the Opium War, the second attacking the Jiaqing emperor, who had renounced Chinese claims to Hong Kong in his final testament, and the last attempting to inspire patriotic sentiments against the surrender of Chinese territory to foreign powers.7 However, poems that criticize the government have been common in China for close to three thousand years, and the most significant works of the series are those that build upon the depiction of foreign customs anticipated by earlier poets like Fan Chengda. Huang's Hong Kong poems 95

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are his first experiments in writing on the foreign themes that dominated so much of his later writing, and since the literary techniques he developed to present the foreign culture of Hong Kong to his Chinese readers form the basis of his later poetry on other countries, his poems on Hong Kong deserve to be examined in some detail. At the end of Chapter 5, we noted that Huang exploits the ambiguities of the classical language to suggest objects and ideas unknown to antiquity, but this device does not yet occur in the Hong Kong poems, and one may very well ask how he could write so effectively about Hong Kong's Western culture without using any real or implied neologisms.8 The answer to this question is found in his original use of the traditional device of literary allusion. At the conclusion to our examination of the literary theory and practice of the Poetic Revolution, we observed that although Huang Zunxian was not willing to abandon traditional form and language completely, he did try to stretch these to their uttermost limits. This is particularly true of his literary allusions, the range of which Huang gradually expanded to make up for his inability to alter many other aspects of classical verse. Of course, in many of his works Huang followed his classical masters closely in his use of allusion.9 In the last chapter, we saw how he utilized language derived from Su Shi and Su Zhe to compress the imagery of his poem "Riding a Boat Downstream," but in this case he was only following the precedent of earlier authors. Like them, he used allusions to create a wide range of literary associations in the minds of his readers, making them feel like privileged auditors of a refined conversation among the great minds of their culture. As is the case with many great authors of the past, Huang's allusions identify his place in his civilization, telling us who his masters are and suggesting that he is a distinguished member of a rich and immortal literary tradition. Huang continued to use literary allusion in these more traditional ways throughout his entire literary career, but his poetry on foreign countries posed certain problems rarely encountered by earlier authors and invited fresh and novel solutions. To see how he wrote about a culture never seen by the great classical poets, let us examine the allusions of his Hong Kong poems in some detail. Generally speaking, these can be classified into three broad groups. The first group, which I shall call "exotic allusions," consists of references drawn from earlier Chinese writings about foreign cultures. For example, the first line of the third poem (our first poem) describes the British governor of Hong Kong as "a curly-bearded foreigner," a reference to a well-known short story by Du Guangting tt itM (850-933) entitled "Qiuranke," or "The Curly-bearded Stranger"), about a hero of foreign (Turkic?) origin who aspires to rule China but 96

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eventually defers to the superior moral qualities of Li Shimin or Taizong ^CTTC (reg. 627-50), the future second emperor of the Tang dynasty, who is normally considered its real founder.10 By comparing him to the Curly-bearded Stranger, Huang probably intended to present the British governor of Hong Kong as a rough-and-ready hero in the mold of the Tang-dynasty knights-errant. Exotic allusions also occur in lines 2 and 6 of the same work; Huang's foreigners with "eyes of sapphire" first appear in a poem about a foreign musician by the Tang frontier poet Cen Shen, mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, and his reference to the "carpets of Kashmir" derives from the account of the Western Territories (modern Xinjiang province and adjacent areas of Central Asia) in the History of the Latter Han Dynasty, a history of China from A.D. 25-2 20.n Some of Huang's exotic allusions also come from Buddhist texts, which, although used sparingly by earlier poets, must have seemed appropriate to Huang and his contemporary readers, because most of them had been translated from Sanskrit and recounted stories that had a foreign country, India, as their background. That Huang was mainly interested in the foreign quality of these allusions is proved by the fact that most of his allusions to Buddhist texts in the Hong Kong poems have no obvious relation to Buddhist doctrine or philosophy. For example, according to Qian Esun, the expression "precious mountain" (our "displays"), in line 4 of poem VII (our poem IV), on the Hong Kong Museum, comes from the Dazhidu lun, a translation of a massive commentary on the Wisdom Scripture in Eight Thousand Verses (Astasdhasrikd-prajnd-pdramitd-sutra),

but it is

likely that Huang used this source only because he could think of no other appropriate text in mainstream literature.12 Exotic allusions are usually quite straightforward and function in one of two ways in Huang's poems. If they come from mainstream literature, such as Du Guangting's story or Cen Shen's poem, they can help make a foreign culture seem somewhat less alien to literate Chinese readers. If, however, they come from more unusual sources (for example, obscure Buddhist texts), they can make the foreign scene depicted by Huang seem even stranger. Thus, skillfully placed exotic allusions allowed Huang to create a whole range of different atmospheres in his poems on foreign lands. However, exotic allusions must have caused Huang Zunxian special difficulties, for, as was mentioned earlier, references to foreign cultures are by no means common in earlier Chinese writings, particularly in poetry. Thus, Huang was forced to scour about for exotic allusions in many nonpoetic texts, especially the monographs about foreign lands contained in the dynastic histories, as well as Buddhist scriptures, and although in some cases he may have intended the allusions to make his foreign 97

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descriptions seem more accessible to his audience, they may have had the opposite effect. The rarity of foreign material in earlier Chinese literature forced Huang to use certain exotic allusions again and again. Thus, Huang describes Westerners as "curly-bearded heroes" or "turquoise-eyed foreigners" over and over in his poems, because descriptions of Western physical features are understandably uncommon in classical poetry. Huang's frequent use of exotic allusions also produces a strange "skewing" effect that tends to undermine one of the bases of traditional Chinese poetry, namely the use of a commonly accepted and widely understood body of allusions to past literature. Huang Zunxian's exotic Buddhist allusions are closely connected with the second category of allusions in the Hong Kong poems, his many "paradisial allusions," or references to heavenly paradises. For example, in line 8 of poem III (our poem I), the expression "city of immortals in our realm of flesh" comes from the writings of Tao Hongjing !%;£JR (456536), a famous Daoist author of the Period of Division. The expression "pleasure palaces" (literally "Gathering Caves," the name of a mythical paradise in the Western Ocean), in line 2 of poem VI (our poem III), derives from an account of fairy islands, supposedly written by Dongfang Shuo 3fl32f $3 (154"~93 B.C.), an author of prose-poetry (fu) who was closely associated with the cult of immortality.13 A specifically Buddhist allusion of this category occurs in line 3 of poem VIII (our poem V), where Huang states that the English who rule Hong Kong "live like Buddhas in Heaven." The literal meaning of this line is "These Buddhas still boast of the pleasures of their kingdom," the expression "pleasures of their kingdom" deriving from the Buddhist term Jileguo ffi^ffl (Extreme Pleasure Kingdom), the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit word Sukhdvati, Amitabha Buddha's paradise in the West, a location that the alert reader would associate with the British.14 The limitations of this second category of paradisial allusions should be readily apparent, for they are only appropriate when Huang wants to describe the superior living standards of nineteenth-century Westerners. The third category of allusions employed in the Hong Kong poems is considerably more complex and eventually proved much more productive for his later poetry on foreign themes. These are what I shall call "transfer allusions," because they involve the transfer of purely Chinese cultural or historical allusions into poetry that describes foreign cultures. Admittedly, many paradisial allusions could be considered transfer allusions, especially when they are based on texts describing Chinese paradises (as opposed to Indian Buddhist paradises), but since it is frequently difficult to separate the native and nonnative elements of paradisial allusions, I shall treat 98

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them as separate categories. A typical example of a transfer allusion occurs in line l of Huang's poem on the Hong Kong Museum. The literal meaning of this line is "The wide-ranging things, an account by Zhang Hua," but I have attempted to bring out its probable intended meaning by translating: "Their museum is superior to our ancient books of learning." Since the connection between these two translations is not obvious in English, more explanation is required. Zhang Hua fJK^P (232—300), a prominent scholar-official of the Western Jin dynasty (265-316), is most famous today for his compilation, the Bowu zhi, or Account of Wide-ranging Things, which contains a large amount of material on mythology, pseudoscience, and geography, as well as some popular stories.15 It just so happens that the title of Zhang's most famous book resembles the modern Chinese word for "museum" (bowuguan, or "wide-ranging things hall"), a term that evokes the varied museum collections of nineteenth-century England. In this line, Huang is comparing the Hong Kong Museum, founded by the British in 1865, to a venerable collection of strange information resembling Zhang Hua's widely read book. Another even more involved transfer allusion occurs in line 3 of poem III (our poem I). A literal translation of this line reads: "A golden wheel inscribes [the name of] the Martial Empress," but again, in order to make the line intelligible, I have taken the liberty of translating: "Here they inscribe Victoria's image on round golden coins." The transfer from the literal version to the probable intended meaning involves a rather complex line of thought. The Martial Empress of Huang's original is the Empress Wu jKlJfj (reg. 684-705), who set aside the rightful sovereign and usurped the throne for twenty years, becoming the only woman to rule China as emperor. The expression "golden wheel" is a name for Empress Wu, appearing in one of the titles she awarded herself, "Holy Emperor [sic] of the Golden Wheel," by which she may have been attempting to associate herself with the Buddhist emperors of India, who used the Sanskrit title cakravartin ("turner of the wheel").16 The term "golden wheel" presents difficulties for the translator, because it was a title of Empress Wu and did not refer to any real physical object, but Huang probably uses it to describe some plaque with Queen Victoria's image or, even more likely, the British coins with her portrait that were current in Hong Kong. Transfer allusions of this sort require a good deal of mental effort on the part of the reader and present difficulties to both the poet and his audience. First of all, it is quite possible that even the intended audience will not understand the allusion, because, although Huang could assume a high level of knowledge from the scholar-officials who read classical verse, his allusions demanded even more from his readers than most earlier 99

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references had. Huang himself must have been aware of this problem, because he supplied the poem in question with a footnote that states: "Hong Kong city is called Victoria, after the name of its female ruler."17 This note would have enabled most readers to figure out the general sense of his allusion, but one wonders if they would have been able to make all of the necessary connections without the detailed notes of Qian Esun. The other main problem of transfer allusions involves questions of appropriateness. Zhang Hua's book, as a collection of exotica, resembles nineteenth-century museums rather closely, but it is difficult to discover much similarity between Queen Victoria and Empress Wu, who is traditionally considered one of the more brutal and treacherous rulers in Chinese history. Of course, when Huang wrote his poem he did not know much about English politics, and it is possible that he may have wanted to emphasize the military prowess of the English by suggesting that their empress was just as strong as Empress Wu. Unlike the two allusions we have just examined, many of Huang's transfer allusions are fairly straightforward. For example, Huang's echoing of a poem by Du Mu ttfe (803-52) on singsong girls, in the second-to-last line of his poem on Hong Kong's gay quarters (translated on page 226), or his use of the termjietan (literally, "street-accuser"), from Zheng Xuan's commentary on a Zhou-dynasty ritual text, to translate the idea of "policeman" in the seventh line of his eighth poem (our poem 5), are probably understandable without knowledge of the original texts.18 The transfer allusions in Huang Zunxian's Hong Kong poems may seem rather forced at times, but this category of allusions was more amenable to further development and formed the basis for most of his later poetry on foreign subjects. Earlier poets had used allusion to indicate their debt to tradition, but Huang had discovered how to use an old literary device to re-create a world never experienced by classical poets and still unfamiliar to most of his reading audience. The content of Huang's Hong Kong poems was just as important for his later poetry as his technique of allusion. From the thematic standpoint, Huang's Hong Kong poems mark a major break with practically all earlier Chinese poetry on foreign cultures. We have already noted Fan Chengda's fair treatment of the Jin Tartars in the twelfth century, but Fan also wrote many negative criticisms of the Jin dynasty, and Huang Zunxian seems to have been the first Chinese poet to portray a foreign culture in such a positive light. In classical poetry, paradisial allusions were used to describe the world of the immortals or the imperial court, but in his Hong Kong poems Huang is constantly comparing the Crown Colony to "a city of immortals" or expressing amazement at how the British "live like Buddhas in Heaven." 100

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However, Huang's admiration for the British is more than just naive wonder at the superiority of Hong Kong's standard of living. The accomplishments of British rule in Hong Kong suggested to Huang that the human race possesses a potential for progress as yet unrealized in China, or, as Huang puts it in his poem on the Hong Kong Museum, "The power of the human race is quite beyond all belief!" The Confucian tradition recognized the original goodness of human nature, but Huang's exclamation approaches the Greek notion of mankind's closeness to the gods (reminding one of Sophocles' famous line "Many wonders there are, and yet none is more wonderful than man," which the Chorus speaks in Antigone)}9

The idea of man's perfectability had many practical implications, because if the British were capable of creating a "paradise" like Hong Kong, any thinking individual must wonder why the Chinese lagged so far behind them. Thus, the positive picture that Huang draws of British prosperity and superiority in the art of war ("their warlike masters" of poem VIII, our poem V) is not only an expression of genuine admiration for the accomplishments of the British Empire but is also intended to spur the Chinese authorities to reform their own nation. So far, it would seem that Huang Zunxian's portrait of Hong Kong is totally positive, but this is hardly the case. Huang may have admired the military expertise of the British, but he knew very well that Hong Kong had come to England through an unjust war fought to defend the British right to sell opium to the Chinese (see the partial translation of poem I on page 15). I have suggested that Huang Zunxian's seemingly inapt comparison of Queen Victoria to Empress Wu was meant to suggest the ruthlessness of British imperialism, and a similar idea appears in poem VI, where a generally positive description of life in Hong Kong, full of street and harbor scenes as well as popular entertainments at fairs and at the racetrack, is closed by the chilling image of a police patrol walking by with billy clubs in hand. Huang also hints that there may be a rotten underside to the Western culture that is so successful in its pursuit of material wealth. Huang Zunxian's poem on the gay quarters of Hong Kong (page 226) seems morally neutral on the surface, but an examination of some of its allusions suggests that this may not be the case. The term "fleshpot" (zhiye), used in the fourth line of the poem, literally means "fat-night" and alludes to a passage from the "Treatise on the Five Elements," in the official history of the Western Han dynasty (Hanshu), which describes a belief that the fatty tissues surrounding the heart will turn to a demon if the mind is clouded with sexual desires.20 The term "flowerlike courtesans," from the same line, literally means "flower demons," a reference to a story about a 101

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demoness who came at night in the form of a beautiful woman to tempt a scholar.21 Thus, although it is possible to take the poem as a straight description of Hong Kong's nightlife, Huang's allusions hint at his satirical intent, and the work is probably written in the tradition of the many late Ming and Qing novels, such as Golden Lotus (Jingpingmei), which titillate their readers with explicit descriptions of sexual activities at the same time that they warn them about the evils of sexual overindulgence.22 Huang also disapproved of Hong Kong's compradors, rich Chinese merchants who closely imitated their British masters. He criticizes their blind acceptance of foreign culture in his line "And even mimic the twitterings of Western tongues" (poem V, our poem II, translated on page 226), an allusion to a famous passage from Mencius JE"?1 (372-289 B.C.) that compares the language of the southern barbarians to the call of a shrike, a bird noted for its cold-blooded cruelty.23 The same poem also contains several allusions to the vulgarity of these wealthy merchants and concludes with an ominous description of their mansions, which "startle you with their tomblike silence." The quatrains on Japan After the Hong Kong poems, Huang Zunxian did not write any more poetry about foreign cultures until he left China to serve in the Chinese embassy in Tokyo. It was fortunate for the development of his poetry that his first overseas posting was Japan, rather than some Western country, for Japanese and Chinese culture had enough in common so that Huang felt reasonably at home in Tokyo. A substantial quantity of Tokugawa and early Meiji literature was written in classical Chinese, and Huang soon learned enough written Japanese to read original works in that language.24 Some aspects of Japanese culture seemed quite alien to him, but because he could communicate with Japanese scholars through the medium of classical Chinese brush conversations, Huang was able to acquire a detailed knowledge of contemporary Japanese society, and his experience in a Westernizing East Asian country served as a bridge to the culture of Europe and North America, which had such a strong influence on his later writing. Huang's Japan poetry can be divided into three broad groups: (1) The large collection of poems published under the title Assorted Quatrains on Japan, which I have already mentioned in his biography; (2) those works contained in Chapter 3 of his collected works that were written during his stay in Japan; and (3) the majority of the poems now in Chapter 3 that were mostly composed years after he left Japan. Since the Assorted Quatrains had the largest circulation of Huang's works during his lifetime and com102

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prise the bulk of his Japan poems, we shall begin by considering them in some detail. The first version of Assorted Quatrains, consisting of only 154 poems, was begun in the autumn of 1878 and finished in the spring of 1879. Soon after its completion, Huang presented a copy to the Chinese Zongli Yamen (equivalent to the Foreign Office), which published the book through the Imperial Foreign Language School (Tongwenguan) in the winter of the same year. The Chinese journalist Wang Tao, who met Huang during a visit to Japan in 1879 and had a strong influence on the development of his attitudes toward parliamentary government, had this same version printed by the presses of his Hong Kong newspaper, the Xunhuan ribao 1631 H $K, in 1880, and this edition was reprinted in Tokyo, Kyoto, and China a number of times. The final version, which reflected numerous important changes, raised the number of poems to the present 200 and was published in Changsha in 1898.25 Huang Zunxian celebrated the completion of the first version of his Assorted Quatrains by "burying" his manuscript, in imitation of the minor Tang poet Liu Shui SUft (Metropolitan Graduate, 850), who interred a manuscript of his poems, and the famous Tang calligrapher Huai Su fe^ (725-85), who had the habit of burying his worn-out writing brushes.26 Huang's Japanese friend O k o c h i T e r u n a ^ : M l ^ i ^ ¥ (1848-82) let Huang use his garden as a "tomb" for the manuscript and carved the "funerary inscription" Huang wrote for his book on a 4-foot-tall stone stele. When the preparations for the interment were complete, in the autumn of 1879, Okochi invited Huang and four other Chinese friends to a "funeral banquet" at his house, and, after offering a libation of wine, Huang chanted the following quatrain as an invocation: One book of poetry, one pile of soil; My poems and the soil will stay together a thousand years. I pray, gods and Buddhas, please preserve them well I bury my poems' souls on the Sumida River's banks. In response, Okochi chanted: These poems sing of mundane matters with original insight; They record ancient traditions; everything in them is true. These poems must have souls, and the soil is fragrant; I wish to be a neighbor to these beautiful lines forever. Shortly after the interment Okochi had the texts of these two poems and a short description of the ceremony inscribed on the back of the stele, which 103

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was later moved to his family's traditional burial ground, where he himself was eventually laid to rest next to the poems he loved so much.27 This whole affair illustrates the close cultural ties between Japanese and Chinese intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century and explains how Huang could form such intimate relationships with his Japanese counterparts. During the period in which Huang composed his Assorted Quatrains, his Japanese friends constantly assisted him, making so many corrections and helpful suggestions in the margins of his drafts that he had to rewrite his manuscript four times, possibly the first example of such close international collaboration in the creation of a literary work. Huang's preface to the revised edition of his poems tells us something about the way in which the Assorted Quatrains came into being and his motives for writing them: In the winter of 1877, I went on a diplomatic mission to Japan, and while I was living there for two years I gradually made friends with Japanese scholars, read Japanese books, and learned Japanese customs. While I was drafting my Monographs onjapan, I assembled much traditional material and studied modern politics. I then used these as topics for short prose notes that I linked together with poems. These grew into the present collection of Assorted Quatrains.28 This series of poems assumed its present form largely as a result of Huang Zunxian's contacts with Japanese scholars, and its primary purpose was to introduce both past and present Japan to educated readers of classical Chinese. The didactic purpose of these poems might suggest that they could not possess great literary value, and it might seem impossible to compose real poetry on diverse topics ranging from Japanese cuisine to Meiji penal institutions. However, many of the Assorted Quatrains reach a high literary level, and, although they have been read in the past as a kind of source book about Meiji Japan, they can provide much enjoyment for readers interested solely in literature. All the poems are heptasyllabic quatrains, one of the most demanding forms of classical Chinese poetry, and despite Huang's later statement that he was not skilled at this form, many of them display a high level of technical skill. I have already mentioned Fan Chengda's collection of heptasyllabic quatrains as a predecessor to Huang Zunxian's poetry on foreign countries, but Huang himself refers to two post-Song collections of heptasyllabic quatrains as his immediate inspiration: Assorted Poems on the Southern Song, a large collection of poems about the Southern Song dynasty written by Shen Jiazhe tfcMiWi (fl. 1740) and several other Qing authors, and the so-called Assorted Verses on Luanyang, which may refer to poems by the famous bibliographer Jijun j§£l$J (17241805), who composed excellent heptasyllabic quatrains, the best of which 104

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are included in his series about the Uighurs, written during his exile in Urumchi, Xinjiang province.29 It may be difficult to determine what the principal inspiration for Huang's Japan quatrains was, but literary precedents existed for large collections of heptasyllabic quatrains on a wide variety of topics centered on a particular place or period in history. The devices that Huang had begun experimenting with in his Hong Kong poems contributed to the success of many of the best poems in the series, but other technical innovations were equally important. Huang began his practice of suggesting the vocabulary of the modern world through the ambiguities of classical language in these poems, a particularly inventive example occurring in the second line of poem XII of the final edition (translated on page 23), in which Huang writes of the legal reforms that are making Japan an equal of the Western powers. To translate the Western idea of "law," Huang uses the Chinese Buddhist term wanfa HfSc (literally, "myriad laws"). This expression contains the normal Chinese word for "law" (fa), but by using the Buddhist term wanfa, Huang has greatly enriched the meaning of the line, for in Buddhist Chinese the word fa translates either the idea "law" or the philosophical concept "phenomenon." The ambiguity of the Buddhist term in this line suggests that the Meiji Restoration involves more than a mere legal reform and has totally transformed all aspects ("phenomena") ofJapanese life. This example demonstrates Huang Zunxian's growing skill at suggesting the modern world through the "old" vocabulary of the classical language, but the Assorted Quatrains are remarkable for another important innovation in his poetic diction, being the first works that use neologisms and words of foreign origin extensively. We have already considered this question in some detail in Chapter 5, but it is worthwhile noting that such neologisms as "parliamentarian" (yiyuan), "restoration" (weixin, referring to the Meiji Restoration), and "newspaper" (xinwen, not used in modern Chinese but the same as modern Japanese shimbun), as well as transliterations like "tobacco" (danbagu) and "Jesus" (Yesu), occur in classical verse for what may be the first time.30 In Chapter 5 we also saw how Huang heightens the wit of one quatrain by exploiting the contrast between the dense texture of classical Chinese and the lighter, more vernacular texture of his bisyllabic neologisms, but some of his trisyllabic borrowings presented even more challenging problems. In a poem about foreign imports (translated on page 240), Huang places the terribly wordy trisyllabic compound afurong (a transliteration of "opium," now generally written y apian HJT~) in the strategic final three syllables of the poem's last line, but this dilution of the poem's classical density does not detract from our enjoyment of the work. Part of Huang's success in incorporating this unwieldy expression into a classical poem 105

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results from the way he makes it fit into the quatrain's tonal structure, with the three tones of afurong (oblique, level, level) contrasting perfectly with the pattern of the last three syllables of the preceding line (level, oblique, oblique). This balancing of level tones against oblique tones is a fundamental requirement of regulated poetry and quatrains, and the resonance that it creates between the relatively classical language of the third line and the vernacular neologism for opium in the final line is at least partially responsible for the wit of the original. Huang's Assorted Quatrains display a mastery of allusion even more impressive than what one finds in his earlier poems. At times Huang may have wanted to show off his erudition to his Japanese friends, but he could be sure that they usually would be able to follow his verse, because many late nineteenth-century Japanese readers still possessed a detailed knowledge of classical Chinese literature. Thus, when Huang writes about Mount Fuji (see translation on page 238), he can assume that his readers will recognize the connections between the language of his poem and earlier Chinese landscape poetry, or, in a poem on Japanese cherry blossoms (see page 240), he can draw from the rich tradition of Chineseflowerverse. Nor was Huang satisfied by alluding only to the classics of Chinese literature and history, for, as we might expect, after reading his preface to the Japan quatrains, he employs a large number of allusions to Japanese historical and literary texts. The poem that was cited in Chapter 5 as an example of Huang's deft use of neologisms contains, in its first and third lines, a number of rather difficult allusions to Japanese poetry, and the Assorted Quatrains are probably the first significant Chinese poetry alluding to the literature of a foreign country other than Buddhist India. Many of these references to Japanese history and literature are quite ingenious, but allusions that follow in the footsteps of the Hong Kong poems are much more original. All three categories of foreign allusions discussed earlier appear in the Japanese quatrains, but there are certain significant changes in the way Huang employs them. When he was writing about purely Japanese topics, he would have been hard put to employ many exotic allusions, because detailed references to Japan are surprisingly rare in classical Chinese literature, supplying Huang little more than stock terms for Japan, such as "Sun Kingdom" and the like. When Huang describes Western objects in Meijijapan, he can resort to the same store of exotic allusions that he used in his Hong Kong poems, and in his poem about Western imports (translated on page 240) he calls the Western-style woolen carpets that had recently become popular in Japan "Kashmiri carpets" (literally, "carpets of Kushana," an ancient empire in modern Afghanistan and northern India), a term he found in the ancient geographical treatises of the Chinese dynastic histories.31 106

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Keeping in mind the popular Chinese belief that Japan was originally a group of islands inhabited by fairies, it is rather surprising that paradisial allusions are rare in the Assorted Quatrains. One exception occurs in the second line of the poem just mentioned, which describes the Japanese rage for imported European grape wine by alluding to wine from the fairy Queen Mother's (Xiwangmu) "Western Paradise." However, the rarity of paradisial allusions probably resulted from Huang's intention of presenting an accurate portrait of contemporary Meiji Japan. By far the most productive type of allusion belongs to our third category, and the high frequency of transfer allusions attests to Huang Zunxian's growing skill in using the devices of traditional verse to handle foreign themes. The poem from Chapter 5 that was just mentioned for its allusions to Japanese history is also significant for the way that it combines these allusions with references to Chinese texts. The sword and mirror, in the first line, come from ajapanese myth about a god who gave swords and mirrors to the first Japanese ruler as emblems of the eternal kingdom he was establishing. The literal meaning of line 2 (here translated "The Japanese emperor returns to power after six hundred years") is "Tai'a returns after six hundred years," Tai'a being a precious Chinese sword made during the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.). In the official dynastic history of the Latter Han dynasty, we read: "Tai'a was held backward, and its handle was given to Chu," meaning that after the overthrow of the Qin dynasty its power (here symbolized by the Tai'a sword) was transferred to Xiang Ji JHH (233-202 B.C.), a general who came from the southern state of Chu.32 Thus, in the second line of his quatrain Huang uses an allusion to a Chinese sword, a symbol for Chinese imperial authority in the Latter Han dynasty, to represent the power of the Japanese emperor. Another example of an even more sophisticated transfer allusion can be observed in his poem about the mansions of the former aristocrats of the Tokugawa shogunate (translated on page 239). Line 3 of that poem is almost a direct quotation of Liu Yuxi's l?!l?l$l§ (772-842) well-known heptasyllabic quatrain: Black Robe Alley

The weeds bloom by the side of Red Sparrow Bridge; The sun sets at the entrance to Black Robe Alley. Swallows nesting on the facades of the old Wang and Xie mansions Fly into the homes of the common folk.33 Liu Yuxi's poem is part of a group of five written about Jinling ^fel^ (modern Nanjing), the capital of southern China during the Period of Di107

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vision (317-581), when the aristocratic Wang and Xie families, whose passing he mourns in lines 3 and 4, dominated the government. Huang's debt to Liu is apparent in more than the third line of his work. His poem is set in the same late spring or early summer season, when spring flowers have finished blooming and swallows are rearing their young, and he mourns the passing of aristocrats who dominated their own age against the backdrop of nature's complete indifference. But this poem is especially significant in the way it represents an expansion of transfer allusion, for Huang does not use his references to Liu Yuxi to suggest a single item from a foreign culture but as the basis for an entire poem, evoking a complex emotional response to the vicissitudes of history in a country that was virtually unknown to his Chinese contemporaries. Huang Zunxian's Hong Kong poems contain a mixture of praise and criticism of the Crown Colony's British rulers, but because one purpose of the Assorted Quatrains was to encourage Chinese emulation of Meiji Japan's more progressive features, praise of Japan greatly outweighs any criticism. There is, however, a subtle shift from the rather uncontrolled enthusiasm of some of the Hong Kong poems; these later poems contain no exclamations about the limitless potential of the human race, and Huang's positive comments about Japan strike one as the result of a detailed and sober examination of nineteenth-century Japanese society. However, not all his poems about Japan are equally enthusiastic, and Huang viewed Shinto legends about the divine origins of the Japanese imperial family with particular scorn, writing at the end of one quatrain, "they recklessly claim that this nation of women [an old term for Japan] was descended from the gods."34 Huang also held Japanese Buddhism in low esteem, making fun of Nichiren 0 31 (1222-82), who promoted recitation of the Lotus sutra, in the line: "He needed only one phrase: Oh, the marvelous Lotus!"35 During the ultranationalist period of Japanese history, just before and during World War II, some of Huang's criticisms of Japanese tradition were considered so offensive that five of his poems were omitted from the best Japanese translation of his book, published in 1935. Typical of these works is his attack on the Japanese emperors' addiction to the Buddhist religion: The emperors sucked the people's blood just to build pagodas; They gladly flattered the Buddha, called themselves his slaves. Some secretly rode out of the palace to accept the tonsure More than half ofJapan's rulers were bald-pated monks!36 Huang did not remove any of these potentially insulting poems from the final edition of his Assorted Quatrains, but he did make many changes to 108

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works that had been critical of Western-influenced aspects of Meiji Japan. My translation of his poem about modern newspapers (page 239) is based upon the text in the final edition of Assorted Quatrains, but the original version was quite different: A one-sheet newpaper comes from the capital city And transmits government decrees to educate the people. Old men sun themselves on the porch and whisper to each other; They do not dare to criticize its contents too openly.37

When he wrote this poem, Huang obviously approved of Meiji-style "newspapers," which were little more than propaganda sheets promoting official policy, and in the prose explanation to the poem he voices strong disapproval of articles that criticize the government and firmly supports press censorship. By the time Huang replaced this poem with the version in our translation section, he already favored a free press, a change which corresponds to his gradual acceptance of liberal democratic political principles. Change in content is not the only significant difference between the old and new versions of the poem. We have already traced the growing skill with which Huang used Song-style wit in his more traditional poetry, but Huang's progress in this area is apparent in the changes he made in Assorted Quatrains, for not only is the thought of the final version of the newspaper poem more progressive but its Song-style wit is also more richly developed. Song poets frequently injected their poems with humor by expressing unconventional attitudes, and Huang is following in the footsteps of his masters when he voices the outrageous idea that a newspaper could possibly "embody the thoughts of all schools of philosophy [literally, 'of the nine schools of philosophy and the hundred thinkers,' i.e., the nine branches of classic Zhou-dynasty thought, which include both Confucianism and Daoism]." Huang's growing skill at writing Song-style poetry can also be seen at the verbal level, particularly in the highly effective doubling of conditional clauses in the first two lines, where repetition of the expression "If you want to know [yu zhi]") creates a tension released in the witty conclusion of the last two lines and makes the double negative of the outrageous third line (literally, "There are no thoughts of the nine schools and hundred thinkers that they do not embody") somewhat more acceptable to Huang's traditional audience. Other poems on Japan With few exceptions, the second category of poems that Huang wrote about Japan is not as worthy of our attention as his Assorted Quatrains. The 109

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surviving poems from this period, in Chapter 3 of his collected works, are small in number, and the bulk of them are occasional poems composed in response to his social obligations as a diplomat. One notable exception to the mediocre quality of most of these works is a long, humorous poem addressed to Ishikawa Ei SJH^I (1833-1918), a scholar of the Chinese classics, written when he took a Japanese Buddhist monk to visit Huang and mistook the Chinese vice-ambassador, Zhang Sigui 3ft 9 ? ^ , for a Chinese monk.38 Another long poem, addressed to Prince Arisugawa Taruhito ^fffiJUJUt (1835-95) on the anniversary of the founding of the Japanese Army Officers' Training School, is written on a lower literary level and is mainly interesting for its promotion of the idea of a military alliance between China and Japan against the Western powers.39 The poems that Huang wrote about his visit to Hakone are by far the most accomplished works about Japan created in that country, but since there is nothing especially Japanese about them and we have already considered their contribution to the development of Huang's Song-style poetry in the last chapter, there is no need to say anything more about them. Although most of the poems from Chapter 3 actually written in Japan pale into insignificance beside the Assorted Quatrains, some of Huang's later works about his Japanese experiences are among his finest creations. Unfortunately, the chronology of these poems is most difficult to unravel. Some of them, particularly topical works like Huang's long poem mourning the Qing government's cancellation of its program to send students to the United States in 1871 and another long poem on the Tokyo government's assertion of its sovereignty over the Ryukyus in 1872, may have been drafted in Japan, but many of the others, such as Huang's series of fifteen quatrains on Ueno Park, already discussed in the last chapter, do not seem to have been completed until 1891 at the earliest, and perhaps not until after 1898.40 The Ueno Park poems are the most satisfying short works of our third category. However, since much of our study of Huang's poetry on foreign cultures has dealt with his use of allusion, I shall conclude this discussion with some comments about his use of allusion in "A Song of Cherry Blossoms" (translated on page 233). This poem utilizes all of Huang's earlier devices for writing poetry about foreign lands, but it is best understood by examining how its echoing of earlier works determines the author's approach to the poem as a whole. For example, the idea of building the poem around the old Japanese scholar's first-person narrative was probably borrowed from Du Fu's famous antiwar poem "A Ballad of War Chariots," in which Du expresses his dissatisfaction with the Tang government's militarism through the device of a monologue delivered by a commoner seeing off conscripts on the 110

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way to the frontier. Similarly, the old scholar's description of Tokugawa Japan as a paradise of flowering cherry trees derives from Tao Qian's popular preface to his poem "Peach Blossom Spring," which depicts an ideal society cut off from the outside world and free from the sufferings of poverty and warfare. Huang acknowledges his debt to Tao when he has the Japanese scholar say: "I have heard that the entrance to China's Peach Blossom Paradise / Is completely concealed by shadowy clouds /And that its inhabitants know nothing of recent history [literally, Han and Wei, dynasties that had been founded after the inhabitants' ancestors had entered the paradise]," lines based directly on Tao's well-known work.42 In his much earlier Assorted Quatrains, Huang had used a poem by Liu Yuxi as the basis for an entire poem, but by the time he wrote "A Song of Cherry Blossoms," his allusive technique had expanded even further. Du Fu and Tao Qian supply the poem's overall structure, but its moving conclusion owes even more to Gong Zizhen's "A Song of Falling Blossoms in the Western Suburbs," a poem created in 1820 on the occasion of an outing to the Western Suburbs of Beijing to view crabapple blossoms. Gong's work is particularly famous for its unusual descriptions of the falling blossoms: They are like Qiantang's tides roaring at night, Like the battle of Kunyang - troops scattered at dawn, Like eighty-four thousand heavenly damsels whofinishedwashing their faces, And then poured their makeup on the ground all at the same time.43 Such bizarre similes are embedded in an equally eccentric poetic form, characterized by irregular caesura and unpredictable line length, and the poem concludes with the following extraordinary couplet: How can we find a tree with infinite blossoms that can rain down fresh and goodflowersalways? Then it will always be the season of falling blossoms - three hundred sixty-five days a year!44 This conclusion is quite different from most traditional Chinese poetry about falling blossoms, which normally symbolize the transitory nature of human existence and arouse melancholy emotions about human mortality in poets and readers alike. Gong Zizhen justifies this break with his literary tradition by means of an appeal to Buddhist philosophy. In the fifth and sixth lines from the end of his work, he writes: "Most of all I enjoy the pure language of Vimalakirti's Scripture /And have heard that fallen blossoms lie four inches deep in the Pure Land Paradise," showing that his 111

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unconventional celebration of the falling blossoms follows the Vimalakirti sutra's doctrine of the nondualism between the transitory world and the eternal joys of Amitabha Buddha's Pure Land.45 In other words, Gong has changed the falling blossoms from a symbol for the transitory into a symbol for the eternal. Huang adopts many of Gong's stylistic peculiarities, but he uses them quite differently from Gong. The form of his poem is much more regular than Gong's, staying fairly close to the conventional heptasyllabic meter. However, Huang does imitate Gong's irregular line length in his poem's last four lines, which follow the syllabic pattern 13/11/5/5. The two long lines of thirteen and eleven syllables are particularly effective here, their length emphasizing the Japanese scholar's fervent prayer that Japan will be closed to Western contact for another hundred years. The last two lines might seem more ordinary at first sight, since they follow the typical pentasyllabic form of much Chinese poetry, but they are also quite unusual. A poem of irregular meter normally ends with at least one line in the predominant meter of the work, but rather than end with the heptasyllabic meter, Huang closes with this pentasyllabic couplet. However, the educated reader of Huang's poem probably does not notice the shortness of these lines initially, because his mind will automatically slow down to savor the couplet's adroit use of Gong Zizhen's famous concluding couplet, which consists of thirteen and ten syllables, respectively. Huang's closure with a pentasyllabic couplet might seem needlessly eccentric, but by compressing Gong's original twenty-three syllables into ten, through the magic of literary allusion his closure attains an evocative power transcending Gong's original. Such subtleties of allusion and meter are largely experienced on a subconscious level, but any reader with a knowledge of classical Chinese verse and Gong Zizhen's original can easily understand the changes in flower symbolism from Gong to Huang, which could almost serve as a paradigm for the development of Chinese poetry during the nineteenth century. I have mentioned that in most earlier poetry falling blossoms symbolize Buddhist teachings about the transitory nature of human existence, the Tang poet Meng Haoran's quatrain "Spring Dawn" being one especially famous example.46 Gong Zizhen is still influenced by Buddhist philosophical concepts in his crabapple poem, but he sees the falling blossoms in a much more positive light, using them as a symbol for the ultimate unity between the ephemeral and the permanent. In other words, he wishes to break with the stale imagery of past poetry but opts for a solution based on traditional thought. Huang is not interested in the metaphysical overtones of Gong's symbolism, nor does he wish to return to classical symbolism; instead, he transfers his flower symbolism to the contemporary nine112

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teenth-century world, using the cherryflowersas a symbol for traditional Japanese culture before the "poison fog of opium spread across the oceans" (and, by extension, for the cultures of all Asian lands threatened by Western imperialism). His symbolism constitutes a clean break with tradition. By the creative use of devices like meter and allusion from the Chinese tradition, Huang creates a highly original work about a contemporary culture unknown to most Chinese, but his poem is even more remarkable in its willingness to move outside the Chinese literary tradition to accommodate the cultural and literary traditions ofJapan. Qian Esun's notes to the poem reveal that this is the first work on a foreign country discussed so far in which allusions from outside the Chinese tradition are just as numerous as ones from within it. We would expect to find references to Japanese customs about the Cherry Blossom Festival in such a work, but Huang paints his portrait of pre-Meiji Japan on a much broader canvas, incorporating numerous references to ancient Japanese history, classical Japanese literature, and even the traditions of the Shinto religion. Huang handles these allusions much as he handles his references to Chinese tradition, for after all, he is writing classical Chinese verse, but he spares no efforts to assimilate material from another culture into the poetic form he has received from antiquity. His task was difficult enough in the case of two societies as similar as China and Japan, but he would need to call on even greater powers of assimilation to write his masterpieces on the countries of Southeast Asia, Europe, and the United States.

8 The brave new world

Preliminary considerations For both Western and Chinese readers, Huang Zunxian's poems about his travels in North America and Europe are some of his most attractive creations. For Westerners, the fascination of these works arises from curiosity about how an outsider views one's own culture. The nineteenth century witnessed the creation of a considerable body of literature by Westerners about the countries of Asia, but works about the West written by East Asian intellectuals are not abundant, so Huang Zunxian's poems constitute a valuable record of a Chinese intellectual's view of Western civilization. The response of Chinese readers to these poems is apt to be more complex and probably deserves more attention, since most of the secondary literature about Huang has been published in China. Many of Huang's contemporaries probably read his poems on foreign countries much as we read travelogues today, for, along with the diaries of Chinese diplomats, they were among the few works written by Chinese scholars about the "mysterious" West, which was exerting such a strong influence on nineteenth-century China. This travelogue appeal remains even today, particularly among classical scholars in China who have had few opportunities to travel outside their country, but contemporary Chinese responses are even more likely to be dictated by political considerations, advocates of Westernization pointing to the positive side of Huang's portrait of the West, more conservative Marxist scholars emphasizing Huang's negative criticisms of American and European society. One could speak on behalf of all these approaches to Huang's poetry, but they all seem to ignore the literary dimensions of Huang's mature foreign poems, which can only be read intelligently within the context of the Chinese literary tradition. Unfortunately, chronological problems hamper a literary study of these poems. For example, if we follow the order of Huang's collected works, we 114

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must conclude that his poem on the Cherry Blossom Festival was composed while he was serving in Japan. This theory is supported by the conservative, isolationist views of the poem's protagonist, views that Huang initially supported but rejected before he left Japan. However, we have already noted that the sophisticated use of literary allusion in this poem is far in advance of anything Huang had written earlier, and if we assume that the work was finished in Japan it is difficult to explain how his writing progressed so quickly. Of course, manuscript evidence suggests that the poem was written much later, and, if we accept that view, the stylistic anomalies disappear.1 Another case in point is the wonderful set of quatrains Huang wrote about his experiences in Malaysia and Singapore during his recovery from malaria. Our knowledge of Huang's manuscripts supports Qian Esun's thesis that these quatrains were not written until after his retirement in 1898, or at least five years after he came down with malaria, but in his preface to the quatrains Huang tells us: "I composed these poems mentally, but did not write them down. Later, after I recovered, I still remembered them and wrote out several dozens of poems."2 Huang does not tell us exactly when he transcribed his quatrains, but, although it may stretch our credulity that he could have had "several dozens" of poems floating in his mind for five to ten years, the astounding powers of memorization developed by many traditional Chinese scholars make this possible. However, if this is the case, when exactly did Huang Zunxian "write" these poems: when he first conceived them, or when he put them down on paper? The London fog and form In spite of the chronological problems, we can trace the general line of development for Huang's foreign poems with reasonable clarity. One way to illustrate these changes is by comparing two poems on the same theme, London fog, the first written just before his poetic breakthrough, the other created many years later. The earlier poem was composed in 1890, while Huang was serving in the London embassy: Heavy fog

What do I accomplish with all my toil? I would sail back east, if I had a ship. A hundred worries wear me down I sit by myself and write words in the air. The fog is so dense, London is blacker than lacquer; The cold is so bitter, it dims my fire.

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I raise my head to gaze at a wild goose, Soaring high in the sky, it rides the wind homeward.3

According to Qian Esun, the second of these poems, "The Great London Fog" (translated on page 268), was written after Huang's retirement in 1898, and although we cannot prove this chronology beyond a doubt, it is highly unlikely that Huang would have composed such completely different works on exactly the same theme during the same period of his life.4 The most obvious stylistic difference between the two works is that the first poem is composed in the heptasyllabic regulated form, whereas the second is in the ancient style with seven syllables in most lines. This might not seem a significant point, but it is fundamental to any discussion of the development of Huang's poetry on foreign lands. Both Huang Zunxian's early Hong Kong poems and his later Assorted Quatrains on Japan were composed in the "modern" style, as was most earlier poetry about foreign countries, but during his stay in London Huang began to discover that ancient-style verse was a more suitable form for such poetry.5 We have already noted Huang Zunxian's increasing preference for ancient-style verse, but the change that began in London is somewhat more complex than was suggested earlier (Chapter 5). Again, the chronology is difficult to establish, but the results are readily apparent, if we refer to Huang's poems on Japan examined in the last chapter. Huang wrote his innovative Assorted Quatrains in regulated style, but the ancient-style poetry from his Tokyo period (especially the Hakone poems and the occasional poems to Japanese scholars) are quite traditional in style. However, the poems, in Chapter 3 of his collected works, written after he left Japan, display a complete reversal of the roles assigned to modern and ancient poetry. We have noted that the Ueno Park poems employ none of the neologisms common in the Assorted Quatrains, but Huang's ancient-style poem on the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival is distinguished by its extensive use of Japanese vocabulary and highly sophisticated technique of literary allusion. It would be nice to know more about the chronology of Huang's later Japanese poems and his "Great London Fog," but even if we cannot be sure about their precise dates, we can see that by the time Huang wrote these mature works he had discovered that only ancient-style verse gave him the freedom to write more original poetry about foreign countries. Exotic allusions Huang's use of allusion in "Heavy Fog" is practically indistinguishable from pre-nineteenth-century verse, whereas "The Great London Fog" 116

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contains all three categories of allusions used in the Hong Kong poems. But the main thing that distinguishes "The Great London Fog" from "Heavy Fog" is not the allusions themselves but rather the scale of their use, particularly in the case of the poem's exotic allusions. Earlier we noted that exotic allusions were of limited value to Huang because so few sources for them can be found in classical poetry but that exotic allusions drawn from Indian Buddhist texts were much easier to use, since the vast number of Buddhist scriptures translated into classical Chinese before the ninth century provided an almost inexhaustible source of literary references. Since our English translation tends to obscure Huang's Buddhist allusions in "The Great London Fog," we should examine a few of them in detail. As translated, line 8 reads: "And worship the wall's lamp like an idol of Buddha," but Huang's original is much more specific: "Face the wall, only worshiping the Lamplight Sovereign Buddha." The name of this Buddha in the original is a Chinese translation of the Sanskrit DiparajaBuddha, from Zhiqian's ^CWH (end of third century) early translation of the Vimalakirti-sutra, which speaks of a "Lamplight Sovereign Buddha" who rules over India's holy mountain, Sumeru ^JCStlll.6 Similarly, when Huang writes: "No one can give a name for these colors and shapes; / Our eyes and noses seem plugged up with corks," the words "colors" and "shapes" refer to the Sanskrit philosophical terms rupa ("physical form") and laksana ("characteristics"). The words "eyes" and "noses" are also Buddhist philosophical terms (caksus and ndsd), used in technical explanations of the Buddhist theory of perception.7 Similarly, the "vicious demons" and "ghouls" mentioned in the next few lines are Indian asura (Chinese transliteration, axiuluo) and raksasas (Chinese transliteration luocha), respectively, and the "hell" to which Huang compares the overcast London day is the lowest Buddhist hell, Avici (Chinese translation Abidiyu PRTJlitiiltfc).8 Translated literally, these allusions would be meaningless to the average Western reader, but Huang's Chinese readers would at least have understood their general sense, even if they could not remember their sources in the Buddhist canon. Still, the impact of "The Great London Fog" on his contemporary readers did not result from any single Buddhist allusion but rather from the large quantity he used in a single poem. We have already observed the "skewing" effect that Huang's unusual selection of sources for his poems had on his literary creations, and the preponderance of exotic allusions from Buddhist texts in a single poem like this completely upsets the balance of allusion so central to classical verse. The great change in style this expansion of exotic allusions occasions in "The Great London Fog" becomes even more obvious when we compare 117

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its references to foreign cultures with those of Huang's Hong Kong poems. The Hong Kong poems' exotic allusions may provide a bit of unusual local color, but for the most part they reassure the reader raised in the classical tradition that Hong Kong is not such a strange place after all, for its governor is really quite similar to the hero of a story everyone has read, and blue-eyed Englishmen are not very different from the Turkic musicians celebrated by Tang poets. In the London fog poem, however, the multitude of exotic allusions (particularly those referring to demons and the underworld) makes England seem even more alien to a nineteenthcentury Chinese reader than it was, and although Huang did not aim for such strange effects in all of his later foreign poetry, the creative expansion of exotic allusion is largely responsible for the poem's eccentric wit. Exotic allusions and the Reclining Buddha Huang Zunxian's use of exotic allusions reaches its high point in his "Reclining Buddha of Ceylon," a stupendous work in six sections (one section is translated on page 266) and one of the longest poems in Chinese literature, inspired by his visit in 1890 to a statue of the Reclining Buddha (i.e., Buddha entering nirvana) at Kelaniya, in the vicinity of Colombo, Sri Lanka.9 Qian Esun states that this poem was not composed until after Huang's retirement in 1898, and both the manuscript evidence and its advanced style support his view.10 The "Reclining Buddha of Ceylon" is one of Huang Zunxian's masterpieces, particularly distinguished by its erudite and masterful allusions to ancient Chinese texts about India, Sri Lanka, and other lands in the vicinity of the Indian Ocean. The number and range of these allusions is so vast that we cannot examine them in detail, for a full study would entail reference to practically every premodern Chinese source on this part of the world. Neither Huang Zunxian nor Qian Esun mentions literary precedents for his poem, but it is quite likely that the poem was influenced by the following quatrain, written by You Tong in the seventeenth century: The island of Ceylon

Pearl curtains on the island come from sands in the ocean; Boulders in the sand resemble yellow larks. They set up banners andflagsto worship in their court In an ancient temple you can still see the Reclining Buddha.11 You Tong, who never traveled outside China, follows this rather perfunctory quatrain with notes that explain the references underlying each line, 118

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all four of them exotic allusions drawn from accounts of Sri Lanka in the earlier historical literature, including records of the explorer Zheng He's iPfP (1371-1433) visits to the island in the early fifteenth century. The quatrain lacks allusions to Buddhist texts, although You Tong knew that Sri Lanka is a Buddhist country, but this omission probably results from You's literary conservatism, for, as we have seen, most traditional verse avoided allusions to Buddhist scriptures. Huang Zunxian must have read You Tong's poem, because it is contained in a well-known collection by You on foreign countries that would have attracted Huang's attention, but his approach to Sri Lanka and the Reclining Buddha is strikingly different. Not only does his poem abound in exotic allusions, but the section that has been translated brims with the most productive category of exotic allusions, references to Buddhist texts. Some of these allusions serve the purpose of creating the same bizarre atmosphere we see in "The Great London Fog," but many of them fulfill quite different functions. First of all, allusions to Buddhist texts are indispensable for Huang's sketch of South Asian religious history, ranging from the Vedic period, before 1000 B.C., and the founding of Buddhism in the fifth century B.C., down to the British conquest of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Just as important as the historical framework these allusions provide is the way that Huang exploits them to persuade the reader of his individual interpretation of the historical events. Huang's description of the Brahmans before the rise of Buddhism alludes to a number of passages from the Buddhist scriptures and ancient Chinese travelers' accounts of the Brahmans' ascetic practices. Indian Mahayana Buddhist texts generally display great respect for the Brahmans, but Huang chooses allusions that are calculated to arouse revulsion in his Chinese readers, referring to the Brahmans "deforming" their bodies by smearing them with ashes (an unfilial act, in Chinese eyes) and describing their yogic exercises with allusions to birds such as owls, regarded as inauspicious by the Chinese. Equally negative allusions, in this case derived from Qing-dynasty historical texts, describe the Brahmans who led the Hindu revival at the time of Buddhism's decline as well as the later Muslim rulers of India. The reader automatically links these later persecutors of Buddhism to the Vedic Brahmans, a connection that extends to India's European conquerors and their Christian religion. At the same time, Huang manipulates his selection of allusions to heighten the reader's sympathy for the Buddhist religion. A striking example is Huang's attempt to portray the Buddha as an archetypal democrat, a sage who created the doctrine of karma to break down the caste divisions established by the Brahmans. Early Buddhists deemphasized

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caste divisions (at least in theory), but Huang's summary of the Buddha's "democratic" teachings entails a clever reinterpretation of well-known Buddhist texts, which conveniently ignores most of Buddhism's central doctrines to stress those ideas that fit Huang's Western democratic thought. A good example of this willful distortion of Buddha's teachings is Huang's misuse of the Chinese Buddhist expression pingdeng ^P*^f (here translated "equality") in line 11 of our selection. In the Diamond sutra, which Qian Esun cites as a source for this term, the Chinese termpingdeng means only "similar" and is used to describe the similarity among different phenomena (fa, or dharmas).12 However, by the late nineteenth century when Huang wrote his poem, many educated Chinese understood the term pingdeng in its current sense as a translation of the English word "equality," and they probably would not have questioned Huang's misuse of the word, merely recollecting that this "modern" term does occur in Buddhist scriptures. Huang frequently used classical expressions to suggest neologisms, but here he is exploiting the ambiguity between the original meaning of an old translation of a Sanskrit term and its more modern meaning as a neologism translating an English word. It is not surprising that Huang misuses Buddhist terminology in this poem, for "the Reclining Buddha of Ceylon" has little to do with Buddhism itself, the religion serving as a symbol for the traditional cultures of Asia under assault from the Christian nations of Europe and North America. The statue of the Reclining Buddha described in this poem has no connection with the original Buddhist idea of liberation from the world through the attainment of nirvana but serves as an emblem for India's (and China's) passivity when confronted by the Western challenge. Huang draws a clear distinction between the Reclining Buddha and the historical Buddha, who, in his view, promoted ideals similar to the liberal, democratic philosophy that enabled the European powers to become so strong in the first place. This poem broadens the use of exotic allusions even more than "The Great London Fog," but whereas in the latter they merely enable Huang to create a bizarre picture of life overseas, in "The Reclining Buddha" they have become highly effective weapons to satirize both the Western imperialist powers and the Asian countries that succumb to them so easily. Paradisial allusions This expansion of poetic devices first developed in the Hong Kong poems also occurs in Huang's paradisial and transfer allusions. We saw that in the Hong Kong poems paradisial allusions are of limited use and that they are quite rare in Huang's next group of foreign poems, the Assorted Quat120

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rains on Japan. However, in spite of their limitations, Huang succeeded in employing paradisial allusions in inventive ways in his mature works. Huang uses paradisial allusions much as he did in the Hong Kong poems in the first poem of his "Moved by Events" (translated on page 272), where he describes the guests at a reception at the British Court as "immortals, more numerous than grass blades," a line that he takes with a change of just one word from a famous work by Li Bai on a dream journey to an underground Daoist paradise.13 In lines 21 and 22, he writes: "All gods, dragons, and men have attended this banquet; / Riding from the Milky Way on rafts of silver," which is a skillful blending of Buddhist and Daoist allusions, the expression "gods, dragons, and men" frequently encountered in Buddhist scriptures, the journey from the Milky Way referring to a mythical trip to fairyland that supposedly took place during the Han dynasty.14 Even these relatively straightforward allusions have undergone a subtle transformation since the Hong Kong poems, where Huang's paradisial allusions reflected his somewhat naive admiration for Western wealth. By the time he served in London, Huang was accustomed to the West's superior living standard, and in this poem he uses paradisial allusions primarily as a tool to criticize China's economic and political backwardness, and hence, at the poem's end, Huang sighs when he gazes eastward toward his native land. Much more inventive is Huang's use of paradisial allusions in his "I invite neighbors to drink with me one spring evening" (partially translated on page 256). This poem can be dated to 1885 with a fair degree of certainty, and it is therefore the earliest known work in which he employs the expanded allusions of his mature style. Its early date may explain why it is not a unified whole, consisting of a string of "tall tales" about foreign countries that (he says) his uneducated neighbors recounted to him after his recent return from Japan and the United States. In fact, each of these tales is based upon one or more allusions to classical accounts of the supernatural, but expanded beyond anything that we find in Huang's earlier verse. One interesting feature of the paradisial allusions of this poem is that many of them do not really derive from stories about the supernatural but are taken from standard literary sources, which Huang has imaginatively reworked to resemble fiction. The poem's account of Japan is based partially on a fantastic tale from the Taipingguangji ^C^PJSffi, a tenth-century anthology of Tang-dynasty fiction, but most of the other allusions derive from the poetry of orthodox authors like Du Fu, Su Shi, and Lu You, whom one does not normally associate with fantasy.15 Of course, the poem's account of Columbus's first journey, which constitutes the second "tall tale," does not come from Chinese tradition at all but is probably based on 121

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a Japanese account of Columbus's journeys that Huang himself transformed into a supernatural tale. Huang's conflation and distortion of his sources serve a practical purpose similar to his expansion of exotic allusions in his poem on the Reclining Buddha. His poem concludes with a section attacking the ignorance of foreign lands common among Chinese scholars who "Are adept at plagiarizing wild accounts, / Ten scholars echoing one scholar's tune," and the entire work ends with the following four lines: I still plan to undertake more distant journeys In order to enlighten my eyes and my ears. Ten years later I will return to my home And explain everything in detail to you, dear neighbors!16 Thus, Huang's expansion of his paradisial allusions was motivated by his desire to poke fun at Chinese intellectuals' ignorance of foreign countries, and the poem's technique of allusion anticipates later satires like "The Reclining Buddha." Transfer allusions and the Eiffel Tower Even in Huang's earlier poetry, transfer allusions were more productive than the first two varieties, and in his mature verse the expansion of transfer allusions produces especially rich results, as we see in "On Climbing the Eiffel Tower." This poem was probably written in 1891, when Huang stopped at the Chinese Embassy in Paris on his way from London to Singapore, and since it is the earliest datable long poem written after his poetic breakthrough, it can be regarded as a predecessor to the many remarkable long works of Huang's old age. The experimental character of the work may explain some of its shortcomings, for although it is certainly one of Huang's most fascinating creations, the poem as a whole is not as unified as his later long poems. The principal inspiration of the poem was the Eiffel Tower, one of the marvels of nineteenth-century European engineering, erected for the 1889 World's Fair and left standing after its conclusion, in spite of protests from many Parisians that it marred the city's skyline.17In Chapter 11 we shall consider this poem in the context of Western science and technology, so let us merely note here that a significant portion of it consists of a paean to modern progress in those fields. In spite of its modern interests, the poem rests firmly on the bedrock of the Chinese literary tradition. In fact, one could hardly imagine a more orthodox literary pedigree, for the eighth line from the end alludes to a 122

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passage from the canonical Confucian text Mencius (third century B.C.), which describes the ascent of Mount Tai, a holy peak in modern Shandong province, by China's most famous sage, Confucius (551-479 B.C.). According to Mencius, "when Confucius climbed Mount Tai, he made the whole world shrink."18 If Mencius had been writing about anyone else, we would assume that he was just explaining the common optical phenomenon of distant objects appearing smaller, but his rather cryptic statement certainly was intended to say something about the Sage's superiority over other human beings. This is the way that the youthful poet Du Fu must have read the passage when he wrote his famous pentasyllabic, ancient-style poem about Mount Tai, the last line of which echoes Mencius's account of Confucius' ascent of the mountain: Gazing at the Holy Peak

Mount Tai is unlike anything else in our world, Its green hue stretching endlessly from Qi to Lu. Creation concentrated its spirit within this peak, Which divides light from shadow, clear as night from day. Its layers of cloud wash my heart clean; I strain my eyes to follow the birds nesting on it. Some day I will climb to the summit of Mount Tai And shrink all the world's mountains with a single look!19 Here the young Du Fu suggests that some day he will be able to rise above the petty world around him, much as Confucius did more than a thousand years before his time. And yet, one can rise above others in many different ways. It is possible that Du meant that he hoped to rise to a high position in the government. He could also have meant that he wished to become a person of superior moral qualities and knowledge like Confucius, or perhaps he was thinking about transcending the petty concerns of material life and ascending to some higher spiritual level. Mencius's passage and Du Fu's later poem serve as the departure point for Huang Zunxian's Eiffel Tower poem, but he transfers both to a late nineteenth-century setting and expands both texts almost beyond recognition. Before we attempt to discover how he transforms his sources, let us first see exactly what Huang derives from Mencius and Du Fu. The most obvious idea that he takes from both is the motif of ascending an object that towers above its surroundings with the attendant optical effect that makes everything seem smaller. Just as obvious, to the educated nineteenth-century reader, would have been the specific language he derives from both works. We have already noted his reworking of the line 123

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from Mencius, and the sixth line from the end of his poem ("As soon as I climb to the pinnacle of the tower") is based on the second line from the end of Du's poem. Huang's reactions to the Eiffel Tower seem to be influenced by Du Fu's work, and as Huang gazes upon the grand structure, his sense of wonder closely resembles Du Fu's awe upon viewing Mount Tai. However, even at this very basic level, differences between Du and Huang are also apparent. Du Fu is inspired by Mount Tai's natural beauty, but Huang is moved by a man-made object, a product of modern Western technological knowledge. Many poems in classical Chinese literature describe ascents of man-made objects such as Buddhist pagodas, and although some of them express wonder at the size and excellent construction of these buildings, nothing in earlier Chinese literature approaches Huang's detailed description of the Eiffel Tower's marvels.20 The contrast between Huang's description of the Eiffel Tower and ancient accounts of structures like Buddhist pagodas does not mean that Huang is some modern technocrat, who might quote us statistics about the size and weight of the tower or discourse on the manufacturing process of its steel frame. Huang's emotional response is much more complex and is dictated to a large degree by the allusions on which his poem is based. We have already noted three rather distinctive interpetations of what Du Fu's future ascent of Mount Tai may symbolize, and although the first of these, the possibility of career advancement, does not appear in Huang's work, the other two are central to his poem. Huang Zunxian does not claim to have attained any superior moral qualities by climbing the Eiffel Tower, but the clarity of his physical vision ("Here no obstacles block my view") is paralleled by the increased breadth of his intellectual vision, which enables him to comprehend both the good points and shortcomings of the modern European civilization that created technological wonders like the Eiffel Tower. His broader perspective on the world will certainly assist him in his quest to improve Qing political and social life, much as Confucius' ascent of Mount Tai must have broadened the insight that lay behind his own strivings to reform Zhou-dynasty government and society. But Huang Zunxian's "distance" from the world below suggests other paths he can follow in the future. Not only does the world shrink beneath his gaze, but when he is confronted with the Eiffel Tower's majesty he comprehends the insignificance of his own life. As Huang reaches the top of the tower, he begins dreaming of a Daoist-style journey through the heavens, away from the world of dust. Of course, there is a significant difference between the Daoists' spirit journeys and the trip Huang is proposing: Unlike them, he intends to travel by hydrogen balloon. The underlying transfer allusions help create a poem that has an impact on the reader quite different from the original texts, for nineteenth124

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century Europe's advances in science and technology necessitate a complete realignment of traditional aesthetic and intellectual assumptions. But Huang Zunxian's expansion of his source texts determines our reaction to his work just as much as its different technological background does. A song performed by one person sounds totally different when it resounds from the throats of a chorus of two hundred, and Huang's expansion of one line from Mencius and an eight-line poem by Du Fu into the sixty-eight lines of his Eiffel Tower poem introduces a complexity absent in his sources. The flowers of Singapore We can observe this process of expansion at work even better in one of Huang's strangest but noblest works, his long poem on arranging flowers (translated on page 278), written with Singapore as its background. This poem was probably created in Huang's old age, between 1898 and the preparation of the final manuscript of his collected works in 1902.21 Its numerous allusions to Buddhism suggest that it was conceived at about the same time as his poem on the Reclining Buddha, and the many references to Western chemistry and physics correspond to Huang's increasing interest in science during his old age. The following note to a quatrain about the flowers of Singapore contained in Huang's Assorted Quatrains of 1899 provides us the background to the work: The millionare She family from Chaozhou constructed a building by a pool on the Zhu River in Singapore, surrounded by water on three sides, where I resided while recovering from malaria. . . . All sorts offlowerscrowded its trees, and there was no difference between winter or summer there. I picked lotus, chrysanthemum, peach, and plum blossoms to arrange together in a vase, which made a marvelous scene!22

Huang's poem is replete with the allusions to classical verse and Buddhist scriptures we find in so many of his later creations, but there is no real precedent for the way he combines them with his many references to modern scientific knowledge.23 Huang's transfer allusions are particularly abundant in this work, but the transfer allusion that unifies the entire poem is not a reference to some specific work of classical literature, but rather an allusion to one of traditional Buddhism's central concepts, transmigration. Huang constructs his entire poem around this concept, greatly expanding it to embrace the modern scientific ideas of chemical and physical transmutation. The first part of the poem (lines 1-22) emphasizes the diversity of the phenomenal world by describing its great variety of flowers (symbols for 125

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the different human races) with a dazzling array of seven consecutive extended similes (lines 13-22), most of them drawn from Buddhistsources.24 This theme continues in the next section (lines 23-42), in which Huang narrates the flowers'joys and sorrows, the joys mostly a result of harmony, the sorrows arising from hostility and strife. Even in the first section, Huang begins to hint at the unity that lies behind all this diversity when he uses similes such as "Like Western and Chinese music, all performed in the same key" or "Like fairies, Buddhas, and devils inhabiting the same room" to describe the flowers. The second simile also hints at the transfer allusion to transmigration that unifies the poem, for a reader with a knowledge of Buddhism would recognize a similarity between "fairies, Buddhas, and devils" and the different categories of sentient beings born as a result of transmigration. 25 This subtheme of unity continues in the second section, where the strife among flowers is balanced by examples of toleration and harmony. A linguistic foundation for this unity is provided by the repetition of the expressionyoushi ("sometimes" or "there are times," not always translated in our version), which again hints at the idea of transmigration, each occurrence of the word shi ("time") suggesting a separate life in the cycle of existence.26 In the third section (lines 43-52), the voice of reason (in the person of Huang Zunxian) intervenes to eliminate strife among the flowers (races), and the flowers consent to being arranged by this higher power. In this section and those that follow, Huang combines explicit references to Buddhist reincarnation with modern ideas of genetic transmutation and chemical synthesis to show how all apparent differences among flowers (and human beings) are only superficial. For example, he bases his line "For they [the flowers] lack human features, don't have human egos" on the Buddhist idea that the human ego has no independent reality, a belief that suggests our consciousness must move from one body to another with no reference to such externals as skin pigmentation. In subsequent lines, Huang infers the same tolerant attitude from modern science, which has demonstrated that one living creature could conceivably be changed to another simply by altering the structure of its DNA molecules. In the last twelve lines Huang wittily suggests that the workings of karma may cause him to be born as a flower some day, and that if the flowers he is arranging change into human beings, they will have the opportunity to put him in a vase and chant his own poem to his face. Some readers may find Huang's combination of Buddhist transmigration with modern scientific theories intellectually untenable, but one must admit that it is quite successful as a literary device. Some earlier poets such as Du Fu, who were inspired by Confucian humanism, emphasized the unity behind human diversity, but in the nineteenth century only a 126

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poet like Huang Zunxian, with his knowledge of both Chinese tradition and modern science, along with his fervent desire to seek the unities underlying both, could have used the device of transfer allusion to express the universal message of racial tolerance. New techniques of description Like his use of allusion, Huang's descriptive technique also grew more skillful in the late poems. As we noted in our examination of his traditional nature poetry, his poetic eye gradually sharpened with age, particularly in the modern-style poems. This increasing clarity of vision is apparent in his foreign poetry too, but it is manifested differently. Since most of Huang's later poems on foreign themes were written in the expansive ancient form, we would expect their descriptive technique to be quite distinct from his later traditional poetry in the highly compact modern style. However, the different technique is not just a result of the differing demands of each form, and an examination of Huang's early ancient-style verse reveals that its descriptive technique has much more in common with his later regulated poetry than most of his later ancient-style poetry does. This peculiar situation can only be explained as a result of fundamental changes in the descripive techniques of his ancient-style poetry. Huang's descriptions in his early ancient-style poetry, such as the Hakone poems, are highly attractive, but they do not transcend those of his Song-dynasty masters. In fact, many of the similes and metaphors that strike the first-time reader with their originality and freshness are merely clever reworkings of lines by ancient masters. For example, when Huang describes his anxiety about the mountain path he is about to ascend by writing: "It's as if some executioner had sliced off my feet," he uses a wellknown story from the Zhou-dynasty legalist philosopher Han Fei $11^ (d. 233 B.C.) about a certain Mr. He, from the state of Chu, who was punished by having his feet cut off after specialists doubted the authenticity of a piece of raw jade he submitted to his ruler.27 Huang strips Han Fei's original story of its political symbolism (gifted scholars are frequently misunderstood and even harmed by ignorant persons in authority), and he uses the allusion merely as a clever figure of speech to describe how his feet are numb with fear. His figures of speech derived from earlier literature are particularly compact, and good English style frequently dictates that we translate many of them as similes, although some are best described as highly condensed metaphors. For example, a literal translation of the line "With wrinkled skin that cracks like burned tortoise shells," from the same poem, would read "Skin wrinkling [is] tortoise oracles cracking," an 127

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allusion to the ancient Chinese practice of telling fortunes by observing the cracks that form on heated tortoise shells. Similarly, the line "I hop like a catfish hooked on the end of a rod" literally means "Leap, leap, climb bamboo catfish," and our final translation is only possible after we take into account the allusion to the following passage by the Northern Song author Ouyang Xiu Wi$Bi& (1007-72): "The poet Mei Yaochen's wife, Madame Diao, said to him: 'In your official career you are no different from a catfish dangling from a bamboo pole.'" 28 Huang continues to base his descriptive technique on compact similes and metaphors derived from earlier texts, in some of his mature poetry, but beginning with the London period important changes occur. Just as "The Great London Fog" marked the expansion of exotic allusions in his later poetry, this poem marks the expansion of his descriptive technique. The descriptions of this late work are no less vivid than those of the early Hakone poems, but they are considerably less compact, an effect produced in part by Huang Zunxian's predilection for "reduplicated" words. Two of the most conspicuous examples occur in the fifth and six lines, which I translate as "All England lies lethargic in a boundless sea of fog - / Benighted and hazy like the dark kingdom of sweet dreams," but which in a word-for-word translation might read: Vague, vague, boundless, boundless the country is lethargic and desolate; Dark, dark, hazy, hazy, the black, sweet land [of dreams]. In "The Great London Fog" Huang also expands his descriptions by placing lengthy figures of speech in adjacent lines. For example, lines 13 and 14 ("I imagine I'm crossing the endless sands of the Gobi / O r exploring a bottomless cavern too dark to measure") consist of two long similes, which in a more literal translation might read: It is like crossing the Great Desert's sands, which are endlessly yellow; It is like exploring a cavern so dark it is hard to measure. Both the repetition of the expression "It is like" (ru) and the use of two consecutive similes to describe the same thing run counter to the compactness of Huang's earlier allusion-based figures of speech, but his conflation of the description is quite effective here, suggesting the vast distances involved. Huang uses this kind of repetition on an even larger scale in many of his later poems on foreign lands. The first poem from the group, "Moved by Events" (translated page 272), repeats the same descriptive pattern, consisting of four modifiers subordinated to their head noun by the grammatical particle zjii 3l in each of the poem's first eight lines. This pattern is unusual in classical verse, which avoids lengthy modifiers of four syllables 128

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and the particle zhi, considered more appropriate for prose, and the effect is almost as startling as the ten similes in a row that we noticed in Huang's late poem on theflowersof Singapore. Huang's expanded descriptive technique is contrary to the mainstream of Chinese shi poetry, but it is not without precedent in Chinese literary history. Prose-poetry (fu), a form of courtly literature that reached its height during the Han dynasty, is famous for lengthy, involved descriptions, and although post-Han writers of shi studiously avoided the excesses of these Han-dynasty Court authors, Han Yu gained notoriety during the Tang dynasty for the complex descriptions of his long poem "South Mountain," already mentioned as a predecessor to his long poems, which contains thirty consecutive extended metaphors for the mountain peaks.29 Hostile critics accused Han of using prose to write poetry, but in his London preface Huang expressed admiration for Han Yu's combination of poetic and prose style, claiming that he himself had imitated "the Ancient Prose masters' [principally Han Yu's] methods of 'expansion and contraction' along with 'separating and joining' for the writing of poetry."30 Why was Huang Zunxian so drawn to this side of Han Yu's poetry during his later years? First of all, he must have felt a strong kinship to Han, who has always been considered a great poetic innovator, even by the critics who disparaged his works.31 Nonetheless, Han Yu's experimentation with verse forms was quite literally ancient history by the late nineteenth century, and Huang's study of Han Yu did not arise from a desire to imitate any specific aspect of Han Yu's poetry but resulted from his unceasing search for models that could help him to fit even more of the modern world's new wine into the restrictive bottles of classical poetry. Poetic history and historical poetry We have noted that Huang Zunxian's long poems were his only major innovation in the form of Chinese verse. His expansion of allusion and descriptive technique were important tools which he applied to the long poems that modern critics have appreciated so much, but his use of historical narrative was of equal significance for the development of these works. The connection between poetry and history has been closer in China than in any other civilization. Before the twentieth century, Chinese scholars read historical accounts with the same enjoyment with which we read novels, and historians like Zhao Yi wrote excellent poetry, while poets such as Han Yu and Ouyang Xiu were also noted for their historical studies.32 China's most revered poet, Du Fu, is not only called the Sage of Poets (shisheng) but is also known as the Poet-Historian (shishi), 129

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a title he earned from his many vivid poems about the tribulations of the Chinese people and his own family during the An Lushan Rebellion. Many modern Chinese scholars praise the historical qualities of Huang Zunxian's verse. Liang Qichao wrote: The Greek poet Homer was the first great poet of [Western] antiquity. His poems are unique firsthand accounts, indispensable for examining and corroborating Greek history, each poem consisting of ten thousand or more lines. . . . During a lifetime of criticizing poetry, I have been most enchanted by Huang Zunxian,. . . whose unusual creations can certainly be said to lack any precedent [in China]. I have not yet read the works of poets like Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, or Tennyson, so I dare not compare them with Huang, but as far as China is concerned, I can affirm that there has been nothing like him before. If I were to give his poems titles appropriate for prose works, I would name them "A History of Modern India," "A Short History of Buddhism" . . . , but, of course, they are poetry, not prose.33 Huang's historical poetry can be divided into two broad categories. The first narrates some historical event from beginning to end, like a traditional Chinese chronicle. Since this category of his historical poetry usually treats Chinese topics, we shall defer its discussion until Chapter 10, where we shall study Huang's satires on China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War. The second type of historical poetry, which is commoner in Huang's works on foreign themes, uses historical narration as a device for presenting the argument of a poem. From the earliest times, Chinese poets alluded to historical events in their poetry, and after the Han dynasty many authors composed so-called yongshishi ("odes on history"), in which they discussed the accomplishments or shortcomings of famous historical figures. However, Huang Zunxian's historical poetry owes little to these traditional odes on history.34 One of the unique features of Huang's use of historical narration is his insertion of extended historical accounts into the middle of poems that are not predominantly historical. This practice already occurs in Huang's youthful poetry, long before he had close contact with Western culture, and we shall consider it in some detail in the next chapter, but it plays a critical role in his poetry on foreign countries and marks an innovation in Chinese poetry on foreign lands. If the chronology proposed earlier is correct, Huang's poem on the Eiffel Tower is one of his earliest experiments with this method. In a brief twelve lines (starting with "I remember the engagements of the Hundred Years' War"), Huang traces the history of Europe, from late medieval times through the Napoleonic Wars down to the end of the nineteenth century, with its Great Power rivalries that would soon lead to World War I. Huang 130

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felt a need to explain European history to his Chinese readers, but his historical account provides a somewhat clumsy transition from his evocation of the Eiffel Tower's technological wonders to his poem's transcendent conclusion. In the second poem of his series, "Moved by Events" (translated on page 273), which may be later than his Eiffel Tower poem, the historical section is much more successfully integrated.35 Huang's account of Western exploration and Christopher Columbus's first voyage extends twenty-some lines, which would seem to threaten the balance of a poem only forty-four lines long, but the historical introduction relates so closely to the work's concluding argument, and Huang handles the transition from the historical account to the next section so masterfully, that the first-time reader hardly notices the subdivisions of the poem at all. Huang's "Reclining Buddha of Ceylon" (translated in part on page 266) is probably his most effective work on a foreign topic that utilizes the device of historical narration. The selection translated is rather misleading, because it consists almost entirely of his amusing account of Indian religious history, without any of the poem's long descriptive sections or didactic passages, and one has to read the lengthy series as a whole to appreciate the contribution of Huang's historical narrative to its overall design. However, even in this small selection we can observe Huang's skill in using history for his own literary purposes. The historical narrative contributes just as much to the wit of the poem as the literary allusions examined earlier, and the allusions he selects from the vast store of materials available to him are completely determined by the narrative, which traces the rise and fall of the Buddhist faith and Buddha's "democratic" thought. No one could claim that Huang is an impartial historian, but some readers might wish that more traditional Chinese historians had possessed his sense of humor. The development of historical narration in Huang Zunxian's foreign poems closely parallels the evolution of his use of allusion and descriptive technique. The first historical narratives from his earlier didactic poems on Chinese themes are both clumsy and poorly developed, and his historical narrative had not been perfected when he first incorporated it into his foreign poems. But once Huang Zunxian mastered the technique of historical narration, he expanded it so greatly that it served as a foundation to such masterpieces as the Reclining Buddha poem. Changing attitudes to foreign cultures We have already given some attention to Huang Zunxian's images of British culture and his reactions to Western civilization. Let us now

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examine in more detail how some of his attitudes toward foreign lands (particularly the West) changed as his literary style slowly matured. Huang Zunxian's poems on Hong Kong explore both the positive and negative sides of nineteenth-century Hong Kong's Westernized life, but these youthful works do not manifest a profound understanding of foreign culture. Huang encountered his next foreign society in Japan, and the accessability of its culture allowed him to learn more about that country than any other nation except China. Of course, there were limits to Huang's knowledge of Japan. As we noted, he does not seem to have learned spoken Japanese well, and his reading of Japanese was restricted to books by Japanese authors written in classical Chinese or Japaneselanguage works that employed large numbers of Chinese characters. He never mastered pre-nineteenth-century classical Japanese, so he could not explore Japan's rich tradition of poetry, drama, and fiction. A serious misconception was his mistaken notion that Japan was nothing more than a cultural extension of China. Pre-nineteenth-century Japanese culture was deeply influenced by China, but Huang's attitude toward Japan was just as distorted as it would have been if a nineteenthcentury Italian scholar were to have viewed France as merely a cultural extension of Italy, because of the fact that French culture was indebted to the Roman classical heritage and the Italian Renaissance. However, Huang's misunderstanding ofJapanese culture is of little account to most of his mature poetry, for as we have seen, the primary insight he gained from his stay in that country was an appreciation of Western culture, which changed many of his basic attitudes toward life. We have already seen that conservative Japanese scholars were at least partially responsible for Huang's negative reaction to certain aspects of Meiji Westernization, but many of Huang's doubts about the West, which serve as the themes for some of his best foreign poems, arose more from conflicts between Western values and his own traditional Chinese background. The West and Mozi During his stay in Japan, and perhaps even later, Huang Zunxian's perceptions of the West were colored by his theory that Western culture was originally derived from the philosophy of Mozi ii"? 1 (fourth century B.C.), a leading thinker of the Zhou dynasty, whose school of thought once rivaled that of the Confucians. In the Monographs on Japan we read: After studying Western culture, I have concluded that it orginated with the writings of the philosopher Mozi. The Western view that every person has a right to freedom is the same as Mozi's emphasis on equality. The idea of loving your neighbor as you love yourself is the same as Mozi's universal love. The idea of 132

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worshiping only God and saving your soul is the same as Mozi's respecting Heaven and understanding spirits. The refinement of Westerners' machines and their military ability is a development of Mozi's preparations for attack and defense along with his idea of sculpting aflyingbird. Western science, too,findsits origins in the Upper and Lower Chapters of Mozi's works. At the time of Mencius, half of China's thinkers sided with Mozi. After Mozi's doctrines became confused, his school split into seven sects, and such disciples as Deng Ling and Qin Guli spread them all over the world. Although the history of their entry into the West cannot be ascertained, the Western philosophers developed Mozi's theories, so that today seven-tenths of the world's myriad countries practice the ways of Mozi, and although we rejected them more than two thousand years ago, Moism shows signs of returning to the East soon.36

After Huang had traveled more in the West and studied Western history, he must have realized the absurdity of this theory, but the idea that Western culture derived from the Zhou-dynasty philosophy of Mozi was widespread in late nineteenth-century China.37 This theory must have comforted conservative Chinese scholars, because they could point out that since their ancestors had rejected Mozi's "foolishness" more than two thousand years ago, there was no reason to be troubled by its Western version. Huang Zunxian's attitude is not so negative, for he seems to accept the idea that the "Mo-ist" principles of Western civilization provide a valid basis for the cultures of many powerful nations and that this Mo-ist way of thinking might dominate China in the future. The late Qing theory that Western culture derived from Mozi's thought is historically untenable, but it does contain a kernel of truth. There is a similarity between Mozi's ideas on equality and universal love, on the one hand and the corresponding ideas in Christianity and the liberal political philosophies that developed under Christian influence, on the other hand. Mencius attacked the Mo-ist doctrine of universal love because it did not preserve the distinctions between father and son or ruler and vassal, fundamental to the Confucian world view and one of the basic assumptions of Chinese society during Huang Zunxian's lifetime. There are also undeniable resemblances between Mozi's religious interests and similar tendencies that underlie so much European culture. By the time of Mozi, leading Chinese thinkers deemphasized the concept of a personal deity, but Mozi and his followers made this "old-fashioned" idea a central part of their thought. Nor was Mozi's thought completely backward-looking, for although Daoism and the Yin—Yang School strongly influenced the development of Chinese science in later centuries, only Mozi and his followers wrote extensively on scientific and technological topics during the Zhou dynasty, China's golden age of philosophy.38

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Christianity Huang Zunxian does not allude to the theory of Mozi's influence on the West in his later prose writings, but most of his strongest objections to Western culture are adumbrated in the early passage from his Monographs on Japan just quoted. We can easily detect Huang's anti-Christian bias in this passage, and he resembled many other Chinese intellectuals in viewing the Christian faith as the most intolerable feature of Western culture. Theistic philosophies played a minor role in the intellectual life of most Chinese scholar-officials, and even an originally nontheistic religion such as Buddhism declined in importance after the tenth century A.D. The common people worshiped a host of gods and spirits, but the educated upper classes were drawn more to the ethical and political ideals of Confucianism. Sometimes they followed the dietary regimen of religious Daoism, and Huang mentions his practice of Chan meditation in several poems, but the devotion to a personal deity that is so fundamental to Western culture plays practically no role in classical Chinese literature. Huang barely touches on Christianity in his early Hong Kong poems, but in a long work about Chinese students being sent to the United States to learn English and Western customs, he lamented: There were even some who practiced foreign religions, Leading one another to worship in churches. They nibbled on the wafers of "our Heavenly Father," As their hands fumbled with ancient Christian writings.39 In a late poem, which had popular Buddhism as its target, Huang wrote: At present religions are nothing but rubbish! The Catholics summon believers with a wooden clapper, And Daoists inscribe white silk with senseless spells.40 Huang's rationalism, which is so central to both the content and style of his poetry, left him little sympathy for the mysteries of religious faith. Huang Zunxian never changed his mind about Christianity, but as he became more familiar with Western society his reasons for disliking the religion became more complex. As with most late Qing intellectuals, his antipathy for Christianity was partially a product of the close link between Christian missions and Western aggression, as we read in his "Reclining Buddha of Ceylon": Lately the followers ofJesus Christ Have been busy spreading the Old and New Testaments.

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They ship stacks of Bibles through their merchant marine And back up their holy gospel with artillery barrages.41 While he was serving in Europe, however, Huang learned that Christianity was not so universally admired in the homeland of Western culture as the foreign missionaries in China led their followers to believe. In 1901, he wrote to Liang Qichao: Previously, when we were in Hunan, I mentioned to you that Kang Youwei had observed the flourishing state of the Catholic Church two hundred years ago, and since he felt that the wealth and power of the West derives from the encouragement of religion, he wished to elevate Confucius as a religious leader to compete with the Christians. He did not know that such talk about the veneration of religion was long ago considered rubbish in the West. Such countries of modern Europe as Germany, Italy, and France have strictly limited the power of the church to interfere in politics, and it would surely be a mistake to promote a Confucian religion at the present time and thus perpetuate the nonsense of others.42 By the time Huang wrote this letter, he agreed with many late nineteenthcentury Western intellectuals that Christianity was irrelevant to the modern world. Equality and democracy Another Mo-ist aspect of Western society that Huang Zunxian attacked during his early years in Japan was the concept of equality, which violated the Confucian ideal of natural and inviolable social distinctions. In his Monographs on Japan, Huang wrote about the possible consequences of the Western doctrine of equality: Fortunately, the Western nations of today are still materially rich, the minds of the people are uncorrupted, and everyone possesses a high level of self-respect. Moreover, by relying on the enlightenment of their laws and the completeness of their armaments, they are able to prevent their defeat in war. Yet, as their material power gradually declines and their citizens become more and more arrogant, their people, disunited and lacking any concept of rank, will give rein to their desire for power and wealth, assisted by the Western habit of fierce competition and their love of militarism. They will rise in violent struggle, without fear of Heaven, respect for Law, or interest in Righteousness. In the end, because they can promote equality but cannot force people to be equal, because they speak of universal love but have no way to put this love into practice, they will be driven to excessive strife and cruelty. If they use their promotion of equality and universal love as a tool to attack others, some will inevitably want to put to practice the forced equalization of rich and poor, noble and low, laborers and leisured class.

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I predict that before one hundred years, Europe will suffer great disorder, and when this disorder comes, men will look upon rulers as if they were pawns in a chess game and on their own relatives as if they were tumorous growths. Whenever they lock in combat, wars will drag on for several decades, millions of corpses will be strewn on the ground, and blood willflowfor a thousand miles.43 Huang Zunxian's apocalyptic vision of the future course of European history would seem to have been at least partially realized in the Bolshevik Revolution that followed World War I, the conflict between Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union in World War II, and the subsequent Gold War with its attendant "hot" conflicts. He probably did not have access to Karl Marx's writings during his service overseas, so his vision of class struggle is even more remarkable, but when he wrote this passage, he did not understand that parliamentary democracy can lessen social conflict. Many of the changes Huang made in the final version of his Assorted Quatrains on Japan arose from a gradual tempering of his extreme distrust of popular involvement in the political process, as he explains in the preface to the final version of that book: Much later, I traveled to America and observed the people of Europe, whose politics and learning are not very different from [Meiji] Japan. Recently Japan has established a parliament, and the speed of Japan's progress is unprecedented among the countries of the world from antiquity to present. When I discuss Japan's affairs with her high officials or her learned scholars, I merely fold my hands in respect and do not voice contrary opinions.44 One of Huang's last poems (fully translated on page 302) also recounts how his political ideals evolved over the years and proves that his respect for democratic institutions grew only with age. After bemoaning the despotic nature of Chinese government from ancient times to the present, Huang states that when he first arrived in Japan he "was confused and shocked by their talk of democracy," but now he is certain that "in our era's twentieth century, / No one will tolerate rule by emperors any more." He closes his work with the fervent wish that he may live to see the new era: "How I yearn to witness the great changes before us, / 1 pray let my death be delayed just a while."45

Imperialism The third characteristic of Western society that Huang Zunxian attributed to Mo-ist influence was the superiority of its science and technology. Although Huang's admiration for Western achievements in these areas only increased with experience, his awareness of the problems that 136

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Western scientific knowledge posed for the world also grew. I shall have more to say about this problem in Chapter 11, but for Huang Zunxian, the most ominous result of the West's superior scientific knowledge was the ability it gave Westerners to dominate the world. Huang's anxieties about Western imperialism never abated, but his perception of the problem grew more subtle over the years. In his early Hong Kong poems, he seems to imply that although British technology has created a prosperous way of life for the inhabitants of Hong Kong and a military power that could threaten the Qing empire, the colony was ceded to the British largely as a result of certain unwise decisions made by the Chinese Court during and after the Opium War.46 Huang would never abandon his political approach to the problem of Western imperialism (after all, he was a diplomat), but his understanding of China's failure to meet the Western challenge became increasingly sophisticated as his knowledge of the West increased, and what he learned from his studies of Western culture did not comfort him. During the late nineteenth century, many Western intellectuals and political figures were strongly influenced by the ideas of social Darwinism, and as Huang studied the philosophy he began to understand its disturbing implications for the survival of China, if it failed to adapt to modern conditions.47 In one of his late quatrains (translated on page 185), he describes how Western technology was enabling Westerners to exterminate the aboriginal populations of the New World, and he feared that the Chinese people might suffer the same fate some day. Of course, technological progress could have disastrous consequences for the Western powers themselves, particularly if they continued the "struggle for survival" that had characterized so much of their history. I have mentioned the admiration for Western technology expressed in Huang's poem on the Eiffel Tower, but it is no coincidence that his paean to Western scientific progress also contains a brief history of European warfare, concluding: The whole continent of Europe is an old battlefield; The Europeans love war and don't compromise lightly. Today six great emperors divide the continent between, Each boasting that he's the strongest leader of the world. These fellows resemble the proverbial kings in a snail shell, Who wasted their time chalking up victories and losses.48 The horrors of the two World Wars were still in the future, but Huang understood that technological superiority might contain the seeds of self-destruction.

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The American poems Readers who chose to read the translations first may wonder why this critical discussion has not yet mentioned Huang Zunxian's poems concerning his three-year stay in the United States. These are certainly some of his most accomplished works about foreign countries, but chronologically they belong to his later, mature verse, since they were not written during his tour of duty in the United States. Huang Zunxian does not seem to have written any poetry during his service in San Francisco, for manuscript evidence suggests that both his poem on the Chinese Exclusion Act and his series of eight poems on the presidential election of 1884 were not written until after his tour of duty in London ended in 1891.49 The difficult circumstances under which he was working in San Francisco (see Chapter 2) make this hiatus in his literary career easy to understand. Huang's poem on the Chinese Exclusion Act (translated on page 242) is his best-known poem about the United States, but it may not have been completed until after his forced retirement from public service, because it exhibits most of the stylistic peculiarities of his later poetry. Its allusions to earlier literature are particularly numerous, and all three categories of foreign allusions are manipulated with extraordinary skill. However, the poem's most impressive feature is the detail of its historical narrative section (starting with line 11), which recounts the history of Chinese settlement in California and the growth of the anti-Chinese movement among the white population. One notable aspect of this historical section is Huang Zunxian's evenhandedness, for although he obviously disapproves of the Californians' racism, he recounts in great detail the grievances, both real and imagined, that they had against the Chinese immigrants. However, the didactic section that follows the historical narrative is not one of Huang Zunxian's finest creations. Huang is certainly fighting the good battle here, but his fulminations against the U.S. government seem a trifle long-winded, and only his occasional flashes of wit rescue this passage from a descent into political diatribe. Fortunately, the deficiencies of this didactic passage are redeemed by the poem's moving conclusion, in which Huang's righteous indignation is balanced by sincere compassion for the Chinese immigrants and concern for his homeland's future. Huang's poems on the 1884 (translated on page 247) presidential elections are in a class by themselves, and, as one might expect, some of the differences between these poems and Huang's other foreign verse can be attributed to their distinctive use of allusion. All three categories of foreign allusions appear in the series, but many of the election poems' allusions merely echo the language of earlier works, and one can understand most lines without knowing their literary sources. This is especially 138

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true of the series' first poem, a delightful parody of American political songs. Qian Esun's notes identify echoes of earlier Chinese literature in this poem, but anyone with a moderate knowledge of classical Chinese can read it with pleasure, and even the learned reader will enjoy Huang's success in imitating the doggerel style of political songs more than any associations the poem makes with pre-nineteenth-century poetry. Some lines in the other poems can only be understood by reference to the underlying allusions to classical literature, but the series' many references to American politics would have given the educated late nineteenthcentury reader many more problems. A Chinese scholar of that day who had been exposed to Western missionaries might have understood Huang's reference to the miracle of the loaves and fishes in the second poem, but he would have been much less likely to make sense of Huang's account of Democratic-Republican rivalries, the national debate on protectionism, or the dispute over the 1875 Bland-Allison Act. Huang's use of allusions to American politics closely resembles his attempt to accommodate Japanese culture in his long poem on the Cherry Blossom Festival; however, his election poems would have seemed much more alien to his Chinese audience than anything he wrote about Japan. In spite of these difficulties, the overall reduction of allusions in these works looks forward to certain developments in Huang's late Assorted Quatrains of 1898, which we shall examine in Chapter 12. The descriptive technique of the election poems is also quite original, particularly in the fourth, fifth and seventh poems of the series. So far, we have studied two distinctive kinds of descriptions in Huang's poems: highly compact, allusion-based descriptions (typical of most of his earlier poetry and his later modern-style verse) and expansive descriptions derived from prose writing, which assume more and more importance in his later ancient-style poetry. Since the election poems are mature works in the ancient style, we are not surprised that the first category of description is lacking, but the absence of the second is unexpected. Huang replaced both with a much more straightforward descriptive technique that we find only in some of his longer narrative poems from later years.50 One reason for this change may be that he found his first category of allusion-based descriptions difficult to incorporate in poems about a culture so different from China, and the second category may have seemed inappropriate too, because he did not wish to heighten the poems' alien qualities by using the allusive techniques that had made his "Great London Fog" so strange. Qian Esun has found sources for much of the language of Huang's descriptions, but one wonders if he has not overannotated the poems in places. For example, he quotes two sources for the expression ximatai JSLII

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H (literally, "sporting-horse terrace") in the first line of the fourth poem, one of which recounts how a certain Kong Jigong ?L$^I (mid-fifth century) retired from his official post and was feted by his ruler at a place called Ximatai.51 It is possible that Huang derived the term ximatai from this source, but the story that Qian cites has nothing to do with the description that follows, and it is much more likely that Huang was thinking of the modern Chinese termmaxituan MlScES ("horse-sporting group," i.e., "circus") when he wrote this line. Huang may have derived some of the language of his descriptions from classical texts, but they are most remarkable for the way he uses relatively straightforward and even vernacular language to depict scenes with the same vividness one finds in his earlier allusion-based descriptions. One can only regret that he did not live long enough to develop this new descriptive technique further. Huang's election poems are also unique in that they are his only works on a Western country that are predominantly satirical. We shall examine the development of Huang's satire in the next chapter, but since the satire of the election poems is rather different from his poetry on Chinese subjects, we should consider it here. Part of the success of his satire on American politics can be attributed to his wonderful sense of the style appropriate to each poem. His opening parody of election campaign songs is written in a clumsy doggerel style, and this is followed, in the second and third poems, by a clever mixture of political rhetoric and street language, as the Democrats and Republicans engage in political mudslinging. The account of a political rally, in the fourth and fifth poems, largely consists of straightforward description, and the lush imagery of the sixth poem's opening and the allusions to classical historical and philosophical texts in the middle section provide a perfect backdrop to its account of political chicanery and vote buying. The account of Election Day, in the seventh poem, reverts to the descriptive style of the fourth andfifthpoems, and the series' didactic conclusion, with its numerous echoes of Confucian classics such as Mencius, the Classic of Changes (Yijing), the Chronicles o/Zuo, and the

Gongyang Chronicles, is the only work of the series that resembles Huang's poem on the Chinese Exclusion Act in style.52 Like any good satirist, Huang displays a wonderful sense of irony in his election poems. He establishes an ironic tone in the first poem, where the members of both parties sing campaign songs that are mirror reflections of each other, and develops it to a high point in the second and third poems with an incongruous mixture of religious imagery, jingoism, and vile personal attacks. Huang also understands how to combine realism with just the right degree of exaggeration, and the humor of the fourth poem mostly derives from the contrast between a realistic description of the convention's venue and a caricature of the drunken politician whose partisan 140

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bombast blasts tiles off the roof and cracks pillars. One contemporary Chinese scholar has pointed out the resemblance between Huang's poems and a humorous sketch by Mark Twain, and although Huang does not mention Twain in his poems, both writers were clear-sighted observers of nineteenth-century American political life, endowed with a native talent for satire.53 The amazing thing is that Huang could create such effective political satire when he did not know the English language and was writing many years after the events he narrates. Some contemporary Chinese critics with Marxist backgrounds have cited Huang's election poems as proof that he disliked Western-style democracy, but there is little evidence to support their interpretation. 54 We have traced the evolution of Huang's attitudes toward democracy from his early hostility to popular government in Meiji Japan to his dying wish that China would become a constitutional monarchy. We cannot be certain of the exact chronology of Huang's changes in attitude, and he was not always consistent, but we know that while he was still in Japan he came under the influence of Wang Tao, one of the first Chinese advocates of parliamentary government, and that by the time he wrote the preface to his final version of the Assorted Quatrains on Japan, in 1898, he strongly endorsed Western political institutions. Since his poems on the American election were probably written after that date, it would be quite strange indeed if he had used them as a vehicle to express his dislike of democracy. Chinese Marxists have confused criticism of certain negative features of late nineteenth-century American democracy with disapproval of the American democratic tradition, but Huang makes his respect for the American political and social system abundantly clear in the last poem of his election series: Ever since the Americans obtained their freedom The nation has prospered in myriad ways. They have increasingly promoted popular knowledge, And the nation's wealth has multiplied tenfold. How noble, how magnificent is this mighty country! Take a look at America's joys; what more could you ask for?55 Coming from a Confucian background, with its emphasis on social harmony, Huang found it difficult to comprehend the necessity for some party strife in a healthy democratic society, but when we keep in mind the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865 and the murder of President Garfield in 1881, less than one year before Huang's arrival in San Francisco, not to speak of the numerous scandals that plagued the federal government during the post-Civil War era, it is not difficult to understand 141

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his concern for the stability of the system, a worry that was shared by many thoughtful Americans. What he hated were the corruption, racism, and political strife that had perverted the ideals of American democratic government, or, as he said in the concluding couplet to his poems on the 1884 elections, "If only the Americans could clean up their politics, / The Golden Age would follow close behind!"56

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9 The development of Huang Zunxian's satire The nineteenth-century background Huang Zunxian's poems on the American presidential elections were his only major satires about a foreign country, since he reserved his sharpest barbs for his own native land. Many critics consider his poems on foreign cultures to be his most original creations, but in fact the rich body of satirical poems that he wrote about late nineteenth-century China demands equal attention, for although his satires on Chinese themes may owe more to tradition than his works on foreign lands, they exhibit the same restless quest to utilize all the devices of classical literature to create effects unknown in earlier poetry. Satirical poetry (tRSlJINf fengcishi, or just M feng, in Chinese) has a long history in China, and, if we are to believe the traditional commentaries on the Classic of Poetry, the genre of satire was already well developed before 1000 B.C.1 We are on even surer ground by the end of the Zhou dynasty, and much of the finest poetry from the Han dynasty and the long period of disorder that followed it was based on the idea that poetry's principal function is to criticize shortcomings in the political system, with Sima Xiangru's ^IMffi^P (179-117 B.C.) prose-poems and Ruan Ji's l^clf (210-63) pentasyllabic verse being only some of the finest products of this literary approach.2 Building on the foundation of these earlier masters, satirical verse reached a high point under the Tang dynasty, particularly in the works of Du Fu and Baijuyi fiSJsr.3 In spite of the rich tradition of satirical poetry in China, Western readers of Chinese satirical verse miss one ingredient deemed essential to Western satire ever since classical times, namely, humor. The humor of the earlier Latin satires by Lucilius (second century B.C.) and Horace (65—8 B.C.) was relatively mild, but ever since the brutal satires ofJuvenal (6o?-i4O? B.C.), Western satirists have made abundant use of irony, sarcasm, and ridicule, the practice of which probably reached its acme in the

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inimitable creations of Dryden (1631-1700) and Pope (1688-1744), who learned the lessons of their Latin masters well. There are certain exceptions to this lack of humor in Chinese satirical verse; some of Du Fu's satires employ humor, and some of the Song satirists' poems do too, but most Chinese satirical verse is closer to the following well-known poem by Baijuyi: The old charcoal seller

An old man sells charcoal, Cutting firewood and burning charcoal in the Southern Hills. Dust and ashes cover his face, the color of smoke; His temples are gray, his fingers all black. What does he get with the money he earns? The clothes on his body and a mouthful of food. Although the clothes on his body are pitifully thin, He worries charcoal is too cheap and hopes for cold weather. Last night a foot of snow fell outside the city, And in the morning he drives his charcoal cart over frozen ruts. His ox is tired, and he's hungry; it's late in the day, So he rests in the mud outside South Market's gate. Who are those two riders who come galloping over? A messenger dressed in a yellow robe, a young man clothed in white. They have a proclamation in hand and speak with the emperor's authority; They turn the cart around and curse the ox they lead north. One cart of charcoal, More than a thousand catties heavy; Palace officials drive it away, and the old man can't complain. A half roll of red silk, Ten feet of damask, Are tied on the ox's head as the charcoal's price!4

Most Chinese satirists conceal their message more carefully than Bai, but, generally speaking, Chinese satire tends to arouse more indignation than mirth. This situation changed radically during the nineteenth century, and two of the most important poets responsible for the transformation were Huang Zunxian's masters, Gong Zizhen and Wei Yuan. They were the first writers who dared to make fun of their society after the easing of the eighteenth-century literary inquisitions promoted by the Qianlong emperor. The Opium War led to a further loosening of central control, and mid-ninteenth-century satire reached its first climax in the works of Jin He jfefP (1819-85), an unsuccessful scholar whose poetry depicted the 144

Development of Huang Zunxian's satire

turbulent years of the Taiping Rebellion. Jin was residing in Nanjing when the Taiping armies took the city in 1853, and much of his satirical verse criticizes the Qing army's ineptitude in putting down the rebellion: A record of what I saw on the fifth

During the latest battle, no rebels were seen; Our general wanted to pardon some, but couldn'tfindany. Some say the general thought it was too hard to kill them all, So he's waiting for another battle to see what to do. Yesterday at dusk he sent an order to his army: "I don't wish to punish anybody, so I'll give you another chance. Tonight you will take the rebels' northeast wall; If you don't take the wall, your lives are worthless." Our troops bowed, cheered out loud, and brandished their swords, And then went promptly back to bed to sleep off their liquor. A wild wind blew through the sky with a moan; Thunder rumbled among thick, black clouds. The general told his officers: "A rainstorm is brewing," And the officers told him: "There's a way out of this." They drove their steeds ten miles back before the sky cleared, Racing to consult their commander in time for sunrise. The general knew there would be a storm tonight; "I don't blame you for running," he said to his men. "I've heard that the weather was so cold in ancient Chu That soldiers' chapped hands made it impossible to fight. Here the blazing sun plagues us during the summer season, And that's why I send my troops out tofightat night. Yet we'd better not advance too far tonight, For now the moonlight's bright as day, and the rebels will see us." Just as the stars and clouds change in less than a moment, Our general's nimble mind decides whether tofightor not. Ah! My general, your strategems are so all-embracing That only bad luck keeps you from destroying the enemy. All we need is a blue sky, when it's neither too hot nor too cold, When the sun or the moon doesn't come out, and there's no wind or rain!5 The caustic wit ofJin He's satire, which is closer to the Western tradition than pre-Qing verse, owes a good deal to the foundation laid by Gong Zizhen and Wei Yuan, but he has gone one step beyond his masters by discarding their classical pretensions. Jin's criticisms are not hidden behind complex allegories, nor are they clothed in the garment of erudite allusion; just like Juvenal's, his satire is biting and even brutal.

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One reason for the success of Jin's satire is his masterful use of a literary technique that resembles the renowned "Parthian shot" of antiquity, a method of attack mastered by Parthian cavalry, who would appear to retreat from their enemy but then shoot backward at unsuspecting pursuers. The first-time reader of Jin's poem is relieved that the rebels do not appear, in the initial engagement of the first line, but is suddenly worried by the general's inability to even locate his enemy in the line that follows. When the general hands down his orders for the night campaign, the reader is reassured that the army responds just as any courageous body of soldiers should, only to be shocked that after receiving such inspiring orders the troops return to their drunken stupor. Jin's poem continues to retreat and attack right to its end, in which his last jab at his target reveals the impossibility of the inept commander succeeding in any battle. 6 There seem to be no allusions to Jin He in Huang Zunxian's surviving works, so it is difficult to say exactly how Jin may have influenced Huang, but in his study of Qing scholarship Liang Qichao mentions Jin and Huang in the same breath, and he intended to publish an anthology of their poetry in one volume, so he must have been aware of some connection between the two authors. 7 Jin's works circulated only in manuscript until their publication in 1894, but it is likely that Liang and Huang would have read such an important author long before that date. However, Huang Zunxian's ties to other early nineteenth-century satiric poets are easy to demonstrate; we have already noted Huang's allusion to Gong Zizhen's poetry, in his Cherry Blossom Festival poem, and in Chapter 12 we shall examine the relationship between his Assorted Quatrains of 1899 and Gong's Assorted Quatrains of 1839, both of which were written in the same year (jihai) of the Chinese cycle of sixty years. The poet-critic Chen Yan noted that Huang Zunxian's poetry was "imbued with the spirit of Gong Zizhen," and another critic, Wang Gengjin I f t ^ , wrote: "The poems of Huang Zunxian of Jiayingzhou record many contemporary events and make use of new language. This was a new form of poetry of the late Qing dynasty, and everyone says it was influenced by Gong Zizhen."8 Neither Chen nor Wang are as specific about Gong's influence on Huang as one might wish, but Wang's mention of "contemporary events" refers to the satirical side of both Huang Zunxian's and Gong Zizhen's creations. The poetry of ideas Nineteenth-century satire ofJin He's sort exerted a powerful influence on the development of Huang Zunxian's verse, but the Qing-dynasty poetry of ideas (normally called gftS^F shuolishi, or "poems expounding principles") was of equal importance. There was some overlap between the 146

Development of Huang Zunxian's satire

two genres even before Huang Zunxian's time, but, like traditional satire from Tang and earlier times, nineteenth-century satire generally attacked specific persons and policies, whereas the poetry of ideas tended to be more general and abstract. Before the Qing dynasty, the poetry of ideas was never as well developed as satirical verse. One of the earliest examples of the poetry of ideas is the much-neglected "Poetry of Mysterious Language" (xuanyanshi), cultivated by authors like Sun Chuo 'SkW (314-71) and Xu Xun irFf&l (fourth century), who used it as a vehicle to discuss Buddhist and Daoist philosophy.9 Compared to European Poetry, in ancient China, didactic verse languished; there are no long philosophical poems like Lucretius' (96?~55 B.C.) De rerum natura or more mundane practical poetry like Vergil's (70-19 B.C.) Georgics. Even in later ages, the poetry of ideas developed quite slowly. Yoshikawa has emphasized the intellectual quality of Song verse, but the following quatrains of a noted Song author, Huang Tingjian, caution us against expecting too much from Song philosophical poetry: Poems qfYixuan (Two poems ofsix) I The greatest shame arises from excessive desires; The greatest joy is the joy of no wishes. In the life of man, hard study is foremost; A thousand ages pass like a great streamflowingeastward. II The key is not to act with haste; Avoid strongflavorsin beverages and foods. A fisherman can easily drown in waves; A gentleman can be drowned by what he puts in his mouth.10 It is rather surprising that a normally witty poet like Huang Tingjian could write such insipid didactic poetry, but the ponderous way he promotes the antimaterialist ideals of Buddhism and Daoism is typical of much Song-dynasty verse of this sort. This situation began to change with certain seventeenth-century authors such as Gu Yanwu, but the first rich harvest of didactic poetry came during the early nineteenth century in the works of Gong Zizhen: At Orchid Terrace they split Chinese thought into nine separate schools, And the Confucians were only one of these. Each of the eight other schools possessed profound truths And refused to adopt the Confucians' ways. 147

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In later ages everyone honored the Confucians, Which only increased the Confucians' arrogance. Among the vast masses of officials and commoners, More than nine Confucian schools arose. I don't know of the original nine philosophical schools How many survive, how many are extinct. Some folks claim Confucianism died out first of all; I really wonder what to make of that!11

When reading this poem, one should keep in mind that Confucianism was still the orthodox state philosophy in the nineteenth century, and although Chinese society was somewhat more tolerant about divergence from orthodoxy than premodern Christian Europe, making fun of Confucianism was a risky business.12 The nine original philosophical schools of Gong's poem include such systems of thought as Legalism and Daoism, which had arisen about the same time as Confucianism and were still studied by Chinese scholars. Ever since the Song dynasty, China's intellectual life had been completely dominated by one school or another of Confucianism, and to assert that Confucianism had become extinct long ago was just as daring as insisting, in early nineteenth-century Europe, that no Christian church represented the teachings ofJesus. Gong Zizhen obviously did not mean that Confucianism had really vanished, and his outrageous suggestion that the philosophy had died out is a clever satirical device for attacking the meaningless Confucian scholarship of his own age. Gong had little use for the endless philological studies of some members of the school of Han Learning, and, like his friend Wei Yuan (and Huang Zunxian), he insisted that Confucian thought must have practical results. Gong's witty use of irony to achieve his satirical purpose had a strong influence on many later authors, of whom Jin He and Huang Zunxian were only two. Huang Zunxian's early poetry of ideas Huang Zunxian's youthful poetry of ideas is already on a par with most nineteenth-century didactic verse. His earliest surviving work, "Meditations," which dates from about 1864, when he was seventeen, consists of three moderately long poems in the nineteenth-century didactic style. The poems already display a high degree of mastery over the genre. One does observe certain infelicities expected in juvenilia, and the couplet with which Huang closes the first poem (translated on page 217) seems particularly clumsy: 148

Development ofHuang Zunxian's satire Master Jia's Policiesfor Government and Peace', Jiang Tong's Suggestionsfor Moving the Rong Tribes.

Neither of these sentences contains a verb in the original, and it seems strange to mention the names of two Chinese politicians and their writings in the last two lines of a poem, when the link with the preceding section is not obvious on a first reading. The translation attempts a partial solution to this problem by moving this final couplet back before the two lines that precede it in the original and by not translating the book titles literally, but still the poem's conclusion is far from satisfactory. However, one reason for our dissatisfaction with the poem's conclusion is that what precedes it is so well written. The poem does begin winding down in the more overtly didactic section that starts in line 13, but the portrait of a tradition-bound Confucian scholar drawn in the first twelve lines is a brilliant piece of satire, containing just the right blend of truth and exaggeration. Huang's humorous portrait of a pompous scholar who sheds bitter tears over departed glories demonstrates that even at this early age he understood how to bring the victims of his satire to life by emphasizing the contradictions in their personalities. Huang's skill at writing didactic verse matured rapidly, and by the time he composed his set of five poems entitled "Mixed Emotions" (about 1868; see translations on page 223), his command of the poetry of ideas equaled that of Gong Zizhen. The earlier clumsiness has vanished; each section of the poems is clearly and logically related to what follows it, and the witty ending of the second poem of our translation is just one example of these works' excellent structure. The themes of these poems and the earlier set are closely related; both explore the question of tradition versus innovation, but there are also important divergences. The earlier poems are more theoretical, the first poem (the one included in our translation section) dealing with the problem of excessive conservatism, the second describing the relation between classical learning and political problems, and the third attacking the "perversion" of Confucius' teachings under the Song and later dynasties.13 These were all favorite topics of earlier nineteenth-century didactic poetry, and, on the whole, Huang Zunxian's viewpoint is influenced by early Qing thinkers such as Gu Yanwu, who advocated a practical approach to political problems and attacked the metaphysical speculations of Song- and Ming-dynasty thinkers.14 In contrast, Huang's second series concentrates on more concrete problems like the difficulties of using classical Chinese as a tool for writing and the evils of the civil service examinations. Poem III (not translated) and

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poem IV (not translated) are critiques of the examination system, which study the way the system has impeded the development of knowledge.15 The third poem is a particularly witty condemnation of how China's despotic emperors used censorship, "patronage" of learning, and the examination system to mute criticism, creating a docile class of bookish intellectuals incapable of solving society's pressing problems. Again the thought of both of these poems derives from earlier Qing thinkers such as Gu Yanwu and Huang Zongxi HCTF;!! (1610-95), whose critique of Chinese autocracy was becoming increasingly popular among Chinese intellectuals.16 However, the boldness of the first and second poems of the series exceeds the bounds of the earlier nineteenth-century poetry of ideas. The first poem (translated on page 223) attacks both traditional scholarship and the classical Chinese language itself, and the second (translated on page 224) promotes the idea of the relativity of ancient and modern in literature, as well as advancing Huang Zunxian's still famous literary slogan "I write in my own language" (literally, "I write my own mouth"). Both poems have concrete political implications; if followed to their logical conclusions, they would require the abolition of traditional education in the classics and the civil service examination system, the very foundation of pre-twentieth-century Chinese political life. Huang's early satire At the beginning of this discussion we noted that the more abstract poetry of ideas has a quite different pedigree from Chinese satire on an individual person or a specific situation. This second kind of poetry is highly developed in pre-nineteenth-century Chinese literature and is probably as old as the tradition itself. Somewhat ironically, however, Huang Zunxian's earlier traditional-style satire is neither plentiful nor particularly well written. His earliest poetry of this class comes from the period at the end of the Taiping Rebellion, when his family underwent considerable hardship after rebel armies attackedJiayingzhou. The Qing-government forces were extremely disorganized, and the local gentry was infuriated by the government's delay in sending help. Huang wrote a number of satirical poems about this situation, the best of which is probably "In the eleventh month of 1865 {yichou) we escape from the Rebellion to Three Rivers in Dapu County" (translated on page 218). The poem uses a number of literary allusions quite skillfully (especially the last one, to the old Zhou-dynasty general Lianpo), but it is much less innovative than the didactic poems we have just been considering, and except for the wit of its closure, it does not seem to have learned much from earlier nineteenth-century satire. Perhaps one reason for its relative lack 150

Development ofHuang Zunxian's satire

of originality is that it was written in the more restrictive regulated style, a form that Huang did not master until some years later, and which did not give him the freedom of the ancient style used in his poetry of ideas. Huang's "Songs of the Taiping Rebels," from the same period (translated on page 218), are somewhat more accomplished satires. They are ostensibly nothing more than transcriptions of Taiping army songs, but one suspects that Huang greatly reworked them, and his skillful use of folksong style provides an attractive contrast to his highly allusive regulatedverse satire. Huang Zunxian's satirical poetry did not develop much until he left home in 1874 to try his luck in the civil service examinations in Beijing. His exposure to the harsh living conditions of northern China opened his eyes to the sufferings of the impoverished peasantry, and his more traditional satirical poems from this period tend to focus on social problems. His fourth poem from the series, "On the Road to Wuqing" (translated on page 229), equals the best social poetry of the Tang and Song masters, especially the gritty realism of the third and fourth lines: Tiles fall from roofs, like scales from a dragon's coat; Walls bear a heavy freight of plastered cow dung. Balancing such grim images with a suitable conclusion might seem impossible, but Huang's unsettling ending ("Middle-aged women beg for copper coins - with a shriek") rises to the occasion. Discussing the formal qualities of such a moving poem may appear a trifle coldblooded, but the work's strong emotional impact results at least partially from the way the perfect parallelism of the first three couplets leads us so smoothly to the shocking end. The only thing that we miss here is the wit of Huang's earlier satirical verse, but he was merely following in the footsteps of Baijuyi and other "serious" pre-nineteenth-century satirists. A didactic poem by Huang from this same period (1876), "An Account of my Feelings, Presented Again to Gong Yitu and Zhang Yinhuan" (translated on page 230) suggests that his poetry of ideas was changing along roughly the same lines as his more traditional satirical verse. Like much of his earlier didactic poetry, this work attacks the examination system (understandably, in light of his continued failure to pass), but its language and imagery have grown in power. Whereas he had merely poked fun at the examination system in his earlier didactic poetry, Huang now indignantly writes: "Scholars swarm around them [the test papers] like ants after carrion / . . . . Any useful book is thrown to the winds, / While everyone grinds away on these puerile studies."

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Some of the vigor of Huang's language and imagery maybe explained by increasing exasperation at his failure to find a niche in official life, but his growing knowledge of China's internal and external problems had allowed him to understand the harmful effects of the examinations on China's political life more clearly. His poem laments the suffering caused by the Taiping Rebellion and the succession of "foreign disasters which struck us one after the other," suggesting that the examination system produced the inept officials who were responsible for China's recent calamities, and he ends his work by casting doubt on the contemporary claim that the Tongzhi emperor's reign was a period of genuine dynastic "renewal," since the examination system had allowed no "great men" to appear. The urgent tone of this work has something in common with the importunate beggars in Huang's "On the Road to Wuqing," but the most important similarity between the two poems is that they are devoid of wit. Wit had underlain the satirical verse of all earlier nineteenth-century verse, and it had formed the basis of Huang's own satirical poetry. Fortunately, the absence of wit in Huang's "An Account of My Feelings" does not detract from its effectiveness, but if the language and imagery had been any less powerful the poem might strike us as excessively preachy. One reason for the work's success is that, in spite of Huang's immediate personal motives for writing the poem, for the first time in his life he successfully integrates his anxiety about China's future into the form of his earlier poetry of ideas. In other words, in this poem his poetry of ideas finally coalesces with traditional satire, a combination of two originally different approaches that determined the subsequent development of all his later satirical verse. Transition Huang Zunxian's success in the civil service examinations of 1876 brought the development of his satirical verse to an abrupt halt. He continued to oppose the civil service examination system for the rest of his life, but his earlier concern about linguistic problems and Qing-dynasty thought seemed less pressing to him now. Huang's appointment to the Chinese diplomatic corps led to his absence from China for more than eight years, and since the writing of good satire usually requires constant exposure to one's targets, we can understand why he wrote no satire on Chinese themes during this period. Huang's poetry on Japan occasionally makes fun of traditional Japanese culture, but his recognition that Japan was politically and economically more advanced than China restrained his satirical talents and caused him to portray Japan in a highly positive light. This shift in emphasis

Development ofHuang Zunxian's satire

corresponded to a change in poetic form. Huang Zunxian's earlier didactic verse and the later combination of traditional satire and the poetry of ideas he began experimenting with in northern China had all been couched in the ancient style, but Huang found the heptasyllabic quatrain more amenable for his Assorted Quatrains on Japan, and his ancient-style verse from the Japan period tends to be quite conservative and avoids satire. In short, both Huang's didactic poetry and his more traditional satirical verse went into a long period of hibernation after he left China in 1877Huang did not write any more satire on Chinese themes until his return tojiayingzhou in 1885, and what he wrote during his period of retirement there bears about the same resemblance to his older satire as a butterfly to its larva. Unfortunately, these new satirical butterflies were few, and it is not easy to trace their relationship to the mature satires of Huang's later years. In Chapter 4 we noticed that this same period witnessed a vigorous development of Huang's conservative nature poetry, but the kind of traditional satire he had been writing in regulated form just before his success in the civil service examinations did not reappear. Huang chose the ancient form instead, for the new satires of this period, the most important representative of which is his "I invite neighbors to drink with me one spring evening" (partially translated on page 256). This poem does contain fantastic accounts of foreign countries, but it is primarily a satire on Chinese ignorance about other lands. Its revival of Huang's satirical wit links it with his earliest satirical poetry in the regulated form, and its debt to his youthful poetry of ideas is apparent in the didactic conclusion (partially translated on page 122), which informs us that the poem was written to encourage the Chinese people to learn more about the outside world. However, the differences between this poem and Huang's earlier satirical and didactic poetry are manifold. The poem's unusual episodic structure suggests that Huang was attempting to transcend the rigid organization of his youthful poetry of ideas. Before he traveled to Japan, he had combined traditional satire with didactic poetry, and now he was trying to use narrative to enliven his new satire. "I invite neighbors to drink with me one spring evening" is quite original in its form, but it also diverges significantly from the narrower political concerns of traditional Chinese satire. Huang Zunxian's poem on the impoverished peasants of Wuqing is a moving andfinelycrafted work, but poetry on impoverished peasants had become a cliche even by the middle of the Tang dynasty, and only the most talented poets could contribute anything original to the theme. The themes that Huang explored

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in his youthful didactic verse were more original, but it is difficult to say how he could have developed them much further than he had before he went to Japan. The success of "I invite neighbors" must have suggested to Huang that he could enlarge the scope of satirical verse to criticize all the foibles and shortcomings of late nineteenth-century China and that he need not limit himself to narrower political topics. The tradition of narration and Huang's early narrative poetry Before we can investigate Huang Zunxian's mature satirical verse, we must examine another of its essential ingredients, narration.17 The Chinese literary tradition emphasized lyrical poetry, and, although Chinese poets have always been familiar with narrative technique, long narrative poetry is quite uncommon. Some narrative poems, such as the late second-century love ballad "The Peacock Flies Southeast" or Bai Juyi's account of the Tang imperial love tragedy, "The Song of Eternal Regret," had been popular for centuries, but long narrative verse did not develop extensively until the Qing dynasty.18 The early Qing poet Wu Weiye's "Song of Yuanyuan," on the theme of a legend about the Ming general Wu Sangui ^ m ^ (1612-78) going over to the Manchu side after learning that his favorite concubine, Yuanyuan HUB, had been seized by the Chinese rebel Li Zicheng ^ S 5S(i (16057-45), looked backward to the predominantly romantic concerns of earlier narrative poetry, but his work "Fanqing Lake," with its account ofWu's escape together with his family during a military upheaval, anticipates late Qing narrative poetry on political and social themes.19 The development of long narrative verse seems to have stagnated during the eighteenth century, but its pace quickened during the first half of the nineteenth century under the leadership of authors such as Zheng Zhen HP^ (1806-64), w n o w r °te many poetical accounts of the so-called Miao Rebellion in Guizhou province, and Jin He, whose narrative verse treated such diverse topics as the life of a female assassin and his own harrowing experiences during the Taiping Rebellion.20 Huang Zunxian narrated the history of Confucianism in the third poem of his earliest set of didactic poems, but the first satire that incorporated extensive narration was his "I invite neighbors." Huang had written moderately long narrative poetry much earlier, the best example of which is his 1865 "Ballad of Chaozhou" (translated on page 219), which recounts his family's narrow escape from river pirates when they were fleeing by boat from the Taiping Rebels to the safety of Chaozhou. In this youthful work, Huang imitates the straightforward language and vivid 154

Development of Huang Zunxian's satire

descriptions of earlier nineteenth-century narrative poetry. The complaints about his family's hardships that open and close the poem lessen the effectiveness of his narration, but his description of the river pirates' onslaught is particularly dramatic, and his humorous account of his younger brothers' and sisters' mock heroism provides some comic relief. In short, Huang already displays a talent for two essentials of good narrative verse in this early work: vivid description and realistic characterization. Huang's first narrative masterpiece Long narrative poems describing personal experiences are rare in Huang's collected works, and we do not encounter another work of this category until after his return from San Francisco to China. Just as his satirical verse improved during this period, so the high quality of the long poem that he wrote about his great-grandmother in the same period (translated on page 259) reflects an advance in narrative technique. We are fortunate to know quite a bit about the background to this masterpiece. Huang penned it in the spring of 1887, at the age of forty, when he made offerings at his great-grandmother's newly refurbished tomb. His great-grandmother had died at the age of eighty-five in 1858, when Huang was eleven years old, but she had exerted such a strong influence on his youth that his memories of her were still vivid. According to an account of her life written by Huang, her original surname was Li $ , and she was born in Hunan, where her father was an official. She was married to Huang's great-grandfather when she was about eighteen years old, and after the premature death of her husband she assumed control of the household. Huang tells us that She was strict in her governing of the household. If someone she cared for was not obedient, she would curse or even beat him. The sixteen or seventeen wives of her grandsons were not allowed to wearflowersin their hair and were not permitted to trim the hair on their temples or to use false hair to make long chignons. When she got up in the morning and went to the washroom, she would always pass by the bedrooms of her granddaughters-in-law, and since all of them were supposed to have finished their simple toilet before dawn, they immediately came out, as soon as they heard her footsteps, and stood outside their bedroom doors, hands folded, to wish her good morning. If one of them did not appear, my great-grandmother would ask: "Is she sick? Or is she still asleep?"21

Huang also describes her physical appearance: My great-grandmother had a prominent nose and big ears, with a face as long as a man's. She bore six sons, all of whom had equally imposing features, so that anyone who saw them feared and respected them. Her breasts were more than a foot long, 155

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so that she would carry a nursing child on her back, brace the child on her shoulder, and extend her breasts all the way to the child's mouth to feed it.22 It is likely that Huang's portrait of his great-grandmother's autocratic rule over her household will not appeal to twentieth-century readers, reared in a permissive society, but in Chapter 1 we saw how her sternness was tempered by genuine love and affection for Huang, and the time that she spent teaching him to sing Hakka folk songs and recite classical poetry must have been a major influence on his later career as a writer. Huang's long narrative poem about his great-grandmother is practically without precedent in Chinese literature. Huang himself admitted that his work's pentasyllabic ballad form was influenced by such traditional narratives as "The Peacock Flies Southeast" and the "Ballad of Mulan" (probably sixth century), and he may have been inspired by the many long narrative poems of the nineteenth century, but his work is unique.23 One might expect that there would be many poems about parents and ancestors in a society that valued filial piety so highly, but this is not the case, Tao Qian's genealogical poem, "Command to My Sons," being a rare exception.24 Not even Du Fu, who is noted for his touching poetry on his wife and children, wrote extensively about his parents or ancestors, an omission that can be explained at least partially by traditional taboos against using ancestors' names. What is even more remarkable about Huang's poem about his great-grandfather is that a female ancestor is its main character, although the important position of women in Hakka society may at least partially account for this. Not only is the poem's theme unusual, but so are the literary techniques that develop it. After a four-line introductory passage that employs popular traditions about plants and animals to discuss the concept of filial piety, Huang begins narrating the life of his great-grandmother as seen through his own eyes as a little boy. This narrative strategy is particularly effective because it allows Huang to show his great-grandmother as a different kind of person from the portrait he provides in the prose passage just quoted or as she would have appeared to Huang's elders. Adults would have been impressed by the firm control she exercised over the Huang family, but when we see her from the perspective of a young boy we are able to admire her love for and care of her descendants. Huang's narrative strategy also enables him to provide us a most delightful portrait of his own childhood, including his naughty escapades as a boy, something rare in the usually dignified classical tradition. This first section is followed by another section in which Huang defines his relationship with his great-grandmother within the broader context of the entire Huang clan. Huang recounts the way his brothers and sisters, 156

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and even his uncles, attempt to get on his good side in order to obtain his great-grandmother's favors, in a particularly funny passage that stays within the bounds of Confucian decorum only by being balanced against the description of his own parents' genuine concern for his great-grandmother's welfare. In the next section, which largely consists of the great-grandmother's monologue about her great-grandson, the emphasis begins to shift to her, because, although Huang is the topic of her speech, she unwittingly reveals a good deal about herself. The self-revelatory effect is heightened by Huang's skillful use of language; the passage is written in pure classical Chinese, but the reader "hears" Huang's great-grandmother speaking to him in the vernacular, an effect produced by a thinning of the linguistic texture and use of vocabulary normally associated with prose. This passage also provides a most effective transition to the next section, in which Huang provides a detailed portrait of his great-grandmother's daily life. Huang tells us that he is merely recounting his childhood recollections in this section, but his narrative reflects an adult's point of view, particularly evident in the way he concentrates on "adult" topics such as conversations about village affairs and regional politics as well as a description of his great-grandmother's medical examinations. Here the young boy Huang recedes into the background, as most of this section concentrates on defining his great-grandmother's relationships with other adults in the family, especially Huang's mother and grandfather. In the last section of the poem, Huang's great-grandmother has passed from this world and has become an object of veneration for her greatgrandson and her many descendants. In spite of his great-grandmother's absence, Huang's description of the graveside rituals clearly demonstrates the close link between the spirit realm she now inhabits and the physical world of the living. The poem's tight organization not only provides a wellstructured narrative, but it also heightens the effectiveness of Huang's characterization of his great-grandmother. By using four different points of view in the sections that describe his great-grandmother while she is still alive, Huang creates a well-rounded portrait that reveals four distinct facets of her life. Huang's picture of his great-grandmother is also brought to life by the contradictions in her character that he reveals. Her wild prejudice in his favor does not correspond to the impartiality one would expect from a person who has successfully managed a large household in which most relatives seem to live together harmoniously. Her relish at the thought of Huang Zunxian passing first in the examinations and returning home as a high official also seems rather vulgar, especially when read against the background of Huang's poetry of reclusion from the same period. We also

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are surprised at her superstitious beliefs about the afterlife, particularly in view of her upbringing in a scholar-official family. All three of these contradictions are related to the poem's most delicious irony, namely, the contrast between his great-grandmother's expectations of her graveside ritual and the realities described by Huang. Her own expectation was that her great-grandson would "place first in the examinations" and would climb her tomb mound one day "with a party all dressed in court robes." At that moment her partiality for Huang would be completely vindicated, and she would open her mouth and "laugh out loud" at the relatives who had criticized her actions. Huang does wear a court robe when he climbs his great-grandmother's tomb mound, and his great-grandmother has received a noble title from the court, but her great-grandson never did pass first in his examinations, rising only to the level of Provincial Graduate, and that only after repeated failures. Moreover, his political life has not been very distinguished, for he has only served overseas in the diplomatic corps, a second-rate career that certainly did not tally with his great-grandmother's high hopes for him.25 Not only are her expectations for him disappointed but her expectations for herself have come to nought. Absolutely nothing remains of the strong personality with which she dominated and guided her family for so long. Even if she wished to "laugh out loud" about her great-grandson's limited success in life, she cannot do so now, and the orderly ritual with which she is commemorated honors her more as a distant god than as the vital human being she once was. Huang never wrote anything quite like this poem again, but the lessons he learned from its creation were applied to his later satirical verse. From now on, his finest satirical poems display a firm grasp of narrative technique and a talent for characterization that is on a par with the best writers of fiction in China during the Qing dynasty.

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10 The late satirical poetry

Sino-Japanese War poems Huang Zunxian's poems about China's disastrous defeat in the SinoJapanese War (1894-5) are justly considered masterpieces of late Qing satire, for in them all of the separate strands of Huang's mature satiric poetry come together into a highly original artistic whole. It is unfortunate that we know so little about the genesis of these works, for anyone who reads them in the original would swear that Huang Zunxian must have been present at the battles he depicts with such clarity, but the manuscript evidence suggests that they could not have been written until 1898 at the earliest, and possibly much later.1 Huang's Sino-Japanese War poems are unique within the context of classical Chinese literature, for few Chinese authors wrote such an important body of war poetry, and as the contemporary American scholar Burton Watson has noticed, detailed battle accounts are even quite rare in Chinese historical texts.2 There is nothing in the Chinese tradition resembling the dramatic descriptions of warfare in Thucidydes' (471?— 400? B.C.) Peloponnesian Wars or Froissart's (i333?-i4OO?) Chronicles, nor did Chinese poets ever indulge in the gruesome descriptions of hand-tohand combat so beloved of the readers of Homer (anywhere between 1200 and 850 B.C.) and Virgil or the Renaissance epics of Ariosto (1474-1533) and Tasso (1544-95). Since Huang Zunxian's Sino-Japanese War poems are so unusual in the Chinese literary tradition, we must examine their background in some detail. Contrary to what one might expect, before Huang created his series on the Sino-Japanese War he wrote only one other poem on the theme of warfare, "General Feng" (translated on page 252), about General Feng Zicai's resounding victory in 1885 over the French at Zhennanguan iRllfllll (on the border between Guangxi province and Vietnam) during the Sino-French War.3 Even the chronological place of this poem is

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unclear, for although manuscript evidence suggests it was not written before 1891, we cannot establish positively that it was not written later.4 "General Feng" resembles earlier Chinese war poetry more closely than Huang's later works do, and an examination of what it owes to the earlier tradition will bring the innovations of the Sino-Japanese War poems into clearer focus. The meter of "General Feng" is fairly conservative, closely imitating Tang-dynasty ballad (yuefu) poetry, with its predominantly heptasyllabic line occasionally interspersed with lines of three or five syllables. As Qian Esun has discovered, Huang's description of Feng Zicai is based upon a poem by the Qing author Huang Jingren l l r j f t t (1749-83), and the final four lines of Huang's work are largely a reworking of Huang Jingren's lines: Alas! After Yuan's destruction, there still were men, If they were all like you, General, Yuan could have been saved. Alas! Where could they find any more generals like you?5 Huang Zunxian's poem is also indebted to Li Bai's poetry on warfare in the frontier regions. The American scholar Shirleen Wong has noticed that Huang Jingren's own ballad-style poetry is closely modeled on Li, and although Qian Esun is certainly correct about the poem's debt to Huang Jingren, the second line quotes from Li Bai almost verbatim, and other allusions to Li verify the Tang master's ultimate influence.6 The violence of Huang Zunxian's descriptions would also seem to owe something to Li Bai. In "The Foreign Horsemen of Youzhou," Li wrote: Their banners emit light in all four directions; They rush to battle like a swarm of hornets. Red blood splashes across their swords' white blades Andflowson the sand, dyeing it crimson.7 So far I have discussed what Huang's poem owes to tradition, but let us also see how it anticipates some of Huang's innovations in his SinoJapanese War poems. First of all, "General Feng" displays considerable freedom in its rhyming patterns, with some sections (lines 3-6) arranged in rhyming couplets (AABB), other sections (lines 7-10) following the more normal pattern of ancient-style poetry (AABA). In earlier ancientstyle poetry, shifts of rhyme or changes of rhyming pattern normally help to define the subsections of a poem, but in this work the shifts are so abrupt that one cannot always be sure what effect Huang was aiming for. Perhaps he was attempting to use the rhymes to reflect the rough-andready character of Feng Zicai, but one suspects that he may have just been 160

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trying out erratic rhyming patterns as a kind of formalistic experiment. Thus, in the area of structural innovation "General Feng" may represent a trial stage before Huang mastered the formal innovations of his SinoJapanese War poems. For anyone familiar with the poorly developed battle descriptions of most Tang-dynasty war poetry, Huang's portrait of Feng's engagement with the French is the poem's most memorable passage, and although it extends only nine lines, it anticipates the dynamic and vivid battle scenes of the Sino-Japanese War poems. Another feature of the poem that looks forward to Huang's later war poems is the incorporation of a brief didactic passage that sums up the work's significance. Huang does not handle the transition from the battle account to this concluding passage very adroitly, but his combination of the battle scene with his poetry of ideas demonstrates that he was attempting to broaden the scope of traditional war poetry. Some of the differences between "General Feng" and the Sino-Japanese War poems can be attributed to their diverse historical backgrounds. "General Feng" was a paean to a commander who had led his troops in one of the few successful attacks by Chinese troops against a Western imperialist power, whereas the poems on the Sino-Japanese War satirize the poor leadership and cowardice that led to the humiliating defeat of China's army and navy at the hands of a country that the Chinese had always looked down upon as their cultural colony. However, in spite of its different historical background, "General Feng" itself ends on a note of despair over the impossibility of finding any more generals of Feng's caliber to defend the Chinese people, and even the praise of Feng implies criticism of the officials who slandered him and the generals who presided over the initial defeats of the war. The most important difference between "General Feng" and the SinoJapanese War poems is that the latter moved beyond the former's more conservative style to create a synthesis of traditional satire, didactic verse, and narrative poetry. This synthesis of three distinct traditions is coupled with other features of Huang Zunxian's late poetry, such as metrical experimentation, the quest for new language, and the intensification and expansion of descriptive techniques to create some of late nineteenthcentury China's poetic masterpieces. Since Huang's Sino-Japanese War poems differ considerably from each other, we shall first examine "A Dirge for Pyongyang," "The Battle of Dadonggou," and "I Grieve for Port Arthur," which resemble "General Feng" in their free rhymes and basically heptasyllabic meter, derived from ancient ballad poetry. Like "General Feng," they all consist of a battle scene followed by a conclusion in which the poem abruptly shifts direction. 161

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"A Dirge for Pyongyang" (translated on page 283) narrates the Battle of Pyongyang, which took place after Japanese troops defeated the Chinese in the initial engagement at Ason Hill. 8 One reason for the Chinese debacle at Ason was that General Ye Zhichao ^JfeM (d. ca. 1901) retreated before the battle's conclusion, but when the commanders of four battalions dispatched from Liaodong to defend Pyongyang quarreled, he was named commander over their troops and the forces that had escaped with him from Ason. Officers under Ye's command bravely defended Pyongyang from the Japanese attack, one of them dying in an artillery barrage, after insisting on staying at his post on the city wall. Just when it seemed that the Chinese might be successful in repelling the Japanese assault, General Ye lost his nerve and ordered a retreat. In the ensuing chaos more than two thousand Chinese troops were killed.9 Huang's moving account of these tragic events represents a significant advance in poetic technique over "General Feng," even on the basic level of rhymes. It is difficult to say what the irregular rhymes of "General Feng" contribute to that poem's impact, but the unusual rhyme scheme of "A Dirge for Pyongyang" is responsible for much of the work's power. In this poem Huang employs rhyming couplets (AA, BB, CC, DD, etc.), a form that forces one to read it in discrete units of two lines each, destroying the broader unity of most ancient-style poems, where the same rhyme scheme usually extends throughout an entire work, or at least throughout one of its major subsections (e.g., ABCBDBEBFBGB, etc., or ABCBDBEB/FGHGIG, etc., in which A can be equivalent to B). In "A Dirge for Pyongyang" the loose connection between the couplets creates a strange, matter-of-fact atmosphere, which only heightens the horror of what is taking place.10 Huang Zunxian's narrative and descriptive techniques are just as effective. Unlike "General Feng," "A Dirge for Pyongyang" does not open with an introductory section but sets us down in the middle of the action. Huang's descriptions avoid the emotional language of "General Feng"; the shower of blood and flesh seems a normal consequence of the cannons' flames, and the officers' hats tumble from the wall almost as if they had been knocked off dolls' heads. The Chinese retreat follows naturally from the foregoing events, and when it is time for the Qing army to leave (line 9), the poet himself urges their departure with a proverbial phrase (literally, "Of thirty-six strategems, none is better than running") that sounds like the wisdom of some ancient philosopher. The poem's matter-of-fact atmosphere terminates abruptly and brutally in the final couplet ("One of our generals is imprisoned, another beheaded, / And fifteen thousand Chinese troops surrender like vile slaves"), where the military disaster's sordid reality is finally revealed in the poem's only emotional language.11 The concluding couplet may serve 162

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the same purpose as the didactic ending of "General Feng," but its sudden shift in language and compact form give it all the concentrated power of a quatrain's closing line. The second poem, "The Battle of Dadonggou" (translated on page 284) recounts the first major naval engagement of the Sino-Japanese War, which took place at Dadonggou, near the mouth of the Yalu River, one month after the Chinese defeat at Pyongyang. Before the Sino-Japanese War, most military experts thought that the Chinese navy was superior to Japan's sea forces, so the rout of China's famous Northern Fleet at this battle was a particularly hard blow to Chinese morale. This time the Chinese defeat was the result of inferior organization and tactics rather than cowardice. In fact, one Chinese commander went down with his entire crew, when he tried to turn the tide of battle by ramming a Japanese ship. In spite of some officers' heroism, the smaller Japanese vessels proved difficult targets for the inaccurate Chinese artillery, easily outmaneuving the heavy ships of the Chinese fleet.12 The form that Huang Zunxian used to narrate this naval battle is even more innovative than "A Dirge for Pyongyang." In "The Battle of Dadonggou" Huang violates the norms of classical verse by rhyming in groups of three lines (AAA, BBB, CCC, DDD, etc.). This peculiar rhyme scheme disrupts the normal flow of classical verse even more than the rhyming couplets of the preceding work, because the "rhythm" of rhyming couplets (AA, BB, CC, DD, etc.) still resembles the duple "rhythm" of normal ancient-poetry rhymes (AABA, CADA), just as the 2/4 time signature is closely related to 4/4 in Western music but quite distinct from triple-time signatures such as 3/4 or 6/8. The rhyme schemes of premodern Western verse usually follow the duple pattern too, but occasionally one encounters triple structure, as in the thirteenth-century Latin poem "Dies irae" ("Day of anger"), attributed to the Minorite monk Thomas of Celano (d. 1256), where the groups of three rhymes express the author's terror of the Last Judgment and his fervent desire to be saved from eternal damnation.13 Triple rhyming structure creates a similar effect in "The Battle of Dadonggou," heightening the sense of urgency for readers accustomed to normal duple structure. 14 This structural innovation meshes perfectly with Huang's skilled narration. As in "A Dirge for Pyongyang," the poet's comments do not precede the action, and from the very first announcement of the Japanese navy's approach we rush headlong into a battle depicted with great vividness and power. The violent action does not relent until the final three-line unit, where Huang closes the poem by a sudden shift into the didactic mode. The triple structure is not easily adapted to the logical balance required in 163

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didactic verse, but, although the concluding triplet does not fit what precedes it as well as the last two lines of "A Dirge for Pyongyang," the final sentence's brutal sarcasm ("I say weapons you can't use are just a gift to the enemy") causes us to forgive such a minor fault. The third poem of this group, "I Grieve for Port Arthur" (translated on page 285), narrates the successful Japanese assault on Port Arthur (Chinese name, Liishun), the major naval base that defended the Liaodong Peninsula and Manchuria. After the Battle of Dadonggou, the Chinese navy did not dare to leave its ports, and the Japanese were free to land large numbers of troops on the Liaodong Peninsula in preparation for an assault on Port Arthur and the nearby city Dalian. The Chinese had constructed thirteen shore batteries in Port Arthur with more than seventy modern guns manufactured by Krupp of Germany, and the city was defended by thirty battalions of troops under the command of six distinguished officers. However, when the Japanese land assault came, the shore batteries proved useless, and because of disagreements among the commanders, only one of them stayed behind to fight, so the Japanese were able to enter the city with light losses.15 Huang Zunxian's satire on this military disaster appeals to the modern reader even more strongly than the other two poems we have studied. The rhyme scheme is quite unusual; the same rhyme occurs in each line, except for the last two, which form a separate rhyming couplet (AAAAAA, etc., . . . BB). This rhyme scheme serves as the foundation to Huang's description of Port Arthur's seemingly impregnable fortifications, the static quality of which is also emphasized by the final m (in Huang's Hakka pronunciation) of each rhyme, a soft, "restful" consonant in contrast to the commoner finals of Chinese syllables (vowels or n, ng, p, t, k in his dialect).16 In contrast to "A Dirge for Pyongyang" and "The Battle of Dadonggou," there is no narration to speak of, but the poem's descriptive technique is superior to that of the other two poems. Huang strips his description of practically all motion and loads it down with pretentious and ponderous vocabulary; Port Arthur is a "mighty" (zhuang) fortress, and its artillery (complete with imperial "titles") is unequaled in "grandeur" (wei). Enemies that covet the port lie frustrated in their lairs and can only retract their "paws," for, after all, Port Arthur is vaster than the ocean itself and mightier than the highest mountain peaks. This pretentious portrait of Port Arthur sets up the reader for the military debacle in the final couplet, and he is just as startled by it as the Qing Court's smug military advisers, who failed to prepare for Japan's assault. The final couplet's wit is particularly effective, because the preceding section's suffocating immobility is suddenly disrupted by the 164

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penultimate line's image of disintegration, immediately followed by the closing line's irony. This startling shift is built on the foundation of the rhyming patterns just mentioned; the final m sounds of the rhymes lull us into a sleep that is rudely interrupted by the vowel rhymes of the concluding couplet. Although this poem does not use either narration or didacticism, its masterful combination of description and wit makes it one of Huang Zunxian's finest satirical works. In spite of the first three poems' many excellent qualities, Huang's "Lament for Weihai" (translated on page 285) contains his best description of a battle. Weihai is still an important seaport and naval base in Shandong province, and at the time of the Sino-Japanese War it was the primary base for the pride of China's modern navy, the Northern Fleet. In the first month of 1895 the Japanese attacked the port, and when General Dai Zongqian ffeTrcHI failed to repulse their initial onslaught and committed suicide, they captured the Chinese artillery emplacements on the northern and southern shores of the port and then proceeded to bombard the Chinese fleet with its own shore batteries. Just before the final capitulation, Ding Ruchang T & H , the commander of the Chinese naval forces, also ended his life.17 The poem that Huang created in response to this military disaster is one of his most innovative works. It is much longer than the other poems of the series, but more important than its unusual length is the trisyllabic meter it employs throughout. Trisyllabic lines do occur occasionally in ancient ballad poetry, which is distinguished by irregular line length, but there does not seem to be any precedent to such a long sequence of trisyllabic verse in Chinese literary history. Nor is the unusual meter just an eccentric experiment, for the brevity of the poem's lines greatly accelerates the work's pace and emphasizes the urgency of Weihai's perilous situation. "Lament for Weihai" is a much more complex work than the three poems we have just examined, for Huang frequently switches back and forth from his narrative to the satirical, didactic, or descriptive mode. For example, the first ten lines of the Weihai poem are primarily descriptive, and a short explanatory (i.e., didactic) passage of six lines follows, after which Huang embarks on his narration of the initial engagement. One might complain that some of the poem's didactic passages impede the flow of action (particularly the long didactic section starting with "Any hope left?"), but because of the constant onrush of the trisyllabic meter, anyone who reads the poem in the original Chinese for the first time fails to notice this problem. Huang's trisyllabic meter also reinforces some of the work's other excellent qualities. The trisyllabic meter could not possibly accommodate the expansive descriptions of Huang Zunxian's mature poetry on foreign 165

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themes or even the ponderous descriptions of Port Arthur's "glories," and as a result, in "Lament for Weihai" Huang's descriptions are highly compact images, compressed into abrupt, three-syllable units. The brevity of the trisyllabic meter also interferes with coherent narration, but Huang takes advantage of this seeming defect in his account of the battle's climax (beginning with the line "Order our sailors / Uphill to save the forts"). We normally value clarity in narration, but Huang's trisyllabic meter pares away grammatical connections and compresses the action so tightly that the reader of the original Chinese is uncertain about who is performing the actions described, an ideal way to reproduce the chaos and confusion of combat. Huang intensifies the violence of his battle scene's most dramatic section (the eight lines beginning with "A furious blizzard") by means of the unusual rhyme pattern AAAABBBB, in which each rhyme occurs in the "entering tone" (words that end with the consonants/?, t, and k).18 In normal pentasyllabic or heptasyllabic poetry, where the rhymes are located in the final syllable of every other line, the effect of entering tone rhymes is already quite dramatic, but the trisyllabic meter shortens the intervals between these rhyme words, which erupt like bombshells on every third syllable. When the sequence of entering tones ends in the line "Maimed soldiers fight," the reader experiences a sense of "release," corresponding to the open vowel rhymes of the next four lines (rhyme pattern CDED), SO that his mind is ready to "take flight" with the retreating Chinese soldiers. The relentless pace of Huang's trisyllabic meter helps connect the narrative passages to the didactic sections (particularly the final section that follows the battle description), but it functions even more subtly in the shift from this last didactic passage to the final eight lines of the poem, which are a satire concealed in a description. The descriptive element of these concluding lines is more obvious on a first reading, and one imagines that Huang is only drawing a sad portrait of Weihai after the defeat of the Chinese navy. The sole obvious link between this final scene and China's political life is the couplet Our foreign minister and our Commander Li Are overwhelmed by the tragedy of this sight. These two lines could easily be taken as an observation about Foreign Minister Li Hongzhang and General Li Bingheng's ^ S U f (1830-1900) understandable depression over China's military fiasco.19 Examining the final eight lines as a purely descriptive passage, we notice that they contain a series of discrete images much like the earlier 166

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descriptions of the poem, but even on a first reading of the work in Chinese, we perceive that the poem's tempo seems to slow down here. These eight lines still employ the trisyllabic meter, so how does Huang achieve this effect, and what purpose does it serve? One device that reduces the tempo is Huang's use of reduplicated adjectives in the first, second, and fourth lines of the passage. Reproducing the effect of reduplicated Chinese adjectives in English translation is difficult, and unless one wants to write pidgin English, about the best thing one can do is translate them with a pair of English adjectives ("broad and deep," "grand and mighty"). The rhymes of these lines slow the tempo just as much as the reduplication of adjectives; the conventional rhyme pattern ABCBDBEB only reinforces the stability of the rhyme in the final sound ao, a particularly "slow" rhyme in Chinese, much used in laments because of its phonetic resemblance to the sound of sobbing. The decreased tempo of the trisyllabic meter, which results from the reduplication of adjectives and the use of the rhyme ao, forces the reader to savor Huang's concluding descriptive passage more slowly, and this lessening of the tempo has definite emotional and intellectual results. On the emotional level, we are moved by the desolation of the scene (an effect reinforced by the "sobbing" rhymes). On the intellectual level, the decreased tempo allows us time for reflection after the battle scene's excitement, and although we are not likely to make all the necessary connections on a first reading, we begin to suspect that this horrible tragedy is somehow related to China's statesmen (represented by Li Hongzhang) and its military leaders (Li Bingheng). The poem ends when we encounter the immobile image of Duke Liu's Island, and we ask ourselves why this island, an impregnable natural fortress that should have protected Weihai from all aggression, is still standing, when the Chinese army and navy have collapsed in ignominious defeat. Two other works from Huang's Sino-Japanese War poems ("An Admiral Surrenders" and "The General of Manchuria") are in a separate class from the poems discussed so far, since they satirize individuals who took part in the war. "An Admiral Surrenders" (translated on page 288) has the Chinese defeat at Weihai as its background, but it focuses upon the suicide of the commander of the Northern Fleet, Admiral Ding Ruchang. Ding, who had been involved with the Chinese navy from his youth, was sent to England in the mid-1870s to purchase warships for the Chinese government, during which time he also visited naval shipyards in France and Germany. In 1888 he was named an admiral (tidu), and he presided over the Chinese naval defeat at Dadonggou.20 The exact circumstances surrounding Ding Ruchang's suicide are not clear, but it is necessary to say something about them to under167

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stand Huang's poem. According to some historians, after the Japanese captured Weihai's fortifications Ding wished to continue resisting, but when he discovered that his foreign advisers and the other Chinese commanders were determined to surrender, he committed suicide.21 The account in the official Draft History of the Qing Dynasty is quite different from this version: After the northern and southern shores of Weihai were lost, the Japanese entered the eastern entrance of the harbor, . . . and our army was terrified, and finally begged their commander not to let them die in battle. . . . The circuit intendant, Niu Changbing, and others wept when they faced him, and after they assembled the Western advisers to discuss the matter, Magelu desired to use the forces to support Ding Ruchang, but the German Ruinaier secretly reported that the army's morale had collapsed and it would be best to scuttle the ships and destroy the cannon emplacements, for it was preferable to surrender empty-handed. Ding Ruchang agreed to this and commanded the admirals to scuttle all their ships at the same time, but they did not obey him, and when they subsequently surrendered, with their ships intact, he drank poison and died.22

Since Huang Zunxian mentions nothing about Ding Ruchang wishing to continue the fight against the Japanese, he probably accepted the official version of Ding's death. It is important that we know what version he accepted, for the satire of this poem is so subtle that it would be possible to read it incorrectly as a straight-faced lament for Ding, as some modern Chinese scholars have.23 The Sino-Japanese War poems are remarkable for their formal innovations, and "An Admiral Surrenders" is no exception. One unusual feature of this poem is that all the lines end with the same rhyme.24 The oppressive feeling engendered by this repetition of the same rhyme perfectly matches the depressing message that the poem conveys to the reader. "An Admiral Surrenders" also violates the duple rhyme structure of shi poetry, for, contrary to traditional practice, Huang inserts an extra line, on two separate occasions, to create two three-line units. We have observed triple structure in Huang's poem on Dadonggou, but the triple structure of that poem is determined by units of three lines ending in the same rhyme, something impossible in a poem in which all of the lines have the same rhyme. The effect of the triple structure in "An Admiral Surrenders" is also quite different from the effect in the poem on Dadonggou, because it does not create an unsettled atmosphere throughout the entire poem but emphasizes the extra lines, indicated by italics in the translation. In both places where the extra line is inserted, the poem reaches a brief climax, the first ("If my troopsfightto the death, who will care for the

others") occurring at the critical point where Ding Ruchang concludes his description of his troops' pitiful condition, the second ("I swear this by 168

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Heaven; let Heaven be my witness!") inserted at the end of his appeal for clemency from the Japanese naval commander. The satire of "An Admiral Surrenders" is among the subtlest that Huang ever created. We would expect him to provide us the background to his satire through narration or description, but unlike in the other poems on the Sino-Japanese War, he strips these two devices down to a bare minimum, admitting them only at the beginning and ending of the poem. Instead, most of the poem consists of Ding's message to the Japanese admiral, but here Huang resists the normal impulse to make Ding seem ridiculous through exaggerated speech or actions. In fact, the first section of the poem (the eight lines before the first departure from duple structure) arouses our sympathy for the sad plight of Admiral Ding's troops and their dependents. In the next section (the ten lines before the second deviation) there is no overt criticism of Ding Ruchang, but we do begin to have questions about an admiral with such a magnificent naval force who is not willing "to go down with his ship." The reader is also repelled by Ding's desperate boasting, for he has amassed a great naval force that he does not know how to use. In the concluding narrative passage, which describes Ding's suicide, Huang avoids emotional language. There are no tearful farewells to subordinates or beloved concubines; Ding merely drinks his poison draught, is shuffled into his coffin, and is carted away by the Japanese with no further ado. The only emotional reaction comes from the soldiers after Ding is dead, but instead of asking the uncomfortable question of why he did not fight to the death they are only puzzled as to why he committed suicide after he had already surrendered. The language of the troops (and possibly the entire poem) is based upon a passage from the official biography of General Zhang Fei 'jft^t (d. 220) of the Three Kingdoms period. When Zhang attacked territory that was governed by one Yan Yan JRIS, he easily defeated Yan's vastly inferior forces and berated Yan for resisting against such impossible odds. Yan replied that in his native place "there is such a thing as a general who gets beheaded, but there is no such thing as a general who surrenders."25 By using this allusion, Huang implies that neither Ding Ruchang nor his men seem to be aware that sometimes it is necessary for soldiers and their commanders to be willing to die in combat. The failure of the Chinese soldiers to fight to the death only proves their cowardice, and Ding's suicide is also a craven act, because he obviously killed himself to escape responsibility for the loss of his fleet. A wonderful sense of irony underlies the conclusion of the descriptive passage. The Japanese do not ship Ding's corpse back home but rather his "bones," suggesting that his mortal frame has decayed just as rapidly as 169

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his reputation. His funeral flags flutter energetically, but the military banners, which symbolize his defeated prowess, "droop lifeless," and the flag of China is nowhere to be seen. The sea wind howls sadly, but it is surely not mourning the fate of a man like Ding Ruchang but rather the tragedy and disgrace that his personal cowardice has brought upon the Chinese people. The last work from Huang Zunxian's poems on the Sino-Japanese War is not only his best satire on an individual but also one of the most distinguished works from the entire series. The target of "The General of Manchuria" (translated on page 289) is Wu Dacheng ^i^ctifc (18351902), one of the more accomplished calligraphers and antiquarian scholars of the late nineteenth century.26 Wu had a very different background from Ding Ruchang, having been born into a rich merchant family of the great cultural center Suzhou and obtained his Metropolitan Graduate degree at the relatively young age of twenty-nine, an accomplishment that netted him an appointment in the prestigious Hanlin Academy. To his misfortune, Wu was not satisfied with his scholarly and artistic achievements and fancied himself an expert in military affairs. His first real experience in this area came in 1880, when he was sent to the northeastern province Jilin to improve defenses on its eastern border with the Russian Empire. In that year Wu organized a Border Pacification Army and, in addition to garrisoning the frontier, managed to put down an antigovernment movement of about fifty thousand miners. The next year he established a Western-style arsenal in Jilin and even wrote a textbook about artillery practice, which was printed in 1884. After the Korean coup d'etat of 1884, he was dispatched with about one hundred fifty men to Seoul to look after Chinese interests, and in 1892 he was given the governorship of Hunan, where he made genuine efforts to improve the local economy. At the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1898, Wu volunteered the service of his Hunan troops and was ordered to defend Shanhaiguan ll|$J H, the strategic point where the Great Wall meets the sea. His troops met the Japanese at Niuzhuang ^SE in the spring of 1895. When the Hunan Army was totally routed, he attempted to commit suicide but was stopped by one of his subordinates. After his defeat, Wu is supposed to have said: "I am no good at military affairs. I should be punished strictly according to military law."27 He was so mortified by his disgrace that he retired from public service shortly after he was returned to his post in Hunan. The story behind the Han seal, which gives its name to Huang's poem, also needs to be told. According to GuZhi "fi*]|L (1887-?), the first commentator on Huang's collected works, Wu purchased the seal from one Xu Xi ^J?S, who himself had obtained it from the famous Suzhou painter and 170

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calligrapher Wu Ghangshi ^.Hfijl (1844—1927).28The inscription on the seal, written in a Han-dynasty script, read "The General Who Regulates Liao," Liao being the name for the region of modern Manchuria that is now part of Liaoning province. Wu Dacheng was delighted when he obtained this seal, because he thought it presaged great military accomplishments for him. The ultimate irony here, something that even Huang Zunxian does not seem to have known, is that the seal was probably forged by Wu Changshi, who was noted for his knowledge of ancient scripts.29 All the Sino-Japanese War poems that we have considered so far are distinguished by their formal innovations, but in this respect "The General of Manchuria" is somewhat more conservative, following the meter and rhymes of traditional ballad poetry fairly closely. Huang tends to organize the poem's rhymes in units of four lines to form patterns of either AABA or ABCB, which he uses to indicate breaks in his narrative much as earlier poets did, the principal exception occurring in the four lines beginning "But as soon as the armies clashed as soon as he joined battle with Japan," where he uses the rhyming pattern AABB. This is one of the poem's wittiest passages, and the shift in rhyming pattern emphasizes the contrast between Wu's boasting at the Court audience and the complete annihilation of his army. The rhymes of these four lines match their meaning perfectly, the first couplet's rhyme words ending with vowels, which mimic the army's rapid retreat (Hakka, kau ["join"]) and (thau, ["deserted"]), the second couplet rhyming with entering tone words, the abrupt consonant finals of which mimic Wu's anxiety about his seal (siak ["worries"] and shit ["lose"]).30 "The General of Manchuria" utilizes all the satirical devices of Huang Zunxian's mature satirical verse, but the narrative aspect is particularly well developed. The first line, with its striking allusion to one of China's ancient heroes, immediately attracts our attention, and after his initial portrait of Wu Dacheng as a "hero," Huang uses flashback technique to recount Wu's earlier career in Korea. Then, the narration surprises the reader by changing direction abruptly several more times, as in the shift from the boasting in the banquet scene to the rout of Wu's army just discussed. These sudden shifts resemble the ironic twists that close battle poems like the one on Port Arthur, but in "The General of Manchuria" Huang expands this device to a scale only found in Jin He's satires. The Han seal is the narrative's primary unifying device. Huang already refers to it obliquely in line 3 ("My brave deeds will net me a million-serf duchy") but the actual seal appears in the seventh and eighth line, at the strategic end of the second four-line rhyme group. It then reoccurs at each critical juncture in the narration, after the defeat of Wu's army ("But, thank God, he didn't lose the Han seal hanging by his waist") and at the 171

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very end of the poem. The seal is also suggested in other passages, for Wu's "carving his deeds on a bronze pillar" while he was serving in Manchuria and Korea, and the drafting of victory proclamations to be carved on "Mongolia's Mount Yanran," suggest his mania for inscribed objects like seals. Thus, Huang's narration in "The General of Manchuria" is much more complex than in his earlier poetry of similar length, but the narration's most attractive feature is its lively characterization of the scholar-soldier Wu Dacheng. Wu Dacheng and the impractical scholar of Huang's early poem "Meditations" (translated on page 217) certainly have much in common, but Huang has learned a good deal about characterization in the intervening years. Huang's portrait of the scholar in "Meditations" is an impressive achievement for a poet of seventeen, but this character is developed much less richly than Wu Dacheng. Wu Dacheng's fuller portrait results at least in part from Huang's narrative technique, for by providing glimpses of Wu at critical points in his career Huang allows us to examine different aspects of his character, a technique that he first mastered in the long poem about his greatgrandmother. If we do not know anything about his subsequent fate, Wu's initial appearance in the poem is quite impressive. In English this first section may sound rather pretentious, but Wu's heroics are patterned upon traditional descriptions of legitimate Chinese heroes. One has only to recall the exaggerated way military heroes enter the stage in Beijing opera, or compare Huang's actions here with the equally pretentious actions of Feng Zicai in "General Feng," to see that nineteenth-century Chinese readers would have found nothing objectionable about Wu's dramatic debut. The most humorous aspect of Wu Dacheng's personality is his own failure to realize where his real talents lie. He is an outstanding calligrapher and antiquarian, but he is completely unaware of his incompetence as a general. His imitation of the ancient hero Zu Di (late third to early fourth century) in the poem's first line provides a clue to this character flaw, for we suspect that he awakens to the cock's crow at midnight not because he is really a hero but in response to his own bookish knowledge of what heroes ought to do. Along similar lines, we read that Wu "regrets he has never had a chance to prove himself in battle," in which Wu's expression "never had a chance" (literally, "never met the age") derives from the complaints of ancient heroes born in a peaceful era that does not give them scope to display their daring.31 Wu's bookishness even extends to the banquet scene in which he slices off a raw shoulder of pork and eats it, in imitation of the great Han-dynasty 172

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hero Fan Kuai J|I% (d. 189 B.C.). Wu has no real military strategies of his own but instead relies on "classic strategies" (literally, "strategies of seven releases and seven captures"), which he has learned from reading historical accounts of the great Three Kingdoms Period general, Zhuge Liang i f H ^ (181-234). As was the case with so many of Huang's contemporaries, Wu's actions are all governed by the ancient books he has read, and his military plans fail to take account of the contemporary situation. His inability to draw from any inner qualities of heroism explains his reliance upon his talisman-seal, his obsession with perpetuating his fame by means of stone inscriptions, and his delight in comments about the way his unusual facial features predict future greatness. Like many little men suffering from delusions of grandeur, Wu makes great demands of others and looks down upon his rivals. In Huang's poem he drills his troops mercilessly while they are stationed at Shanhaiguan, something that is confirmed by the historical records.32 At the Court banquet Wu heaps scorn upon his rivals in China's Anhui Army and expresses his utter contempt for Japan's military forces. But when the real battle begins, ugly reality collides with his bookish world, and all his heroics are forgotten as he and his troops flee in panic for their lives. Huang's portrait of Wu Dacheng is not static, for, as one expects in good fiction, he allows Wu to change. Wu's comfortable life after the defeat contrasts cruelly with the tragic fate of his army, but Wu is obviously afflicted by remorse for his actions, and in between collecting antiques he attempts to make amends for his blunders, offering to contribute money to help pay China's indemnity to the Japanese. One wonders about the sincerity of these actions, but at the very end of the poem, the seal finally fulfills its true function in his life by enlightening him about the horrible tragedy that his false pride and incompetence have caused. It is not clear whether Huang intended this revelatory scene to represent a true awakening on Wu Dacheng's part, but it is possible he is expressing hope that China's impractical conservative intellectuals, whom Wu Dacheng represents, will finally wake up to the consequences of their ignorance. Poetry on women Huang Zunxian's Sino-Japanese War poems were his most accomplished satires on Chinese subjects, but by no means do they exhaust the variety of satirical verse from his later years. Traditional Chinese satire concentrated on political events, but Huang treated many other topics related to his program for social reform. We saw that Huang's "I invite neighbors to drink with me one spring evening," with its attack on Chinese ignorance

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of foreign countries, is a landmark in the development of his nonpolitical satires, but one of Huang's best late satires deals with another subject that was dear to his heart, the advancement of women's rights. Huang wrote a number of poems on women's questions, but the best of these is certainly the first poem from the series of three poems entitled "Sent to My Daughter" (translated on page 292). Huang had always identified strongly with the women of his family. His great-grandmother exercised a major influence on his life, and we have seen how important his long narrative about her life was to the development of his poetry. In an early series of three poems, written in 1866, about his younger sister's marriage ("Seeing Off Younger Sister," translated on page 220), Huang expressed his admiration for the industriousness of Hakka women, who rarely bound their feet and worked in the fields just like the men: Yet all the way back to our grandmother's generation, Our women have engaged in every kind of toil. We Hakka people seem to work by instinct, And nobody labors harder than the females of our family. The poem also expresses Huang's concern for his sister's future welfare, because her husband's family is dominated by a grandmother-in-law who runs an even tighter ship than Huang's own great-grandmother and the mother-in-law seems to have surrendered to melancholy over her husband's recent death. Worst of all, Their family is full of young civil service graduates, Intensely proud of their caps and gowns. They incessantly harass the family's young women, And the girls themselves are always cursing their brothers. Huang does give his sister good Confucian advice "to be gentle and tactful" and "to wait on the pleasure" of her husband's family, but he is painfully aware of the suffering that her inferior status as a woman will cause her. It is no wonder that at the end of the first poem he writes: "As I send you to your husband, I suddenly think, / What a pity it is you weren't born a man!" At the age of nineteen Huang already sympathized with the hardships that Chinese women suffered in the traditional family, but only in later years did he begin writing poems like "Sent to My Daughter," which suggested specific remedies to women's problems. The reasons for this gradual evolution in his thought are not difficult to imagine. As Huang 174

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examined the causes of China's backwardness, he realized that if half of its population was deprived of education and relegated to a status little better than that of slaves, China had scant hope of catching up with the Western countries and Japan. Huang had served in Japan during a period when basic education for both sexes was being promoted, and his long stays in the United States and Europe showed him that relations between the two sexes in those parts of the world were very different from in China. In his first poem from the series "Moved by Events" (translated on page 272), he describes a Court reception in London at which The couples enter hand in hand, and the women all curtsey, Resembling immortals, more numerous than grass blades. Nor were these women, who walked as equals beside their husbands, limited by the same conventions of etiquette and dress that governed Chinese women, for: Outer robes unfasten and bare women's arms; Tassels hang down from heads, mounted by jeweled tiaras. With slim and graceful waists they are as bewitching as lithe willows; Their slender shoes in a bunch resemble a bouquet of lotuses. Huang would never have dared portray Chinese women in a similar state of decolletage, and his nineteenth-century readers could hardly have helped noticing the contrast between the freedom of Western women and the servile status of most of their Chinese sisters. Of course, we should not attempt to make Huang Zunxian into a modern feminist, but his allusion to a saying by Confucius in the last line of "Sent to My Daughter" shows that he equated foot-binding with the barbaric custom of burying a ruler's wives and retainers alive in his tomb (discussed on page 292, note 2). "Sent to My Daughter" is not only effective anti-foot-binding propaganda but also a well-written poem. Huang's allusion to Confucius' saying would have been obvious to all his readers, but some aspects of his satire are more subtle. Line 11 ("She is so slim and lissom, so slender and delicate") echoes a famous quatrain by the Tang poet Du Mu, presented to a youthful prostitute who had accompanied him on one of his notorious debauches: Slim and lissom, slender and delicate, and no more than thirteen, You are a sprig of cardamom at the beginning of the second month. The spring wind blows ten miles along the road to Yangzhou, But the other girls who roll up beaded curtains are no equal to you!33 175

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Premodern Chinese would not have been shocked by the tender age of Du's female companion, but Huang's use of language from a poem about a prostitute to describe a girl with bound feet from a family of consequence would have disturbed them, because the allusion suggests a link between all women with bound feet and the courtesans celebrated in Du Mu's verse. We will recall that Huang alluded to the same poem by Du Mu in his early work on Hong Kong prostitutes, so the association in "Sent to My Daughter" was certainly intended. Huang's allusion to Du Mu is only one example of how he uses his poem to make fun of the entire tradition of poetry about women. Descriptions of beautiful women drawn from classical literature abound in this work, but these borrowings are turned upside down, because Huang uses them to depict women of whom he heartily disapproves. Du Mu's poem itself is indebted to "Palace Poetry" on palace women and courtesans from the sixth and seventh centuries, and Huang's young beauties combine the physical frailty and seductive coyness so popular with male poets of that age, except that Huang is making fun of the feminine ideal they admired.34 Even when he alludes to a more "respectable" source like the Confucian Classic of Poetry (line 3 echoes the ancient line "There are women like clouds"), he does so with tongue in cheek, which is apparent when we remember the locus classicus of his phrase: I went out of the eastern gate, Where there were as many women as clouds. Although there were as many women as clouds, None of them is the one I think of.35

The original author of this poem no doubt was longing for a lover whom he did not find among the beauties outside the eastern gate, but through the medium of his allusion, Huang is saying that the beauties of his poem are not worth thinking about. Huang's deadly accurate characterization of the young beauty with bound feet is certainly his poem's finest point. His portrait uses many allusions to the earlier literary tradition, but he provides many individual touches, like her catty remarks about women with unbound feet and her "cute" comments about her own small feet, all of which define her as a real person, unlike Du Mu's compliant singing girls or the langorous demoiselles of the Palace Poems. Huang's portrait of this young woman also makes the disturbing suggestion that the oppression of women in nineteenth-century China arises equally from female attitudes and male oppression. 176

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Late political satire Huang Zunxian's interest in broader social issues during his old age does not mean his political satire diminished in stature. After the suppression of the Reform Movement, he no longer was in a position to affect policy in Beijing, but he still was deeply concerned with the course of domestic and foreign events, and much of his later satirical verse centered on the Boxer Rebellion and its aftermath. The strongly xenophobic Boxer Movement was growing by leaps and bounds among the lower classes in northern China after the collapse of the Reform Movement, and although most of the Boxers were originally antigovernment, they gradually won the support of the Court's most reactionary elements, who hoped to use them as a tool to rid China of foreigners. When Boxer forces entered Beijing on the seventeenth day of the fifth month (June 13), 1900, the empress dowager threw her support behind them. The Boxers believed that magical incantations protected them from foreign bullets, and after Boxer soldiers fighting alongside regular forces inflicted some defeats on Western armies, their belief in their occult powers greatly increased. The Boxers easily occupied the capital and surrounded the walled Legation Quarter, but their victory was short-lived, because a large force of allied troops from England, France, Germany, the United States, and Japan entered Beijing on the twentieth of the seventh month (August 14), and the empress dowager fled westward.36 Many modern Chinese historians look upon the Boxers as precursors of twentieth-century Chinese nationalism, but Huang Zunxian wrote a number of poems that expressed his disgust with the government for exploiting the disorganized, superstitious Boxer forces to attack foreign interests in China, for he realized that only a reform of Chinese politics and society would protect it against Western imperialism and that foreign outrage at Boxer excesses might bring about China's partition. Most of the poems in Chapters 10 and 11 of Huang's collected works are connected with the Boxer Rebellion in one way or another, and he wrote a number of excellent long narrative poems on the rebellion, which have been neglected by modern Chinese scholars, largely on political grounds.37 However, the most significant development in Huang Zunxian's Boxer Rebellion poetry was the perfection of regulated-style poetry as a vehicle for political satire. Practically all his earlier satirical verse that can be dated was composed in the ancient form, with the exception of his poems on northern China from 1874, which are of very high quality but tend to follow closely in the footsteps of the Tang and Song masters. The two works translated from Huang's Boxer Rebellion period ("On the twenty-first of the seventh month the foreign allied army entered our 177

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capital," translated on page 300, and "The Midautumn Moon," translated on page 300) represent the high point of Huang Zunxian's regulated poetry on political subjects. Both works are masterpieces of craftsmanship, the parallelism of the two interior couplets of the first poem (i.e., the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh lines) being effected with particular grace. Huang believed that his regulated poetry did not equal his verse in the ancient style, but it is difficult to imagine better-crafted works. Those who do not read classical Chinese will be unable to appreciate all the subtleties of these works, but their wonderful satirical wit survives reasonably well in translation. Poets like Du Fu did write some devastating satires, but nothing in Du's regulated poetry approaches Huang Zunxian's mordant wit, and both poems seem closer to earlier nineteenth-century authors like Jin He in spirit.38 The first poem strikes blows at all the villains of the Boxer fiasco. The third line, which makes fun of the Boxers' belief that they could confront a modern army with "bare-knuckled brawling," is perfectly balanced against the next line, which derides the empress dowager's hasty retreat (ironically called her "imperial retinue" [hubi] in the original), a craven act that is even more disgusting when one remembers her public vow to defend the capital city to the death.39 The next parallel couplet ridicules the easy victory the allies have won, while the irony of the closing couplet scoffs at the stupidity and cowardice that brought about the entire fiasco. In "Midautumn Moon," Huang's wit is even sharper. In earlier Chinese verse it was quite common to describe the imperial Court in terms of the language used to write about fairies and immortals, a practice that certainly inspired Huang's paradisial allusions in his poetry on foreign themes. However in "Midautumn Moon," Huang turns this conventional imagery topsy-turvy to create a biting satire on the empress dowager Cixi, the most powerful individual in China. When a reader familiar with the history of the Boxer Rebellion realizes that the Great Goddess of this poem is none other than Cixi, the satire then becomes transparent, the references to reckless gambling referring to her reliance upon the Boxer forces, and her smashing of a potter's vessel to the rebellion's tragic consequences for China. But a close examination of Huang's literary sources for this poem enable us to understand the sharpness of his satiric wit even better. The first three lines of the poem are based on a description of a banquet of immortals taken from the Song scholar Zhu Mu's yfc8 massive geographical treatise, the Fangyu shenglan ^ J ^ i m t , or A Splendid View of the Terrestrial

Realm,firstpublished in 1267. Back in the days of China's first emperor, Qin Shihuang ^l#qji: (reg. 221-209 B.C.), an immortal named the Prince of Mount Wuyi invited more than two thousand inhabitants from his 178

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former hometown to a banquet on Mantingfeng, or the Peak of the Curtained Pavilion. While the banquet was in progress, a singer called Peng Lingzhao JU^BS was asked to sing a song entitled "The Tragic Fate of Mankind," which goes: Oh, how rare are the opportunities for heavenly beings and humans to meet; The sun sets on the western mountains, and the birds return to nest for the night. A century passes in a twinkling, and ambitions and desires are not requited; Heaven's Court is so close, what a shame we cannot join its company.40

By itself, this song expresses the conventional idea that human life is brief and that mankind can rarely achieve any kind of lasting unity with the heavenly realm, but Huang Zunxian uses it directly in line 3 and obliquely in other parts of the poem to create an ingenious two-layered satire on the empress dowager. The first and more obvious layer makes fun of the fact that Cixi and the high officials around her live in an unreal world dominated by tradition and are totally obsessed by the conventional attitudes that underlie the song to which Huang alludes. In this respect, they are no different from the hopelessly traditional scholar who appears in Huang's earliest poem of ideas, "Meditations" (translated on page 217), a man who is incapable of responding to the modern world. The empress dowager has suppressed the Reform Movement and slaughtered its supporters, but she can do nothing more than mouth conventional sentiments about the brevity of human life, as the entire Chinese world collapses around her. This first level of satire is confirmed by an allusion to a famous poem in the ci form by Su Shi, in line 4 of Huang's poem (literal translation: "However, they forget what year it is up in Heaven"). Huang's line is based on the following couplet from Su's poem: I do not know, up in the palaces of Heaven, What year it happens to be this evening.41 Unlike "The tragic fate of mankind," Su's poem is a masterpiece of ci verse, but it also treats such traditional themes as the brevity of man's existence, separation from loved ones, and the difficulty of transcending human suffering. In the couplet, Su's statement that he does not know what year it is in Heaven suggests the gulf that exists between Heaven and the human realm, but Huang wittily "overturns" (fan'an) Su's original by stating that the inhabitants of Heaven (actually the empress dowager and her supporters) do not know what year it is in their own celestial abode (Beijing).

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The educated reader of the late nineteenth century could have made most of the connections we have just suggested, but the second level of satire arising from Huang's allusion to the poem cited by Zhu Mu would have been understood only by the small number of readers who knew the poem quoted by Zhu well and who happened to recognize the ingenious way Huang uses it. We will recall that the prose text that introduces the poem describes a banquet at which an immortal entertains a large number of mortals, but since the chief immortal in Huang's poem is the empress dowager Cixi, we can reread Zhu's poem as an account of the Boxer Rebellion, a "banquet" at which Cixi played "host" to her Boxer rebel "guests." Once we realize that Huang wants us to understand "The Tragic Fate of Mankind" in a contemporary context, his rereading of the poem becomes clear. The first and second lines poke fun at the brief association between the empress dowager and the Boxers, who were originally opposed to each other and only joined forces to expel the foreign powers from China. The third line alludes to the fact that the Boxer Rebellion began in Shandong in 1899, the last year of the nineteenth century, and that Boxer troops occupied Beijing in 1900, the first year of the twentieth century, which is going to witness the frustration of the "ambitions and desires" of autocrats like Cixi. The last line derides the Boxer troops' rapid defeat by the Allies and their inability to follow their "valiant" host after her hasty withdrawal from Beijing. Huang's two-layered use of Zhu Mu's original demonstrates his total command over the regulated form as a tool for satire in his old age. The refashioning of older texts was indeed quite common in classical literature, especially from the time of the erudite Song author Huang Tingjian onward, but there do not seem to be any precedents for a poet asking his readers to reinterpret the entire text of a work to which he is alluding, especially when the text is not quoted.42 "The Midautumn Moon" is remarkable on another level, too. We have noted an affinity between the work's mordant wit and the creations ofJin He, but even Jin He never dared to satirize China's ruler openly. Huang was running a definite risk by penning such a biting satire on China's de facto sovereign, particularly in view of the suspicions that the Qing government must have harbored about an exreformer like him. Perhaps one reason why Huang broke with the earlier poetic tradition in this matter is that by the time of the Boxer Rebellion he was convinced that China's imperial institutions were doomed to extinction.

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11 Huang Zunxian and modern science Science and poetry There has always been a close connection between literature and the scientific and technological level of the society in which any single work was created. Du Fu's "Northern Journey" presupposes a backward transport system, and the outcome of Romeo and Juliet would have been quite different if the two lovers had been able to maintain contact by telephone or fax. In earlier times the pace of scientific and technological change was slow enough that most poets did not even detect the ways that it made their poetry distinct from that of previous ages, but by the end of the nineteenth century it was difficult for writers to ignore the remarkable scientific and technological transformations changing the world around them. Poets could adopt different approaches to scientific and technological change, but in spite of some mavericks like Erasmus Darwin (17311802), Charles Darwin's grandfather, who celebrated modern science in his poetry, most late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western poets followed William Blake (1757-1827) invoicing their revulsion for the new technological world created by the Industrial Revolution and its "dark, satanic mills."1 Only briefly, at the beginning of the twentieth century, did poets like Filippo T. Martinetti (1876-1944), the founder of Italian modernism, who had such a strong influence on the dynamic sculptures of Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), embrace the new world of modern science and technology, but their enthusiasm was short-lived, and ever since the catastrophic experiences of the two World Wars, many Western poets have seemed uninterested in the contributions of modern science and technology to our understanding of the world.2 The situation in China before the twentieth century was quite different. Although poems on scientific or technological subjects are rare in premodern European poetry, with its emphasis upon romantic love or heroic adventure, such poems became commoner in China during the 181

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Song dynasty, when poets' desire to expand the range of poetic themes led them to explore topics that might not have been considered poetic in earlier ages. One example of this tendency is a quatrain about a waterpowered pounding device by the Southern Song author, Yang Wanli, whom we have already met in our discussion of the Song influence on Qing poetry: I know, water grinder, you're as marvelous as magic; I constantly hear the sound of you pounding but can't see any people. But if you want to make sure no one will catch onto your secret, Better not let the bucket follow you around all the time!3 Since few of us are familiar with the technology involved, this poem is not apt to appeal to us on first reading, but it is an excellent example of witty Song writing. Because the device Yang describes seems to have been recently invented, he supplied the following note for his contemporaries: In Xuan and Xi [modern Anhui province], they use field water to run pounders. These are not like ones turned by a wheel injiangxi, for the "tail" of the pounder is larger than its "body," and [the tail] is carved out so it can contain water. When the tail [the "bucket" of Yang's poem] is full, it becomes heavy and then descends. This raises the hammer, and [when the bucket's water spills out, the hammer falls and] pounds.4 The pounder of Yang's poem was still being used in early twentiethcentury China, and the author has seen similar contraptions on a miniature scale serving as decorations in traditional Japanese gardens. How does a medieval poet like Yang approach his technological subject? First of all, the humanist Yang Wanli certainly does not consider technical subjects outside the sphere of his interests, but, on the contrary, he is fascinated by the pounder and is quite eager to explain exactly how it works to his readers. His approach is not that of the "dispassionate" modern scientist, and one of the most attractive features of his poem is the almost childlike joy he experiences in watching the seemingly magical operation of the device. Still the poem is much more than a mere description of an ingenious machine, for it is written with the same skill as Yang's other poetry, utilizing one of his commonest literary devices, personification. Not only does Yang address the pounder as if it were a real person, but he also imposes a human personality on the device, suggesting that it is so clever that it will want to prevent the "bucket" that constantly "follows" it around from guessing the secret that allows it to perform work without human assistance. 182

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Science and technology in the 1899 quatrains Huang Zunxian's early poems on his first visit to Hong Kong (1870) already display his fascination with Western technology, but his interest in science and technology reached a climax in his Assorted Quatrains 0/1899, the most significant group of short poems of his old age. Even by the end of the nineteenth century, the modern chasm between technical and humanistic studies did not trouble Chinese intellectuals, and authors like Huang Zunxian were not sympathetic to the Romantic antiscientific tradition, as Huang's celebration of mankind's mastery over nature through modern technology (1899) demonstrates: A thousand radiant lamps hang like fluorescent pearls, Illuminating this portrait of gods who banquet in the night. Strung in nets like tasseled clouds, they resemble showers offlowerpetals There is a paradise of immortals in this realm of mortal flesh!5 This paean to electric lights does preserve a tenuous link with Song poetry, particularly in its witty juxtaposition of the seemingly contradictory terms xiandu (literally, "city of immortals") andyujie ("realm of flesh") in the last line, but it would have impressed nineteenth-century readers more for its message that Western men are able to live like the gods thanks to modern science and technology. This link between the modern technological world and the heavenly realm is reinforced by an ingenious combination of allusions to real historical persons, such as the rhetorician Zou Yang W>$n (206-129 B.C.) in line 1 (the "fluorescent pearls" are first mentioned in a memorial by Zou) and Han Xizai f|J?Siifc (902-70) in line 2, a high official of the Southern Tang period who literally "lived like a god," together with descriptions of Buddhist paradises with their beautiful cloud formations and falling flower petals, in line 3. 6 Mastery over the world through scientific and technological knowledge is a common theme of Huang Zunxian's late poetry, but his rationalistic background also made him stress that scientific knowledge dispels superstition: The kingdoms offireand water wage warfare in the clouds; They clash and grind against each other to produce a loud roar. This is nothing more than the ordinary power of friction, But foolish people are terrified by thunder and lightning!7 Here scientific knowledge is the enlightening force that will rid the masses of superstitions about natural phenomena like thunder and lightning, 183

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which the gods supposedly used to punish evildoers. Huang's own explanation of thunder and lightning in the main body of the poem is partially incorrect, because his classical heritage obliges him to allude to the traditional theory of the five elements (fire, water, earth, metal, and wood), but in his footnote to the poem he correctly explains lightning as a product of static electricity. In any case, the main idea behind the quatrain is his hope that rational knowledge of the physical world will eliminate ignorance.8 Many other benefits could be reaped from scientific knowledge: When cotton was blown to China, it changed into spring robes; The sweet potato from overseas saved our peasants from starving. We must let commerce thrive without any barriers between nations; From the present I can predict how the future Utopia will look!9 Neither cotton nor the sweet potato was of Chinese origin, but the introduction of these crops benefited the Chinese people enormously, and if free commerce is allowed, other improvements in agricultural science will work in China's favor.10 The connection between science and the future world order is quite clear in this quatrain; Huang believed that the future hope of mankind depended upon the free exchange of scientific knowledge without regard to international borders. However, modern scientific knowledge is not without its drawbacks. When Huang sailed through the Suez Canal for the second time, in 1891, he already understood the connection between modern science and imperialism (see the translation of the poem he wrote then on page 277), but this link is expressed even more forcefully in the following quatrain, from the 1899 series: A great river, sliced out with a knife, stretches before you, Shaving six months from the long journey south around Africa. Foreign seafarers cheered, but the Egyptians all grieved: The tower of their debts rose straight up to heaven!11 Huang had studied the history of the Suez Canal and knew that the Egyptian government had been forced to sell its share in the Suez Canal Company in 1875 and to cede management of its financial affairs to Britain and France in 1876, which eventually led to the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. The Suez Canal may have seemed like a good idea to the Egyptians when construction started in 1859, but it mainly benefited the Western powers and led to the loss of Egyptian sovereignty. In some of Huang's 1899 quatrains, this negative side of modern science is even more frightening: 184

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Scientists can graft peaches and plums, make the whole year like spring, Create giant fruits, fragrant flowers, and entirely new trees. No wonder, in the newly opened lands of our Western Hemisphere, White men are replacing all the old red-skinned natives.12 We have seen that Huang's later world view was tinged by his contact with social Darwinism, and although he always promoted the idea of racial equality, his experience in the United States had taught him that many people did not share his liberal ideals. As he grew older, it seemed increasingly possible that the white race, armed with the wonders of modern science and technology, would crowd out the other races of the world and eventually eliminate them, as they were doing so successfully among the indigenous peoples of North America. The Nazi death camps of World War II were still forty years in the future, but Huang had already seen the link between scientific knowledge unguided by moral principle and the specter of genocide. So far, we have studied the link between the scientific and technological poetry among the 1899 quatrains and the Song tradition and explored some of the themes developed by these poems, but we have not investigated how their preoccupation with science and technology influenced the style of the poems. One way to do this is to compare two quatrains on similar themes from the same collection, the first basically traditional in its outlook, the second more "scientific": Even the world's greatest heroes plant vegetables occasionally, And noble hermits in the mountains love hoeing their melons. Less self-conscious than these fellows, I'm even lazier than a cloud It's by accident I plantflowers,by accident I even see them!13 And: Once rank weeds are cleared away, green clumps appear; Even my oldflowerstake on a fresher hue of red. Yet I think I'll abandon them all to natural selection As the plants struggle for survival, I'll just remain impartial!14 The similarities between the two quatrains arise largely from their debt to the tradition of witty Song verse. The humor of the first poem centers on the contrast between the labor needed for cultivating a garden and Huang's "laziness"; in the second poem there is a similar opposition between Huang's earlier labors in clearing the weeds away and his later "perversity" in insisting on remaining impartial to what happens to them. Both poems also owe a good deal to traditional poetry on reclusion, empha185

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sizing the nobility of "laziness," a quality valued by recluse-poets like Tao Qian, because it showed one's indifference to the rush and bustle of worldly life.15 However, the contrast between the two poems is also quite striking. The first poem is almost an anthology of allusions to classical literature, the first line referring to the ruler Liu Bei illjlif (reg. 221-3), of the Three Kingdoms period, who planted a garden at one time in his life; the second line to Zhao Ping S^F (late third century B.C.), a noble of the Qin dynasty, who grew melons after his fortunes declined; the third line to a poem by the Song prime minister Wang Anshi; and the fourth line to a poem by Huang's "teacher," Gong Zizhen.16 By contrast, the second poem is devoid of allusions to classical Chinese literature. Unlike the first poem, which bends over backward to demonstrate its debt to tradition, the second poem avoids literary references, just as most of the other scientific quatrains quoted in this section do. The only "past" that counts here is Yan Fu's translation of Thomas Huxley's Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays, which Huang read over and over again

in his old age. The brevity of the quatrain form does not allow Huang to explore all the intellectual implications of his study of modern science and technology in the 1899 poems, but the concept of the struggle for survival, which underlies the second poem, cannot help but undermine the theme of the harmony of nature assumed in traditional bucolic verse, even if Huang does manage to laugh this problem off with his Song wit. Unlike some late Victorian authors like Thomas Hardy, Huang never seems to have pondered how Darwin's theories might affect human attitudes toward nature, and one can only wonder what sort of poetry he would have written if he had emphasized the idea of struggle for survival learned from his reading of English thought and his practical experience in the late nineteenthcentury world of power politics.17 Modern parting Huang never felt a compulsion to reevaluate traditional nature verse in the light of modern science, possibly because the mountains andfieldsof rural Jiayingzhou seemed so remote from the realm of steam engines and hydrogen balloons, but in a series of four poems on the timeworn topic of separation ("Modern Parting," translated on page 269) he systematically explored how the new world of technology could transform a traditional theme. These poems are especially intriguing, because a lack of any demonstrable connection with Huang's personal experiences suggests he 186

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conceived them as experiments in using modern technology to revivify a genre of poetry that had reached a dead end long before his time. Before we examine these poems in detail, we must first look into the tradition of parting poetry in China. Already in the first millennium B.C., Chinese poets wrote about the sorrows of separation, but the following parting poem by Wei Yingwu represents the tradition during its high point in the Tang dynasty: Sending off Li Zhou in the evening rain

A misty rain enshrouds the Yangzi River; The evening bell echoes from Nanjing City. Sails drenched by rain float toward us heavily; Birds wing slowly through the gathering dusk. Where river joins ocean is too remote to be seen; Trees on the riverbank hold back their dew. Our sadness at parting knows no limits; Tears stream down my lapels like scattered silk threads.18

The interior couplets (lines 3-6) are particularly effective in evoking the bleak atmosphere expected in Tang parting poems, but the modern Western reader is likely to be repelled by the lachrymose conclusion, in spite of the pleasing confusion between the threads of Wei's lapels and the "threads" of his tears. Song wit completely transformed a theme that could not be developed any further along Tang lines, as can be seen in a famous parting poem presented by Su Shi to his brother Su Zhe: Sending offSu Zhe on an embassy to the Tartars

You entrust your life to this sea of clouds we both gaze across, But we'll not soak our handkerchiefs over your long journey. You gladly ride post-horses through wind and snow And instruct the proud Tartars about Chinese culture. In the desert, you'll turn to gaze at our imperial palace's moon; 'Midst lakes and mountains, you'll dream of me at Wulin in spring. Should the Tartar ruler ask lots of questions about your family background, For heaven's sake, don't tell him you're our number one scholar!19

Su Shi's poem contains many stock images from earlier parting poems, but he uses them all in highly original ways. For example, the second line contains the tired phrase "tears soak handkerchiefs {lei zjianjin)" but Su assures the reader that (in contrast to Tang and earlier poetry) no tears wet handkerchiefs (or lapels) when he parts from his brother. Similarly,

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line 3 speaks of "wind and snow," but rather than suggesting the hardships suffered by the traveler, this reference to inclement weather emphasizes Su Zhe's devotion to his emperor and Chinese culture. In Tang and pre-Tang verse, the worn-out moon imagery in the fourth line would symbolize Su Zhe's longing for his brother, but here it also demonstrates his devotion to his country and ruler. The third line from the end does hint at Su Shi's unhappiness over Su Zhe's departure, but this melancholy is dispelled by the humorous close, in which Su Shi warns his brother not to reveal his true talents for fear that the Tartar ruler may want to detain him. From the eleventh century onward, the melancholy parting poetry of the Tang authors and Su Shi's witty parting poetry demarcated the limits of practically all verse on the theme, and with such a rich and diverse tradition behind him it would seem difficult for Huang to say anything original on this theme. The connections between Huang's series "Modern Parting" ("Jin bieli" ^ ^ ' J ^ l ) and earlier poetry are, in fact, quite numerous, and even his title is identical to the title of a series of works by a minor early eighth-century poet named Cui Guofu ^ H l i . 2 0 Qian Esun has identified a large number of allusions in each poem, ranging from remote antiquity to the Tang and Song masters, and Huang Zunxian's witty approach to the themes of parting and separation reveal his debt to Song authors like Su Shi. However, the differences between Huang Zunxian's poems and earlier parting verse are also profound. For example, Gui Guofu's title means nothing more than "Now [we] part," without any hint of a connection to the contemporary world, but Huang Zunxian has deliberately distorted its original meaning (in classical Chinese the wordjin can mean both "now" and "modern"). 21 Most important of all, Huang's experimental approach is unique in pre-twentieth-century Chinese literature; there do not seem to be any examples of consciously experimental works before his age, all previous parting poems having been written for specific occasions in accordance with accepted rules. In spite of the overall experimental approach, the second, third, and fourth poems are quite distinct from poem I, since all three are clever literary riddles. Huang creates these riddles by exploiting the possibilities for using ambiguous classical Chinese poetry to suggest the technical neologisms of the late nineteenth century. For example, in the mind of poem IFs hilariously ignorant heroine (or in the mind of anyone ignorant of telegraphic technology), lines 13 and 14 mean "Strings stretch along these rows, / Strings which connect one pole to another," while the omniscient reader supplies the word "wires" for "strings," because in the spoken Chinese of the age the original Chinese word (si) can mean either "string" 188

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or "wire" (note the modern term for electric fuse, baoxiansi ["dangerprotection-wire"]). Similarly, poem III plays on the multiple meanings of Chinese words like jing (either "mirror" or "lens," hence, "camera") or zhao ("reflect" or "photograph") to suggest the vocabulary of modern photography, and in line 13 we can either translate "I reflected my own image in a mirror like yours" or "I took a photograph with a camera like yours," depending on our knowledge of the technology involved. Riddle poetry is particularly difficult to translate into English, for an English translation must "give away the secret" much sooner than the cleverly contrived Chinese texts. Poem IV also possesses many of the riddle qualities of poems II and III, and an ignorant or careless reader might not recognize that it is a study of how the world's different time zones affect the conventions of traditional separation poetry. One major difference between this poem and the other two is that its female persona fully understands how her relationship with her lover is hindered by the greatly expanded world of her age. She fervently desires to appear in his dreams, but he is awake when she sleeps, and vice versa, so she cannot indulge in one of traditional Chinese parting poetry's cherished conventions. This poem is a clever literary joke, like the other two, but the reader sympathizes with its female persona, whose predicament has a truly modern ring. The relation between the first poem of the series and the literary tradition of parting poetry is even more complex than in the case of poems III through IV, for, as Qian Esun has noted, the poem follows the rhymes and utilizes much of the language of a parting poem by the mid-Tang author Mengjiao i £ ^ (751-814) entitled "The Cart Is Distant."22 The practice of writing poetry following the rhymes of a friend's work or of a poem by some earlier author was common in premodern China, particularly since Song times. Most authors of such verse followed one of two approaches. Some composed poems that closely echo the thoughts of the original, an excellent example of which is the series of one hundred twenty poems by Su Shi on the pattern of Tao Qian's fifth-century poems of reclusion. Other poets attempted a witty reversal of their model, a practice related to thefan'an technique, which we saw Huang learning as a child. Huang does use some of Mengjiao's original language, but his clever practice oifan'an is more fundamental to this poem.23 In lines 7 and 8 ("But when those contraptions carried friends away [literally, 'Vehicles and boats carried off parting sorrow'] / You could at least get on or off whenever you wished"), Huang does echo Meng's lines "Boats and carts are both unobstructed, /And there is no place where they cannot wander," but he immediately negates this idea in the next couplet ("Now the steamships [literally, 'boats'] and trains [literally, 'carts'] of our modern age / 189

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Conspire to increase the parting sorrow of people"). In a similar spirit, the first couplet of Huang's poem, "My thoughts whirl like a wheel when its time to part, / Turning at the rate of ten thousand RPM [literally, 'ten thousand times everyfifteenminutes (A^)']" is a clever transformation of Meng's "My thoughts whirl like a wheel when it's time to part / Ten thousand times each single day," where Huang accelerates the speed of the whirling thoughts to correspond with the increased tempo of modern life. Huang did not overturn Mengjiao's poem just by the clever juggling of a phrase here and there, for the underlying premise of his poem is that modern technology forces us to reevaluate the entire Tang (and Song) approach to parting poetry. Huang notes that modern transportation may very well increase our anxiety when we take leave of a loved one, but our separation is not likely to be as long as it was in antiquity, and he ends his work with the prospect of the man returning on a hydrogen balloon. Modern technology may not eliminate the grief of separation, but it forces us to change our traditional attitudes to the problem. Even on the basic level of language, Huang's poem subverts the Tang tradition of parting poetry. All the vocabulary items of Huang's poem are found in earlier poems on parting and separation, but a late nineteenthcentury reader could not help reading the work simultaneously on at least two separate levels, a traditional and a modern one. If we compare the brief translations I have provided for certain lines from Meng Jiao with the translations of corresponding lines by Huang Zunxian, we recognize the ambiguities that confront the reader, who must constantly ask himself whether a Chinese character such as che $ means "cart" or "railroad train" or whether the graph zhou fy refers to a Chinese junk or a modern steam-driven ocean liner. The reactions of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century critics to these poems are quite interesting. Huang's friend, the poet Chen Sanli, said that the poems "expressed universal emotions with their profound thoughts and fit new themes into old forms,. . . opening up a realm previously unexplored by the ancients," and the scholar Fan Dangshi wrote that "The realm of their thought is absent among the ancients, yet their poetic flavor is unequaled in purity and antiquity."24 In other words, both men emphasized the originality of the poems within the context of tradition, but they both missed the point that all four poems are elaborate literary jokes in which Huang proves that modern technology has destroyed practically all the assumptions of traditional parting poetry. Huang's announcement that traditional parting poetry was a dead letter (he never wrote another parting poem in his life) is not the only discomfiting message of these poems. We have already noticed the confusion that technological advances create in the mind of poem IFs female 190

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persona, and we feel genuine sympathy for the woman in poem IV, separated from her lover by the immense distances of modern travel and deprived of the pleasure of meeting him even in her dreams. In spite of poem Fs rollicking humor, we cannot avoid feeling at least some anxiety over the globe-trotting traveler's frenetic pace. Modern technology has not just killed traditional parting poetry; it has altered the very fabric of society. The midautumn moon The impersonal and experimental qualities of the "Modern Parting" series did not allow Huang to explore fully the isolation and loneliness of modern technological society, but when he adopted a more personal tone in his "I composed this poem gazing at the moon from a ship in the Pacific Ocean on the night of the Midautumn Festival" (page 254), written during his return voyage from San Francisco (1885), the results were quite moving. This poem treats the age-old theme of separation too, but it is unlike any earlier Chinese poem on the subject. Before we can appreciate how the poem's excellence results at least partially from a skillful use of modern scientific ideas, we must examine its literary background. Huang's work is full of allusions to earlier verse, but two poems by the Tang master Li Bai are Huang's chief source of inspiration. The first of these is a quatrain that most Chinese schoolchildren are able to recite by heart: I look at moonbeams shining around my bed (Or are they frost covering the ground)? I raise my head to gaze at the moon, Then lower it again and think of home.25 Huang cites language from this work in line 42 ("When I raise my head, I see the moon of my homeland"), but, even more important, he follows Li Bai in using the moon as the physical link between himself and his family. The second poem by Li Bai to which Huang alludes is equally popular but somewhat more complex: Drinking alone by moonlight

By moonlight, with my pot of wine, I drink alone, no friends at all. I raise my cup to invite the moon; Moon, my shadow, and I make a party of three! The moon itself doesn't know how to drink, And my shadow follows my body in vain.

Criticism

I'll party with the moon and my shadow a while (Better take your pleasures while you've got a chance!) I sing out loud, and the moon lingers by my side; I dance round wildly, confusing my shadow. While I'm sober, we'll remain the best of friends, But once I'm drunk, we'll go our own ways. We'll form a friendship lacking human emotions And meet again in the remote Milky Way!26 Here the moon does not symbolize separation from home but rather Li Bai's splendid isolation as a great poet of his age. The poem's last two lines hint at the possibility of a Daoist flight into the void, but, in spite of its occasional wit, the dominant mood of the series to which the poem belongs is one of alienation and isolation. The friendship that Li forms with the moon and his shadow is attractive as a literary conceit, but it cannot replace normal human relationships. Huang Zunxian alludes directly to this poem in two places. Line 25 of his poem ("My body follows the ship just as the moon follows me") is an echo of lines 5 and 6 of Li's poem, and line 28 ("The moon, my shadow, and I make a party of three") quotes verbatim from line 4 of Li's work. Huang's moon symbolism owes more to the first quatrain just translated, but, taken as a whole, his poem manifests the same oppressive isolation of "Drinking alone by moonlight." Huang Zunxian's description of the moon is not entirely indebted to Li Bai's moon poetry, for the mark of Song literature is also apparent. Li Bai's second poem hints at the possibility of treating the moon as a human being, but Li did not develop the device of personification as fully as a Southern Song author such as Yang Wanli: White Lady Moon has gotten up early by herself, Her new black disk washed clean in heaven's azure pool. Like a precious button scraped hard enough to see its lacquer, Her orb is tinged by a bit of silver on its edge. Her eyes suddenly change from black to white, When she opens them wide and stares at me crossly. A dark black mist penetrates both of her pupils; She sneaks a glance coyly - too bashful to be intimate.27 Huang Zunxian avoids the Southern Song conceits of Yang Wanli's verse, but lines like "But tonight her clear rays glow with double purity" or "My friend moon has become so dear that she can't bear to leave me" show the strong influence of Song-dynasty personification. Personification also seems to affect Huang's choice of allusions to Li Bai's second poem, for he 192

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borrows Li's two most "human" lines about the moon, the only ones that even hint at personification. Li Bai's two poems supply much of the literary background to Huang's work, but we must also say something about its social context. Huang is viewing the moon on the Midautumn Festival (that is, at full moon on the fifteenth of the eighth lunar month), when Chinese families gather together to celebrate the harvest by eating moon cakes and gazing at the moon. One reason for looking at the moon on this festival is that, in common with Li Bai's first poem, the moon, which is visible to everyone, links the individual and his family group or, as Huang writes: "The entire universe shares the same moon with us." But in Huang's poem his "family" consists of more than his immediate relatives, encompassing the laborers riding in steerage class as well as his "four hundred million" compatriots beyond the horizon, with the infinite variety of "their joys and sorrows." Thus, the Midautumn Festival's moon bonds Huang both to his own immediate family and to the extended "family" of the Chinese nation, all of whom "share this same autumn evening." Unfortunately, the link between Huang and his family is far from perfect, for he is riding on a foreign ship with "curly-bearded Americans" and drunken, blue-eyed sailors, a ship that confines most Chinese to miserable quarters, where they sleep apart from Huang in conditions little better than those of beasts. These unpleasant political and economic realities of the age play a major role in creating Huang's sense of isolation on this ship, but the conditions of modern technological society are equally important. When one is separated from loved ones, any distance may seem great, but modern technology has given Huang Zunxian the "freedom" to travel farther from his family than any Chinese poet before his time. He is lost in the boundless Pacific, where there is not "an inch of land," only "the dark heavens" above and "the inky waters below," and he is surrounded by foreigners, whose joy can only "make me feel more homesick" (an expression Huang takes from the archetypal description of separation from one's native land, the letter sent by Li Ling ^l^c (d. 74 B.C.), a captive of the Huns, to his friend in China, Su Wu # i t 2 8 Even more disturbing than this geographical isolation is the fact that the moon, the traditional link to one's family and native land, is no longer dependable. "Westerners don't reckon time by the phases of the moon" (i.e., they do not use the Chinese lunar calendar), and when Huang is celebrating the Midautumn Festival aboard the ship, his family is probably sleeping on what is for them the morning after the festival (depending, of course, on whether he has passed the International Date Line or not). Modern technology has opened up a new world of knowledge to Huang,

Criticism

but at the same time it has begun undermining the traditions that make life bearable. Some of Huang's references to the changing time zones are humorous, providing needed comic relief, but the way he closes the work shows how serious he really is. As Qian Esun has pointed out, the last line of the poem contains two allusions, one of which is an echo of a prose-poem by Pan Yue ?§•& (247-300), which supplies the Chinese term menglong ("vague," here translated less literally as "fog"), and a much more important allusion to Han Yu's well-known work, "Written on a gate tower after I visited the shrine at Mount Heng, where I spent the night at Holy Peak Temple," which concludes with the lines: Apes cry, bells resound, but I can't detect the dawn; A brilliant sun rises in the east - coldly.29 Han's poem, written while he was in exile in southern China, opens with an exhilarating and inspiring vision of Mount Heng, one of China's holy peaks, which is completely negated by Han's subsequent description of the sickening human vulgarity that has invaded the shrines there. In both Chinese and Western literature, the sunrise usually symbolizes a renewal of hope, but the sunrise with which Han Yu concludes his work provides no warmth to a human world in which the poet wearily drags out his existence. Huang does not avail himself of Han Yu's wonderful contrast between the sun's brightness and its apparent coldness, but the ending of his poem is just as moving as Han's, and by shrouding his sun in a vague fog his poem strikes a modern note of uncertainty, echoing his doubts about what the future holds for himself and his native land in the new world that Western technology has created.

12 Quatrains of 1899

Gong Zizhen and Huang Traditional Chinese life was organized around various cycles thought to express the orderly cosmos in which mankind lived. The cycles that formed the basis of the Chinese lunar calendar were related to observable changes in the physical world, but some of them were more abstract, the most important of which was formed by combining a series of ten graphs (the so-called "heavenly stems") with another series of twelve graphs (the "earthly branches") to form a new sequence of sixty pairs. This ancient sequence of paired graphs seems to have no connection with the movements of the sun or moon but merely forms a continually recurring cycle of sixty that was first used to indicate the order of days and later the order of years. Although the cycle has no observable connection with the physical universe, many Chinese believe it has a strong influence on their lives, and in ancient times it was the basis of much pseudoscience, especially fortune-telling. Premodern authors normally marked the year of any event by indicating in what year of a particular emperor's reign period it had occurred. For example, the year 1839 was the nineteenth year of the Daoguang emperor and 1899 was the twenty-fifth year of the Guangxu emperor. However, if they chose to use the cycle of sixty years instead, they would also write the yearjihai for both of these dates, since both 1839 and 1899 happen to fall in the thirty-sixth combination of the Heavenly Branches and Earthly Stems, the pair that consists of the sixth Heavenly Branch, ji, and the twelfth Earthly Stem, hai. Just as Westerners enjoy learning what happened a hundred years before their time, traditional Chinese were intrigued by events in a corresponding year of the preceding cycle of sixty. The nineteenth-century poet Gong Zizhen, who influenced Huang Zunxian so strongly, happened to write his renowned series of 315

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heptasyllabic quatrains entitled Assorted Quatrains of the Year jihai (Jihai zashi), in the jihai year of 1839.1 In 1899, also a.jihai year, Huang Zunxian created a series of 89 heptasyllabic quatrains, to which he gave exactly the same Chinese title (rendered Assorted Quatrains 0/1899 in the translation section of this book, pages 296-300). Neither in the preface to this collection nor in the poems themselves does Huang Zunxian mention Gong Zizhen by name, but both the title of the series and a good deal of its content were influenced by Gong. Gong Zizhen was much too famous for Huang and his contemporaries to miss the connection between his work and a later series of heptasyllabic quatrains in the same year of the cycle, and Liang Qichao, who probably corresponded with Huang about these poems, wrote: Gong Zizhen wrote 360 [sic] Assorted Quatrains of the Year jihai, which critics of modern literature love to read. Recently I have seen that the Master of the Hut in the Human Realm [Huang Zunxian] has also written several tens of Assorted Quatrains of the Year jihai, and they are like a snapshot of his entire life history.2 Liang does not elaborate upon the connection between the two sets of poems, but the fact that he mentions both in the same breath suggests he recognized a close relationship between them. Even the historical backgrounds of the two series are fairly similar. Gong Zizhen wrote his jihai poems during the year after he resigned from his position on the Board of Rites (Libu), largely because his suggestions for reform were ignored, and Huang Zunxia.n''sjihai poems were composed the year after the Reform Movement's violent suppression by Cixi and Huang's forced retirement from politics. Thus, both men wrote their series of quatrains at a time of bitter disappointment over the failure of the Chinese government to adopt their policies for political reform. Both men also happened to write their jihai poems in the waning years of their lives, when their poetic styles had reached full maturity. Gong Zizhen died suddenly at the age of fifty in 1841, only two years after completing hisjihai poems, and Huang Zunxian lived only six more years after the completion of hisjihai poems. Both poets wrote in detail about the events of the year in which each series was composed, but, conscious of declining health, both used their poems to sum up what they had learned from life. In spite of the similarities, the backgrounds of the two works do not mesh precisely. The tragic events that led to Huang Zunxian's retirement nearly cost him his head, but Gong Zizhen was living in a more peaceful age and quit his post voluntarily. Furthermore, the position that the jihai poems occupy in the literary careers of Gong and Huang are quite different. Gong Zizhen wrote some fine poetry before his retirement, but he was 196

Quatrains of 1899

much more noted as a historian and epigrapher prior to the publication of hisjihai poems, and, if he had never written them his stature as poet would be greatly diminished. Huang Zunxian's jihai poems are certainly important works from the period of his retirement, but if they had never been published he would still be regarded as a major poet. In spite of the numerous differences between Gong's and Huang's jihai poems, Gong's influence on Huang is readily apparent, as we can see from Gong's quatrain: Some doubt Prime Ministers Fang and Du were Wang Tong's students, For their fame is immortal, but his status was low. There is one thing in my life no one can criticize me for — I only start trends and refuse to teach!3 Wang Tong Iffi. (584-617) was a Confucian philosopher who lived at the end of the Sui dynasty and is supposed to have taught Fang Xuanling M a H$ (578-648) and Du Ruhui tt#PB$ (d. 630), both of whom helped found the Tang dynasty and later served the second Tang emperor as prime ministers. Later scholars, including the Song philosopher Zhu Xi, doubted that Wang had taught them, because, as Zhu Xi says: "None of these people created even one word that equaled their teacher's." 4 Gong says that he does not want any students because of the possibility that they will pervert his own teachings, and, like Huang Zunxian, he was primarily an innovator who sets new trends in intellectual life. Not only did Gong Zizhen's example inspire Huang Zunxian's quest for intellectual and literary originality in his jihai quatrains and other poetry, but some of Gong's 1839 poems also dealt with social problems that still interested Huang in 1899: Ancient aristocratic garb doesn't equal pretty market girls, Who pace daintily in pointed shoes like ancient Zhao's flirtatious lasses. When a ruler chooses a consort to bear him descendants, Should her reputation for virtue depend on having small feet?5 Gong's attack on foot-binding in this poem is repeated with even greater urgency in Huang's quatrains (see translation on page 297), and Gong's use of poetry to attack social evils that lay outside the purvey of traditional political satire inspired Huang's own expansion of the satirical tradition. The old and the new In spite of such similarities of approach, there are also numerous differences between Gong's and Huang's jihai quatrains, and a brief examina197

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tion of some of these will increase our understanding of Huang Zunxian's contribution to nineteenth-century Chinese poetry. Gong Zizhen's new approach to learning was certainly original within the context of his age, but he still identifies strongly with China's Confucian past: I have always respected the Classics' traditional explanations, Except for the Poems, which lack valid commentaries. My mind is identical to their author, Duke Zhou; It's like a blank tablet that can even reproduce his dreams!6 Gong's poem suggests that the traditional commentaries on the Classic of Poetry have only limited value, and when he interprets the poems of the ancient anthology he attempts to re-create the mental landscape of its author (not, in fact, the duke of Zhou Mfc [twelfth century B.C.] but anonymous authors). The content of Gong's poem is certainly original within the context of the early nineteenth century, but he is more concerned with re-creating the past than with looking forward to the future like Huang Zunxian. This traditionalism of Gong's poetry manifests itself in certain basic attitudes toward life: In youth I brandished a sword and played on a flute; Now my sword's vigor and my flute's spirit have both faded away. Who could have guessed my desolation during my journey home? A thousand sorrows and joys cluster around me this morning.7 According to Shirleen Wong, the sword and the flute symbolize Gong Zizhen's political and artistic ambitions, respectively, but here Gong says that both have come to naught. The negative tone of this work is a direct result of Gong's recent retirement from his Court position, but premonitions that his life is drawing to a close also affect his attitude. According to Wong's study, most of his jihai quatrains are dominated by the same "mournful tone and bitter-sweet language," and much of Gong's poetry was created under the influence of the pessimistic tradition that informs so much of China's classical verse.8 The contrast between the spirit of Gong's and Huang'sjite' quatrains is revealed by a comparison between this work with a. jihai quatrain that Huang composed about his own journey home, after he had been forced into retirement: I imagine my legs suddenly grow wheels and roll around the world; A tiny China rides on the ocean's depths 'midst some wisps of mist. 198

Quatrains of 1899 In youth, my ship crashed through ocean waves and I mounted the wind; Now I draw maps on the wall and travel lying down!9

Huang's exit from politics had nearly cost him his life, but we see no signs of the gloomy atmosphere that dominates most of Gong Zizheri'sjihai quatrains. However, the differences between Gong's and Huang's quatrains involve more than their approaches to life. If we were to evaluate Huang Zunxian'sjihai quatrains by the same stylistic criteria that Wong applied so successfully in her study of Gong Zizhen's works, we would discover that many of them compare favorably with Gong's poems, for both poets created superbly crafted heptasyllabic quatrains that are models of compactness and subtlety, and both were masters at the skillful use of literary allusion. Nonetheless, both Huang and Gong had fundamentally different approaches to writing. To help define some of these differences, let us look more closely at the quatrain by Huang just translated, but rather than adopting Wong's criteria, let us study the way the poem is related to earlier literature. The first line derives from a passage in the Zhou philosopher Zhuangzi $£~P (369-286 B.C.), where an old man imagines how his body is going to be transformed after death, his legs changing into wheels, his spirit into a horse.10 The second line echoes a work by the Tang poet Li He ^ 1 8 (791-817), which mourns the brevity of life and compares China to a tiny island in a great ocean, when viewed from the perspective of Heaven's immortals.11 The third line alludes to the official biography of Zong Que 7rcS (d. 465); when his uncle Zong Bing ^'M (375-443)5 an aged recluse, asked him what his life ambitions were, he replied: "I want to ride on the long wind and smash through ten thousand miles of waves."12 Huang also makes use of a couplet by Li Bai here ("There will be a time when I ride on a long wind and smash through waves; / I will hang my cloudy sail up straight and cross the vast oceans"), lines written when Li was fantasizing about escaping from unpleasant circumstances.13 Finally, line 4 refers to the official biography of Zong Bing. After extensive travels through southern and western China in search of beautiful mountain scenery, Zong became ill and was forced to return home. According to the History of the Song, "He spoke with a sigh: 'Old age and sickness have arrived together. I fear that it will be difficult to see all the famous mountains. I had best purify my thoughts and observe the Dao. I shall travel around as I lie in bed.' After this, he drew pictures [of the mountains] in his room."14 All these sources relate to the problem of old age and death in some way, which is hardly surprising in light of Huang's declining health. However, 199

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rather than dwell on the gloomy associations that each allusion would arouse in the minds of traditional poets, Huang cleverly overturns each text underlying his quatrain's four lines. The original passage from Zhuangzi is part of a bizarre discussion on the relativity of life and death, but Huang completely transforms Zhuangzi's eccentric imagery and his morbid concern for death into a celebration of travel around the nineteenth-century world. Li He's poetry is obsessed with decay and death, and his original line describes the insignificance of the human realm when compared to the heavenly paradise of the immortals, but Huang uses the same passage to show how the world has shrunk under the influence of modern technology. Similary, Huang's allusion to Li Bai, in the next line, does not involve an escape from reality but commemorates real journeys of the past that he will continue to make on the intellectual level in his old age. Finally, in the last line Huang disagrees with Zong Bing's mournful attitude toward the approach of old age; Huang does not decorate his room with paintings of mountain scenery celebrated by ancient poets but pastes maps of the modern world on its walls instead. Huang's technique of overturning earlier passages was inherited from his Song-dynasty masters, but he uses their methods in an individual way, for each time he overturns a classical text he gives it a modern meaning relevant to a world that has expanded beyond anything that earlier nineteenth-century poets like Gong Zizhen could have imagined. In spite of its debt to tradition, Huang's quatrain belongs to the modern age, whereas Gong Zizhen's works are a product of a defunct literary world. Modernity and tradition Some of Huang's jihai quatrains are more conservative than this work, especially those that treat bucolic themes, many of which seem indebted to Fan Ghengda's celebrated Impromptu Verses on the Four Seasons of the

Countryside, a series of heptasyllabic quatrains about his life on his country estate near Suzhou during the year 1186.15 Huang's own bucolic quatrains treat many of the themes that figure in Fan's series; there are quatrains about his leisure activities (e.g., 296), as well as works that describe Jiayingzhou's scenery or depict rural customs (e.g., 297). Huang's style is not identical to Fan's, for he avoids his ornate diction, but he does utilize one of Fan's favorite devices, the pathetic fallacy, in poem III.16 In spite of the apparent conservatism of the 1899 quatrains that treat the theme of nature, some of them skillfully incorporate modern ideas within the framework of traditional verse. We have already examined some works of this sort in the last chapter, but the following quatrain about flowering plums, one of the favorite themes of medieval bucolic 200

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poets, blend new and old even more cleverly than in Huang's poetry on science: Since they certainly hadfloweringplums three thousand years ago, I'm astonished the old poets didn't write verses about them. I'm going to ask the moon, which has been around since antiquity, "Are theflowersof ancient times really as good as modern flowers?"17 Huang's personification of the moon in the last two lines could have come straight from Fan Ghengda or Yang Wanli.18 His mock astonishment over the Zhou-dynasty authors' failure to write about plum blossoms (actually not really plums but flowers of the genus Prunus) resembles Songfan'an technique, but Huang adds his own special twist by questioning the muchvaunted wisdom of the ancients rather than overturning any specific text. Huang's poem is partially traditional, but his use oifan'an gives it a modern feel, for the poem attacks the conservative assumption that antiquity is superior to the present world. Nineteenth-century Confucians might claim that the canonical Classic ofPoetry is superior to later writing, but Huang gleefully points out that the poets of the Zhou dynasty did not know enough to write about the most popular flower of later verse. The modern qualities of Huang's quatrain are even more apparent when we read the prose note he appended to it: Peach and plum [real plum, not Prunus]flowersappear in the Classic of Poetry, as well as Prunus fruits, but there is no mention of Prunus blossoms. Poetry on Prunus blossoms started in the Six Dynasties and flourished during the Tang dynasty especially. If one examines this problem from the standpoint of modern botanical principles, [we may conclude that] antiquity's flowers were not necessarily very good, and they began toflourishonly after they had been grafted on other trees.19 We cannot ascertain the scientific basis to Huang's statement, but, according to him, the failure of Zhou poets to depict the beauties of the Prunus flowers in their poetry can be explained by the backwardness of botanical technology during what traditional Confucian scholars would consider China's Golden Age. Many of Huang's poems about his everyday life in Jiayingzhou may be modeled on Song verse, but modern concerns are never far beneath the surface: Ashes smoulder in the cooling oven where I roasted chestnuts; My rice wine cools, the lamp dims, and I'm so tired I want to sleep. I suddenly perk up when I hear someone reading aloud But when I listen closely, it's just an examination textbook.20 2O1

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This poem bears a striking resemblances to a quatrain in Fan Ghengda's collection of poems about his life in the countryside: Twigs burn without smoke in the long, snowy evening; I warm wine on the clay stove, until it simmers like soup. I shouldn't be angry with my wife for preparing no snacks; She smiles and points at fragrant chestnuts roasting in the ashes.21

In addition to the obvious thematic resemblance, a similar structure underlies both poems. Tension created in each poem's third line (the not fully understood sound of recitation and Fan Chengda's potential anger at his wife) is released by a revelation in the last line (Huang's realization that he is hearing someone recite a textbook and Fan's observation that his wife has roasted chestnuts). However, the structures are not precisely the same. The first two lines of Huang's poem suggest decline, for his chestnuts are being roasted in a cooling oven over dying ashes, and the cooling of his heated rice wine as well as the lamp's dimming parallel his physical exhaustion. This decline is reversed temporarily in the third line when he hears someone reciting a book, but the revival in Huang's spirits is denied by the fourth line's disappointing revelation. In contrast, Fan's first two lines bubble with a joy confirmed by the last line after the third line's temporary interruption. One could find examples of Huang Zunxian's precise structure in Fan Chengda's poem, and vice versa, but the structure of Huang's poem forms the foundation of the contemporary message he has embedded in its traditional form. On the surface, the poem merely describes his own personal experience, but the decline in the first two lines parallels the decline of China, "East Asia's sick old man." This decline seems to be reversed in the third line, when Huang hears that someone is still devoted to learning, but when he realizes that the person is reciting a textbook of civil service examination essays, the gloom of the first two lines deepens, for, in spite of Huang's efforts to reform his country, students are still shackled to traditional learning, and the Qing dynasty is doomed. New directions Poems on ancient themes as well as traditional verse that incorporates modern ideas are among the more successful creations in Huang's 1899 series, but there are also many quatrains that develop Huang's earlier innovations or strike out in new directions. Some of these works satirize the backwardness of Chinese society, whereas others recount Huang Zunxian's experiences during his journeys overseas. Some of the quatrains 202

Quatrains 0/1899

on foreign countries seem to be based on longer ancient-style poems that Huang had written years earlier, such as the following poem on the Eiffel Tower: The dust of this tiny planet stirs beneath my eyes; The vast and mighty wind of heaven blows on my robe. I am going to ride the air on a hydrogen balloon; Sate my eyes with the world's continents and leap across the ocean back home!22

In the limited space of a quatrain Huang could not explore all the themes developed in his earlier long poem on the same subject (discussed in Chapter 8), but his mastery of the quatrain form allows him to re-create his exhilaration on ascending the Eiffel Tower and his yearning to transcend the limits of nineteenth-century life through modern technology with an intensity unequaled by his original ancient-style poem. Part of Huang's success cannot be reproduced in English translation, for it involves his skillful manipulation of Chinese tonal patterns. At first sight, Huang's tonal pattern seems excessively conservative, for he follows the rules of the quatrain form even more religiously than many Tang masters, which is apparent when we graph the quatrain's tonal structure, letting the letter 0 stand for level tones (a category roughly equivalent to first- and second-tone words in modern Mandarin), and the letter X for oblique tones (tones 3 and 4 of Mandarin, in addition to words of the first and second tone that ended with/?, t, k final sounds in ancient times):

xxooxxo ooxxooo xoxxoox xxooxxo In the first couplet, each level tone of the first line is balanced by an oblique tone in the corresponding syllable of the second line, except in the second line's last syllable, which must be level to rhyme with the first line's last syllable. In accordance with traditional rules, this imbalance is corrected in the third line by using the oblique tone in its first syllable, where we expect a level tone to balance the oblique-tone first syllable of the fourth line. Thus, with the sole exception of the first syllable of the third line, there is a perfect balance between level tones and oblique tones within the second couplet, too. Huang is merely following the rules of classical prosody here, but he uses the tonal patterns to create a striking effect that contributes to his poem's modern feel. To understand what he achieves in the original, I will translate the third and fourth lines word for word, indicating the tone value for each syllable: 203

Criticism Then {|L [oblique] ought H* [level] course 'M [oblique] air |R [oblique], ride IS [level] balloon 3 [level], leave 4 [oblique]; Sate tfi [oZ>/i^t/^] look S" [oblique] surrounding 3i [to^/] continents 3 ! [level], stride ^ [oblique] ocean $5 [o^/^wtf] return J§ [level].

A close examination of this literal translation enables us to observe the close correspondence between the tones and the "movement" of the last two lines. To understand how tones would have affected the response of a nineteenth-century Chinese reader to this concluding couplet, we must first explain that level tones are tones of "stability" and "rest," whereas oblique tones suggest "imbalance" amd "motion," an idea confirmed by the way modern Chinese scholars chanting poetry in traditional fashion draw out level-tone syllables and shorten oblique-tone syllables. Thus, in the poem's third line, "coursing through air" is expressed by means of two oblique tones, and the floating sensation of "riding in a balloon" is suggested by two level tones, the line leaving us with a sensation of imbalance created by the oblique tone of its final word "leave." In the last line, Huang's world tour is described with two oblique syllables, and the stationary continents themselves with two level tones, whereas the two syllables of the expression "striding over the ocean" consist of two oblique tones. The last line and the entire poem itself conclude with the level tone of the word "return," the meaning and tone of which evokes Huang's imagined homecoming. The precise correspondence between the tonal patterns and the action of the poem is one reason that the work reads so well in Chinese, and Huang's success in capturing the dynamism of modern life through the devices of traditional regulated poetry is mainly responsible for the work's modern feel. Huang also wrote many successful quatrains about famous foreigners, such as the following poem on George Washington: One man flung up his arms, and a million men shouted: "Down with subjection, no better than slavery!" Rulers, when the people are ennobled, they will ignore your nobility; Don't think you left the throne because of your sagely virtue!23 Quatrains of this sort developed from the didactic verse of Huang's youth, which in turn is derived from Gong Zizhen's poetry of ideas. However, in spite of its debt to tradition, Huang's quatrain negates the past three thousand years of Chinese history, for, although Chinese intellectuals created many poems protesting political conditions throughout the centuries, Huang's quatrain is practically an incitement to rebel against the Qing dynasty. 204

Quatrains of 1899

If one comes straight from a literary tradition in which even the most critical intellectual never ceases to avow his loyalty to his sovereign, Huang's first and second lines are utterly electrifying. Anyone who has been raised on Schiller's (1759-1805) Wilhelm Tell (1804) or its numerous descendants may feel somewhat more blase, but no one who reads this quatrain in the original can deny the power of the image of George Washington inciting rebellion against George III by raising his arms to the sky. There are no exact parallels to these two lines in earlier Chinese literature, and even a learned scholar like Qian Esun has failed to discover any echoes of earlier Chinese literature here. The next two lines do allude to earlier writings, but Huang's use of his sources is quite unconventional. The third line is based on a passage from the Confucian philosopher Mencius, which states: "the people are [the most] noble, the altars of the state are next, and the ruler is the least important." 24 Mencius was hardly a modern-day liberal, but, with the exception of Confucius, he was one of the few Chinese thinkers who believed in the primacy of the people, and it is hardly surprising that most traditional poets rarely allude to this passage. The last line of the quatrain alludes to various traditions concerning three semimythical rulers of ancient China, Yao, Shun, and Yu, who were supposed to have ruled in succession about two or three centuries before the beginning of the second millennium B.C. According to these traditions, which were accepted as historical truth in pre-twentieth-century China, Yao did not transmit his throne to his son but abdicated to Shun, because he was morally superior to Yao's own sons. Similarly, Shun did not turn over authority to his own son but made Yu his successor. Although Yu was as virtuous as his two predecessors, he chose to make his own son his successor, thus founding the Xia dynasty (traditional dates 2205-1766 B.C.).25 We do not know if any of these events really took place, but in later Chinese political theory Yao, Shun, and Yu were always considered ideal rulers. Many Chinese poets use these traditions to praise their sovereign's virtue, but Huang has nothing of this sort in mind, for he is saying that when the coming democratic revolution forces the Qing emperors from the throne, they should not claim that their forced abdication has come about as a result of their own superior moral qualities. Huang cannot resist alluding to tradition, even in a revolutionary poem of this sort, but the way he uses tradition is innovative on both the literary and philosophical levels. We have encountered numerous examples of how Huang uses fan'an technique to effect witty reversals of ancient texts. Huang's use of the Yao and Shun traditions resembles fan'an, but in this poem he does not overturn the stories themselves but rather the way past writers have used them to praise their own autocratic rulers and the way 205

Criticism

the Qing rulers pervert them to serve their own political purposes. By overturning commonly accepted misreadings of ancient texts, Huang is trying to keep his tradition from being perverted by conservative scholars and the Qing Court, an action that makes him more "traditional" than Gixi herself. However, Huang's use of ancient texts is not without its own distortions. He cites Mencius to justify his democratic ideals, but there is really no tradition of democratic thought in China, for although Mencius recognized the fundamental importance of the people, he never doubted the need for a strong ruler. Still we should not blame Huang for trying to find a source for Chinese democracy in Mencius's writings or accounts of the early sage-kings, any more than the Founding Fathers of the young American republic should be criticized for justifying their experiment in democracy by reference to Greco-Roman history. When people set out to reform or destroy an old system, they usually justify their actions by an appeal to the past. This constant dialectic between tradition and modernity, which underlies most of Huang Zunxian's poetry, is absolutely central to his jihai quatrains. Huang never resolved the contradictions between his love for both antiquity and the modern age, but his 1899 quatrains proved that a traditional form like the heptasyllabic quatrain could serve as a vehicle for expressing modern ideas and feelings.

206

13 Fin de siecle

At the end of one century Since Huang Zunxian wrote his Assorted Quatrains of the Year jihai in 1899, he was quite literally a fin de siecle artist. Huang's strong sense of history enabled him to understand that his own life was waning, together with the imperial system that had ruled China for more than two millennia, and as the nineteenth century drew to a close he became increasingly convinced that China was heading for dramatic changes in the next few decades. As he said in one of his latest poems addressed to Liang Qichao: People say that in the twentieth century No one will tolerate imperial systems any more. The entire world will move toward an age of great harmony; I am a student of history and know this will happen.1 This passage holds out the hope that the abolition of absolutism will produce an "age of great harmony," but Huang knew too well that China's transformation into a modern society might not be so smooth, as he wrote in a footnote to one of his 1899 quatrains: When I was in Japan, I said to our ambassador, He Ruzhang, that China must reform its laws in the Western way. China's legal reform may resemble the Selfstrengthening Movement ofJapan, or we may be forced to reform, like Egypt. It is possible we will be governed by others, like India, or partitioned, like Poland. But there will be change.2 This passage does not mention violent revolution, but in another late poem to Liang Qichao (see page 302 for complete translation) Huang describes the activities of the revolutionaries who were soon to overthrow the Qing dynasty and writes: No one can cast the net of the law wide enough That he can kill all the sons of this revolution.3 207

Criticism

But Huang was not just living at the end of a century that happened to coincide with the waning of a particular autocratic government; he was living at the end of an entire cultural tradition. Within a few years Chinese intellectuals would reject much of their ancient civilization, and by the 1920s the classical Chinese language would be abandoned by most writers. 4 The deep gulf between the most progressive late nineteenth-century writers in the classical language and the vernacular authors of the next generation is made abundantly clear by the comments of Zhou Zuoren jW|fPA (1885-1967), the brother of twentieth-century China's most universally admired writer, Zhou Shuren JWIIIf A (pen name, Lu Xun ^Hlfi [1881-1936]), and a noted literary figure himself: Huang Zunxian is a man whom I venerate, but what I respect is his farsightedness and thought, with his literary accomplishments in second place. Therefore, among his writings I value his Assorted Quatrains on Japan and his Monographs on Japan most of all, with his Draft of Poems from the Hut within the Human Realm in second

place. If I am allowed to speak frankly but discourteously, the reason I acquired his collected poems is simply because they are the works of Huang Zunxian, and this is largely the same as "loving another person so much that the affection extends even to the crows on his roof." Since I cannot speak cleverly about [classical] poetry, how can I pretend to understand it? I am not an expert on the Dao of [classical] poetry, which is one reason for my attitude. However, I also feel that the old poetry is devoid of new life, for it has already reached full maturity and has its own set qualities and nature. Although it has not exhausted all possible realms of beauty, it can be said to have more or less realized all realms of beauty possible to it. I certainly admit that there are many excellent works of old poetry, which we can appreciate and should respect . . . , yet if one uses the analogy of putting new wine into old skins in the hope of using old forms to write about modern thought, I think the effort is futile. This is, of course, my personal prejudice, and I would hardly dare use it as an excuse to rank the moderns above the ancients, but I do not believe that old poetry can be made new, and thus I am not very interested in the old-style [classical Chinese] poetry of this new age.5 Zhou's comparison of Huang Zunxian's collected poems to the "crows" on a friend's house seems quite uncharitable, but his comments about Huang Zunxian's poetry are not totally baseless, and he makes two points that must be dealt with in any critical evaluation of Huang Zunxian's place in Chinese literature. The first of these is that classical poets had already done everything possible within the received forms of classical verse. From the theoretical standpoint, this is the more interesting of the two points, but we shall defer its discussion for a while. The second point is that, although there is much classical poetry that "we can appreciate and should admire," the tradition of verse written in 208

Fin de siecle

classical Chinese seems irrelevent, because it does not address the concerns of "modern" life (i.e., of early Republican China). Zhou's comments betray something of the philistine, and if we carried them to their logical conclusion we would only read literature written by our contemporaries, but Zhou's criticism would have caused considerable anxiety to Huang Zunxian. Huang never discusses the question of how posterity will receive his poetry, but by the turn of the century he was certainly very conscious of his political agenda's increasing irrelevance to the younger generation. In one of his last poems, he imagines a conversation between Liang Qichao and the spirits of two reformers executed by the empress dowager: You told them today that China's revolutionary youth Curse and revile you as a timorous coward. . . . They know that men like you support a constitution But are certain that this is a far-fetched idea.6 These revolutionaries thought that scholars like Liang Qichao were impractical old fools, and one suspects they would not have passed their leisure hours reading Huang Zunxian's poetry. Huang and Mahler Huang Zunxian is a fin de siecle artist in more than the sense that his poems represent the end of a century and a literary tradition. Generally speaking, artists that live at the end of a particular cultural period display definite characteristics that set them apart from earlier artists. These differences are most easily observed in the visual arts, and even nonspecialists have little difficulty recognizing the stylistic contrasts between the theatrical Hellenistic sculpture of the Pergamum Altar (ca. 180 B.C.) and the classical composure of Praxiteles' (fourth century B.C.) statues, or between the ornate Perpendicular Gothic tracery of Cambridge University's King's College Chapel (1446-1515) and the severe Early Gothic of Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral (begun in 1163, with numerous later additions). Although it may be dangerous to draw comparisons between arts so different as architecture and poetry, one might also suggest that the complex styles of British authors like Robert Browning (181289), Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), and Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) herald the end of Victorian literature. 7 One of the closest parallels between Huang Zunxian's poetry and Western art is not found in the realm of literature but rather in the music of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), the great Bohemian composer best 209

Criticism

known for his nine immense symphonies. Mahler was born twelve years after Huang Zunxian, so, strictly speaking, he was not from the same generation, but he died only six years after Huang and can be considered an approximate contemporary. His only voyage outside Europe took him to the United States in 1907, where he became the conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and later the conductor of the Metropolitan Opera Company. Mahler was not quite as cosmopolitan as Huang Zunxian, but he was fascinated by other cultures, and his most popular work, Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) was a setting for German

translations of Tang-dynasty Chinese poems. Unlike some fin de siecle composers, such as Puccini (1858-1924), Mahler did not resort to quaint imitations of oriental music in The Song of the Earth, but used his Chinese sources to make universally valid statements about human life. Mahler had no firsthand knowledge of Chinese literature, but he was intrigued by what he could learn from it, just as Huang was fascinated by European music, in spite of his meager knowledge of it.8 In a wonderfully perceptive essay on Mahler, Leonard Bernstein (1918— 90) compares him to "a colossus straddling the magic dateline 1900. There he stands, his left foot (closer to the heart!) firmly planted in the rich, beloved nineteenth century, and his right, rather lessfirmly,seeking solid ground in the twentieth."9 According to Bernstein,uMahler was left straddling: his destiny was to sum up, package, and lay to ultimate rest the fantastic treasure that was German-Austrian music from Bach to Wagner."10 But a creative artist like Mahler could hardly be satisfied with a mere recapitulation of the past glories of German-Austrian music, and throughout his life he felt a compulsion "to recapitulate the line, bring it to climax, show it all in one, soldered and smelted together by his own fires."11 The result was what Bernstein calls Mahler's "exaggeration, extravagance, bombast, excessive length," traits that are exemplified by his Second Symphony (Resurrection), which stretches on for more than an hour and a half and requires an orchestra consisting of a huge string section, four flutes, four oboes, five clarinets, three bassoons, a contrabassoon, six horns, six trumpets (plus a separate band with four more horns and four more trumpets with percussion), four trombones, tuba, six kettledrums, three bells, assorted percussion, four harps, an organ, soprano and alto soloists, and a large chorus.12 Even more stupendous was the Eighth Symphony, or Symphony of a Thousand, so called because it required about a thousand performers in all. According to Bernstein, Mahler was a "manic, compulsive creature," who "took all (all!) the basic elements of German music, including the cliches, and drove them to their ultimate limits. He turned rests into shuddering silences; upbeats into volcanic preparations 210

Fin de siecle

as for a death-blow. . . . Ritardandi were stretched into near-motionlessness; accelerandi became tornadoes; dynamics were refined and exaggerated to a point of neurasthenic sensibility. . . . Mahler is German music multiplied by w."13 With the exception of some of the more abnormal aspects of Mahler's personality, these comments could be applied to Huang Zunxian's poetry. He, too, was a straddler between centuries. His left foot wasfirmlyplanted in the nineteenth century, which was in many ways more beloved to his heart than the twentieth century which his right foot was exploring, only because reason told him he should be heading in that direction. He repeatedly suggested how Chinese poetry could be reformed but failed to break with the beloved tradition in which he had been educated. He too felt a compulsion to recapitulate the past and bring it to a climax that was smelted and transmuted by his own creative fires. Sometimes this resulted in the kinds of excesses for which Mahler has been criticized. Huang created poems that were longer than any poem by an author in the classical tradition, employed a descriptive technique that outdoes Han-dynasty prose-poems in complexity, and ransacked every type of classical writing available to him to find allusions even more erudite than Du Fu or Huang Tingjian had used. Ancient-style poetry, regulated verse, the quatrain; no form of classical shi was neglected by Huang Zunxian's genius, as if he were driven by a compulsion to squeeze the entire classical tradition dry in order to achieve his literary goals. Weltschmerz and the shrug of posterity Huang Zunxian was not tortured by the same Germanic dualisms that racked Mahler's soul. We do not find "the Believer vs. the Doubter" or "the Faustian Philosopher vs. the Oriental Mystic" or "the heartbreaking duplicity" of "anxiety-ridden images . . . set up alongside images of the life of the spirit" in Huang's poetry.14 Huang Zunxian's Confucian rationalism enabled him to avoid, or at least gloss over, emotional excesses typical of Mahler, but even before Cixi's brutal coup d'etat destroyed his hopes for reform, Huang's anxiety over the possible partition of China by the Western powers and Japan was driving him into ever-deeper despair. One product of his emotional turmoil during this period is a long poem addressed to his daughter in about 1896, two years before his forced retirement (translated on page 293). At first reading, the work seems excessively obscure and disorganized, but a closer examination reveals one of Huang Zunxian's richest creations. The poem opens with a peculiar blending of Buddhism and Christianity, the description of the Buddhist pagoda in the first line being used as a 211

Criticism

metaphor for the towering steeple of the church in line 2, both images emphasizing upward motion and spiritual transcendence. The third and fourth lines continue these ideas, but in the next four lines Huang directs our attention to a large wooden cross and presents a grotesque scene of glittering foreigners' eyes and Jesus being scourged and led to his crucifixion.15 The action of these lines is especially vague, and the reader is not certain whether Huang is merely imagining the scene or describing real paintings inside the church. This strange amalgam of Buddhist transcendence and Christian martyrdom leads immediately to a passage describing Suzhou, which had recently been opened to Western trade. Huang employs paradisial allusions to suggest the magical transformation of the city under foreign influence, but, contrary to their effect in other poems, these allusions assume a sinister quality, when we read how women "vomit" silk for a foreign trade that exploits cheap Chinese labor and disrupts the Chinese economy. Only at this point does the poem reveal its connection to Huang's own life, suddenly mentioning his role in negotiations over Japan's request for extraterritoriality in Suzhou. However, this brief excursion into autobiographical reality is quickly sidetracked; we are utterly mystified by the unexplained mood shifts of the Japanese consul, who is strangely described as having a curly beard, like the British rulers in Huang's youthful Hong Kong poems.16 Then the poem abruptly shifts direction with a puzzling four-line passage about the skin colors of different races, in which Huang also mentions the ignorance and apathy of black slaves he met during his travels overseas. (Is he drawing a parallel to his conservative Chinese compatriots?) This enigmatic section is followed by an almost equally strange account of ancient Japan's barbaric customs, probably intended to emphasize how much progress Japan has made since the Meiji Restoration and to criticize the Chinese government for losing the Sino-Japanese War to China's former cultural colony. Huang hints at some underlying connection between all these loosely related subsections by returning to the religious imagery of his poem's opening passage. The violence of the crucifixion scene has disappeared, but so has the transcendence suggested by the soaring pagodas and church towers. Huang tells his daughter that her mother recites Buddhist scriptures but that Buddha's native land, India, is now ruled by foreigners, and that the Buddhist deities responsible for conquering the enemies of Buddhism no longer exist. In his late work "The Reclining Buddha of Ceylon," Huang used Buddhism as a symbol for Asian cultures besieged by Western values, so does this concluding section mean that China is now defenseless 212

Fin de siecle

against foreign aggression, and that the spiritual basis for its civilization is moribund or even dead? Huang does not provide an answer to these questions but merely asks his daughter not to show his poem to people: "Otherwise, they'll think your father's going crazy." We will never completely unravel the significance of this mysterious work, but its chaotic form, so untypical of Huang's poems, may be a product of the psychological stress he suffered during the period preceding the collapse of the Reform Movement. As we saw, Huang had negotiated a favorable deal with the Japanese consul in Suzhou, but after the Japanese government discovered that he had outmaneuvered their representative, it successfully pressured the Chinese authorities to overturn the agreement and change the venue of future negotiations. Huang finally realized that no matter how hard he labored on its behalf, the Qing government could not save itself. Gixi's bloody suppression of the Reform Movement only confirmed his deepest fears, and some of his 1899 quatrains describe the utter despair that he experienced during the last year of the nineteenth century: I sit a while after my dream, and tears stream down; I've already wastedfiftyyears of my life that will never return. There's only the past and the future (the present doesn't exist); Unending births and deaths - look at the smoke from your incense.17 Huang, the rationalist, finds no solace in Buddhism's denial of the physical world's reality; it only deepens his grief over his wasted life. Nor did the dawn of the twentieth century give him any further grounds for optimism. In a poem addressed to the exiled Liang Qichao, a few months before his own death (translated on page 303), Huang Zunxian wrote: The dagger I hid in my breast grew blunt long ago; I mourn that old age already presses upon me. You can never retrieve the days long past; Would be better off waiting for the Yellow River to run clear.18 The burden of old age weighs heavily on Huang in these lines, for as death approaches, he is certain his ambition to reform China has come to nought. But what of the future? In the same poem Huang writes that the twentieth century will witness the end of Chinese despotism, but the poem that precedes it (translated in full on page 301), one of Huang's strangest creations, is considerably less optimistic. In this somber work, Liang 213

Criticism

Qichao, who has just been struck down by an assassin overseas, arrives in Huang's bedroom, carrying his head in his hands, like some medieval Christian martyr. On his way to bid farewell to Huang, Liang has encountered the spirits of Tan Sitong and Kang Guangren, both of whom were executed by the empress dowager, but in response to their joyous reception of their fellow reformer in Heaven, he informs them that the ideals for which they sacrificed their lives are now despised by the younger generation of revolutionaries. Before Huang can make sense of what Liang Qichao tells him, Your head suddenly began to flatten against my wall Andfloodedits surface with a crimson tinge of blood. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and took a good look Alas! It was a map of China's partition!19 The twentieth century might see the demise of Chinese absolutism, but it might just as well witness the destruction of China itself. And if China were destroyed, what would be the fate of its great cultural tradition? What would happen to the poetry that he had labored on from his early boyhood? He knew that his political ideals were threatened by the Qing Court's reactionary policies and the revolutionaries' extremism, but by the century's end he was increasingly aware of the danger that posterity might shrug its shoulders at his literary creations too. Less than three years before his death, Huang wrote: In my youth I loved to write poetry and wildly proposed the idea of creating a new realm of poetry. However, my talent was limited, and I was not able to bring my talk to fruition. If one compares this situation with the new nations of the Western Hemisphere, I am but a single Puritan standing alone in the wind and snow. We must put our real hopes in men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin.20 In this passage, Huang Zunxian admits that the Poetic Revolution has failed and that he himself is merely a pioneer who took the first tentative steps into the twentieth century. Zhou Zuoren was right; the classical tradition was capable of nothing more. Huang had not revolutionized classical poetry; he had merely written its last glorious chapter. Like Gustav Mahler, he was a straddler.

214

Part III Translations

14 Early verse (ca. 1864-1868) Meditations

A vulgar scholar, who can recite one or two classics, Never stops boasting about his wonderful talent. He lifts his head proudly, when he lectures on antiquity, And speaks of the Golden Age with a gleeful rub of his palms. He claims that ancient times were the summit of history, That we must wait many centuries for another sage to appear. He mentions our present disorders in the middle of his talk And weeps so bitterly his nose starts to run. He's always copying out diagrams of chariot warfare, Raises calluses on his hands and wastes paper by the ream. He clutches an ancient manual on land tenure in one of his hands, Scratches blueprints in the dust, itching to try out its theories. But did the ancients really intend to cheat us this way? Are ancient and modern conditions so utterly different? Scholars like him never bother to step outside their libraries, And have no right to discuss our century's ills. You must understand present conditions to know your own age; (Can you comprehend people's feelings without practical experience?) Jia Yi had policies for peace and stable government; Jiang Tong had a strategy to expel the barbarians.1 The wise men of antiquity were vastly superior to this scholar, Or at least they could deal with their society's problems!2 (1, 3d) 1. Jia Yi JUPOI (200—168 B.C.) was a famous Han-dynasty poet and statesman who proposed political and military reforms that were adopted only after his death. Jiang Tong tL$i (d. 310), a Jin-dynasty author, wrote his "Treatise on moving barbarians," to eliminate the nomad threat to northern China. 2. The first number in parentheses refers to the page number of the original text in RJL. If another number follows, it is the page number of the text in one of the annotated selections of Huang's verse. A letter after the number (a, b, c, etc.) shows which anthology was consulted: 0, Huang Zunxian shixuan Jt1$jtEi^F!ll, ed. Zhong Xianpei M.K^a et al. (Guangzhou, 1985); b, Li Xiaosong ?MS$&, Huang Zunxian shixuan (Taipei repr., 1988); c, Cao Xu WM Huang Zunxian shixuan (Shanghai, 1990); d, Shimada Kumiko HE3^vH~F\ Kojunken

217

Translations In the eleventh month 0/1865, we escapefrom the rebellion to Three Rivers in Dapu county1 Our army sings songs of death instead of patriotic airs;2 We were born in the wrong age, but what can we do? Everyone flees and begs relatives for help; We have just endured famine, and now comes war. Our leaders depend upon other provinces for protection And clamor all night that the rebels are crossing the river. We hear rumors that the government has ordered a mobilization; Of course, the commander is ancient - goes to the toilet all the time!3

(15)

Songs of the Taiping rebels (two poems of four)4 I In the morning we down a hundred gallons of wine, And at evening we feast on a thousand sheep. From time to time we try out our fortunes with dice, And every night we welcome a new bride to our beds!

(18)

II Today we sleep with elder brother's wife; Tomorrow we'll enjoy a neighbor's wife. Let them all ride together on a single filly, No reason to argue about who they belong to.

(18)

(Tokyo, 1958); e, Liu Shinan filtttllf, Huang Zunxian shixuanzhu JUBISf^F^llS: (Shanghai, 1986). An asterisk after the numbers in parentheses means that the poem probably was not written at the time of the events it describes but possibly many years later. For more details about the problems of dating Huang Zunxian's verse, see page 310. 1. This and the following poems were written about the Huang family's experiences during the Taiping Rebellion, when they were forced to flee from a Taiping attack on Jiayingzhou. (See the discussion in Chapter 1.) 2. Literally, "Southern airs are not martial, sounds of death are many," an allusion to a passage in the Zuozhuan in which the music master Shi Kuang told the army of Jin not to worry about the approach of Chu's army, because when he was singing northern and southern airs the latter were not "strong and gave the tones of many deaths." Jin was in the North and Chu was a southern state. Harvard Yenching Institute Sinological index series (hereafter abbreviated HYISIS), Combined concordances to Ch'un-ch'iu, Kung-yang, Ku-liang, and Tso-chuan

(Taipei repr., 1965), 288 /Xiang M i8/6zuo?E. 3. Literally, "However, they employ an old Lianpo for general," an allusion to the Zhou dynasty general Lianpo, who wished to be employed as a commander even after he had gotten too old to control his bowel movements. See Sima Qian i^LUM, Shiji jJliG (Beijing, 1959), 81, 2448-9. 4. These poems were supposedly written in imitation of songs popular among the Taiping Rebels, but Huang uses them as a vehicle to express the horror with which he and most other upper-class Chinese viewed the Taiping armies. 218

Early verse A ballad ofChaozhou

When men are born in an age of disorder, Their best-laid schemes oft go awry. They are forced to move three times in one night And sleep wherever their feet may lead them. When my family fled together to the town of Three Rivers,1 We thought it was better than a heavenly paradise. But people do not pity the plight of strangers, And one disaster after another plagues us without mercy. A little yellow oriole warbles a dark prophecy And warns us not to linger in this town too long.2 A long river stretches straight from here to Ghaozhou; Yes, in the city of Ghaozhou we will find our asylum. On the day we departed, the north wind blew frigid; The still river water quivered as we plied our oars. We gradually approached the outskirts ofChaozhou, Where hearth smoke curled upward like knots of silk thread. Suddenly our boat could continue no farther Bandits were lurking in the forest scrub! We raised the alarm, but they were already upon us, Their boatsflyingmore swiftly than a squall of rain. Our boatmen immediately tied fast our vessel And brandished their weapons to repel the attackers. But then we realized we could not overcome them And would only incite their fury against us. I struck the boat's side and frantically shouted: "Let the bandits take whatever they want!" (We had wandered like vagrants ever since this rebellion, And hardly any valuables remained in our luggage. Yet the bandits would stuff their sacks with some booty, And we could escape being kidnapped or murdered.) But the thunder of a cannon suddenly roared in our ears; "Kill the bandits!", people shouted, and the bandits all scattered. We truly had been delivered from the jaws of a tiger, And we all sobbed with joy when we tried to speak. I could see my brothers and sisters, back in the boat, Lying paralyzed with fear like little mice. 1. Three Rivers is located about fifty kilometers east of Meizhou, in northeastern Guangdong province. 2. This line may not be a description of a real oriole singing, but it makes use of two short passages from the Classic of poetry that are related to the idea of leaving one's place of residence: "The tiny yellow bird [oriole]" and "We cannot live together / With the men of this country." See HYISIS, A concordance to Shih ching (Taipei repr., 1974), 27/131/1 and 41/187/3. 219

Translations

I called them to get up and told them to sit straight, Trying to calm them down with a few words of comfort. They leaned against their beds, faces white as ash, Claiming they never had been frightened to begin with! Alas! In this tragic age of misfortunes, My family has suffered all calamities possible. Soon we will arrive in the city of Ghaozhou, Where we can quickly seek help from kindly friends. For the time being, we sit trying to collect our wits, Collect our terrified wits by the side of this river.1

(19, lb)

Seeing off Younger Sister (two poems of three)2 I We are descended from an ancient race that hails from northern China But moved around so much people call us Hakkas or "Strangers."3 We crossed the Yangzi River and entered southern Fujian, Where we wandered back and forth 'till we reached Guangdong's seashore. We remain frugal and industrious, in the good northern fashion,4 Just like the folk of remotest antiquity. The fact that our womenfolk labor so hard Provides even more proof of the purity of our customs. At cock's crow they rise and draw water from the well; When the sun goes down, they are cartingfirewoodhome. Only on festive occasions do they wear rouge and powder; Their normal adornment is a simple skirt. We are from the Huang clan, and your groom is a Zhang, And luckily our families have never suffered any want. Yet all the way back to our grandmother's generation 1. Literally, "We cut paper banners and summon souls back, / Summon souls back by the banks of the river," an allusion to an ancient shamanistic practice of summoning the souls of the ill or mentally disturbed by various magical practices. Huang probably does not mean that the family is actually performing this ritual but is alluding to a poem by Du Fu, "The ballad of Pengyang," which describes how he was rescued by someone during his own travels. Du Fu himself is alluding to how the poet Song Yu 5f:S (ca. 290 B.c.-ca. 223 B.C.) is supposed to have summoned back the poet Qu Yuan's JEiJJ^ (34O?-278 B.C.) soul after he drowned himself, depressed by his ruler's failure to adopt his policies. See HYISIS, Du Fu, A concordance to the poems o/Tu Fu (Taipei repr., 1966), 58/19/32. 2. "Younger sister": Huang's sister, Zhenyu 3^3£, was married to a young man surnamed Zhang 3H in 1866. 3. "Hakka": The literal meaning of Hakka (Kejia, in Mandarin) is "guest families" or "outsiders," a term that probably arose as a result of the Hakkas' migrations from somewhere in northern China to their present homes in the provinces of southern China. For more detail, refer to the discussion of Huang's Hakka ancestry in Chapter 1. 4. In modern Beijing, people from Shanxi province are still the butt of jokes about their frugality, similar to those told about Scotsmen in England or North America. 22O

Early verse

Our women have engaged in every kind of toil. We Hakka people seem to work by instinct, And nobody labors harder than the females of our family. As I send you off to your husband, I suddenly think, What a pity it is that you weren't born a man! (29, 9b) II Our mother is gentle and tenderhearted by nature, And she loves you more dearly than a precious pearl. When you were a child, she patted you constantly And wouldn't let you leave her for even a second. Now she is about to send you off to your groom, Clasping your hand, reluctant to let you go. Your new mother-in-law is a melancholy widow, Her heart oppressed by somber thoughts. Your brothers- and sisters-in-law are still young children, Aflockof chicks peeping for their mother to feed them. Your grandmother-in-law manages the household, Better than a man (or so people say). She meticulously doles out the rice and salt And tends her melons and gourds with unceasing industry. Their family is full of young civil service graduates, Intensely proud of their official caps and gowns. They constantly harass the household's young women, And the girls themselves are always cursing their brothers.1 However, you must strive to be gentle and tactful; You must wait on their pleasure both day and night. Yes, it is on their pleasure that you must wait, For only this way will my mind be at ease. Your first month of marriage will soon come to an end, And when you come visiting, we'll have a good heart-to-heart talk.

(31, 12b)

A trip to Lake Abundant (one poem of three)2

Their deep green cleansed by a sprinkle of rain, A thousand bamboos rise in a dense, crowded forest. Lotus leaves stand erect, so slender and graceful Like millions of emeralds spitting dewy beads from their mouths. Willow branches bend low on all sides of the lake, Shaking and bobbing in time with the breeze. 1. Literally, "Constantly cursing like Niixu," the sister of China's first poet known by name, Qu Yuan. Niixu upbraided her brother after he was exiled from court. See Sibu congkan P3 P$ HfJ (hereafter abbreviated SBCK), Chuci buzhu Hlffiffi, "Lisao" 811$, 1, 1 ib. 2. Lake Abundant, now known as West Lake, is located near Huizhou, in Guangdong province. 221

Translations

In the middle lies a house with only a few rooms, Surrounded by a yard that is moderate in size. On the western horizon Gauze Peak towers up, The shore of Lake Abundant curves to the house's left. When you close the garden gate, the peak disappears, But I've carved my own grotto and made a little mountain from stones. Rice stalks rustle by the house'sfronteaves; Behind, in the back yard, a millstone grinds. I lean on a staff to look atflowersin the morning, And have no time to sit until night's approach. At noontime I roll down mottled bamboo curtains And nap, with a stack of books for a pillow. I have a chat with my wife about household affairs, Then call my son to see how his lessons are going. Occasionally I hear a faint knock at the door An old peasant has dropped by for a friendly visit. Fair reader, do you think that the master of this house, Is really me, or some other person? I'm going to move all my furniture here soon, Then just sit and wait for my neighbors' greetings! (37, 20b)

222

15 The growing talent (1868-1877) Mixed emotions I When I read the classics, in the days of my youth, I felt something was wrong as soon as the book's cover opened. For the language of antiquity and our modern speech Are more remote from each other than alien countries. Ancient Chinese is a message translated over and over, Which must be deciphered like some barbaric tongue. Fathers and teachers pass it on to later generations, But even they've forgotten the reason for this practice. It seems I was born about a thousand years too late; My dialect is low-class, and I speak with a drawl. Of course, the classics have survived to our age, Because old Confucius edited them up north long ago.1 But if you intend to read these venerable works, You must first understand their obsolete language. Many renowned scholars of Tang and Song times Wrote stacks of commentaries on these classical books. Latecomers, they relied on their imaginations And probed Chinese history back to remotest antiquity. They explained ancient theories that the ancients didn't know2 And described antique artifacts that never existed. Their absurd explanations could fool most people; 1. According to ancient tradition, Confucius (551-479 B.C.) edited a number of the Confucian School's canonical texts. Confucius himself was from the state of Lu, located in the northern province of Shandong. 2. Literally, "Nature and Heaven were something that antiquity did not have," a reference to a passage in Confucius' Analects which states that there is no way to know Confucius' ideas on Nature and Heaven because he did not speak about these things. Huang is poking fun at the Song dynasty neo-Confucians who used such metaphysical concepts as Heaven and Nature in their own philosophy, in spite of their reverence for Confucius. See HYISIS, A concordance to the analects of Confucius (Taipei repr., 1966), 8/5/13 (a).

223

Translations (Some men worship ancestors whose names they've forgotten.) They resemble a fellow who wears a fur cap in the tropics, Or a man tracking lost sheep on forking mountain paths.1 Yan's prime minister was delighted with the letter he received, But his favorite passage just happened to be a misprint!2 (40, 304a) II The gods carved out our world from shapeless chaos And made our great globe rotate in a circle, But not even Lishou, who invented our numbers,3 Gould calculate how many aeons have passed since that time. Two sage-kings of antiquity created our writing,4 Five thousand years before I came into this world, But when men of later centuries examine my works, They will think/was born in remotest antiquity! Foolish Chinese scholars all worship the ancients And spend their lives studying stacks of mouldy paper. Expressions not found in the Confucian classics Are too risque for them to use in their poems. Rubbish that the ancients dumped in a trashbin, Makes the mouths of these scholars drool with saliva. By instinct they plagiarize and pilfer the ancients, And accuse original authors of heinous crimes.5 1. Allusion to a passage in the works of Liezi $|"f (probably afictionalfigure,reputed to have lived in the fourth century B.C.), which recounts an anecdote about a neighbor of one Yangzi who lost a sheep on a mountain path. The man requested his clansmen and Yangzi's servants to chase after it, in spite of Yangzi advising him that it was futile to search for sheep on forking mountain paths, no matter how many people participated in the search. The point of the original passage is that overly subtle thought only leads to mental confusion. Here Huang equates the later scholars of the Confucian School to the foolish man in search of his sheep. See Sibu beiyao VM^ffijM, Liezi MT (Taipei, 1966), 8, 12b. 2. The order of the lines has been rearranged slightly for the sake of easier comprehension. The literal meaning of the last two lines in the English translation is "The prime minister of Yan was delighted by the letter from Ying [the capital city of the southern state Chu], / But when the candle was raised there were writing mistakes," an allusion to an anecdote in the writings of the legalist philosopher Hanfei. Supposedly, a man from Ying was dictating a letter to his secretary at night, but, because the light was too dim, he asked the secretary to raise the candle, and the secretary mistakenly wrote the words "raise the candle" into the text of the letter. When the prime minister of Yan received the letter he was not disturbed by this misprint but attempted to interpret it in a highly ingenious manner that had absolutely nothing to do with the original meaning of the letter. Huang is saying that the later commentators on Confucius' writings resemble the prime minister of Yan in their ridiculous misinterpretations of his thought. See Han Fei H # , A concordance to Han-fei Tzu, ed. Wallace Johnson (San Francisco, 1975), 208, I2f. 3. According to Chinese tradition, Lishou invented numbers. 4. Literally, Fu Xi and the Yellow Emperor, two legendary culture heroes of the Chinese. 5. When asked about this line, Qian Esun suggested another interpretation: "Those who recklessly create [i.e., with no basis in tradition] commit a host of crimes." 224

The growing talent

All men were created from the same yellow earth, So why are we ignorant, and the ancients so wise? With every moment the present becomes past, Then where, after all, does antiquity begin? I open my glass window to let in more light And burn sticks of incense in my tall censer. On my left side I set out an inkstone from Duanxi;1 On my right is displayed Tang-dynasty paper.2 I intend to write in my very own language And refuse to be limited by ancient fashions. Even if I use the current slang of our age To compose the poems I intend to publish, People who livefivethousand years from now Will be utterly astounded by their hoary antiquity!

(42, 18c)

Hakka hill songs

By local custom, we love making up songs that young men and women sing to each other, rather in the tradition of antiquity's love songs by Ziye or the hummed refrains from Wu. I selected a number that one could transcribe without difficulty.3 I People always worry about lovers in the next life, But I'm contented with the husband standing before me. I'm constantly with him, twenty-four hours a day; When he sits or walks, we're always shoulder to shoulder!

(56, 27b)

II Whenever one family's daughter prepares for her wedding, Girls of ten other families study their faces in the mirror. The bridal procession's bronze gong beats time to a song Which echoes in the bride's heart and sings: "Darling! Darling!"4

(58, 23c)

III I married you as a baby some thirteen years ago; Now I admire myself as I comb my long hair. 1. A place in Guangdong famous for its high-quality stone used for making traditional inkstones. Calligraphers grind sticks of ink on inkstones moistened with water to make ink for brush writing. 2. Literally, "On my right is displayed writing paper of Xue Tao" j^fll (768-831), a famous Tang-dynasty courtesan-poet, who preferred to write her verse on high-quality paper of a variety still made by hand in Sichuan province. 3. Since the original songs were sung in the Hakka dialect, not all the vocabulary could be written in literary Chinese. 4. The Chinese word for "darling" or "groom" (lang) can be used as an onomatopoetic word to represent the sound of a gong. 225

Translations

I remember how at first we nursed from the same breast And then napped together in my mother-in-law's embrace!1

(59, 28b)

Reactions to Hong Kong (seven poems often)

I A curly-bearded foreigner governs the colony of Hong Kong, Where the wealthiest merchants have eyes of sapphire. Here they inscribe Victoria's image on round golden coins,2 And gleaming church towers pay tribute to Jesus. Gas lamps flash like silver flowers on flaming trees; Fancy embroidery embellishes carpets of Kashmir. A race of titans carved out the port of Hong Kong, And now a city of immortals exists in this realm of flesh!

(67, 38b)

II Music and song burst from the land by the sea; Wineshops and restaurants line the hillsides like a grove. A thousand houses gather in great concentric circles; A foot of land is worth more than a thousand gold pieces. The people all follow the customs of foreigners And even mimic the twitterings of Western tongues. Chinese compradors flaunt their vast fortunes of millions;3 Their mansions startle you with a tomblike silence.

(69, 39b)

III Since they have accumulated huge stores of gold, They have pleasure palaces in which they can spend it. They get lost in jeweled topknots of Western-style hairdos4 Or dissipate themselves in fleshpots with flowerlike courtesans. Dragon ladies display their charms in front of fancy carved mirrors, And mermaids compete to "weave brocade" for their clients. Bamboo-curtained windows extend ten miles in this vernal land; Where evenings of enchantment never come to an end. (70, 2a) 1. Many Hakka marriages were arranged shortly after children were born, and the "bride" was brought up in the same household as her "groom." 2. Literally, "Golden wheels inscribe the Martial Empress." The Martial Empress is the Empress Wu iK (reg. 684-705) of the Tang dynasty, China's only female sovereign, who took the title "Golden Wheel" (Jinlun). Huang is comparing Queen Victoria to her, largely because both were women. See the discussion on page 99. 3. Literally, "Yellow markers, an accumulation often million," which refers to Prince Xiao Hong W(%i of the Liang dynasty (502-57). Whenever he accumulated ten million in cash, he would erect a yellow marker to show off his wealth. See Li Yanshou $ M # , Nanshi ^ ^ (Beijing, 1973), 51, 1278. 4. Literally, "Man [southern barbarian] clouds lost among jeweled topknots," very likely a reference to the Western-style hairdos current among upper-class Hong Kong prostitutes at the time. 226

The growing talent IV Their museum is superior to our ancient books of learning,1 Set up in a broad mansion with a thousand rooms. There are statues of bronze foreigners you can rub with your hands. (What a pity you can't take the displays back home)! Giant birds stand sentinel like human guards, And a monstrous whale leaps from the ocean's frothy waves. The British government rules both the land and the sea The power of the human race is quite beyond all belief! (71, 2a) V Beyond the incessant stream of Hong Kong's traffic, Painted boats skim smoothly over the ocean's surface. The English here live like Buddhas in Heaven; Even their Chinese servants take pride in their warlike masters. People ride hydrogen balloons a thousand feet into the sky; A hundred horses dash 'round the racetrack, swift as the wind.2 Only when the police patrol the streets with their red billy clubs Does the bustling markets' racket suddenly drop to a hush.

(72, 27c)

VI Ships with northern China as their final destination3 Arrive from the West like fabled steeds of Ferghana.4 Their propellers all beat the ocean's waves to the same rhythm, And twenty-one-gun salutes thunder across the harbor each day. Hong Kong is an artery between East and West, Where merchandise and money pile up in great heaps. If you happen to climb a hill to get a good view of the ocean, Notice how China's vast expanse recedes far into the distance.

(73, 2a)

1. Literally, "The account of wide-ranging things," an allusion to the book with this title written by the Western Jin author, Zhang Hua Wi^ (232-300). The first two syllables of the book's Chinese title (Bowuzhi) coincide with the first two syllables of the word for "museum" (bowuguan), and the book itself is a strange collection of legends and stories with an undeniable resemblance to the wide-ranging collections of nineteenth-century museums. The British government established a museum in Hong Kong in 1865, probably the first public museum anywhere on Chinese soil. 2. Riding in balloons was popular at fairs in nineteenth-century Hong Kong, and the racetrack is still well attended. 3. Literally, "He pointed north [and said] we will drink at Huanglong," an allusion to a speech by the Song general Yue Fei L&^I (1103-41), who was delighted about an enemy soldier coming over to his side and was trying to encourage his men to retake northern China from the Jin, after which he would hold a banquet at Huanglong, one of the Jin capitals. Huang is using this allusion to describe how many of the ships bound for northern China first stopped at Hong Kong. For the source of Huang's allusion, see Tuo Tuo I&I&, Songshi 5 S i (Beijing, 1977), 365, 11390-1. 4. Literally, "From the West, heavenly horses come," an allusion to the horses of Central Asia, which were highly prized in ancient China. 227

Translations VII When the foreigners first sent ambassadors to ask for land, Our Qianlong emperor was at the height of his glory.1 Who in China was responsible for our terrible blunders? It's too late to grieve for lost territory now.2 The English carved out Hong Kong from empty wilderness,3 And now it rises to glory like a mirage from the sea. On the mountain I hear a flag snap in the breeze I almost mistook it for our own dragon banner. 4

(74, 2a)

Thinking ofXiao Guangtai on a spring evening Horse carts never rumble down my secluded lane;5 I can close my gate and nap with a book for my pillow. In my view, no one in this world is superior to you, And our friendship was cemented a decade ago. As soon as I awake, my dreams chase after rain showers; The spring season drives the half-opened blossoms frantic. A thousand flowering trees have reddened outside my wall; When will you find time to look at my crimson kapoks?6

(95, 46b)

Assorted poemsfrom the Hut within the Human Realm (three poems of eight) I The spring wind puffs against the trees in my garden, And they sigh together as if autumn had arrived. Suddenly we're in for an all-night shower, 1. Qianlong's long reign (1736—96), a period of unequalled peace and prosperity, is usually considered the golden age of the Qing dynasty. Huang is referring to the Macartney Mission to China (1783), when the British unsuccessfully requested territory on the coast of Guangdong for commercial purposes. 2. Literally, "Loss of Mount Yanzhi in Yan," an allusion to a song composed by the Xiongnu 1^1 #X (probably the ancestors of the Huns) to mourn the loss of this territory in northern China; here Huang means the cession of Hong Kong to the British as a result of the Opium War. See Sima Qian, 110, 2909. The passage does not appear in the original but is found in the commentary, or Zhenoyi lEH, by the Tang scholar Zhang Shoujie 3E^tp. 3. Literally, "Can Cong carved it out of nothing," Can Cong being a legendary ancient ruler of a state in Sichuan to whom Huang is comparing the British. Before British rule, Hong Kong was only a minorfishingvillage. 4. The Qing dynasty's flag had a yellow dragon as its emblem. 5. Allusion to a famous line by Tao Qian, "There is no rumbling of carts and horses," which stresses Tao's detachment from the world around him. See SBCK, Tao Qian ^M,Jianzhu Tao Yuanmingji Mf£mffl9iM, 3, 30b. 6. The kapok is a tropical tree (Glossampinus malabaricus) with redflowersthat produce a fluff used to stuff pillows and make life preservers. 228

The growing talent

And I climb a tower which overlooks our river. Drenched clouds wriggle free from craggy peaks; Layers of drifting waves slap against the sky. A seagull dozes drowsily on a sandy bank, Ignorant that the waters are already rising.

(l 18, 54b)

II Plantain leaves clap each other in rhythm, And each clump of bamboo hums its individual tune. The soughing of the wind hints at rain to come, And the sighs of falling leaves fool me into thinking it's autumn. As the gathering dew thickens, cold crickets grow silent; Branches start to sway and scare magpies in their shade. Then the trembling lamps dim - one by one And I sit alone until dawn's first tentative light. (121, 57b) III I stroll with my cane to visit willow catkins, But drop in on a neighbor, entirely by chance. His taro plants have grown as tall as a man, And scraggly vines enshroud the walls of his house. We have a long chat about this decade's disorders And complain that the government's not doing enough. Water from spring rains has filled all the ponds, And from time to time we hear the croak of a frog.

(JWS 37, 333a)

On the road to Wuqing (one poem of four)

The people here are as frugal as folks in Shanxi,1 But they're not as vigorous as Hebei's fighters.2 Tiles fall from roofs, like scales from a dragon's coat; Walls bear a heavy freight of plastered cow dung. The people's greatest worry is the big size of their families, For this desolate, barren land can hardly grow crops. I pity them most of all when they bow down around my horse, Middle-aged women begging for copper coins - with a shriek.

(128, 4401)

A moonlit night

The courtyard's parasol trees invite phoenixes to perch; Six-foot bamboo curtains wriggle across ourfloorin a breeze. 1. See note 4 on page 220. 2. In antiquity, the area around modern Hebei was near the frontier with the nomads, and its inhabitants were famous for their military prowess. 229

Translations I remember how we spoke with each other by the damask window To the second and third watch, in the cool of the evening.1 (X33)

An account of myfeelings, presented again to GongAiren and Zhang Yeqiao The eight-legged essays (our national disgrace),2 Arose some six centuries before our own age. They flourished like bacteria, under the Song and the Mongols (Alas! Our Manchu dynasty followed Chinese fashion here).3 Everyone is eager to read the successful test papers, And scholars swarm around them like ants after carrion. Any useful book is thrown to the winds, While everyone grinds away at these puerile studies. People are ignorant of both past and present: (They resemble archers who flex arrowless bows). Chinese intellectuals lack vigor and spirit; You pity how they gasp out their last feeble breaths. They muddled through the last peaceful era in court regalia (No worthy men then, but luckily no wicked ones either).4 Afterward the Taipings suddenly rose in rebellion, And foreign disasters struck us one after the other.5 Scholars delivered fine speeches about defeating our enemies, As the Chinese empire shuddered in spasms of fear. Our emperor's ancestors provided these experts a living (Doesn't that seem a waste of public funds now)? Sweating oxen strain to pull cartloads of their writings, None of which could rescue our nation from disaster. If the laws of our country are not soon reformed, China will never produce heroes or wise men again. And if our dynasty is really on the verge of renewal, Shouldn't we expect some great men to appear about now?

(l7&> 3 l a )

1. This poem was written to Huang's wife. 2. The "eight-legged essays" were a rigid and exacting form of prose essay used in the civil service examinations during Ming and Qing times. In common with many Qing scholars, Huang considered them to be harmful to intellectual life. See the discussion in Chapter 1. 3. Literally, "Ming fashion." 4. Huang is referring to the long, relatively peaceful reigns of the Qianlong (1736-96) and Jiaqing (1796—1821) emperors. 5. The Taiping Rebellion, one of the most catastrophic wars in human history, started in Guangxi province in 1851. The Opium War (1840-2) was the first European invasion of China. 230

The growing talent A parting poem for Zhang Sijing that I also showed to Chen Yuanzhuo

My horse was headed east, but I received new orders, So now it's back to Beijing, as you two head home. Both of you got drunk at our going-away party, But I sat staring sadly at the robe Mother made me. A thousand misgivings assail me, all at the same time; We've traveled together three years and are reluctant to part. Please send my greetings to everyone in my family Don't forget to tell them I'm getting fat around the waist!

231

(!95>

16 Tokyo(1876-1882)

Evening outings to Lake Shinobazu Lake Shinobazu, which is in Ueno1 and is also named West Lake, is a famous scenic spot in the vicinity of Tokyo. I used to enjoy going there on evening outings during the long, hot summer season, and sometimes I would not return home until late at night. I Just awakened from my dream, I open the door and watch the rain; A blotch of setting sun glows on the painted screen. Dragonflies wing away, docilely following the west wind The blossoms are too weak to make them drop in for a chat. (221,81b)* II A geisha bends her waist and dances in time with the throbbing drum; Jade rings inlay the silver lamp; my wine's surface ripples. Where incense smoke curls upward, by the flower arrangement's side, They no longer display a pair of swords in black lacquer scabbards. H u a n g Z u n x i a n ' s n o t e : The Japanese use an alcove at the side of their room to display a censer, together with a flower arrangement. In previous ages, the samurai were armed with pairs of swords, and when they attended banquets they used to hang them on a wall in the alcove, a custom that has been discontinued. (223, 180a)*

III One tiny sip of subtly flavored cherry tea Makes a snack that refreshes like dewdrops on lotus. Then black-robed waitresses bring out green, rippling wine, With transparent sashimi, sliced thinner than paper. IV Rows of bamboo appear vaguely across the lake's water, Together with blooming plum trees, all enshrouded in dark mist. An indistinct outline makes faint, muffled sounds: Someone is trampling the fallen blossoms - wooden clogs in hand. 1. This is now in Ueno Park in Tokyo. 232

(224, 180a)*

(226, 85b)*

Tokyo V The moon climbs my window's lattice in the depth of the night; Lotusflowerswaft their subtle fragrance from a faraway place. The censer's smoke settles; the gauze window is silent; I don't know how to meditate, but at least I can read holy scriptures!

(227)*

A song of cherry blossoms

People ride on jewel-incrusted saddles and palfries of gold, Carrying wine goblets in shell-inlaid lacquer boxes. Umbrellas like butterfly wings protect Western woolen suits (The men are titled "mister" and the women called "madame"). 1 People dance beneath each tree, and by every single flower, Others sit or walk along, humming poems to themselves. Those who touch or pick blossoms first wipe their hands clean;2 People rub shoulders with each other as they mill back and forth. The Sumida River flashes green, and its surface ripples lightly, With millions of blossoms ablaze on both banks. The whole city views all these wonderful flowers, And everyone sings in chorus about the blooms of cherry. An old man stands at the roadside, sighing over and over: "The shogun's sunflowers were superior to the imperial chrysanthemum. 3 Today there may be more sightseers than fish in a pond, But this is nothing, compared to the golden age of the shoguns. When they ruled our country, Japan still knew how to fight Minamoto defeated Taira, battling like a pair of fierce tigers. 4 But then Tokugawa reigned peacefully for many generations, Transforming the old battlefields into a paradise on earth. The Tokugawa shoguns loved flowers, and good parties, too; When they viewed cherry blossoms, they brought flutes and drums. Each of Tokyo's three hundred noble families5 1. Huang is commenting on the incongruous mixture of Japanese and Western customs in Meji Japan. 2. The Japanese cleaned their hands to display respect for the cherry blossoms. 3. The imperial emblem is the chrysanthemum, whereas the sunflower was the emblem of the Tokugawa shoguns, who had ruled Japan before being overthrown during the Meiji Restoration. The old man speaking throughout the rest of the poem represents the conservative opinions of some of the sinophile scholars whom Huang had come to know in Tokyo. For a discussion of Huang's relationship with these Japanese conservatives, see Kamachi, 36-43. 4. Reference to the civil wars between the Taira ^F" and Minamoto W> clans (the Gempei War) for control over the imperial court, which resulted in the victory of the Minamoto, the total eclipse of the emperor's authority, and the establishment of the first shogunate at Kamakura HUt (1185—1333). See George Sansom, A history of Japan (Stanford, 1958), vol. 1, 289-305. 5. Literally, the "hostage families," who were relatives of feudal lords required to live at Edo (modern Tokyo) under the watchful eyes of the Tokugawa shoguns.

233

Translations

Vied in spending gold to train dancers and musicians. They squandered millions in cash to build geisha houses; Cherryflowersshimmered on the ocean, like a radiant tide. Crowds of wandering samurai made these gay quarters their lair; Even holy monks went astray in these bewitching fleshpots. People wrote myriad poems and lovesongs in literary contests;1 They hung red gauze headdresses on tree branches as prizes. They displayed lanterns in the seventh month, and danced in the ninth; But the Cherry Blossom Festival was the climax of the year. Countless cherryflowersexhaled misty clouds of perfume; The revelers treaded a brocade path embroidered with petals. Bright buildings and pavilions soared into heaven's void, Where suddenly you saw a thousand exquisite trees in bloom. Flowering trees from other counties were carted to Tokyo; A thousand workers moved them away when their blossoms all fell.2 It was a ten-day festival when the whole country went wild, A joyous celebration which lasted from morning to night. This age of peace endured for two hundred years;3 We heard no war drums, only the flute and the samisen. Cherry was proclaimed king, everyone bowed down before him; People claimed our nation was divine, holier than heaven itself. But then giant waves surged eastward from foreign oceans, Terrifying Japan's dragons, ghosts, Buddhas, and gods. The powers of Europe grew stronger every day, Overcoming the black slaves and the yellow race bit by bit. A poison fog of opium spread across the vast seas, But we closed off our country and slept like dead men. One day cannons roared from foreign men-of-war, Rudely waking the people from sweet cherry blossom dreams.4 I have heard that the entrance to China's Peach Blossom Paradise Is completely concealed by shadowy clouds, And that its inhabitants know nothing of recent history.5 1. Reference to one of the classics ofJapanese literature, the Manyoshu mMM, or Collection of ten thousand leaves, the earliest anthology of poetry in the Japanese language (fourth through mideighth centuries). For an English translation, see Ian Hideo Levy, tr., The ten thousand leaves (Princeton, 1981). The lovesongs, or baizhu STT (literally, "white ramie songs"), were originally southern Chinese folk songs from the region of modern Jiangsu province, composed during the fifth century. 2. During the festival, potted cherry trees were moved to Tokyo as soon as they started blooming and were immediately removed after their blossoms fell. 3. The Tokugawa shogunate lasted from 1603 to 1867. 4. Reference to Commodore Perry's (1794-1858) opening of Japan in 1854, one of the causes of the Tokugawa shogunate's downfall and the beginning of the Meiji reforms. 5. The Peach Blossom Paradise is described in a poem by Tao Qian, preceded by an even more famous prose preface. It was a Daoistic paradise inhabited by people who had been cut

234

Tokyo I've heard Heaven's carpet of blossoms lies four inches deep, An idea that drives me wild when I read holy scriptures.1 I offer flowers and bow down to our emperors' divine ancestor,2 Praying fervently to the hundreds of gods up in Heaven - 3 I beseech you, close our country for a thousand years more; Let the sky rain down fresh flowers every day of the year, Let the season of cherry blossoms never come to an end!"4

(231, 90b)*

A visit to Hakone (three poems of four) I A precipitous path twists and turns in the distance, A route so constricted even birds won't attempt it.5 I'm too petrified to take even a single step forward, As if some executioner were about to slice off my feet. Then someone summons a sedan chair to ride in, All in all, just shy of two feet in width. My arms and legs dangle clumsily outside; I have to bend my waist and arch my back to get in. The carriers seem to hale from the Land of Nudes, With wrinkled skin that cracks like burned tortoise shells.6 Their bodies are tatooed with writhing dragons; Only their breasts are covered by vermillion stockings. They hoist my chair suddenly on top of their shoulders, off from the outside world for centuries. Here the old man is comparing the ideal life of Peach Blossom Spring to the isolationism of the Tokugawa shogunate. Both the poem and its preface are translated in Tao Qian, The poetry of T'ao Ch'ien, tr. James Robert Hightower (Oxford, 1970), 254-8. 1. Huang's original refers to the Avatamsakasutra (Huayanjing WWcM. in Chinese, or Flower ornament scripture), which is only one major Buddhist scripture famous for its numerous "flowery" descriptions of Buddhist paradises. For a sample translation, see Thomas Cleary, tr., Theflower ornament scripture (Boston, 1984), vol. 1, 55. 2. Literally, "I offer flowers and bow twice to Konohananosakuyahime." In the Shinto religion, Konohananosakuyahime HHPM is considered the great-grandmother of the emperor Jimmu ttlK (traditional dates 660-585 B.C.) and is thought to be a descendant of the sun goddess. See Yamakawa Uichi ill J11 mjingijiten ttlRSH (Tokyo, 1924), 294. 3. Literally, "I report my prayers to the revered gods, human emperors, and hundred spirits in Mitsuhonokuni slif jSlij," a Shinto equivalent of paradise. These celestial beings were all believed to be ancestors of the present imperial family. See Yamakawa, 681. 4. These lines are based on a famous poem by Gong Zizhen. See the discussion on page 111. 5. These poems were the result of a two-week vacation Huang took in the Izu-Hakone region in the summer of 1880. Mount Hakone rises along what was a strategic section of the Tokkaido Road, the main artery for trade in premodern Japan, and its beautiful scenery makes it a popular vacation spot today. 6. Allusion to the Shang- and Zhou-dynasty practice of telling fortunes by studying the cracks in burned tortoise shells inscribed with questions addressed to ancestors.

235

Translations

Balancing its weight with a pair of wooden poles. One supports me in front, another holds me from behind; First they tilt me upward, then lurch suddenly back. I feel like an ant crawling on a whirling millstone, Or a snake slithering its way out of a narrow crevice. I hop like a catfish hooked on the end of a rod, Or lumber like a tortoise crawling along sandy beaches. The carriers belch louder than a gale wheezing through a pipe; The sweat oozes down their bodies like a rice cooker's steam. Whenever they get tired, they begin to sing songs In a dialect that sounds like the chirping of birds. We twist a thousand times through mist-laden trees; Flowers blown by my sedan chair are seen in a flash. A sheer cliff overlooks a bottomless chasm; One glance and my tongue is glued to my mouth. There's no one to call for help any place on this mountain; One little slip, and it's goodbye, fair world. These fellows won't take a breather on this terrifying path, Shifting their load to the other shoulder from time to time. We climb straight up to the highest peak's summit, And for the first time I realize the true size of this world! II Where a host of mountains stick up through the clouds, Someone built a hut so he could live on the summit. A boundless sea of a million clouds lies below, Floating in the void without an inch of dry land. I open my window when I get up to watch them, But they're so vague and indistinct, there's nothing to see. Suddenly one cloud flies straight in my direction, A single lone cloud which refuses to leave. It begins to transform itself into a dragon, Which coils and writhes around the pillars of my hut. I quickly slam the window to lock it outside, But it seeps through the cracks in tiny wisps. In an instant it crams my hut to bursting; Its pure vapors inundate the door and the windows. I untie my luggage and open my bags, And call my servants to help me pack it inside. But then a great wind whirls over the earth, Rolling the mist into a giant black ball. I hear the indistinct rumble of distant thunder, Which begins to howl like a furious baby. From up here I can tell that millions of homes Have already been deluged in three feet of water. But then I fall asleep with my legs braced up, 236

(260)

Tokyo

Dreaming that I ride on a dancing red dragon. Waters from the Milky Way pour down in a torrent, Gushing in the direction of northern China.1 I flip over and rise to gaze toward the west, And my dream goes crashing into a deep bank of clouds.

(263, 56c)

III There are no famous rivers in all ofJapan, But a big lake is swaying and dancing before me!2 It embraces an area of a hundred miles; You can make out its bottom five hundred feet down. It was created during the reign of the god-emperor Jimmu,3 Has neither grown nor diminished since ancient times. Hidden springs feed it from the sides day and night, But no one knows where its secret currents flow. It is solid blue, purer than heaven's bright void, Rising above worldly phenomena, relying on nothing. When you raise your head, only the sun and moon equal it (Two wheels in the sky that chafe and jolt one another). I came for the purpose of taking a boat ride, But the lake is so vast, I lose my direction. I pretend that I'm journeying across a blue ocean, Riding on the wind, smashing through giant waves. I have no ambition to climb every mountain nearby, So I float on this sea so vast and boundless. Formerly the Kanto region was full of great heroes, Who declared independence and then battled for power.4 Moats of boiling water guarded their passes; No one dared climb city walls smooth as lacquer. But recently the Japanese Agricultural Ministry Has proposed a scheme to fill in lakes. They want to dredge watercourses and dry out this sea, Change it to thousands of rich, fertile fields. They debate the idea's feasibility in a thousand reports, 1. Literally, Bingzhou and Yuzhou, in Shanxi and Henan, respectively. 2. The lake that Huang celebrates in this poem is Lake Ashinoko H[$f], now in the FujiHakone-Izu National Park, with an area of 6.8 square kilometers (2.6 square miles) and a circumference of approximately 18 kilometers (11 miles). It was formed inside an ancient volcanic crater. 3. See footnote 2, on page 235. 4. The Kanto WiM. (literally, East of the Pass) region came under the control of Minamoto Yoritomo M H ^ (1147-99), t n e founder of the Kamakura shogunate, who made the Kanto city Kamakura his capital as opposed to Kyoto, the emperor's residence in Kansei ISM (literally, West of the Pass). Real power soon slipped from the hands of the Minamoto clan, and six of the Kamakura shoguns were set up as puppets by the Hqjo 3tW clan, whose power was based in the Izu-Hakone region.

237

Translations But I'd rather forget both good and bad government.1 Better to be a disciple of the mist and the waves Please, give me some space to row my own boat!

(264)

Assorted quatrains on Japan (fifteen poems of two hundred)2 /. Mount Fuji Mount Fuji surges from the earth and scrapes heaven's vault, Its lone summit sprouting like a lotus from the East Sea's waves. Snow from two thousand five hundred years ago Is piled in one white expanse that never melts. (23, 1104, 60c)

//. Earthquakes When the earth quakes, the thunder panics, and all creation howls, Deep down in the ground subterranean waves gush. People worry day and night about the sky falling on their heads; They blame the tortoise gods for losing their grip on our planet!3 (25, 1104,265a)

///. Fire departments (new version) Red flames shimmer on the ocean and set surrounding houses ablaze; A white rain flies through a hose and fills the whole sky. I had just been startled from my dreams by the ringing of the bell, When I heard the truck racing back - the fire put out! (47, 1110)

1. Literally, "I would forget both Yao [an ancient sage-ruler] and Jie [the evil last ruler of the Xia dynasty]," an allusion to Zhuangzi's apolitical Daoist philosophy, expressed in the passage "Rather than praising Yao and criticizing Jie, it would be better to forget both of them." See HYISIS, Zhuang Zhou ffiJ3, A concordance to Chuang Tzu (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), 16/6/23. 2. For a discussion of this series of poems, see Chapter 7. The subtitles for each quatrain are not in the original but have been supplied for the sake of clarity. The prose explanations for each quatrain written by Huang have been omitted, because they seem redundant in English translation. The first number refers to Huang Zunxian,iftfon zflshi shi 0 ^tt^P-INf, ed. Saneto Keishu JHSnKff and Toyoda Minoru KfflSl (Tokyo, 1977), the text of which has been followed in case of variants. The second number refers to RJL, and a third number, if present, to the annotations mentioned in note 2 to the first poem in Part III. 3. Reference to the popular belief in premodern China and Japan that the world is supported on the backs of giant tortoises. 238

Tokyo IV. Mansions of the former aristocratsl

The trees' leaves are fresh and green, but few blossoms remain; Vegetables bolt in neglected gardens - the spring season departs. The young swallowsflyaway from the halls of their birth; The old aristocrats' mansions have mostly changed masters. (49, 1111, 161 d)

V. Newspapers (new version)

If you want to know antiquity, read history books; If you want to know the present, then read the newspapers. They embody the thoughts of all schools of philosophy; The four corners of our world now speak this one language!

VI

(53, 1111, 267a)

Girls' normal schools

Clutching books, they kneel on a carpet of red; Reading finished, they take out needles and embroider robes. They return home and ask their parents forflowersand fruit; Then when no one's looking, they stitch maps of the world!

VII

(59, 1114)

Kindergartens (new version)

They walk single file holding hands, like a merry school of fish, Or clutch books and notepads, like a procession of geese. The teacher raps a naughty child on the head, and he shouts in anger, Making me think with regret of all the times I played hooky! (60, 1115)

VIII. Ancient books (new version)

Paper more than one thousand five hundred years old, Constantly watched over and protected by the spirits of Heaven. As if they were visiting some ancient master or seeing the Buddha in person, They first burn incense and bow before unrolling the old scriptures! (78, 1123)

IX. Japanese-style public baths (new version)

Spotted bamboo curtains half rolled up, gauze windows wide open; A riot of hair bands and bath towels, covering heads and breasts. 1. These were aristocrats of the Tokugawa shogunate, which had been overthrown at the time of.the Meiji Restoration.

239

Translations

You would think you had entered a lotus pond in Buddha's paradise, So why shouldn't heavenly damsels scatterflowerpetals on the ground?1 (117, 1133)

X. Cherry blossoms

Everyone gawked at theflowersfrom dawn until sunset; Luxury coaches fought their way through a torrent of horses. First dinner, then a song about this pink blizzard in a rouge cloud The Japanese emperor is the cherry blossoms' number one fan! (122, 1134,64c)

XL Foreign imports

They display Kashmir carpets with thousand-hued flowers, Drink a hundred cups of sparkling wine from the Western Paradise.2 They will bankrupt themselves buying all these foreign baubles, But, thank heavens, they're not addicted to opium, like us! (130, 1137, i66d)

XII. Nagasaki's Chinatown

The carp wind was blowing strong when the first Chinese junks arrived;3 Now our guildhalls stand wall-to-wall with rich merchants' mansions. Besides fighting to buy snowy cotton and sugar white as frost, The Japanese all ask about the latest bestsellers from China!4 (131, 1137, 275a)

XIII. Japanese houses

A multitude of doors and windows are all alike; One white screen after another materializes from nowhere. 1. Like many foreigners, Huang was surprised by the Japanese custom of bathing nude in public baths open to both sexes. 2. Literally, the paradise of the Queen Mother, a Chinese deity, who was supposed to live in a paradise to the west of China; here, an allusion to the Japanese craze for grape wine imported from the West. 3. The "carp wind" is the autumn or west wind that blows in the ninth lunar month. 4. During the isolationist Tokugawa shogunate, trade with China was almost as tightly restricted as trade with the West, but Nagasaki was a major port for commerce in Chinese cotton and sugar, two commodities unavailable in Japan. When Huang visited Japan during the Meiji period, Chinese books were still very popular with educated Japanese, in spite of the craze for Western culture. 240

Tokyo

Thick Western-style carpets help keep the dust down,1 And occasionally you even hear the clip-clop of boots.

(*44J

* l4°)

XIV. Coachmen

They sit high up, whip in hand, very pleased with themselves; Leather shoes and wool suits, according to the latest fashion. Yesterday they were tatooed savages, but now they cut their hair short, Bragging how they exchanged tribal costumes for top hat and coat!2 (183, 1153)

XV. Japanesefolding fans

You fold their thirteen ribs together and carry them in your sleeve; Everyone just raves about these precious Japanese fans. They conceal a view of autumn mountains rising from a distant plain, Unfortunately, all disfigured by the pleats in the raven paper!3 (194? 1156) 1. The floors of traditional Japanese houses are covered with tatami mats, but at this time Western-style carpets were popular. 2. According to Huang Zunxian's note, before the Meiji Restoration coachmen were of low caste, dressed in animal skins and with tatooed bodies. Shortly after the Restoration, they were ordered to cut their hair short and wear Western costume. 3. The Japanese invented the folding paper fan, and although these were popular trade items by Tang times, the Chinese did not paint folding fans in large numbers until the fifteenth century, under the Ming dynasty. All the Chinese painted fans one sees from earlier times are leaf fans. "Raven-black" paper was a particularly fine type of black paper, used for making fans, first introduced into China from Korea during the Tang dynasty.

241

17 San Francisco (1882-1885)

Reactions to an ocean journey (three poems of fourteen)

On the eighteenth of the first month I set sail from Yokohama to America, arriving on the twelfth of the second month. I had nothing to do on board the ship, so I wrote the badly organized group of poems that follows. I Bunk beds are big enough to sleep two or three persons; Mirrors and bath towels are set out in perfect order. Although every inch is so incredibly cramped, There's enough space for my body - a tiny grain of rice!

(345)

II Galaxies of stars mantle the heavens, Never to be reckoned in thousands or millions. Perhaps someone is traveling through the sky on a magic raft; If he looks back toward me, he'll see our earth is really round!

(^47)

III Aflockofflappingseagulls chase after our ship; We never knew one another, are headed in opposite directions. I'd like to ask you birds to send a message to my friends, But I'm afraid you don't know how to speak the Chinese language!

(^49)

The exiles

Chinese first started to emigrate to the United States during the Daoguang (1821-51) and Xianfeng (1851-62) reign periods because of the demand for laborers, and more and more followed in their footsteps, eventually exceeding two hundred thousand. Once the Chinese started competing with the Americans economically, the local people agitated for their expulsion, and in 1880 the United States sent three representatives to China to negotiate a treaty limiting the immi242

San Francisco

gration of Chinese workers. After the treaty was signed, in the third month of the sixth year of the Guangxu emperor (1880), Congress used it as a pretext to pass a law prohibiting the immigration of Chinese workers.1 I wrote the following to express my indignation. What terrible sin did the Chinese people commit, That they suffer this calamity in our nation's history? Five thousand years after the Yellow Emperor's reign, The Chinese empire has grown feeble and weak. No one can penetrate wicked men's designs, More treacherous than fiendish demons or ghouls. But why are we treated like subhuman creatures, Tortured by people of another race? Within the vast reaches of this globe of ours, No asylum remains for the Chinese race. But when our people first sailed the Pacific, They were pioneers, building a new life from scratch. They lived in straw hovels, cramped as snail shells, And gradually built stockades to provide defense. Still dressed in tatters, they cleared mountain forests, Transforming the wilderness into villages and towns. Then gold ore was discovered, piled in tall hills, Free for the taking by anyone with hands. Eureka! They came home with a load of bullion, Boasting that America was a paradise on earth. They begged the whole family to emigrate with them; Legs in the rear filed behind legs in front. They dressed in short coats, put their hair up in queues, Carried umbrellas of bamboo, and were shod with straw sandals. Chinese bartenders marched before short-order cooks; Tailors' needles accompanied the axes of woodsmen. They clapped their hands in glee about their overseas journey- 2 They were on their way to the land of the longbeards!3 1. The first Chinese to emigrate to California arrived in 1847, and the number increased after the California Gold Rush and the building of the transcontinental railroads. The treaty referred to is the Treaty of Peking, which replaced an earlier treaty of 1862. It allowed the United States to temporarily prohibit or limit immigration of Chinese workers, if economic or social circumstances warranted such action. The law referred to is the Chinese Exclusion Act. See discussion on page 26. 2. Literally, "entering Qin," a border state during the Zhou dynasty. 3. Literally, "Many Maos surround Zhuo in great numbers," an allusion to a story about a man named Zhang Yu W$&, who lived during the Three Kingdoms period (220-65). Zhang had a long beard, and Liu Bei, the ruler of the state of Shu, made fun of it by saying that once he had lived in Zhuo County, which was surrounded by a large number of people surnamed Mao ^i, the Chinese character for which also means "fur" or "body hair." See Chen Shou IS H, Sanguozhi HULik (Beijing, 1962), 42, 1021.

243

Translations

Soon after, the Taiping Rebels rose in revolt,1 And our government drafted lists of suspects. Many criminals absconded to American asylum, Slithering like serpents into a deep burrow. American Chinese drew knives on their countrymen; Bare blades clashed in the center of town. Lax American laws only encouraged this violence, And day by day they became more depraved. Gradually the natives began to resent them; People even began spreading malicious rumors. Some said that this pack of foreign beggars Came here only to stuff their moneybags full of cash. As soon as they set their feet on California's soil, They leap for joy at the gold in the earth. They fill their money belts with a million dollars And catch the next boat back to their Celestial Kingdom.2 None of them is willing to untie his queue And do an honest day of hard labor for us! Others claim the Chinese are a pack of scoundrels Who arrived in America without a shirt on their back. They swarm like ants, whenever they're happy, But as soon as they get mad, they're at each others' throats. Fierce and pitiless, they're natural killers; Blood soaks their knives for no special reason. America is not some depraved tropical river; We have no need of man-eating crocodiles like them. Others affirm that this bunch of Celestials Are dirty and filthy by nature and habit. Their houses are fouler than the kennels of dogs, Their food more disgusting than the slop of pigs. They manage to get by on less than a dollar a day; No one pinches pennies harder than these Chinese skinflints. If we let them labor at starvation wages, Our own salaries will decline to nothing at all. Just look at your own bodies to see how they harm you; We don't need to put up with this vermin any more! A thousand voices endlessly argue and debate; A million eyes glare and burn with hate. The Californians sign a dozen petitions And demand that the government amend its laws. 1. Literally, "Red Turban bandits," rebels of the Yuan dynasty, by which Huang means the Taiping Rebels. For a more detailed account of his experiences with them, see Chapter 1. 2. Contrary to what one would suppose, the word "celestial" was a term of abuse for Chinese in nineteenth-century California.

244

San Francisco

Congress suddenly announces its Act of Exclusion (This violates their treaty with us, I might add). The countries of the world all trade with each other; What excuse will they use to justify this law? In the meantime they dispatch a delegation to China, A smokescreen to dampen international opinion. (Sometimes a lucky crapshooter can throw seven on his first roll, So why not court Lady Luck with a gamble like this?) But who could have believed that our own stupid government1 Actually agreed to their demands - in public - eyes closed? (The assembled ignoramuses of the world's seven continents, Would be hard put to create a blunder to top this!)2 From now on the Americans enforce a strict ban, And hem in the Chinese with restrictions on every side. They close their gates tightly to immigrants of yellow hue, Order vigilant customs officials to patrol all entries. Deported Chinese are magpies wearily circling a tree; Those left behind are swallows nesting nervously on curtains. Customs officials even interrogate Chinese travelers in transit, Nor do they spare U.S. citizens or Chinese students. America's laws and all its international obligations Are filed away and most conveniently forgotten. The boundless Pacific stretches eastward from China, Vaster in extent than the Gobi's trackless wastes. Ship captains encourage our people to board,

1. Literally, "Who could have believed our prime minister would have been so stupid?", but in the Ming dynasty the position of prime minister was abolished and replaced by the Grand Secretariat (neige), which itself was largely superseded by the Council of State (junjichu) from 1730 onward during the Qing dynasty. 2. Literally, "Alas, the iron of the six regions of China / Who used them to cast this great mistake?" This is an allusion to a story about the late Tang military leader Luo Shaowei Mffii WL (d. 915). When he was serving as military commissioner (jiedushi) of Tianxiong, he was angered by the outrageous conduct of troops in his district and borrowed soldiers from Zhu Quanzhong 5(ci~ n& (original name, Zhu Wen ^^m. [854-914], later Emperor Taizu ^Cl@. and founder of the Latter Liang dynasty) to put them down. In gratitude for Zhu's assistance, Luo presented Zhu with a large treasure of valuables from his own district, an act that weakened his military position and greatly strengthened Zhu, enabling Zhu to seize power over northern China. Although Luo later submitted to Zhu, he regretted the folly of his actions and is supposed to have said: "If you were to gather all the iron of the forty-three districts in the six regions of [China], you would not be able to make such a mistake!" Luo's statement involves a clever pun on the word "mistake" (cuo), which has the metal radical and is a homonym with the word cuo M, for "file" or "rasp." See Xue Juzheng Mf£lE,Jiu Wudai shi If 2£ft;j£l (Beijing, 1976), 14, 188—90, and Congshujicheng xinbian WilmMf&^ftWl (hereafter abbreviated CSJCXB), Sun Guangxian Wi^hM, Beimeng suoyan Jfcl^JJlpf, 14, 119, 275, the locus classicus cited by Qian Esun for the expression.

245

Translations

But at U.S. Customs they hear, "No Chinamen, please."1 Anyone who arrives without a passport on his person Is handcuffed as soon as his feet touch dry land. You only need a face colored yellow To get drubbed by the cops. (Who cares if you're innocent?) I sigh when I think of America's George Washington And the noble ideals that this great leader upheld. He announced to all the American people That a vast wilderness stretched far off to the west. Men of all nations, folk of every country, Were free to settle in those frontier lands.2 The yellow, white, red, and Negro races Would live on equal terms with the American people. But not even a century has elapsed since his time, And the government is not ashamed to dishonor his pledge. How depressing that in every continent of our globe Each race seems to live in its own little world. People drive away foreigners and abuse outsiders, Despise other human beings and call one another foul names. We are so far removed from the Age of World Peace, We pervert human knowledge just to conquer other nations. The Indians' tribal lands are immense but remote, And the United States is eager to open and settle them. The American eagle soars up into the sky, Clutching half our globe in its powerful talons. Although the Chinese were last to arrive in the States, Isn't there some corner in which they can settle? A nation like China that won't protect its people Allows them to be slaughtered like sparrows in a bush. If the world's four corners refuse them asylum, They will wander in exile with nowhere to settle. Although the world's a big place, we Chinese crouch in terror, Fearing to be devoured by demonic men. Our Celestial Envoy and the Yellow Race Have become a laughingstock to all nations of the world. 1. Literally, "The boatman cries: 'I am waiting,' / But the officer at the ford cries: 'Do not, sir!'" The first line is derived from a passage in the Classic ofpoetry, in which a boatman encourages passengers to cross a river. Liu Shinan says that Huang has reversed the original sense of this line and means that the ship owners refuse to take Chinese passengers, but this explanation seems rather unlikely, since it would have been in their interest to accept any passengers willing to pay; thus there is no need to alter the meaning of the text to which Huang alludes. See A concordance to the shih ching, 7/34/4. 2. Literally, "settle in Qiong and Zuo," two ancient states on the far western frontier of modern Sichuan.

246

San Francisco

(Hopefully we'll not be so dull as the African slaves, Who placidly accept whatever fate brings them.) I embarked on my mission with dignity and pride But approached San Francisco vexed by anxiety. For even if we could pour out all the four seas' waters, We will never wash clean our national disgrace. Soon other countries will imitate America, And no havens will be left for our wandering people. My mission will not defend the boundaries of China; I'm no military genius like our generals of yore.1 Just think of the vast land that our sage-kings once ruled!2 When, when will the glories of ancient China revive?

(35°? I2e)*

A record of events

The tenth month of [November] 1884 was the time for holding the presidential elections. The Democrats wished to retain the incumbent J. Blaine, whereas the Republicans nominated Grover Cleveland. After a great struggle between the two parties, Cleveland was elected, and I wrote poems to record the events.3 I Come on, let's blow on our Democrat horns, Let's give a good whack to our Democrat drums! Lift the banners of our party high over our heads, And don't forget: "Vote the Democrat ticket!" Now folks, I beg you, a little quiet, please, 'Cause I'm goin' to tell you what our party stands for. All you people got mouths that are chock full o' teeth, And every feller's got himself a good pair of lungs. Put us together, and we make a great nation, Yes, we're one body, all born from the same good soil. I beg you, don't elect the wrong man for the job; Just remember, the president's the Father of our Land. 1. Literally, "Traveling far, I think of Da Zhang and Shu Hai. / For recent accomplishments I am ashamed before Wei Qing and Huo Qubing." Da Zhang and Shu Hai were supposedly sent by the semimythical Emperor Yu to survey his realm, whereas Wei Qing Hfltf (d. 106 B.C.) and Huo Qubing 8 ^ f t (d. 117 B.C.) were real generals, responsible for defending China from the Xiongnu during the Western Han dynasty. 2. Literally, "In consternation I ask about the footprints of Yu." Yu was a semimythical ancient sage-emperor who traveled all over China while trying to control the Great Flood. 3. Huang got his facts wrong in what was a rather confusing election. The previous president, Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901, president 1889-93), was a Republican, but the Republicans nominated James G. Blaine (1830—93), in spite of the fact that he had been implicated in a financial scandal. Many Republicans (the so-called Mugwumps) were dissatisfied with Blaine and withdrew from the convention, declaring their intention to support the Democratic candidate, if he were an honest man. Grover Cleveland (1837-1908, president 1885-9 a n d i893—7), who had won recognition for his honest administration as governor of New York, was nominated by the Democratic Party and received support from many of the Republican Mugwumps.

247

Translations

Give a good whack to our Republican drums, Come on, let's blow on our Republican horns! Don't forget: "Vote the Republican ticket!" Lift the banners of our party high over our heads. I'm goin' to tell you all what our party stands for; Now folks, I beg you, a little quiet, please. Every feller's got himself a good pair of lungs; All you people got mouths that are chock full o' teeth. Yes, we're all one body, born from the same good soil; Put us together, and we make a great nation. Just remember, the president's the Father of our Land; I beg you, don't elect the wrong man for the job!

(365, 23c)*

II The Democrat party starts promoting its platform; "Just wait, you folks, until we come to power! We'll stimulate business and benefit labor; We're first in line to protect American trade. We're going to price gold by the standard of silver;1 Our policy's to make the two metals one. Then each and every family that farms our land Will increase its yield by a hundred bushels! And what's more, no one in the great U.S.A. Is going to let foreigners push us around any more. Those yellow folks came from some faraway place, But we've shut the door on them, yes, we'll drive them all out. We won't let those vermin pollute our land. (Would anyone sleep in the same room with a Chinaman?) Our party's just the same as the loaves of sweet Jesus, Because we can fill the bellies of thousands of people. As soon as the government gets into our hands, You won't wait long to see some results." But the Republicans curse the Democrat Party: "This talk is nothing but a pile of hogwash!"

(366, 24c)*

III The Republicans slander the Democrat Party: "The Democrat candidate is a lousy bum. He was a low-class crook when still a young fellow, 1. The Bland-Allison Act of 1878 already required the Treasury to buy and coin at least 2 million dollars' worth of silver each month. Generally speaking, farmers were in favor of using silver as the standard for the dollar, because it would increase the rate of inflation, thereby reducing their debt load and raising the value of their crops. Eastern banking interests were opposed to dropping the gold standard, out of concern for thefinanciallosses they would suffer. After his election, Cleveland asked to have the Bland-Allison Act repealed, since the public was exchanging silver currency for gold and draining the Treasury of its bullion reserves.

248

San Francisco

And the grapevine says he rustled other folks' steers. Our sources tell us his girlfriend walks the streets, And he spends his nights screwing around in bordellos. During the day he gambles his money on poker; That guy's a real cardsharp and knows all the tricks. What's more, he's got a mug like some devil down under, And he's dressed in an outfit like a dancing monkey. Now nobody could count all his secret sins; Folks, does anyone here know the real number? The Democrats support him, no questions asked; They'd see his crap land smack-dab in the White House.1 That rascal's skin is thicker than ten-ply steel armor, But you can bet your life he can't hide his crimes forever. The Democrats return the Republicans' attack, And their supporters howl approval with a single voice.

(368, 24c)*

IV One day, in the middle of a circus arena, They set up a convention with a thousand seats. File after file of leather chairs, black as crows, Rise on all sides like the rungs of a ladder. A thousand lamps blossom likeflowerson a tree, Blazing right through the stage's fancy curtains. A half-crocked fellow climbs the podium to speak, Wagging his long tongue with fluent ease. His whiskers are blonde and his beard all frizzy; His sapphire eyes glitter like a hawk or a buzzard. When he opens his jaws, the words gush in torrents, Rolling and tumbling like the waves of the ocean. His laugh blasts the roof tiles straight into the sky; His furious roar severs the building's pillars in two. Sometimes his audience responds with a "Yay!" At other times they bellow, "Hip! Hip! Hooooraay!" A thunder of applause rumbles from their hands; Then the entire audience claps to the very same rhythm. In the end the delegates all raise their hands high, A clear demonstration - the party's vote is unanimous.

(37°> 2 5 e )*

V Before all the speeches have come to an end, They present a spectacle for the delegates' pleasure. Dressed in steel helmets and brocade uniforms, Soldiers march past in neat rows, left and right. They are escorted by a jeweled elephant with a golden halter, Together with a white stallion which has violet reins of silk. 1. Literally, "throw excrement on the Buddha's head."

249

Translations

The troops' boots click smartly as theyfileby, A forest of rifles sprouting from the tops of their shoulders. Some paraders cover their faces with painted masks; And others brandish long lances in their hands. There are sorcerers whose eyes glitter with gold, Followed by infernal demons, faces black as coal. Some marchers imitate medieval crusaders, Their crimson banners fluttering gaily in the wind. A gigantic chorus warbles patriotic songs, Their sonorous voices echoing around the ceiling's rafters. Thousands of heads swarm ahead in one mass, Marching forward in a solid human wall. They accost the gawkers who line the street: "Just feast your eyes on our party's pageant!"

(371, 25c)*

VI Out of sight of the average person, The campaigners court supporters with words sweet as honey. They serve pekoe tea, brewed a deep shade of green, Pour out heady wine with a light turquoise hue. They give you black velvet woven with graceful patterns, Or crimson Kashmir with complex designs. Then there are cute little gifts like hairpins and bracelets, Just the right things to get the ladies on their side. They make polite calls on eminent scholars And are certain to canvass the meat-market butchers. Even if the fellow is a bum or a cutthroat, They shake his hand warmly, as soon as they spot him. They explain that all these little knicknacks they carry, Are gifts which so-and-so entrusted them to deliver. At that point the name list slips out of their pockets, And they say: "Don't forget to write down X and Y. We know you've got a bundle of relatives and in-laws; We know you've got a crowd of nephews and uncles. If all of you just lend us your generous support, Our party's sure to place first in the election this time." They repeat all this drivel ad infinitim, ad nauseum; They plead with him to agree - these fellows don't take no for an answer! (373, 26e) VII They elect a new president once every four years, And today the big day hasfinallyarrived. The candidates' names for both the parties Are boldly emblazoned on campaign signs.1 1. Literally, "On the party's stele." 250

San Francisco

Every person seems to be carrying a piece of paper in hand; They all seem to be officials, or at least somebody. At daybreak, horse-drawn wagons go rumbling by; Then a thousand hooves gallop in wild confusion. All the policemen are wearing sabers by their sides, Just to remind the people of the government's power. (Do they really want to keep the people from talking, Or are they taking precautions against a threat to the state?) All the bystanders not directly involved in the election Rub their eyes in amazement and gawk at these events. Men loiter in the street in threes and fives, Nervously twisting the whiskers on their chins. In such a huge country, with so many districts, It takes a long time to obtain the results. The red sun has already cartwheeled halfway up the sky, And people are fuming that the news is so slow. All of a sudden the first election figures come in; The messenger wheezes, like a man blowing embers to life. Not long after, the second tally arrives; Cymbals clash, and amazement mingles with doubt. A thousand urchins race past, shouting and laughing; Their cries reverberate clear up to heaven. The votes are all counted by the first stroke of midnight; Now the results are clear, there's no mistake now. Cannons roar out in wild jubilation, Thundering so violently the clouds hang their heads. High from the summit of a nine-story skyscraper Hangs the party banner of the new president-elect! VIII From the era when the great George Washington ruled, More than a century has elapsed down to the present. Washington hoisted the banner of American independence And put a stop to British oppression. The red, yellow, black, and Caucasian races Were all to be treated as equals in the country. Ever since the Americans obtained their freedom, The nation has prospered in myriad ways. They have increasingly promoted popular knowledge, And the nation's wealth has multiplied tenfold. How noble, how magnificent is this mighty country! Take a look at America's joy; what more could you ask for? But who could imagine that during their election You would witness the weird events that I've just seen? Angry supporters drew knives on fellow Americans, As their candidates battled for a seat in the White House. 251

(375? 26e)*

Translations

This could have plunged the whole nation into civil war (Or an assassin might have put a bullet in somebody's head). Ordinary citizens would have been involved in crimes, And the witch-hunt might have spread to the highest officials. Private interest has perverted the public weal, And a few men have corrupted the common man's welfare. And even if they elect a worthy president in the end, Can he hold his head high in America's sacred office? If only the Americans could clean up their politics, The Golden Age would follow close behind!

(37^, 27e)*

General Feng 1

Oh, General Feng! Your noble name is heard on everyone's lips! Still a young man, you slew hordes of Taiping Rebels; Even the clouds turned pale when your banners appeared. During a decade in southern China, you performed glorious exploits, As your yellow robe glistened and your helmet plumes danced. After you purged China's midlands, there was nothing left to do, And you stroked the saber at your waist with impatience each day. Then these French brigands presumed to take a slice of our land, Came to plunder China's gold and extort yearly tribute,2 You were appointed, General, to guard China's southern gate,3 At the request of our country's leading military officials. Yet no sooner did your saber flash out of its scabbard Than slanderous accusations piled up at court.4 They said you're crude and rash, without a strategy in your head, That you might brave a puny foe but the Great Powers cow you.5 1. Feng Zicai (1818-1908), a native of a part of Guangdong now under the jurisdiction of Guangxi, commanded the Chinese army in a battle fought between French and Chinese troops in 1885, during the Sino-French War, at Zhennanguan on the boundary between Guangxi province and Vietnam. This battle was one of the few occasions when Chinese armies were victorious over Western powers in the nineteenth century. 2. This refers to the so-called Keelong Incident. In 1884 French naval forces attacked and occupied Keelong (pinyin spelling Jilong) in Taiwan, but when they were driven out by the Chinese garrison the French ambassador in Beijing demanded reparations of 80 million francs and then left the capital city before the Qing government even had time to reply. 3. Literally, "northern gate," to correspond with a classical allusion in the Zuozhuan, but of course Feng was guarding southern China against an attack from French-ruled Indochina. For the original, see Combined concordances to Ch'un-ch'iu, Kung-yang, Ku-liang, and Tsuo-chuan,

140/Xi iU 32 /$/zuo ^E. 4. According to one account, slanderous reports about Feng were one reason why he was so brave in battle. See Wang Quchang ZEjil'ftj', Guochi shihua mflft^ffii, 137, inJindai Zhongguo shiliaocongkan Iffift^BAWJIIfU (hereafter abbreviatedJDZGSLCK), (Yonghe 7JcfP, 1967). 5. These are all the character traits of the great generals of classical Chinese history and literature. See the discussion on page 172. 252

San Francisco

Your just rage soared higher than the peaks of our mountains, And you vowed to drive the French from the last inch of our soil.1 You've been training an army begging to die for its commander, And you don't intend to come back alive unless you smash our foe.2 In one hand you brandish an eight-yard lance like a cobra, Laughing as you prepare to quaff Frenchmen's blood.3 You rank troops left and right and station guards in the rear; This time our army will advance, retreating cowards will be shot. Cheering troops brandish rifles and advance like a whirlwind; They will fight to the death just to follow you in battle. You wish to die for your emperor out of love for your country; Are people like us worthy of your noble sacrifice? General, you are more majestic than the deities in heaven; No soldier disobeys your slightest command, And anyone who lets you down intends to slit his throat.

The infantry and cavalry leap when you roar: "Attack!" Five thousand brave men follow you into the fray. Five thousand soldiers advance like a wall, Rank after rank attacking with deadly precision. Our monstrous cannons roar with voices of thunder; Bayonets pierce French breasts, sabers slash French throats. The enemy army collapses, and their war drums fall mute; A thousand French heads scatter like a swarm of frantic ants. Each charge smashes the foe until none stand before us; In one day we pursue them for a hundred miles! Yes! Oh, yes! Our army had turned timid after the navy's fiasco at Mawei; The French plague pressed us hard, and we withdrew to Longzhou.4 But today, general, our dragon banner streams gloriously in the sky; Two imperial reigns have not witnessed a victory like yours.5 If only we had a score of generals like you, sir, We could slaughter the wolves and tigers that ravage our land. We could restore the nations they conquered and succor our neighbors. Alas! Where can we find any more generals like you? (379> 113b)* 1. Literally, "Jade Pass," located near Dunhuang in modern Gansu, and once a highly strategic point on the frontier with nomadic peoples to the west of China. It is likely that Huang is equating Zhennanguan (literally, Pass for Pacifying the South) with the Jade Pass. 2. Literally, "If they do not slaughter Loulan," a small state in Han times, the remains of which are located west of the Lop Nor in modern Xinjiang. "Slaughtering Loulan" was a common expression for fighting to a victorious conclusion. 3. Literally, "the Xiongnus' blood," the Xiongnu being the most serious enemies of China in Han-dynasty times. 4. In 1884 the Qing navy was defeated at Mawei MM> (near Fuzhou, in northern Fujian province). Longzhou fl^H is just north of Zhennanguan. 5. Literally, "the reigns of Daoguang [1821-51] and Xianfeng [1851-62]."

253

18 Return to China (1885-1890) I composed this poem after gazing at the moon from a ship in the Pacific Ocean on the night of the Midautumn Lunar Festival1 The boundless ocean's waves merge with the sky, Where the full moon's giant orb glitters just on the horizon. Every night she lights the stern to send us along on our journey, But tonight her clear rays glow with double purity. Outside our ship there's not an inch of land anywhere; The dark heavens stretch above us, the inky waters below. Since embarking I've seen the moon shine four times, And we've already sailed three thousand miles back home. The entire universe shares the same moon with us, But not all people celebrate our Chinese Lunar Festival. The Western calendar is approaching its two thousandth year, But Westerners don't reckon time by the phases of the moon.2 Officers navigate with compasses upon the bridge; Both our ship and the Milky Way glide westward together. Curly-bearded Americans sing hoarsely, and blue eyes become drunk, But their foreign music merely helps make me feel more homesick. The Chinese laborers who travel steerage class below Escape from their bondage for a short while in sleep. Like ants, they sink lifelessly into the black realm of sugar dreams, Sprawled in disorder, arms locked together, elbows akimbo. Fish and sea creatures lie silent, as midnight approaches; The ocean is level as a mirror, and the wind dies to a hush. The moon's wheel hangs in the sky as the ship's wheels turn, And I alone pace anxiously beside my cabin. 1. The Midautumn Festival, celebrated on the full moon of the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, is one of the major Chinese festivals, when family members gather together to eat moon cakes and enjoy the sight of the full moon. 2. That is, the West uses a solar calendar.

254

Return to China

My body follows the ship, just as the moon follows me; My friend moon has become so dear that she can't bear to leave me. On this vast ocean that stretches for thousands of miles, The moon, my shadow, and I make a party of three.1 I raise my head and gaze westward toward thick-lying clouds, Below which lie the homes of billions of men. In how many families do young couples mourn separation? In how many mansions do the rich sing and dance? Though their joys and sorrows differ from one another, Four hundred million Chinese share this same autumn evening. How could those men of Cathay, of our Middle Kingdom, know, That somewhere west of America, some place east ofJapan, A lone traveler stands on the deserted deck of a ship? I left the land of my ancestors more than ten years ago, And now moonbeams are shimmering on my graying temple hairs. Just to see where the sun rises I journeyed eastward to Japan, And then I harnessed the wind to cross endless seas. When I raise my head, I see the moon of my homeland, Though she appears at different times in each country of the world. Tonight my family will watch her from the ocean's other shore, But when she pops up in China she will have already set here. I lead an existence as aimless as a rolling tumbleweed; I'm a Chinese pioneer wherever I travel in the world. Even our sages didn't reach lands that don't use our calendar, But I still have not come to the end of my journey. Home lies beneath my feet on the back side of the globe, So what were Heaven's intentions in setting me down here? I scratch my head and wish to ask Heaven a question: Just what is the destination of my unending voyage? My heart is so vexed, I lean against the railing, sleepless. The night's shadows turn vermillion with dawn's rosy hues, And the sun rises dead east - half lost in a fog.

(395>

1O C

5 )

A sudden rainstorm at sea

Salt water extends straight to the edge of the horizon, And a cloud bank spreads where sky joins sea. 1. Allusion to a line from one of Li Bai's most popular poems, "The shadow opposite makes us three persons," a drinking poem in which Li holds a drinking party with the moon, his shadow, and himself. For a discussion of Huang's use of allusions to Li's poetry in this work, see page 191. The original is found in Li Bai ^[=3, A concordance to the poems of Li Po, ed. Hanabusa Hideki feM^® (Kyoto, 1957), 796.04

255

Translations

A thick mist sprints in the footsteps of the wind; A howling gale advances hand in hand with the rain. A giant wing of feathered clouds droops low over the sky; Dragons roar in chorus with the shriek of waves. In a moment the windstorm abandons its assault on our ship, A thousand miles of blue ocean stretch ahead of us - flat.

(401,109c)

An outing to Seven Stars' Cliff1

When the return boat takes advantage of a brisk wind to leave, I miss it, because I'm so busy feasting my eyes on mountains. Impatient waters race onward to the two rivers' confluence;2 Weird peaks suddenly tower just where the road ends. I seek Ax Hill's magic hatchet, but where are the fairies? Even a Buddha gets weary after a long journey like mine.3 The setting sun relights the forest, and I sit a long time, Waiting for the ravens, who insist on coming home late. (4°4> 123b)

(From) / invite neighbors to drink with me one spring evening

The spring wind ripples with gentle warmth And blows all the snow away from my eaves. Just as a cold dog takes a rest from his barking, A crowd of visitors flings my door wide open. They present jugs of heady brew to me, While lanterns blaze against the walls of my room. Speckled piglets accompany their yellow hens Enough to stuff our bellies and get us all plastered. We sit in a circle, old neighbors from the same village, And don't worry our heads about the dictates of etiquette. Because I've spent so much time in foreign lands, They start arguing with each other about my travels.

1. Seven Stars' Cliff is a famous beauty spot near Zhaoqing 3SJS, in Guangdong province, visited by Huang in 1885. 2. The Xinxingjiang WiW^tL and Xijiang MILflowtogether at Zhaoqing. 3. Near Zhaoqing there is a mountain called Lanke Mfil (literally, Rusty Ax), named after a famous legend about a man of the Jin W dynasty named Wang Zhi 3 i § , who encountered two young boys playing chess when he entered the mountains looking forfirewood.The boys, who were actually immortals, gave him an object that resembled a jujube seed to eat, and when theyfinishedtheir game, after what seemed a short while, they told him that his ax had already rusted. It is not known if the statue of a Reclining Buddha suggested here still survives. Huang alludes to the Buddha to describe how tired he is from a life of traveling to perform official duties.

256

Return to China One of them begins to talk about Japan, How it was a cavern long ago, inhabited by flying immortals. "Densely branched coral trees flourish there," he said, "And silver and gold palaces dazzle the eye. Beyond the mist lies Bai Juyi's altar, And you can still find brocade from Lady Yang's stockings.1 Even today she rides on phoenixes from there to China; There are eyewitnesses to this; I'm not making it up! You, sir, took passage on a fairy raft to Japan, So you certainly know immortality's secrets. Magical fungi and the holy elixir Are hidden in your bags, I'm positive, sir." Another chatted about the great man, Columbus, How he searched for land but couldn't find it at first. "After many months," said he, "they feared their food would run out, And his crew sharpened knives in order to slay him. Suddenly a god descended straight from Heaven, Displayed a jade tablet, and gave Columbus instructions. A giant tortoise approached, carrying a mountain on its back, Bowed twice to Captain Columbus and begged him to take command. His men shouted wildly and clambered on to the land, While their cannons roared and filled the sky with thunder. Some rode on horseback, for all the world like centaurs, With battle-axes in hand that glittered like gold. The natives fled or fainted at the sight of these creatures, Scared out of their wits by these foreign devils. This, then, is the America we know of today, The America whose wealth the Westerners grabbed. They've discovered veins of gold there a thousand feet deep; No matter how much you take, they're never exhausted." Yet another villager spoke of the Pacific Ocean, Which is located, he claimed, in the earth's southwestern crack. "The sea god's palace lies beneath its waters, Where ocean dragons appear and vanish at will. White drops of rain leap across its endless skies, And fish continually belch bubbles upon its surface. Once there was a ship of a thousand tons That followed its currents until it met a long tongue. Then heaven and earth suddenly turned black as basalt, And a foul wind blew up a squall of rain and blood. 1. Lady Yang is Yang Guifei SI Jt #B, consort of the Tang emperor Xuanzong ~£^< (reg. 71356). She was killed during a rebellion but later became the subject of many romantic poems (the most famous by Bai Juyi), stories, and dramas, which describe her as the inhabitant of a Daoist paradise after her death.

257

Translations

The ship twisted and turned in the monster's intestines But, bless God, was expelled with a blast from its arse . . . !"

(4°9)

My little daughter1

I could sit with my family, chatting by lamplight, forever, Hidden deep inside the curtains, no lock on our door. My daughter is dying to ask questions and tugs at my beard; When her mother ignores her, she pulls at her robe. "The sun's just above our heads; it's really close, isn't it? Can't you hold the ocean between your two hands?" I want to unpack my globe and show everything to her A breeze puffs the curtains, and moths tap against the lamp.

(422, 129b)

Impromptu

Faint dusk turns the world pale just outside my wall; There's wine by my bed, no noisy carts in the alley. Ready to leave, but returning, wind puffs willow fluff; Suddenly warm, then cold, spring nurtures her flowers. I get drunk and drift drowsily in the middle of a dream; My body floats a second time to the ends of the world. Mountain rain patters against my window and beats a subtle rhythm Just like the ocean billows that lapped against my ship. (422, 131b)

Riding a boat downstream2

Fleet as a bolt of lightning flashing through the sky, My boat rides the torrent's billows and never turns back. A hungry falcon freed from its gauntlet, a hare leaping from a burrow, It rolls downhill like a wheel, shoots like an arrow from a bowstring. Friends, take a look at how furiously it races! Gould you imagine a joy greater than this in our world? The current slaps the boat's sides, gullsflyoff in confusion; The helmsman cheers, and the oarsmen rejoice. One mountain looms ahead, another rises opposite, But in a twinkling both mountains vanish completely from sight. 1. Possibly Huang's daughter Dangsun m fm, who would have been twelve at this time. 2. The original title of the poem was "The river rose suddenly in spring, and sailing with a favorable wind I traveled from Songjiang to Chaozhou in only a few hours, written on the bingxu day in the first month."

258

Return to China

So many mountains flash by me my head starts to swim; Gould I possibly follow all the clouds' transformations? The river begins to act up as it twists through the mountains; It kicks sand, bites the rocks, and shoots waves across our bow. The mountains bend a hundred times, but my boat goes straight, As the wind gets naughty and starts boxing my ears. Both the wind and the water drum and rattle the boat; Gunwales tip, sails slant, but I'm not worried at all. Are we riding on the wind, or is the wind riding us? Let's soar into the sky and take a short tour of Heaven! I've left tracks all over the world during the last few years,1 Floated on a magic raft to the farthest reaches of Heaven. How I smashed through a gale's waves is hardly worth mentioning, For all the marvels I saw overseas can't compare with this trip. Suddenly boatmen on the bank raise a cry of "Heave ho!" And trackers pull our boat with the strength offiercetigers. They will drag it upstream with hundred-yard hawsers; Three days, three nights, then it's the Yellow Cow Rapids!2 (423, 351a)

Closing my gate

Beyond the pine trees' luxuriant shade, I close my gate tightly to live in reclusion. I once took a journey of twenty thousand miles, But now two or three rooms suffice for my home. Lazy clouds follow dragons to rest in their lairs; A mild wind allows the birds to come home early. The mountains outside my wall are good enough for me No need to concoct wild stories about foreign mountains!

(426)

/ made offerings at the tomb of my great-grandmother, Madame Li Luxuriant pine treesflourishon the mountains, And everywhere in the forest you hear ravens caw. The pine trees provide ample shade for descendants, But the vile ravens never bother to feed their own parents!3 1. Literally, "five continents," but Huang is using a classical expression to represent the modern idea. 2. Huang does not actually mean that he will be traveling to the Yellow Cow Rapids, which are located in the Yangzi Gorges; he is alluding to an old boatmen's song that describes the difficulties of traveling by river. See SBGK, Li Daoyuan Wffltjt, Shuijingzhu ^MSffi, 34,446b. 3. In Chinese tradition, the raven is regarded as afilialbird because its young are supposed to feed their parents when they get old. Huang is suggesting that he has not been able to fulfill hisfilialduties toward his great-grandmother and mother.

259

Translations

The day I descended into this world of ours, My great-grandmother was already seventy-five. In less than a year my younger brother was born, And the two of us competed for Mother's milk. So my great-grandmother stretched out her arms, Plucked me from Mother's breast, and carried me away. From that moment on, I never left her side, And she cuddled me hundreds of times each day. With her very own hands she cut damask and silk To tailor an outfit for her little great-grandson. She mixed crystal sugar with snow-white flour And baked sweet tarts for her baby to eat. When my hair was disheveled, she combed it straight; When my feet got dirty, she heated bathwater. She bought rouge and makeup in the marketplace And then powdered my face until it became fragrant. She coaxed my hair up into a little topknot And then decked me with earrings that glowed like the moon. She dressed me in a red skirt and a crimson blouse, So I looked like a baby girl in every respect! When I could hardly lisp my veryfirstwords, She taught me to sing "The Moonlight Song."1 I could recite it by heart after repeating it once, With a voice as clear as the new reed of an oboe. I learned to walk well when I was two years old, So she sent her great-grandson off to his lessons. She knew that by nature I was timid and shy And warned the tutor not to be overly strict. She tugged at my clothes as I left her room And was waiting by the doorside long before I returned. She asked me hundreds of questions each day, As she rushed around barefoot on her many errands. During the festivals of the spring and autumn seasons, Our relatives would all gather for family dinners. Then she lifted her pearl for everyone to see, And a hundred mouths dutifully praised me in unison. "The Huang family has seventy members," she would always say, "But I love your grandfather better than my other sons. Your mother is my favorite among the women of our clan, And of all my grandsons your father is dearest. You treasure the belt you use to tie your dress; 1. A Hakka folk song ofJiayingzhou. 260

Return to China

Dyed silk can't be compared to the white silk it was made from.1 I know it's true that I'm partial to you, But I don't care afigwhat the relatives think." All our neighbors used to smile at me and say: "The old lady isn't wrong to love him so much. He really does have a beautiful face Just as bright as a lotus blossom." But the womenfolk cursed me behind my back, "He's like a wild calf that smashes an oxcart! The little brat's climbing our trees all the time And comes sneaking around to steal our taro. Yesterday he filched eggs from a magpie's nest And broke two teeth when he fell flat on his face. He spit his blood all over the wall And then used it to scribble pictures of dragons and snakes!" My brothers and sisters would often coax me, "Go and ask Great-grandma to give us some money." Then she poured out her purse with purple lotus designs, And coins round as golden bells rolled all over the floor. Mom and Dad would sometimes whisper softly in my ears: "Please ask your great-grandmother to eat more food." Then she would downfinelyminced carp from a golden platter, Just for the sake of pleasing her baby.2 My uncles always walked hand in hand with me, Though I was sure they didn't give me a thought. All this show of continually patting my head Was only a ruse to get on Great-grandma's good side! Some years later, when I was eight or nine, Father finally passed the provincial exams. Great-grandma stood hugging me by Grandpa's side, Patting me three times for each sentence she spoke. "This boy was born under the sign of the monkey, But he's a good deal cleverer than any monkey I've seen. When you think how little chicks soon outgrow their parents, 1. The preceding line is a Hakka proverb. Huang's great-grandmother means that she loves his mother because she is "connected" to her favorite grandson in the same way a belt is connected to a favorite dress. The second line alludes to an ancient folk poem: "The new wife is good at weaving dyed silk; / The old wife was good at weaving undyed silk. / The new wife weaves one bolt of dyed silk a day; / The old wife wove fifteen meters of undyed silk. / If you compare the dyed silk to the undyed silk, / The new wife is not as good as the old wife was." The dyed silk mentioned here was considered inferior to pure white silk, and Huang's greatgrandmother means that she loves Huang Zunxian even more than his father and grandfather. See Wanyou wenku huiyao SS^^tlttfic, Shen Deqian tt^W, Gushiyuan "SflNfM, 56 (Shanghai, 1939). 2. Since Huang's great-grandmother was normally very economical, she would not consider eating "luxury" food of this sort unless urged to do so by her great-grandson. 26l

Translations

You wonder what he'll accomplish when he's big like his father. My health is failing, and I'm growing decrepit, And I know all too well I'm not long for this world. At this rate I don't think I'll ever see him grow up, But how I'd love to watch him take the world by storm! I tell you, when this boy reaches twenty years of age, He's going to take first prize in the government exams. And when years later he climbs my tomb to make offerings, He'll come with a party all dressed in court robes. His vanguard will hold a parasol of brocade above him, And the rearguard will beat loud drums and blow fifes. Sacrificial boars and chickens,flowersand fruits, Will be carried one by one on his servants' shoulders. Firecrackers will pop at the rear of my tomb, And they'll burn spirit money in front of it, too. He'll carry a proclamation sealed by the emperor himself, A proclamation announcing that I've just been ennobled. His sons and grandsons will stand around him and bow, While he burns incense for me and announces to my soul: 'Your great-grandson has luckily obtained a high post, Just as you predicted years ago, Great-grandma.' People of this world claim that ghosts know nothing, But at that moment I'll open my jaws and laugh aloud." Grandpa turned around and looked at me carefully, "Don't forget these words, my boy," he said. And I did remember her words, from one year to the next, As I slowly but surely grew bigger and stronger. But at that time I only had a child's mind, And I didn't understand much about Great-grandma's life. All I can do is describe whatever my eyes saw, For I still vaguely recollect a few things about her. Whenever Great-grandma went out of the house, She hobbled around with the help of a cane. Back home, she hung it up on her wall Or sometimes hooked it over her mosquito net. Every night she would take me to sleep in her bed, But first she asked Mom to scratch her back. Great-grandma rolled around when Mom massaged her waist, And the bed always rumbled like a spring thunderstorm. She always kept the lantern before her Buddha lit, And from a crack in her window you could watch the moon rise. When Grandpa raised the door curtain for his daily visit, She was so delighted that she clapped with joy. He told her all the latest tidbits of village gossip And made fun of everyone, including the highest officials. 262

Return to China

He could always take something the peasants had said And transform it into a tale of demons and goblins. But when Great-grandma grew silent and didn't respond, He knew it was time for his mother to sleep. Then he would close the room's windows, ever so slowly, With his feet gliding over the floor like silent wheels. Next morning my mother would put in her appearance, Carrying a washbasin to wash Great-grandma's face. When Great-grandma ate her rice, Grandpa held the platter, And Mom held the spoon as she drank her soup. Every time Grandpa went to fetch the doctor, He would discourse at great length on medical theory.1 He first chewed a sample of each medicine prescribed, Poured out and carefully measured the liquids himself. From the time of my earliest childhood memories, I witnessed these same events practically every day. Then I spent some years studying for the exams And served as a diplomat in faraway lands. Before I knew it, thirty years had elapsed, But the time had passed faster than the snap of a finger. Today, when I make offerings at Great-grandmother's tomb, The face of her "baby" is covered with whiskers. This year I arrived at the fourth decade of my life, And Grandfather is already seventy-nine. I'm delighted that he is still so alert and healthy, With a rosy complexion just like before. When he strolls around the cemetery to admire the pines, He does not even walk with the aid of a cane. He doesn't need help when he bows for the ritual, And his back is not bent or crooked at all. The amber beads of my court regalia Were a present that Mother gave me herself. An embroidered cock flashes on my brocade robe, Which was newly delivered from Guangzhou City.2 With one hand I straighten the whiskers on my chin, And with the other I shake out the sleeves of my robe. A drum beats, and someone chants the invocation; We bow our heads together on a crimson carpet. We burn red-colored joss sticks on top of her tomb, And below we pour out libations of yellow wine. 1. Literally, "He spoke in great detail about the theory of pulses." The study of pulses was a major diagnostic method in traditional Chinese medicine. 2. Such amber beads could be worn only by officials of grade 4 and above. The brocade cock could be worn only by grade 1 officials. Huang has risen in the bureaucracy since his mother presented him with the beads.

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Green bamboo leaves enclose dumplings of rice, And lotus roots are bound with violet strings.1 Grandfather bows before everyone else, And all his grandsons kneel down behind him. We are arranged in ranks like shoots of bamboo And bend our waists gently like weeping-willow branches. My cousin's young wife (your maternal great-grandson) Was a marriage arranged by you, Great-grandmother. My eldest son, Aduan, has already turned twenty And married his own wife a year ago. The boy who follows him, carrying a fan, Is my second son Ahe, who is fifteen years old. Dangjiu stands in front of her young sister Dangsun This is the sum of all my sons and daughters. The two men dressed in blue scholar's robes Are my two younger brothers, whose names you know. My youngest brother (who just entered the academy) Steps forward and bows, libation cup in hand. We all sacrifice in order, according to generation and age, Including the babies and the children carried by adults. Our entire family has turned out for this ritual, And I only regret that Mother's not with us.2 When she still was alive, Great-grandmother loved her best And wouldn't let her leave her side for one moment. Perhaps at this very moment my mother's soul Is living in the same abode with Great-grandmother. The wind goes its way, after the trees quiet down; The spring wind does not stay with the grass it nurtured. The men of our world are really silly fools, Worshiping the Big Dipper to obtain long life.3 Few can hope for a century in this world, And I will be quite happy with three-score years. If you ask how I could repay my Great-grandmother's love, I would be too embarrassed to even open my mouth. How I wish Mother had lived as long as she did, So I could have looked after her many years. Now I am blessed with a grandchild of my own, But he will never receive my mother's love. And since he can never enjoy that kind of love, There's no sense in saying anything more about the matter. 1. These are all common food items appropriate for grave offerings. 2. Huang's mother died in 1883, while he was serving in San Francisco, and he obviously felt guilty about his inability to get leave to arrange her funeral. 3. Worshiping the stars of the Big Dipper in the constellation Ursa Major was thought to prolong one's life.

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On one hand, I rejoice over grandfather's long life, But Mother's early death still fills me with anguish. Pity the man who has lost his own mother, You remote blue heavens who float far above!

(427, 114c)

Trying to cheer myself up

Whileflowersbloomed and wilted, I closed my gate to sleep; Please excuse me, dear spring, I can't help that I missed you. Hardly anything in this world ever works out as you plan; The men all around me become younger every day. Evening rain drips on like some dreary tune; Time waltzes past me with a quick, lively step. But on this day, at this moment, only / exist Tea steams, and this sick layman enters a Zen trance on his bed.1 (441, 124c) 1. Literally, "a sick Vimalakirti," Vimalakirti being the main character in one of the most popular Buddhist scriptures, the Vimalakirtinirdesasutra, in which the layman Vimalakirti demonstrates that he has a knowledge of Buddhism superior to that of all of the Buddha's disciples. At the beginning of the scripture, Buddha asks his disciples to visit Vimalakirti, who is reported to be ill. This work was particularly appreciated by Chinese officials and was one of the main scriptures of the Zen (Chinese, Chan) sect.

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19 The empire on which the sun never sets (1890-1892) (From) The Reclining Buddha of Ceylonl

A pity the Buddha didn't save his land from the Brits, But why in the world couldn't he save his religion? What a crying shame it is that in every province of India You don't find a soul who professes his faith. Before Buddhism, the Indians had their volumes of Vedas, Supposedly created by Lord Brahma himself.2 As usual, the nobles and the Brahman caste Invoked these holy texts to lord it over everyone else. Laymen and people whose minds weren't so sharp Just had to put up with what fate had dished out. But after the Buddha preached equality for all, The people received a fair reward for their karma. Entrance into heaven or damnation in hell, Both resulted from people's own actions. Men of lower castes and even the peasants3 Blew loudly on conch shells to announce the good news. There were even a few fellows from the Brahman caste Who gradually submitted to Buddha's laws. 1. This poem was inspired by Huang's visit to a Buddhist temple in the vicinity of Colombo (probably Kelaniya), when he stopped in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) on his way to England. Statues of the Reclining Buddha represent Sakyamuni Buddha just before he entered nirvana, the highest state of bliss. However, throughout this poem, Huang plays on the idea of the Reclining Buddha as a passive, helplessfigure,a symbol for Asia's inability to resist Western imperialism. The following section traces the rise, decline, and fall of Buddhism in India. For a more detailed discussion, see page 118. 2. The Vedas are the most ancient texts in Sanskrit. Each of the four Vedas consists of a Samhita (collection of poems on religious topics), Brahmanas (ritual texts), and Upanisads (philosophical texts). Most Hindus believe they are of divine origin. 3. Literally, Sudras, the lowest of the four traditional castes. Although Huang is probably exaggerating the "democratic" nature of Buddha's teaching, Buddhism did appeal to people in the lower castes because of its willingness to accept all believers regardless of their background.

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Previously they had fasted and strutted like pelicans Or hooted like owls as they begged alms at night. Their half-naked bodies were smeared with ashes, And they stood on their right legs to worship the moon. But now they forsook the deities of the Brahmans And put their faith in Buddha's church. Throughout the vast expanse of the Indian subcontinent, Buddha's cloud of compassion sheltered all humans. But what was the intention of those vile Brahmans, Who made such a clamor as their power revived? Their old faith's dead ashes had blazed up anew (It was almost as strange as a tail wagging its dog)! They thought up a new name, called themselves "Hindoos," An innovation announced in their rulers' decrees. They smeared human excrement on top of Buddha heads And spiced their imprecations with ridicule and jeers. They drove away all the Buddhist monks they could find And exiled them far beyond the nation's frontiers. Even the Parsees, who came from overseas, Began to construct temples to Zoroaster. They worshiped holyfireswith thousands of oxen And sacrificed to the sun's rays with myriads of horses. Not long after them, old Mohammed turned up, Picking some tidbits from other folk's scriptures. He claimed his revelations were sent down by God And had a sharp sword for those who demurred. He called these writings the "Glorious Koran," Which didn't teach much more than keeping a low profile. Allah commanded him to gallop around on a white horse And proclaim the divine message for everyone to hear. His followers would ascend to heaven in a jiffy; Those who didn't believe, well, he'd deal with them later. He was a hybrid combination of pope and emperor, Who rode in an imperial carriage with yak-tail banners. He was fittingly succeeded by the Mongolian khans, Whose regime in India was notably vicious and cruel.1 When strong rulers like this gain the imperial sway, You'd better watch out, if you don't share their opinions! Lately, the followers ofJesus Christ Have been busy spreading the Old and New Testaments. 1. Of course, Mohammed himself never set foot in India, but from the thirteenth century onward northern India was ruled by the Delhi sultanate, the first Muslim empire in India. The Mongols referred to here may be the Timurids, Muslim descendants of the originally non-Muslim Mongols, whose sack of Delhi was particularly vicious, or perhaps the Mughals, who also traced their ancestry to the Mongols.

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Translations

They ship stacks of Bibles through their merchant marine And back up their holy gospel with artillery barrages. They claim there is only one god in high Heaven, And if you happen to sin, there's no other you can pray to. For them, every idol of clay or of wood Is totally preposterous, nothing more than a joke. The pearls on the heads of Buddhist statues Are only garbage they destroy and burn. They intend to blow out the lamp of Buddha's faith, And if that doesn't work, they'll tear it up root and branch!1

(486, 228a)*

An audience at Windsor Palace

Ten thousand lamps glitter like phosphorescent pearls; Layers of gold-embroidered brocade carpet the floor. They carve Victoria's exploits on a Heaven-soaring pillar;2 These distant isles of Britannia rival fairyland's fabled realms. My ears seem to savor a noble concert straight from Heaven; Do I really see our sage-king's divine chart of the world?3 This empress's virtue has flourished more than fifty years; She's had no equal since our goddess put the sky back together!4

(506, 127c)

The great London fog

The blue sky has died, a yellow sky reigns; The ocean staggers, clouds tumble, and dark spirits assemble. Heaven is groggy from wine, and God dreams in a stupor; The country sinks into confusion at the loss of its sun. All England lies lethargic in a boundless sea of fog Benighted and hazy, like the dark kingdom of sweet dreams. I have sat in this cubbyhole for several months now And worship my wall's lamp like an idol of Buddha. I really can't tell whether it's morning or evening, Nor is it possible to distinguish the north from the south. 1. Actually, Buddhism was given its coup de grace by the Muslim conquest of northern India during the thirteenth century, but the religion had been declining in India long before the Delhi sultanate. Huang may also be referring to Christian missionary activities in Sri Lanka, which is still largely Buddhist. 2. Literally, "the Empress Wu's [Military Empress's]." For an explanation, see note 2 on page 226. 3. This chart was supposedly a gift from the goddess Xiwangmu M i § to the semilegendary Emperor Shun, one of China's ancient sage-rulers. 4. Niiwa ^C$® was the goddess who repaired the sky after it was damaged in a fight between two monsters.

268

Empire on which the sun never sets

My lamp burns ghastly green as it starts to sputter; Armageddon's black ashes inundate the whole world.1 I imagine I'm crossing the endless sands of the Gobi Or exploring a bottomless cavern too dark to measure. Grime covers everything (even the dust gets dirty!); I strain to see the air, but the air has become ink. No one can give a name for these colors and shapes; Our eyes and noses are plugged up with corks. We will never discover another Creator To sunder sky from earth after he is born. Could this all be a plot of some vicious demons, Who stirred up the ocean and roiled its waters? For suddenly we plunge into hell's endless night, Terrified by an evil wind that blows us to the land of ghouls. When I go out of doors, I can barely walk an inch; All over the boulevards, I hear clanging bells. Horses and carriages vanish like hens in their coops; In this mirage city of towers, the air just stinks. A tiny run appears in the fine mesh of Heaven's net, Revealing the crimson orb of a bloodshot sun. It is certainly too dim to irritate anyone's eyes, Too pale and cold to even warm up my hands. I've heard our globe circles the sun and turns once daily; Now the British Commonwealth extends over the world's continents. It's an empire on which the sun never sets; Its radiant glory covers every place under the heavens. But who could imagine you can't see the sun in its capital And everyone is afraid the sky will fall on his head? Scientists say the earth's moisture evaporates and condenses to form rain, Clever mathematicians can calculate how many raindrops there are. The English have always made their home by the water's side (Not to mention all the vapor from their ten million chimneys). So if somehow you could total the world's fog, inch by inch, I bet it wouldn't come close to the fog in London Town! (5°9> 129c)* Modern parting2 I My thoughts whirl like a wheel, when its time to part, Turning at the rate of 10,000 RPM 1. This is a reference to the periodic destruction of the universe, a popular belief in Hinduism and Buddhism. According to various stories, people sometimes discover ash from the last destruction. 2. For a discussion of these poems, see page 186.

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Translations

My eyes watch wheels driving off in pairs, But they only multiply my heart's misgivings. They had mountains and rivers in ancient times; They also had a variety of vehicles and ships. But when those contraptions carried friends away, You could at least get on or off whenever you wished! Now, the steamships and trains of our modern age Conspire to increase the parting sorrow of people. Every up-to-date fellow knows how his tight schedule Forbids him to indulge in any lingering adieus. As soon as he hears the departure bell clang, That's the end of goodbyes, not a second to spare! Nowadays a ship's rudder of thirty thousand pounds Moves just as smoothly as the finger on your hand. The ocean hasn't run short of contrary winds, But people don't even quail at typhoons these days. Before the folks seeing you off have even got home, Your ship's long vanished someplace over the horizon. They search for its outline, but it's nowhere to be seen, Lost somewhere in a murky patch of mist and waves. Then they wonder aloud why you left so abruptly And hope that some day you can stay a bit longer. But when in the future you actually do return, They beg you toflyback on a hydrogen balloon! II You sent me salutations in the morning, dearest; In the evening, you told me how much you missed me. These messages all sped here one after the other, And people tell me these were mailed by you. But this letter I'm reading is not in your hand, And it seems to be lacking your personal touch. I did read my sweetheart's name just at the end, But I suspect the signature was forged by someone else! The letter consists of no more than normal chitchat, As if you were too rushed to discuss our intimate affairs. It seems to have passed through four successive translations, Which I fear don't convey what you had on your mind. But there do remain a few blotches of ink; Could these be some stains from your parting tears? In front of my gate two rows of straight poles March in perfect order to a place over the horizon. Metallic strings run along each row, Strings that connect one pole to the other. 270

(516, 133c)

Empire on which the sun never sets

I really don't understand how you mail all these letters, And how they arrive so quickly, one after the other. There are hundreds of minutes in each single day, But how do you find time to send so many notes? If I don't have your news for just one moment, darling, My face turns ashen with anxiety and worry. I wish I could travel at the speed of lightning, And flash in one moment to my lover's side!

(5!8, 135c)

III I open the envelope and my face beams with joy, For inside is the image of my darling's face. You sent it directly from the top of your dresser, And now it's clasped tightly in your lover's embrace. The robe I gave you as a going-away present Was cut out and stitched by my very own hands. Every day I worry that you are losing weight; My dear, does the robe fit you as well as before? Ever since our leavetaking I have burned to see you, My love is more potent than heady spring brew. But today when I see my darling's own face, My breast is vexed by anxious worries. When I hold a mirror to study my face, Its complexion is still pink as a peach tree's blooms. I open a small case and send you my portrait inside it, For that's almost as good as seeing you in person. You gave me the jade pin that's stuck in my hair; I sent you the robe that presses your breast. Now our pitiful images will hang face to face; And you and I will always be in each other's company. But even if we're always in each other's company, There will never be an end to our parting sorrow. Face to face, the pictures will not know what to say, As if a thousand mountain ranges still lay between them. If only we could visit each other in our dreams! How else can we communicate our innermost thoughts? IV Where has your soulflownoff to, my dear? Your lover will follow wherever you went. My own soul can soar over the deep, blue ocean I do not tremble before gales or waves. Last evening, darling, Iflewinto your bedroom And raised your bed-curtains with my very own hands. 271

(b1^ 137C)

Translations But when I raised them, I didn't see anybody, And I thought perchance you go to bed late. If your soul is searching for me in your dreams, We're going to have problems seeing each other, dear. I worry that whenever your soul flies here, It arrives at a time when I'm not asleep. When I'm in my dreams, you're always awake, So how can I tell when you're really in bed? This way, we'll never get news of each other; No wonder we have problems getting together! I raise my head and gaze at the bright moon, The bright moon that happened to stride through my door. At times like this I long for you most And don't put on my sleeping gown until dawn breaks. You are living in some remote corner of the world, I'm here in China, far beyond your horizon. We must be separated by more than ten thousand miles, So our days and nights are completely reversed. We don't go to bed or get up at the same time, No wonder our souls never meet in our dreams! The earth is huge, and it's not going to shrink; My soul's wings are too short to fly very far. All that remains is a heart that loves you, Which will never change until the seas run dry. How deep, how deep are the ocean's blue waters, But they're not so great as my love for you!

(521, 138c)

Moved by events (two poems of three) I They serve their guests a thousand gallons of port And present everybody intertwined branches of roses. They sate us with jackfruits a foot in diameter, Slake our thirst with cups of Hindustan's tea. They lodge us in multistoried towers of glass And convey us in curtained carriages with wraparound windows. They present robes with sleeves weighed down by gold thread And invite us to a ballroom immured in brocade curtains. Red felt carpets hug the floor, lamps blaze on the walls; At the soiree tonight, they announce new guests without cease. The couples enter hand in hand, and the women all curtsey, Resembling immortals, more numerous than grass blades. 272

Empire on which the sun never sets

Embroidered gowns trail on the floor over seven feet long; White feathers cover chignons and stick up like tridents. Outer robes unfasten and bare women's arms; Tassels hang down from heads, mounted by jeweled tiaras. Their slim waists bewitch you like lithe willow branches; Clusters of dainty shoes resemble bouquets of lotus. A butler in the courtyard serves frozen sherbets; An orchestra below the stairs plays to a drum's beat. All gods, dragons, and mortals attend this banquet, Riding from the Milky Way on rafts of silver. Their costumes are in all styles, they speak every language; They live in joyful harmony and entertain themselves with flair. You may very well ask why I alone am depressed I turn eastward and face China, sighing over and over!

(523)

II This vast planet stretches in all directions around us, And natural barriers limited our contact with the West. No caravan could cross Central Asia's trackless wastes, With black sandstorms more terrifying than the demon realm. But one day explorers suddenly knocked on our gate; Westerners had carved a path where no man went before.1 After Vasco da Gama sailed the Indian Ocean, Western galleons braved seas with mountainous waves. Formerly Borneo and Sulu were our southernmost vassals, But now foreign empires have swallowed them up.2 Westerners annexed them as easily as pythons crush pigs Goodbye tribute of parakeets and tropical fish!3 Christopher Columbus was the most dauntless European of all, Searching for new lands like a policeman chasing convicts. He packed food for three months and headed westward from Spain, Across surging waves that extended as far as the eye sees. He sailed month after month until his supplies were gone, And ghosts howled at night as his crew planned to knife him. But suddenly terra firma materialized before his eyes Columbus had hooked fifteen islands with one cast of his line!4 1. Literally, "arrived from the southwestern Yi [ancient non-Chinese tribes]." 2. Literally, "Land north of the Han River was conquered by Chu," referring to the conquest by Chu of small states in this region during the Zhou dynasty. 3. Literally, "Gasping, gasping, there was no route for the jian [a kind of bird that flies in pairs, wingtip to wingtip] and the die [a kind offish that swims in pairs in a similar fashion] to come." These two items were precious tribute articles supposedly supplied to the Chinese court in antiquity. Now that both Borneo and the Sulu Archipelago (modern Philippines) have fallen under foreign control, such exotic creatures will no longer be supplied to the court. 4. Literally, "hooked fifteen tortoises," an allusion to a story in the works of the Daoist philosopher Liezi. Supposedly there werefiveislands in the Bohai, which were not attached to

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Translations

Now there are more than a dozen American nations, Thousands of miles wide, with millions of people. Of course, these Americans know the world is round, And now they're exploring the thick polar ice. If they'd put their minds to it, they could fill in the oceans1 Or slice through mountains like our river gods did.2 Their cities of skyscrapers are beyond all belief, Can you predict where these earthshaking changes will lead? There's a dignified country that people called Cathay, Whose civilization was once the toast of all Asia. China's culture spread far beyond the deserts' shifting sands; Our Genghis Khan impressed foreigners (and insulted them, too)! But then Confucian scholars concocted wild doctrines (Stuff about Chinese "supermen" and "our great fatherland"). To their deluded minds, our frontiers weren't worth mentioning (Their wisdom didn't forsee the wolves that rend our land now)! Now England, France, and Russia have risen to power, Press our country on all sides and stand around us watching. When they crack their whips, we defer so politely We let these monsters sleep in the same bedroom with us!3 Isn't it weird how we've changed, from ancient times to now? We take pride in ignorance about ourselves and others! We Chinese are idle courtiers who natter on about trifles; Fellow countrymen, I beg you, let's see some action! (529> 7 2a )

Mailed to Consul-general Zuo Binglong4

You possess all the talents of ancient men; The ancients are really nothing compared to modern men like you. For ten years you have gained fame in our diplomatic corps; Your family lives happily in Singapore's fairy realms. Your official title is "Captain of the Southern Islands," the ocean floor, so God sent fifteen magical tortoises to carry them, but a certain giant went to these islands and fished up six of the tortoises. Of course, Huang is referring to Golumbus's discovery of the West Indies. SttLiezi, 5, 5a. 1. Literally, "The jingwei is always trying to fulfill its ambition of filling in the ocean," an allusion to a legend about thejingwei fit IK, a mythical bird that tries to fill in the seas because in its previous human existence as the daughter of the Flaming Emperor jfc'S, it drowned in the eastern ocean. See SBCK, Shanhaijing l i l ^ M , 3, 44a, 25. 2. Supposedly, a river god split apart Mounts Hua V and Shouyang t f i l to allow the Yellow River to flow in its present course between them. See the translation of Zhang Heng's Ijflllf "Western metropolis rhapsody," in Xiao Tong fBfsE, ed., Wenxuan, or selections from refined literature, tr. David R. Knechtges (Princeton, 1982), vol. 1, 182, note L36. 3. Literally, "We lie in our beds and let them sleep at our sides." 4. Zuo Binglong had served as Chinese consul general in Singapore for nine years.

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But you style yourself "Western Secretary of the South and East." I've heard you sing wildly, beating on an iron clapper; So loud that you scare all the dragons and fish!

(534)

Depressed

I have lived here a long time, sad and depressed, And can't stand being separated from the people around me. Pear trees blossom in this evening's rain; The swallows remain from last year's spring. My position is so humble I just lock my door; The lamp makes me so lonely I befriend my servant. The thunder of wagons rumbles outside my wall, Roiling up clouds of red-colored dust.

(565)

On climbing the Eiffel Tower

The tower is 300 French meters tall (about 1,000 Chinese feet) and is the world's highest man-made structure.1 The tower bursts from the ground and rises straight up, Soaring like a mountain hundreds of feet in the air. (If you don't happen to have a pair of wings on your back, You'd better forget about a trip to its top.) A golden lightning rod crowns the tower's summit, And a lattice of steel hangs down on four sides. Below the pinnacle, they hang afifty-footflag, Just the right size for a thousand-man tent. Granite foundation stones huddle like trees in a forest; Dew-laden arches face each other grandly. Tourists stand on tiptoe to get a closer look, Thrilled by this new spectacle revealed to their eyes. An elevator car suddenly shoots up its cable, And I leap when I hear the whine of its engine. I really amflying,without any wings on my back, Soaring on a journey to the heavens above! Nothing in our world is as sublime as this tower, Rising alone without any support. Even when you stand on its lowest platform, You're already beyond the reach of other buildings. 1. Huang visited the Eiffel Tower in 1891, only two years after it was completed.

275

Translations

The only roof above you is Heaven's blue dome, And below, planet earth displays her infinite variety. The air I exhale blows against Heaven's throne; I can commune directly with the deities in paradise!1 Everything under Heaven, everything on the earth, Can be seen by looking down (no more sore necks). I only regret I don't have perfect vision, For here no obstacles block my view. Square field boundaries stand out precisely, A million acres of the world's most fertile farms. A hazy line stretches far into the distance, Where the broad river Seineflowshundreds of miles. Palace towers and the ramparts of forts All merge together in the blue, misty air. You can't tell the cows from the horses or men, All swarming beneath you like tiny midges. As soon as I arrive from the world below, Things large and small are magically transformed. Do you imagine that everything looks smaller than this, When a god gazes down at the world beneath him? The north wind arrives from a sea crammed with ice; The autumn air suddenly turns crisp and chilly. A few wisps of mist rise west of the sea, Where the British Isles glower far in the distance. I remember the engagements of the Hundred Years' War, How England rent France and battled for empire. Two kings drove their people against enemy swords, Exhausted their treasuries, and bankrupted their nations. In later ages Napoleon Bonaparte arose, A hero without peer in the entire world. As long as he kept winning, he was emperor of Europe; One little slip, and he ended up the world's number one exile. The whole continent of Europe is an old battlefield; The Europeans love war and don't compromise lightly. Today six great emperors divide the continent among them,2 Each boasting that he's the strongest leader of the world. These fellows resemble the proverbial kings in a snail shell,3 Who wasted their time chalking up victories and losses.

1. Literally, "penetrate to the xixiang insect," a kind of insect that was supposedly very sensitive to sound and later became a symbol for divine inspiration. 2. I.e., the emperors of England, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, and Italy. 3. Allusion to a story in Zhuangzi about two kingdoms that fought with each other constantly, one on the left antenna of a snail, the other on the right antenna. See Zhuang Zhou, 70/25/27.

276

Empire on which the sun never sets

I'm afraid that my body is as soft as a grain of rice; I'm just a feeble creature, who's always overrated himself. The world seems to shrink when I see it from here; Its seven continents would fit in the palm of my hand. As soon as I climb to the pinnacle of the tower, I begin to daydream aboutflyingon the wind. When can I harness the air as my steed, Ride on a hydrogen balloon wherever I want? I would soar on a whirlwind, ninety thousand miles straight up; I laugh out loud, because I just might do it! (565, 161b)

The Suez Canal

Sage Yu's diversion of the Yellow River can hardly top this;1 Antiquity's drifting dunes now change into tides. The world's nations all fight over this route to the Orient —2 It bestrides two continents and separates them like a river. This great feat of spade and chisel has shrunk our planet; Boats pass through, bow to stern, to Mother Nature's embarrassment. Some day, when the southern oceans have also been linked, America's eagle will kick the ocean and soar to Heaven on a whirlwind!3 (572, 146c) Huang Zunxian's note: The construction of the Panama Canal was notyet complete.

On the evening that our ship moored at Port Said, it rained for thefirst time in six months

Dunes of sand stretch a thousand miles; A godforsaken wilderness like China's Dragon Pile.4 A soaring hawk circles around the clouds and disappears; Glistening camels carry water jars on their backs. Three inches of rainfinallybreak the drought, As the rumble of thunder surges from the ground. The clammy heat vanishes in an instant, And a wonderful cool breeze caresses my breast!

(575)

1. The sage-king Yu supposedly dredged out the Yellow River in the area of Longmen (Dragon Gate) when he was taking measures against the Great Flood. 2. This line involves a clever play on words, impossible to reproduce in English. The term dongdaozjiu normally means "host" or "master," but its literal word-for-word meaning is "eastern route master," hence, the translation adopted. 3. According to the note in 146c, this last line takes the expression dapeng ("great roc") in the original to refer to ships, so if we accept this interpretation we should translate, "The ships will kick the ocean and soar to heaven on a whirlwind like a great roc." However, the note Huang appended to the poem suggests that he is referring to the United States here. 4. A desert region near the ancient kingdom of Loulan, in modern Xinjiang.

277

20 Singapore (1891-1894)

I wrote this poem after arranging lotuses, chrysanthemums, and peachflowerstogether in the same vase.1 Here the South Dipper lies north and the seasflowwest;2 Their spring's not our spring, and their autumn's not autumn. People inform me that today it's already New Year's, But a hundredflowersglisten in a big heap on my desk! For three years I've served in these southern lands; I've traveled five continents and seen many strange sights. I try my very best to care for these flowers And arrange them with devotion in a vase of clear water.3 The lotuses wear white and the chrysanthemums yellow; I add dark-skinned peaches, but they stand shyly aside.4 My hands hold pairedflowers,head pressed against head; One leaf faces another, each blossom matches a blossom. Myriad fragrances mingle, heady as sandalwood incense, And their colors outdazzle the clouds' brocade robes. Magnificent as jeweled robes on display in the markets, They're more splendid than jade broth, ambrosia fit for gods. They're a flute-and-drum orchestra, zithers and lutes plucked in harmony, Like Western and Chinese music, all performed in the same key. The gods must have showered heavenly blossoms on my body, Fairies, Buddhas, and devils inhabit the same room, 1. This remarkable poem advocating racial harmony was inspired by the ethnic diversity of Singapore but does not seem to have been written until Huang returned to China. See the discussion on page 125. 2. The South Dipper consists of five stars in the Southern Hemisphere constellation Centaurus, which is also visible part of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. 3. The word hai *M ("sea") must be a misprint for qing S ("pure"); the flowers would have wilted in seawater. 4. These three kinds offlowersrepresent the white, yellow, and black races, respectively.

278

Singapore

I imagine that someone paid merchants to send vessels, Loaded with people of all hues to settle this nation. Onefloweris delighted to run into a friend, More than four thousand years since they've seen one another. Anotherflowerlooks at himself in total confusion Gould he really have traveled a thousand miles to this land? Shy and embarrassed, oneflowerdraws aside by himself; The others are so refined, he's ashamed of his coarseness. Another glares in contempt at all his companions; He won't flatter these boors with his exalted presence! At times they turn their backs in mutual suspicion; They thinkflowersof different species can't trust one another. But later they stand in love, side by side, Blessing the good fortune that joined them in wedlock. Sometimes they frown in anguish and stifle bitter sobs: "Flowers grow from the same roots, why do others harass us?" But other times they pacefiercely,with head held high, Shouting, "Uproot other species! Who will act as our hoe?" Later they gaze in the water, speechless with fury: "Who created these other races to oppress us so cruelly?" But then they greet the spring wind with a friendly smile: "We refuse no comers; everyone's welcome in our land!" If you examine flowers' outlines, they all look the same, For they lack human features, don't have human egos. I have a message for the world's millions of flowers: "You are all of one race and belong to the same family. You don't understand the ancients' tolerant wisdom, And you'd best let a human set you straight on this matter." Then I asked theflowersif I could begin to arrange them, And the ones I held grinned, while the others nodded yes. Flowers can't talk, but my tongue's equal to the task, So I beg theflowergod, "No discrimination, please!" We Chinese are skillful at growing greenhouse flowers1 And can make orchids and plums bloom at the same time. Modern ships flash like lightning across the wide seas, And they could deliver myflowersto China in one day. This vase wouldn't dry, and theflowerswouldn't wither (Don't think this grotesque because you've never seen it).2 1. The translation "greenhouse" or "hothouse" assumes the emendation of the text suggested by Qian. 2. Literally, "Because rarely seen, do not think it strange as a camel," an animal the ancient Chinese considered to be grotesque, because it resembles a horse with a hump.

279

Translations If we decided to reverse the hemispheres of our globe, The Equator might oppress China, and the seasons would switch. Perhaps the peaks of Canton would become an island in the sea, And flowers of all climates would bloom in my town. These days, horticultural methods are so terribly refined, We graft branches and leaves with greater skill than Nature. Scientists will change lotuses to peaches, make peaches chrysanthemums (Though for the time being we don't fathom how chlorophyll works). When chemists synthesize compounds, they start with the atoms; They use many techniques to rearrange and join elements. They may invent an elixir that can change one plant to another Or join myriad chrysanthemums, peaches, and lotuses in a single body. The form of living creatures is determined by karma, And you flowers quite possibly weren't flowers to begin with. Plants and animals live and die, transmigrate many times; Men may change to flowers, and flowers to men. The sixty-four sorts of atoms are infinitesimally small, And anything's possible as our bodies change form. Our physical frame decays, but our souls are immortal Perhaps I'll become a flower, or a flower will become me. The soul retains knowledge for billions of years; My flower and human forms may alternate with each other. Some day, when you flowers arrange me in a vase, Please recite this poem to your flower friend again!

(599> 1 5 OC )*

Assorted poems on recoveringfrom malaria (twelve ofseventeen)

After I was ill with malaria for a year, the doctor urged me to take a vacation, so I visited Penang, Malacca, and Perah. While I was living in the country residence of a Chinese friend, I saw so many wonderful sights that I composed poems in my mind but didn't write them down. After my recovery I still remembered them and wrote out more than a dozen. I Trees on a thousand mountain peaks merge with the sky; A hundred waterfalls dart high over their branches. Could you believe that at the summit, the very source of these torrents, I sleep, propped against some books - legs sticking up? (640)* II The moon darkens, the wind moans, and the trees' shadows thicken; Birds shudder, insects sigh, and the night falls still. I seem to hear someone rattling against the brushwood gate; When I rise in the morning - deep tiger tracks all around! (641, 179c)* 280

Singapore III The trees grow denser the farther you go into the mountains; I pierce clouds and ford streams, chanting poems as I walk. I hunt for the path home but can't find a trail of cow droppings, So I starting hunting in a place where there are no footprints at all! IV The autumn moon rides like a wheel over the mountains Andfloodsmy hall at midnight with coconut-palm shadows. I order a tame monkey to go fetch me their fruit; I could drink tea or wine, but my throat's really too parched! V Intoxicated by Heaven's music, I dream in a fog; I recover from an attack as the hens start to cackle. I rise to view the South Dipper, but I find it due north; Is this a sign of good luck, or does it foretell my death?1 VI My old wife listens to gossip as she guards her oven; Our neighbor has a Muslim charm to expell malaria demons. Old Buddha doesn't work as well as the angels down here, So she nags me to read the Koran - over and over!

(641)*

(642, 180c)*

(642)*

(642, 115d)*

VII The peach blossoms are in riot, and the willowfluffflies; A placid stream with gentle ripples flashes turquoise around me. In a single-oared boat with a ropefivefeet long, My boy returns home, proudly dragging a crocodile behind him! (643, 180c)* VIII The stream swells to bursting with the water of spring showers; I trail a wet raincoat as I untangle my line. I look for a rock to fish from, but there's no place to sit — I end up standing with the wild egrets for a very long time!

(644, 181c)*

IX The sun setting behind my bamboos first fades, then reappears; I raise my curtain, lean on my pillow, and watch the sky clear. Rain swirls with dust motes, a fragrant mist curls upward; A strand of spider web stretches across one corner of my room.

(644)*

X A light robe, white underwear, a black cap on my head Only ten degrees difference between the hot and cold seasons. 1. According to traditional Chinese star lore, the North Dipper (the Big Dipper) confers long life, but the South Dipper gives death. See Gan Bao ^PJI, Soushenji SttfS (Taipei, 1962), 3, 21.

281

Translations

Their winter isn't winter, and summer's hardly summer; The four seasons'flowersare never in short supply on my desk! XI Bamboos by a crumbling wall glower under a waning moon. Dim lamps glisten somewhere, like two or three stars. Red turbans and white robes whirl, and bared arms dance; From time to time stray dogs yap at fireflies in the alleys.

(644)*

(644, 182c)*

XII All manner and variety of trees flourish in this country; I want to call them by their local names, but my tongue is too clumsy. I try to find Chinese translations for this plethora of plants, But the Malay terms are all written in a script like crab tracks!1 1. At this time, Malay was still written in Arabic script.

282

(645)*

21 War and reform (1894-1899) A dirgefor Pyongyang1 Black clouds obscure the mountains, the mountains so lofty; Look down and watch cannons blast Pyongyang in concert. Wherever their flames flash, the city rumbles and thunders; A shower of flesh flies, and red blood rains down. Green plumed helmets of officers tumble off the walls; One general rushes to his death, vows to be buried on the spot.2 Heaven shudders, and the earth trembles at the soldiers' cries; Already surrender's white banner droops from southern ramparts. Now a hasty retreat is the wisest stratagem for you; Run, men, gallop, horses, trample each other in confusion! Hurry! Hurry! Leave the city while you've still got a chance! Listen to the bloodthirsty demons hoot in hot pursuit behind you! Great Nippon rises to dance, while little Korea mourns; Turncoats change sides, and snipers' bullets whizz.3

1. The following poems deal with the disastrous defeat of China in the Sino-Japanese War, which started as a dispute over control of Korea. The Japanese siege of Pyongyang (1894) was the war's second major battle. For a fuller discussion of the historical background to this poem, see page 162. 2. Literally, "One general hastens to be wrapped up in a horsehide," an allusion to the great Eastern Han general Ma Yuan MWt (14 B.C.- A.D. 49), who is supposed to have said: "A brave young man ought to be willing to die in a frontier wilderness and wrap his corpse in a horsehide shroud before it is returned for burial." See Fan Ye f S ^ , Houhan shu li 81 It (Beijing, 1965), 24, 841. The general referred to in Huang's poem is Zuo Baogui (d. 1894), who resolved to die at his post after he realized that Pyongyang could not be defended against the Japanese assault. He mounted the city wall to command his troops, in a temporarily successful counterattack, but after he was killed by Japanese artillery the Chinese army collapsed. 3. Literally, "Each time, reversed lances, hidden arrowsfly."Reversed lances are a common symbol of betrayal, and Huang is describing how, after Pyongyang was abandoned, Korean troops went over to the Japanese side and killed many Chinese soldiers. 283

Translations

Our long lances, short sabers, and shiny steel guns Are discarded in great heaps by the side of the road. In one evening our troops run a hundred miles in blind fear; The enemy fords the Yalu River with the greatest of ease.1 One of our generals is imprisoned, another beheaded,2 And fifteen thousand Chinese troops surrender like vile slaves.

(647, 183c)*

The Battle qfDadonggou3

Vague black wisps of smoke appear due north of our fleet; The admiral announces: "The enemy's been sighted"; Our battleships glide neatly, bow following stern. The Japs come toward us, advance bit by bit; They steam cautiously forward in an unbroken file, Then suddenly swing around and encircle our fleet. Once our men know what's happened, they fire their guns; A shell explodes on a deck and sweeps a hundred men away; Another arches like a meteor but fails to go off. Enemy artillery bombards our fleet from all four directions; Their ships whirl like tornadoes and prance like stallions; A thousand Japanese shells punch our armor full of holes. Hell's oven boils the ocean, the waves seethe and surge; Seabirds wing away, marine dragons huddle in terror; Even the sailors and cannons are paralyzed with fear.4 Black ashes plunge the world into twilight shadows;5 Our fleet has enoughfirepowerto annihilate the enemy, But would we dare attack when we can't see them clearly? One ship's rudder is mangled; one sinks like a smashed pot; Billions of dollars rain down in a shower from the sky; Our money dissolves in the water or blazes into flames. 1. At the command of Ye Zhichao, who had originally been against putting up a fight, the Chinese army beat a hasty retreat across the Yalu River into their own territory. One of the principal reasons for the defeat was disagreement among the various generals as to what actions to take. Over two thousand Chinese troops were killed by the Japanese during the retreat from Pyongyang. 2. Both General Ye Zhichao and General Wei Rugui frftH (d. 1896) were sentenced to death as a result of the defeat. 3. This naval battle took place one month after the Battle of Pyongyang, at Dadonggou (Taipinggou), near the mouth of the Yalu River. See the discussion starting on page 163. 4. Literally, "the sound of war drums." This line is translated in accordance with Qian Esun's response to a query about its meaning. 5. See note 1 on page 269.

284

War and reform

A conflagration lashes the ocean and gives wings to its water; The sun sets straight west (many men won't go home); Both navies sing battle hymns and sound the retreat. From now on, the Chinese navy will cower in its harbors; Our experts claim we lost because they outmaneuvered our ships, But I say, weapons you can't use are just a gift to the enemy! (649, 186c)*

I grievefor Port Arthur1

China may float on the ocean like nine wisps of cloud, But mighty Port Arthur is a natural fortress for our land. Cannons rear their heads skyward and glare like tigers toward the sea; The court's even granted them titles (nothing equals their glory).2 Columns of giant battleships line the deep harbor below them, Thundering in clear weather, flashing lightning at night. Now just let your gaze sweep to Port Arthur's highest peak, Where the wind whips a dragon banner one thousand feet long; Don't forget that Port Arthur is the moat to our Great Wall, Guarding us from the carnivores who die for a taste of our flesh. The beasts cock their heads slyly and greedily eye our port; Some extend paws to snatch it but lose nerve in the end. It's easier to fill the ocean or move a mountain, people say, Than for these monsters to work up courage to succeed in their schemes. But one morning our whole army collapsed in a heap, And the enemy took Port Arthur from behind - by land\ (653, 189c)*

A lamentfor Weihai3

North and south forts Fit like lips over teeth. The port's east-west mouths Connect, head to tail. 1. On the twenty-sixth of the ninth month, the Japanese landed at Dalianwan ^11131 and, after resting ten days, advanced toward Port Arthur (Chinese name Liishun IfOIK), which was taken in a few days. The Chinese lost the battle because of a lack of coordination among the six commanders who controlled the armies in Port Arthur and their failure to prepare for a possible attack by land. For a more detailed account, see page 164. 2. The title of the cannon in the original is "Red-robed General." In premodern China, it was quite common to grant noble titles to inanimate objects of service to the court. 3. The Battle of Weihai was fought in the first month of 1895. Weihai was a leading seaport and naval base, in Shandong province. The Chinese forces collapsed on the third day of the Japanese assault. For more details about the battle and the unusual trisyllabic meter of this poem, see the discussion on page 165.

285

Translations

The Island of Duke Liu Rises - dead center.1 Walls of steel Guard a pitiful dragon; Watch the dragon squirm, Twisted into coils. Our navy and army Hate one another. Before the Japs come, The game is over. The Japs arrive, Attack on both sides, Advance in full force, Strike our rear first, Smash Glory Fort,2 Shatter Shandong's army. Force our southern gate (Even our dogs don't dare bark). Fortresses of steel Surrender in a minute. Thousand-pound guns Abandoned without a fight. Our cannons blast our ships; What hope now? Take our ships, We can fight. Take our cannons Slit our throats. Red alert, red alert! From North Hill Pass To our southern forts, A distance of feet. Our ten-mile line there A flimsy paper sheet. General Li dozing; General Dai dead.3 The Japs drive deep; 1. The rugged Island of Duke Liu (Liugongdao) protects Weihai from the Yellow Sea on the eastern side of the port. Two smaller islands lie on the leeward side of the island, forming a natural fortress for the city. 2. To the southeast of Weihai. 3. Glory City was captured because of General Li Bingheng's lack of preparation. General Dai Zongqian attempted to retake the forts, but when his men refused to follow him into battle he swallowed poison.

286

War and reform

Sound the alarm! Order our sailors Uphill! Save the forts! Cannons belch fire, Everything's ashes. Hills leap and shriek; The ocean reels. Someone attacks Our sailors are charging! Too late for the forts, No longer ours. Battleships alone, East and west of the harbor. A furious blizzard Cannons boom out. Ships split asunder; Dragons see blood. Ghosts shriek at night; Ships keel over. Pressed and crushed, Our dragon writhes. Maimed soldiers fight; Injured men struggle. Vanquished sailors drown The cowards all run. Any hope left? The Japs work together Our army and navy are On different sides; Worms in tight burrows, Who can't stretch bodies, Twofightingcocks Can't live in one flock. Bugs in dog's fur, Seeking their death, Unreeled threads That tangle together. Play with fire, Don't complain if it burns you. No place to escape, No commanders with plans. High Heaven above Doesn't heed their cries. All relief cut off, 287

Translations

No one to save them. Send reinforcements, Would they fight or run? Our cannons, intact Somebody's fault. Our ships not scuttled Who uses them now? A steel mask on your face Can't conceal disgrace. The ocean by Weihaiflowsbroad and deep; The wind of Weihai is grand and mighty. Just strain your eyes as hard as you can, You might glimpse China's flag still waving in the distance. Our foreign minister, our commander,1 Are overwhelmed by this tragedy, Only Duke Liu's impregnable island Guards the harbor - alone.

(655, 192c)*

An admiral surrenders2

Our boat flies through Jap lines as swift as a bird; Both armies look on and weapons hush.3 A man stands on the bow and waves a white flag, Sent by Admiral Ding to deliver his appeal: "My army's exhausted, we can't keep fighting; You've besieged this island, our peril's extreme. Nothing remains for your humble servant to do The troops that survive are all crippled and maimed. Dead men's wives and orphans make up the remainder, But they've no food to cook, and their clothes are in tatters. 1. Literally, "Big and Little Li." Big Li is Li Hongzhang, who held a position equivalent to foreign minister at the time. Little Li is probably General Li Bingheng, mentioned in note 3 above. 2. This poem is also about the Battle of Weihai, the subject of the preceding poem. Ding Ruchang Tt&H (1836—95) was commander of the Beiyang Fleet, the pride of the Chinese navy. According to some historians, when the Japanese attacked Weihai Ding wished to defend his fleet to the death, but after his subordinates refused to accept his orders he took poison, out of despair. Another version has it that he was also in favor of surrender and committed suicide out of fear of punishment. Huang seems to have adopted the latter explanation. On the surface, this poem seems to be a dirge for Ding, but in fact it is a subtle satire on his defeat. See the discussion of the historical background and interpretation of this poem on page 167. 3. Literally, "war drums fall silent."

288

War and reform

My men freeze and starve like sparrows on a mountain Six thousand lives hang by a thin thread. If my troops fight to the death, who will carefor the others?

This island's a great fortress, the ocean its moat; My ships are moored in rows like pearls on a necklace. I have hundreds of cannon and thousands of guns, Possess a pile of ammunition as high as a mountain. Both the land and sea troops are under my command, And I long ago vowed we would fight to the death. Smash us like insects or grind us to mincemeat, I swore we would defy death and go down with our ships. But now I'm putting my force under your command, And I humbly beg you to have mercy on our lives. I swear this by Heaven; let Heaven be my witness!"

The Japanese admiral agreed to keep his side of the bargain; At sunrise he would receive the Chinese flag of surrender. Shouts of joy thundered along the ranks of both armies, But green will-o'-the-wisps flickered, an evil wind blackened the moon. The angel of death pressed General Ding to depart; He brewed the opium draught and downed the deep cup. The Chinese sealed his coffin, the Japanese loaded it in a cart, One general on each side, three attendants at the rear. Both armies rained down tears of shock and bewilderment; Why did he commit suicide after he surrendered? It was truly a pitiful sight when they shipped his bones home White funeral flags fluttered, military banners drooped lifeless. They hoisted an ensign with his name on a tall standard, But you couldn't see China's flag flying anywhere at all. The surf tumbled and splashed, and the sea wind howled sadly: A national tragedy. Alas. Alas. (682, 200c)* The General of Manchuria1

A cock crows at midnight, and he leaps up with a flourish;2 "Proclaim to the J a p s , / d r a w near," he commands. 1. This poem is a satire on Wu Dacheng, a well-known calligrapher and antiquarian who was governor of Hunan when the Sino-Japanese War broke out. Because he had wide experience in military administration, Wu volunteered the service of his Hunan troops, and he was ordered to defend Shanhaiguan llj$lllfl. After his troops met with a disastrous defeat at Niuzhuang, he was relieved of his command. 2. Allusion to the Jin-dynasty hero Zu Di, who was aroused to military prowess after hearing a cock crow at night. See Fang Xuanling M~£$$,Jin shu # # (Beijing, 1974), 62, 1694.

289

Translations "My brave deeds will net me a million-serf duchy; Our emperor couldn't refuse such a paltry reward." The general approaches Manchuria with fitting heroics, Whips his steed into a gallop to display his great courage. In normal life he collects antiques and has bought a Han seal, Which now hangs at his waist as his official emblem.1 Previously our general had traveled many stages by carriage And left tracks all around upper and lower Korea.2 He carved his deeds on a bronze pillar (even sacrificed a white stallion), And when our neighbors heard the news, they quaked with due fear.3 His triumphal procession slowed, and he settled in Pyongyang, Where he drilled his poor troops a hundred times each day. Some averred that his features presaged a noble future; (How he yearned for a chance to prove his talents in combat!) Now he guards a mighty pass that looms straight into Heaven, Where fist-sized snowflakes fall in spring's raging blizzards.4 He summons all his officers to an annual audience, 'Mid bronze stoves, silver candlesticks, and red felt carpets. Once they drain their cups, he commands another round And unsheathes his sword to slice raw shoulder of pork. He claims he's practiced sharpshooting all his life, Achieved pinpoint accuracy during the last fifteen years. A violet lightning flashes from his eyes, As he bares his arms to display biceps of steel. "Our Anhui generals are all women," he claims,5 "About as pitiful as a pack of old nannies. Just watch me mount my stallion to slaughter our foes; I'll attack left and feint right, and no one can beat me. Ten miles beyond Blue Hoof Lodge, on the Yalu River border, The Jap's front lines will vaporize in a single puff of smoke." He had Messeiurs Huang and Zeng draft victory proclamations, 1. While he was governor of Hunan, Wu obtained a Han-dynasty seal with the inscription "General who rules Liao [part of ancient Manchuria, now partly in Liaoning province]." Since he had always been involved in military affairs and had even published a manual on artillery practice, he considered the seal prophetic of a brilliant career as a general. 2. After the coup d'etat in Korea, Wu was dispatched to Korea as a commissioner of the Qing government and spent approximately six weeks in Seoul, at the beginning of 1885, with about one hundred fifty troops under his command. 3. In 1880 Wu was selected to take part in the strengthening of Chinese defenses against Russia in eastern and northern Manchuria. He organized a Border Pacification Army and established a European-style arsenal in Jilin. In 1885 he set up a bronze pillar to mark the Chinese-Russian border near Jilin. In ancient times white horses were sacrificed to sanctify an agreement with other countries. 4. The area of Shanhaiguan where Wu was stationed. 5. The Huai, or Anhui, Army was under the command of Yeh Zhichao. See note 1 on page 284. Huang is criticizing the factional rivalry that was the bane of the Qing military forces. 290

War and reform

So they'd be ready to chisel on Mongolia's Mount Yanran.1 "Those Japanese rats will not dare to resist me; They are lower than dogs or the most vile vermin. If they gamble their fortunes on a sudden assault, They'll meet their doom in the chaos of battle. They can only escape death if they kneel before me; Just let them try clashing with my army's vanguard! Soon as I defeat them in three running battles, I'll take them all prisoner with classic strategies."2 But as soon as the armies clashed, as soon as he joined battle with Japan, His armyflewlike birds and deserted their camp.3 No one worried about lost helmets or the sabers they dropped, But, thank God, he didn't lose the Han seal hanging by his waist! After all, this general is a leader of great talent, So he returns to his governorship in Hunan province. His eight thousand troops were mostly crippled or killed; Mourners sacrificed to their souls as the wind howled sadly. His officers and infantry scattered like a cloud of dust, But the general returns home, with his appetite intact. He catalogues antique jades and publishes drawings of bronze vessels, Digs deep into his wallet to buy a collection worth millions. He hears of the bullion mountains that we ship to Japan4 And wishes to do his bit to help out our government. He wants to contribute a sum to assist with the deficit, Would even bankrupt his family to pay his debt to society. When he gazes northward to Korea, he fumes with righteous anger, Takes out his Han seal and strokes it over and over. Suddenly he recalls all those senseless deaths in Manchuria,5 Cries, "Oh! My seal! My seal! What can I do now?" (694, 211c)* 1. Huang is Huang Ziyuan Htl=!7U, and Zeng is Zeng Guangjun, Zeng Guofan's grandson. Qian Esun originally identified these two men incorrectly in RJL but gave the correct identification during an interview with the author. Mount Yanran is a mountain in what is now Mongolia, where a Han general had an inscription made to commemorate his victory over the Xiongnu in A.D. 89. 2. Literally, 'Try out my strategy of seven releases and seven captures," referring to a strategy employed by General Zhuge Liang, of the Three Kingdoms period who captured and released his adversary Meng Huo J!I 4^°~5 1 1 > a n d Paul A. Cohen, China and Christianity: The missionary movement and the growth of anti-foreignism, 1860-1870 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 229-61.

39. A detailed traditional-style account of Li's life is found in Dou Zongyi UTTC""^, Li Hongzhang nianpu ^Stift^fjf (Hong Kong, 1968). See also Stanley Spector,

3°9

Notes to pages 15-19

Li Hung-chang and the Huai Army (Seattle, 1964), and Kwang-ching Liu, "The Confucian patriot and pragmatist: Li Hung-chang's formative years, 18231866," HJAS 30 (1970), 5-45. For the influence of translated materials on nineteenth-century intellectuals, see Tsuen-hsuin Tsien, "Western impact on China through translation," Far Eastern Quarterly 13 (1954), 305-27. 40. A Marxist interpretation of the Self-strengthening Movement is found in Zhongguo shixue hui tfiWi^l^^t, YangwuyundongffiSjUUKj(Shanghai, 1961). For Western views of the movement, see "Self-strengthening: The pursuit of Western technology," in Fairbank, Cambridge, vol. 10, 491-542, and Mary C. Wright, The last stand of Chinese conservatism: The T'ung-chih Restoration, 1862—

1874 (Stanford, 1957), 196-221. 41. RJL, 103. 42. For a biography of Hu Xi, see Luo Xianglin S U ^ s "Hu Xiaocen xiansheng nianpu" il/JN^7fc^ti^fif, in Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo jikan waipiandisizhong ^ ^ W ^ I ^ M i ^ W W ^ W I I f J ^ S I l E f l , 1, QingzhuDong

43.

44. 45. 46.

47.

48. 49.

50.

Zuobin xiansheng liushiwu sui lunwenji Silfti(f^3i[5fc^iA"hSj^lralil^ (Taipei, i960). Hu Xi's poems are contained in his Zhancixinzhai shiji 5 t £ ! ! N H (n.p., 1935). He also wrote poetry criticism, Zhancixinzhai shihua 15, in Yuan Wusong iS^HS et al., eds., Xingning xianxian congshu (Hong Kong, 1958), vol. 1, which also contains his prose writings in volume 4. See the discussion on page 84. A translation and study of Tao Qian's complete poetry is found in Tao Qian, The poetry of T'ao Ch}ien, tr. James Robert Hightower,Jr. (Oxford, 1970). RJL, 129. RJL, 131. For more on He Ruzhang's later diplomatic activities, see this volume, Chapter 2, note 1. His official biography is in QSG, 450, 12456. He Ruzhang wrote a significant collection of poems about his diplomatic mission to Japan, Shidong zayong i ^ ^ l M c {Assortedpoems about a mission to the east), appended to Shidong

shulue £.~WJ&&, in JDZGSLCK, 29-47. D e n g Chengxiu's biography is in QSG, 444, 12457. Augustus Margary was a twenty-eight-year-old British vice-consul who traveled through remote regions of Yunnan to meet a British team surveying the land route from Burma to Yunnan. He was repeatedly warned by local Chinese officials that they could not ensure his safety in the highly unstable region. See Hsu, 304-5, and S. T. Wang, The Margary Affair and the Chefoo Convention (New York, 1935). Also, Xiao, vol. 3, 1021-32. RJL, 1064. In the last two lines of the second poem in a series of four funerary poems for Li Hongzhang, Huang wrote: "When he got old, he made the mistake of befriending jackals and tigers, / Claiming this would give us peace for twenty years," a reference to Li's territorial concessions to the Western powers to counteract Japanese influence in China. Sfe RJL, 1061, and 1062, note 8. RJL, 194. It is difficult to ascertain the date of composition for many of Huang Zunxian's poems. The poems of RJL appear to be arranged in chronological 310

Notes to pages 20-2 order, and practically all of Huang's biographers have assumed that they are in order of composition. However, the existence of two manuscript copies of parts of Huang's collected works throws the chronological order of RJL into grave doubt. The first of these, named Chaoben $P^- (hereafter abbreviated CB) by Qian Esun, was bought by Zhou Xiashou MWL^ (probably Zhou Zuoren J^lf^A) in a used-book store in Beijing and is presently in the University of Beijing Library. It contains most of the poems in Chapters 1 through 6 of RJL, with composition dates ranging from Huang's youth to 1891. The second manuscript, called Yuangaoben WMk^ (hereafter abbreviated YGB), seems to be missing now, but it was originally in the possession of one Yang Huiwu 1R!i(;&, a disciple of Huang Zunxian, and detailed information about its contents was sent to Qian Esun by Huang's brother, Huang Zungeng licliijSt. It contains most of the poems now found in Chapters 5 through 8 of RJL, spanning the period from 1892 to Huang's forced retirement in 1898. However, many poems now found in RJL which would seem to have been written within these two time periods do not appear in CB or YGB, the poem just translated being one example. It seems that Huang had a habit of writing poems at later dates about events that had occurred earlier and inserting them into the final edition of RJL at the points where they "should" have been written. Although the absence of a poem from CB or YGB is not conclusive evidence about its date of composition, the fact that the poem just translated is not in CB would suggest that it may have been written after 1891. Part of the confusion about chronology in most earlier works on Huang's poetry arises from the fact that information about which poems are in CB or YGB was included only in the latest edition of RJL. See Zhou Zuoren, Yijing wenshi banyuekan S^M^jfe^^j fj 25 (March 5, 1937), 7-13? and Qian Esun, Mengtiao'an shihua j£i§MRTf§S in RJL, 1295—9. The original article is anonymous, and Qian Esun gives the author's name as Zhou Xiashou, which is not Zhou Zuoren's normal hao (Zhitang ^ 0 ^ ) . See Howard L. Boorman, ed., Biographical dictionary ofRepublican China (New York, 1967), vol. 1,424. 2. HUANG, THE DIPLOMAT 1. RJL, 1181. See Kamachi's discussion of the reasons for Huang's decision to serve with He in Kamachi, 26-8. For He Ruzhang's mission, see Li Yushu ^ 4 1 SJ, "Shouren zhu Ri gongshi He Ruzhang" t H i f t H ^5fef"IiP^, in Shen Jinding ifcUjffi, ed., Bainianlai Zhong Ri guanxi lunwenji l^^-Tfc^ R SB^Iw^fc M (Taipei, 1966), 1073-4. 2. RJL, 197. 3. For the Meiji Restoration, see W. G. Beasely, The Meiji Restoration (Stanford, 1973); Michio Umegaki, After the Restoration: The beginnings of Japan's modern state (New York, 1988); and Robert A. Wilson, Genesis of the Meiji government in Japan, 1868-1871 (Berkeley, 1957). A useful general summary of the period is found in Marius B. Jansen, ed., Cambridge history of Japan (Cambridge, 1989), vol. 5, 3 0 8 - 6 0 and 432-765. 4. RJL, 1184. Kamachi, 81-2, 248-9.

Notes to pages 22-4 5. Huang Zunxian, Ribenguo zhi B^BLife (hereafter abbreviated RBGZ), Guangzhou, 1890, 3, I7ab. For the various editions, see Sheng Banghe IS^P fP, Huang Zunxian shixueyanjiu ifiiSLiRjfe^W^iL (Jiangsu, 1987), 109. 6. See Liang Qichao, ed., "Donghaigong laijian" jR^l^^ffi, inXinmincongbao W\ PajRfK. (hereafter abbreviated XMCB), (Taipei repr., first of seventh month, 1902), no. 13,55. 7. Four of the thirteen editions of Riben zashishi S ^tt^INf (hereafter abbreviated RBZSS) mentioned by Wu Tianren, and six out of seventeen listed by Sheng Banghe, were printed in Japan. See HGD, 305-7, and Sheng, 109, for a table of these. The first edition, published by the Tongwenguan IWI^tlff in Beijing in 1879, contains 150 poems, which were finally increased to 200 in the Fuwentang edition t^Csi, published in Ghangsha in 1898. The first edition apparently has not been reprinted since the nineteenth century; the Fuwentang edition is found injindai Zhongguo shiliao xubian J E f t ^ S i ^ l S t l S (Yonghe, 1974), dishiji H~h^, vol. 95. A commentary on the series is contained in Huang Zunxian, Riben zashishi guangzhu 0 2^ $U-ft IS 8:, ed. Zhong Shuhe HW^M (Changsha, 1981). See Sheng Banghe, 15-20, for a study of the series' intellectual background. 8. In the citations for poems from RBZSS, the first number refers to the order in the series, allowing the reader to find the texts in the most easily available edition of the poems, which contains the texts of both the Tongwenguan edition and the Changsha edition, Huang Zunxian, Saneto Keishu, and Toyoda Minoru; the second number refers to RJL. In the case of textual variants, Saneto and Toyoda have been followed. 15, 1102. 9. 12, 1101. The reference to "bare looms" hints at the decline of local handicrafts under the pressure of foreign imports and the general problem of trade imbalance. 10. Ibid. 11. A large number of these "brush conversations" have survived and are in Zheng Ziyu HP~P3iu, ed., Huang Zunxianyu Ribenyouren bitanyigao ilcliLiKII S ^ ^ A ^ W&Mb (hereafter abbreviated BT) (Tokyo, 1968). 12. The poems are all contained in Chapter 3 of RJL, and the prefaces in Chapter 4ofWJ.

13. For a more detailed study of Huang's Japanese friends, see Kamachi, 36-47. For Shigeno, see Jiro Numata, "Shigeno Yasutsugu and the modern Tokyo tradition of historical writing," in William G. Beasely and Edwin G. Pulleyblank, eds., Historians of China and Japan (London, 1965), 264-87. For the Mito School, see J. Victor Koschman, The Mito ideology: Discourse, reform, and insurrection in late Tokugawa Japan, 1790—1864 (Berkeley, 1987). 14. For Nakamura, see Jansen, 481—2. A convenient summary of Ito Hirobumi's life is found in Yoshitaka Oka, Five political leaders of modern Japan, tr. Andrew Fraser and Patricia Murray (Tokyo, 1986), 3-43. 15. For Wang Tao, see Paul Cohen, Between tradition and modernity: Wang T'ao and reform in late Ch'ing China (Cambridge, Mass., 1974). At least nineteen letters from Huang to Wang Tao survive. For a summary of the relationship between 312

Notes to pages 24-j

Huang and Wang, see Sheng Banghe, 9-15. 16. RJL, 1187. In an interview with the author, Wei Zhongyou hypothesized that many of the innovations of Huang's Tokyo-period poems may have been suggested by reading contemporary Japanese poetry written in classical Chinese. The publication of Dr. Wei's research on this topic is eagerly awaited. 17. RJL, 1186-7. 18. BT, 15, 88, 288. 19. BT, 21, 144, 182-3. 20. See Huang's "Song of Ryukyu" in RJL, 322, which recounts the Ryukyu secret mission to He Ruzhang. This is not contained in CB, so it was probably written after Huang left Japan. 21. See Liang Qichao, Yinbingshi shihua ffeftKSItIS (hereafter abbreviated YBS), (Shanghai, 1910), 85, and Kamachi, 102-8. 22. RJL, 1182-3. 23. Fei Xingjian Wrt%Jindai mingren xiaozhuan ffiftl^A/hflJ. In JDZGSLCK, 166. 24. In a parting poem to his friends, Huang wrote: "The most difficult thing to leave is the cherry blossoms." RJL, 341. 25. RJL, 346. In a footnote to this poem, Huang wrote: "The boat sailed eastward in the direction of the sun, so that we saw the sun earlier each day, until I had to add a whole day, to make the calendar fit. This 'double' day happened to be the second of the second month [the Flower Festival], hence what I wrote." 26. There are many excellent books treating the problems encountered by Chinese-Americans, among which some of the best are Alexander Saxton, The indispensable enemy: Labor and the anti-Chinese movement in California (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971); Stuart C. Miller, The unwelcome immigrant: The American

image of the Chinese, 1875-1882 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969); Gunther P. Barth, Bitter strength: A history of the Chinese in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1964); S. W. Kung, Chinese in American life: Some aspects of their history, problems, and contributions (Seattle, 1962); and Kwang-Ching Liu, Americans and Chinese, a historical essay and bibliography (Cambridge, Mass., 1963). A valuable

source for original documents about the anti-Chinese campaign of this period is Cheng-tsu Wu, "Chink!" A documentary history ofanti-Chinese prejudice in America

(New York, 1972). See Wu, 70-5, for the text of the Exclusion Act. 27. The texts of the Miner Act, Immigrant Tax Act, and the act barring Chinese from California are in Wu Cheng-tsu, 20-5, 31, and 32-3 respectively. For the court decision and the act making it a misdemeanor to employ Chinese, see (respectively) ibid., 36-43 and 69. See also Kung, 70-4. 28. California State Senate, Chinese immigration: Its social, moral, and political effect (Sacramento, 1878), 35, 37-8, 55. 29. For the Burlingame Treaty's provisions to this effect, see Treaties and other international agreements ofthe United States of America (Washington, D.C., 1971), vol. 6,

Articles V and VI, 682-3. See a l s o Kung, 74-5. 30. QSG, 464, 12742. See also Liang Qichao, "Jiayingzhou Huang xiansheng muzhiming" MMM"B:9n^MU^, in RJL, 1163, and YBS, 85.

3*3

Notes to pages 28-33 31. RJL, 1191.

32. RJL, 585. 33. Ibid. Bee's Chinese name, in Mandarin pronunciation, was "Fu Liebi" \h. About Bee, see Saxton, 9, and Kamachi, 31. 34. RJL, 1191. 35. RJL, 362. 36. Huang does not say this in his surviving works, but his brother, Huang Zunkai, states that his heavy work load prevented Huang Zunxian from completing the Monographs on Japan in San Francisco. See RJL, 1191. 37. According to RJL, 350, note 1, and 366, note 1, the two most famous works Huang wrote about his American experience are not in CB. 38. RJL, 407. The Jade Pass is in modern Gansu province and was regarded as the frontier between China and foreign countries in ancient times. Literally, the boys sing: "The sword's ring," which is a pun on the words "ring" JH (huan) and "return" M {huan). The reference to the North Dipper is an allusion to a mythical journey to that constellation by a Han-dynasty explorer. 39. For Zhang Zhidong, see William Ayers, Chang Chih-tung and educational reform in China (Cambridge, Mass., 1971) and Daniel H. Bays, China enters the twentieth century: Chang Chih-tung and the issues of a new age, 1895-1909 (Ann Arbor, 1978)40. RBGZ, 40, gab, "Houxu" HU^. Liang's postface was written after the SinoJapanese War, hence the reference to Japan's occupation of Taiwan. 41. A much-neglected study of the relation between Huang's ideas and the Reform Movement's program is Jocelyn Valery Milner, "The reform ideas of Huang Tsun-hsien's 'History ofJapan' and its influence on the Hundred Days' Reform, "Journal of the South Seas Society (Nanyang xuebao Sfff 4?$$.), vol. 17, pt. 2, 1961 (published November 1963), 4 9 - 9 4 . See also Jocelyn Valery Milner, "The role of Huang Zunxian in the Reform Movement of the nineteenth century," M.A. thesis, University of Hong Kong, 1962. 42. A detailed account of this mission is found in Xue Fucheng iSteiS, Chushi Ying

Fa Yi Bi siguo riji # J i ^ f t * t t M 0 ffi, dishVerji ^ + ^ H , JDZGSLCK, no. 11743. RJL, 515. Liang's works are contained in Liang Jushi HCSST, Liang Shiwu xianshengyigaoji lie f^lLTfc^feJdtfitS :1ft (Taipei, i960). 44. Huang received his Senior Licentiate and Provincial Graduate degrees in 1873 and 1875, as opposed to 1885 and 1889 for Liang. 45. YBS, 19-20. 46. Ibid. 47. RJL, iii. For some strange reason, this preface was left out of the first printed edition of Huang's works. One Chinese scholar thinks that it was omitted because Huang had second thoughts about his literary ideals, in the years just preceding his death. See Zhang Yongfang, 151. See also Zheng Ziyu Mf$ "Ba Kang Youwei xiansheng Huang Gongdu shiji xu shougao" l S S W it^jffilNMfcff ^%Hk, in Zheng Ziyu, ed., Renjinglu congkao A^HMH^" (Singapore, 1959), 101-4.

3*4

Notes to pages 33-J 48. For an account of Huang's mission to Singapore, see Gao Weilian "Huang Gongdu jiuren Xinjiapo zonglingshi kao" ^/2^S.Wtii^f\JmS %, in Zheng Ziyu, Renjinglu congkao, 105-48. RJL, 595. The term duman must be some local word for clothing. 49. RJL, 643. 50. Huang Jingchu TtScftte, Huaqiao mingren gushilu ¥ 1 1 ^ AiKtlP-iS (Changsha, 1940), 43. 51. Xue Fucheng Mfa$L, Chushi riji xuke # j £ B !££$!!, sixth of sixth month, Guangxu 19, 8, 3D-4D, 1130-2, in Zhonghua wenshi congshu ^ ^ i l l * (Taipei repr., 1968), no. 36. 3. REFORM AND REACTION 1. RJL, 1210. 2. RJL, 1211. Huang Zunkai is alluding to a passage from the philosopher Zhuangzi that describes a butcher who cuts meat according to the Dao. See Zhuang Zhou, Concordance to Chuang-tzu, 7/3/4. 3. See Hsu, 332-45, and Xiao, vol. 4, 1162-1295. A large collection of materials on the war is found in Shao Xunzheng et al. SPtfjflE, eds., Zhongri zhanzheng 41 0 W?", 7 vols. (Shanghai, 1957). 4. For Kang's most famous petition, "Ten-thousand-word petition," see his autobiographical account, translated in Jung-pang Lo, 64-5. A detailed account of Kang's reform program is contained in Kung-chiian Hsiao, 193-406. 5. The magazine has been reprinted in Shiwu bao ftJi^ift, 56, in 6 volumes (Taipei repr., 1967). See also Ge Gongzhen zfe^fit, Zhongguo baoxueshi ^ B f l l IPife (Taipei repr., 1964), 58-62. Huang's relations with Liang Qichao are the subject of Wang Dezhao ZE^BS, "Huang Zunxian yu Liang Qichao HiBSl HSKHfee," Xinya Shuyuan Xueshu Niankan f f f f i ^ S c * * ¥fll 11 (September 1969). 1-316. There is a detailed account of these negotiations, which makes use ofJapanese sources not available to Qian Esun, in Kamachi, 197-201. 7. The standard English study of Yan Fu is Benjamin I. Schwartz, In search of wealth and power: Yen Fu and the West (Cambridge, Mass., 1964). 8. RJL, 838-9. 9. See Ping-ti Ho, "Weng T'ung-ho and the 'One Hundred Days of Reform,' "Far Eastern Quarterly 10 (1951), 125-35. 10. The reason that the Germans gave was that Huang was suspected of corruption in Singapore and that he had already been rejected by the British. See Chen Yusong Etff^, "Huang Zunxian shi De zaoju shimo" ftSSffi^Sffi ipT^, Nanyang xuebao S f f ^ f t t , 17, 1 (April 1962), 25-8, and Siegfried Behrsing, "Huang Tsun-hsien und Berlin," in Inge Lore Kluge, ed., Ostasiatische Studien (Berlin, 1959), 10-17, Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Institut fiir Orientforschung, no. 48. Huang expressed his anger at the German allegations in a number of poems. See RJL, 747, 748.

3*5

Notes to pages 38-40 11. Tan's most famous philosophical work is translated in Tan Sitong, ^4;i exposition of benevolence: The Jen-hsueh of T'an Ssu-t'ung, tr. Chan Sin-wai (Hong Kong,

1984). His poems are contained in Tan Sitong fSiUf^I, Tan Sitong quanji WM 1^1 ^;H (Beijing, 1981), and his place in the Poetic Revolution is discussed in Zhang Yongfang, 134-143. 12. Liang Qichao, Wuxu zhengbianji JJC^KIliE (Beijing, 1954), 130. 13. Chen Sanli's poems are contained in Chen Sanli, Sanyuanjingshe shi IS (Taipei, 1962). For a selection of his works in translation, see Lo and Schultz, 351-2. His poetry is discussed in Kurata, 96-106. Tang Caichang was executed in 1900, when he led a rebellion against the empress dowager. 14. For the Shiwu xuetang, see RJL, 1223 A description of the Nanxuehui is given in Liang Qichao, Wuxu zhengbianji, 137. 15. For Wang Kangnian's management of the magazine, see Jung-pang Lo, 162. 16. A good Chinese study of the Hunan reforms is Lin Nengshi Wftsit, Qingji Hunan de xinzhengyundong *M^M$&ffiW\WOS§M} (Taipei, 1972). See also Hunan shengzhi bianzuan weiyuanhui MW^^M^9M^, Hunan jinbainian dashi jishu $J]^llfi;~@*¥;*;WEMl (Changsha, 1959), 122-67, and HGD, 151-234. For a study of the Hunan reforms in English, see Charlton M. Lewis, Prologue to the Chinese Revolution: The transformation of ideas and institutions in Hunan province,

1891-190J (Cambridge, Mass., 1976). 17. The text of this speech is in Xiangxue leizuan IffllP^lifil (Taipei repr., 1968), 307-16. This work reprints many of the essays contained in the Xiangxue bao. 18. JDZGSLCK, no. 647, "Liang Jie'an [Dingfen] zhi Wang Jijiu [Xianqian] shu" (Wuchang, lSgS),juan 6, 2, 379. 19. Useful Chinese studies of the reforms are contained in Huang Zhangjian lic4£ It, Wuxu bianfa shiyanjiu J$LJ$LWfc$iW$i (Taipei, 1970), and Tang Zhijun | § £% Wuxu bianfa shi luncong /X/Jfllfeifeiwfi: (Wuhan, 1959). Extensive collections of materials on the reforms are contained injian Bozan Uffilf et al., eds., Wuxu bianfa JJCi^Slft, 4 vols. (Shanghai, 1953), and Guojia dang'anju Ming Qing dang'an guan ffl^1^^M?S?^^^l&, Wuxu bianfa dang'an shiliao JJC^JBlfeiftlSifeW (Beijing, 1958). Important English-language studies are Luke Kwong, A mosaic of the Hundred Days: Personalities, politics, and ideas of 1898

(Cambridge, Mass., 1984), and Paul A. Cohen and John Schrecker, eds., Reform in nineteenth-century China (Cambridge, 1976). See also Hsii, 355-86, and Xiao, vol. 4, 2065-2154. 20. Since illness was always a convenient excuse for not taking part in political activities, one might suspect that Huang was not as sick as he claimed, particularly in light of his differences with Kang Youwei in later years. However, the frequent references to his illness, in the poetry of this period and later, make it difficult to doubt his sincerity. See, for example, the next poem translated in the text, as well as RJL, 839-40. 21. RJL, 773. 22. See the study of the coup in Liu Fenghan ISJJHI&, Wuxu zhengbian 316

Notes to pages 40-3

(Taipei repr., 1964). Two contrasting pictures are found in Liang Qichao, Wuxu zhengbian ji, and Yuan Shikai JCtttsfl*, Wuxu riji jr$C$C 0 IS, in Zuo Shunsheng, ed. 2r^f:z£i, Zhongguojin bainianshi ziliao ^BiSl^f^jfeSit^ (Shanghai, 1928-33). Yuan's military support was crucial to Cixi's success. See also Jerome Ch'en, Yuan Shih-k'ai, 1859—1916 (Stanford, 1961), 54-62. 23. RJL, 775. "Heaven's Prison" is the name of a constellation. 24. A detailed account of the attempts to save Huang is found in RJL, 1235-6. See also Kamachi, 234-5. 25. RJL, 779. Line 4 reads literally: "Again we see King Cheng with his back to the screen," a reference to how the Zhou-dynasty king was under the tutelage of his uncle, the duke of Zhou, during his minority. 26. RJL, 800. 27. RJL, 802. 28. All the original furniture disappeared after the near demolition of the building during the Cultural Revolution, and the present inscription by Huang's Japanese friend seems to be a reproduction. The design of this reconstruction, which followed the original quite closely, betrays influence from the West and Singapore especially. For a description of Huang's later life-style, see Kamachi, 237-8. 29. RJL, 845. 30. For Yoshida's life, see Jansen, 449-52. 31. Liang printed a considerable number of Huang's poems in the poetry section of XMCB (entitled Shijie chaoyinji t t l f iHWIi) as well as in YBS, which was first serialized in XMCB. He also printed numerous letters from Huang in XMCB. See Sheng Banghe, 152-71, for a discussion of these. 32. Qiu's poems are contained in Qiu Fengjia I$HL¥ , Lingyun hairilou shichao $t9 $ | 0 Htf#fe!> (Taipei repr., 1970). When he visited Huang in Jiayingzhou, Qiu wrote an antithetical couplet for his studio, which is still on display at the Renjinglu. There are a large number of poems addressed to Qiu in RJL, Chapter 10. For a discussion of the relationship between the two men, see Qiu Tiechang SLMM, "Huang Zunxian yu Qiu Fengjia de youyi" 1119 JEHJX III ¥ MSS,Iin^fl« wenshi ^StSf^jfe, 56 (November 1983), 139-43. For a critical discussion of Qiu's poetry, see Ma Yazhong, 504-13. 33. According to Qian Esun, a newly discovered poem entitled "Ballad of the knight errant," ("Xiakexing" ft^rfr), the authenticity of which has not been verified beyond a doubt, suggests that Huang secretly supported the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in his later years. This is due to be published in a new anthology of late Qing poetry by Qian Esun. See Zheng Ziyu HP~ffl!if, "Huang Gongdu (Zunxian) yishi ji Qian Zhonglian deng yougan erzuo yuanqi" It"^

(«*)

fttSli^lW^Wiiffif^fe,

Wenhui bao XM^L (November 18,

34. See the discussions and letters by Huang quoted in HGD, 256-8. 35. The second of these serves as a school in Meizhou today. According to Huang Zunxian's great-grandson, Huang Jingchang lic^ScB, the building has not changed substantially since Huang's time.

3*7

Notes to pages 43-50 36. The most detailed discussion of this development is found in HGD, 283-90. 37. RJL, 1035. 38. RJL, 1254. 4. THE THEORY OF THE POETIC REVOLUTION 1. YBS, 20. Much material on the late Qing Poetic Revolution and late nineteenth-century poetry in general is found in Kurata and Zhang Yongfang, which discusses YBS in Chapter 6. Most scholars use the expression "late Qing Poetic Revolution" rather loosely to indicate the group of poets who took part in the late Qing Reform Movement, but as Zhang Yongfang has pointed out, Liang Qichao used the term no earlier than 1899. According to his study, the revolution should be divided into the following stages: xinpaishi 0f$Sf$, or "new-style poetry," a term which Huang Zunxian seems to have invented and which should be applied only to the poetry he wrote before he became associated with the revolution proper; xinshi SPf W, or "new poetry," the poetry written by Xia Cengyou MIS it (1865-1924), Liang Qichao, and Tan Sitong during their period of association in Beijing, starting with the autumn of 1895 and lasting through 1896 and 1897; shijie geming, or the Poetic Revolution proper, beginning with Liang Qichao's announcement of a need for a revolution of poetry in 1899 and largely arising from the reformers' "discovery" of Huang Zunxian's poetry and a merging of their innovations with his. See Zhang Yongfang, 4-43. Some works from Huang Zunxian and other authors of the movement are translated in Ramon L. Y. Woon and Irving Y. Lo, "Poets and poetry of China's last empire," Literature east and west 9, 4 (December 1965), 331-61. 2. YBS, 41. 3. HYSIS, A concordance to Yiching (Taipei repr., 1965), Hexagram^ (no. 49), 30. 4. RJL, 762. 5. "Xiaweyi youji" JCjlicJiSlfB, in Yinbingshi heji t ^ ^ c S ^ ^ , zhuanji M-I^k (Beijing, 1936), 182. 6. For Yuan Hongdao's attack on tradition, see Yuang Hongdao, Yuan Zhonglang quanji ft^K^lfc (Shanghai, 1935), 1, 5-6 and Chih-p'ing Chou, YuanHungtao and the Kung-an School (Cambridge, 1988). For Yuan Mei's literary theory, see Arthur Waley, Yuan Mei: Eighteenth century Chinese poet (London, 1956),

165-204, and Jian You'yi ffi^lil, Yuan Meiyanjiu J&MM% (Taipei, 1988), 111-258. 7. Huang Zunxian, "Yu Langshan lunshi" ^$M\U%mW,Lingnan xuebao HTSI^IIK, II. 2 (July 5, 1931), 184. Huang does not give the surname of the Langshan to whom the letter is addressed, and therefore Kamachi suggests that the letter was written to another friend named Langshan while Huang was serving in London in 1890-1. Since Huang does not seem to have had any other friends with the name "Langshan" other than Zhou Gun, and since, according to the chronological arrangement of JWS, Huang's poem "Mourning for Zhou Langshan" was composed before Huang went to Beijing for the metropolitan 318

Notes to pages 51-8

examination (1874), the letter must have been written before that date. See Kamachi, 307, and JWS, 35. 8. RJL, iii. 9. Huang Zunxian, "Yu Langshan lunshi," 185. 10. RJL, iii. 11. Qu Yuan's "Encountering sorrow" is translated in David Hawkes, The songs of the south (Harmondsworth, 1985). See the discussion of the relation between the Ancient Prose Movement and poetry in Charles Hartman, Han Yu and the T'ang search for unity (Princeton, 1986), "The unity of style," 211-75. 12. RJL, iii. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Wang Guoyuan ffifflfe, Guangxuan shitan dianjiang lu 3feJ!L nrftti£7$Fft (Hong Kong, 1971), 8. For Xia Gengyou and Jiang Zhiyou, two relatively minor poets of the Poetic Revolution, see Zhang Yongfang, 129-34, an(^ 152-60. 16. This comment comes from Qian's preface to the 1936 edition of RJL and has been omitted from the most recent editions. RJL, Shanghai, 1936, n.p. 17. The best study of intellectual antitraditionalism in the May Fourth Movement is found in Yu-sheng Lin, The crisis of Chinese consciousness: Radical anti-traditional-

ism in the May Fourth Era (Madison, 1968). The best general account of the period is Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual revolution in mod-

18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

ern China (Cambridge, Mass., i960). Lingnan xuebao,juan 2, qi 2, 184. Huang's ideas display a strong affinity with what James Liu has termed "expressive theories" of Chinese literature, especially those of Li Zhi ^ U (1527-1602), the three Yuan brothers of the Gongan School, and Jin Shengtan jsfefiHli (i6io?-6i). See James Liu, Theories of Chinese literature (Chicago, 1975), 78-83. RJL, iii. Ibid. WJ, 194. RJL, 275. YBS, 34-5. It must be admitted that the poems by Huang that Liang quotes are not very distinguished works and were omitted from Huang's collected verse. RJL, 1250. HGD, 384. YBS, 19-20. RJL,ii. RJL, 1078. 5. THE PRACTICE OF REVOLUTION

1. YBS, 2. 2. YBS, 24-5. 3. Even after modern Chinese poets abandoned classical language and meters in the 1920s, the problem of form was still paramount. See the discussion in

3*9

Notes to pages 59-65 Michelle Yeh, Modern Chinese poetry: Theory and practice since 1917 (New Haven, 1991), Chapter 4, especially 8 9 - 9 2 . Huang was constantly troubled by questions of form, especially in the vernacular" "new-style" poems he composed shortly before his death. In 1902 he wrote to Liang Qichao: "In writing these new-style poems, choosing the rhyme is difficult, selecting the tones is difficult, and applying the ornamentation is difficult, but I hope that you and others will expand upon my efforts and bring them to a glorious conclusion." RJL, 1249. For the so-called new-style poems, see Zhang Yongfang, 58-71. 4. RJL, 1308. 5. RJL, 1249. 6. Previously translated in Kamachi, 5 0 - 1 . See RBZSS, Tokyo, 1880, preface. 7. RJL, 602 8. YBS, 3. 9. Du Fu's poem is translated in Yu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo, eds., Sunflower splendor (Bloomington, 1975), 121-7. Han Yu's poem is translated in Stephen Owen, The poetry ofMeng Chiao and Han Yii (New Haven, 1975), 198—

205. 10. RJL, 1293. 11. YBS, 7. 12. For tanci, which date back to at least the sixteenth century and were immensely popular in the Yangzi Basin, see William H. Nienhauser, Jr., ed., The Indiana companion to traditional Chinese literature (Bloomington, 1986), 747-9. In

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

the nineteenth century the form of guci with the highest literary value was zidishu, which arose in Beijing among the Manchu Bannermen and reached its height in the period from 1735 to 1850; see ibid., 844-6, and Chenjinzhao ^ £$#lj, Zidishu zhi ticai laiyuanji qi zongheyanjiu ^ ^ # 5 l B t f JUJISSX^^BF %, Ph.D. thesis, Zhengzhi University K?n^C#, 1977. A discussion of works written in imitation of Yue'ou (Cantonese ballads) is contained in Zhang Yongfang, 55-8. RJL, 42. RJL, 40. RJL, 45. RJL, 54. WJ, 198-9. The famous preface that outlines Bai Juyi's commitment to using poetry as a vehicle for political and social protest is found in SBCK, Baijuyi S SIS, Baishi Changqingji S RHJ8A, 3, la, 36. BT, 182. RBGZ, 33, 7a. It is difficult to date Huang's remarks precisely because, although he began writing the Monographs on Japan in 1879, they were not completed until about 1886. Hu Shi recognized the "revolutionary" nature of Huang's verse. See Hu Shi rMS, Wushi nianlai Zhongguo zhi wenxue HL^^ftfitf*

WO-JC^ (Beijing, 1929), 42. As Kamachi has pointed out, Huang's proposals for literary reform were identical tofiveof Hu Shi's famous "Eight principals of literature." See Kamachi, 181. 320

Notes to pages 65-jo 21. For Hu Shi, see Jerome Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917—1937 (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), especially 7 5 88, for his contributions to the Literary Revolution of the Republican period. A discussion of his critical ideas on poetry in the vernacular is found in Michelle Yeh, 11,21, 56—8. A selection of his poems in vernacular Chinese is translated in Hsu Kai-yu, Twentieth century Chinese poetry: An anthology (New York, 1963). 22. For example, Yang Tianshi, 14-15, and Zhang Tangqi, 96-8. 23. RJL 54, note 1. CB has twelve poems. Nine remain in RJL, but one of them is an extra poem not found in CB. 24. See Schmidt, Yang Wan-li, 75-7. 25. RJL, 57. 26. RJL, 58, note 2. 27. See the article "Folk music," in Willi Apel, ed., Harvard dictionary ofmusic (Cambridge, Mass., 1974). The allusion is from BBCS, Guo Xian %$M, Bieguo

dongmingji BWSKtB, 3, 4b. 28.JWS,62-3. 29. This didacticism has a long history in Chinese popular literature and was often inspired by the authorities. One of the most famous examples is the so-called Sacred Edict issued by the Kangxi emperor. See Victor H. Mair, "Language and ideology in the written popularizations of the Sacred Edict," in David Johnson et al., eds., Popular culture in late imperial China (Berkeley, 1985), 325— 5930. Liang Qichao, "Xiaweiyi youji," 189. The parting poems are translated on page 269. The birthday ode, which advocates women's rights, is found in RJL, 668. 31. RJL, 304 and 1077. RJL, 489. RJL, 496. RJL, 362 and 366. RJL, 772. RJL, 5°932. RJL, 314 RJL, 489, RJL, 566. RJL, 362. RJL, 489. RJL, 1078. Ibid. RJL, 625. RJL, 642. 33. Polysyllables do exist in classical Chinese. Many of these belong to the category of words known as "binomes," terms that either rhyme (e.g., U f l , yaotiao, "secluded") or begin with the same initial (W$$pengpai, "surge"). Others are bisyllabic expressions, in which the individual syllables have no independent meaning (e.g., MM,yuanyang, "Mandarin duck"). There are also many other expressions that resemble polysyllables (e.g., li|JI|, shanchuan, "mountains and rivers," or i§|£8&, lichou, "parting sorrow"), because the individual syllables occur together frequently, but in most of these cases the individual syllables are independent units of meaning, and hence they function more like monosyllabic words. In many cases, such seemingly polysyllabic expressions have become full polysyllabic words in the modern language. 34. YBS,4O. 35. The Sutra in forty-two chapters is a collection of passages translated from largely Hinayana scriptures, supposedly compiled during the Eastern Han dynasty, before Buddhism had become fully established in China. Kumarajiva was one of the greatest translators of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese and was largely 321

Notes to pages yi-8i

36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42.

responsible for the introduction of Madhyamika Buddhist philosophy into China. For more on these subjects, see Kenneth Ch'en, Buddhism in China: A historical survey (Princeton, 1964), 34-6, 81-4, and 367-8. Zheng Ziyu, Renjinglu congkao, 7-8. RJL, 516. RJL, 304. RJL, 318. RJL, 611. RJL, 602. RJL,io 75 . RJL, 371. RJL, 1098. "Xiaweiyi youji," 189. Many educated readers of Ezra Pound's generation could have understood his numerous passages in French, Italian, Latin, and ancient Greek, but one wonders what they made of the Chinese character xin fif ("trust") inserted at the end of Canto XXXIV (1934) or the expression zhengming IE45 ("rectification of names") with which he concludes Canto LI (1937). Pound used Chinese characters only sparingly in his earlier Cantos, but from Canto LII onward he cited whole passages in Chinese. See Ezra Pound, The Cantos of Ezra Pound (New York, 1981), 171, 252, and Cantos LII-CXX. Wu Fangji ^ 3 ? o", WuBai'wu xianshengyishu buyi ^ 6 M 7 f e ^ t t # M H (Taipei, 1970), vol. 3,46. RJL, 519. For a history of the termpao and the technology involved, see Needham, vol. 5, pt. 7, 263-341. 6. TRADITIONAL THEMES

1. Yoshikawa Kqjiro ]ifJl|^$C£$, "The philosophical and discursive nature of Sung poetry," in An introduction to Sung poetry, tr. Burton Watson (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 21-4. 2. In this connection it should be noted that much of Yoshikawa's discussion of the differences between Tang and Song poetry is based on intellectual rather than stylistic criteria. 3. SBCK, Yang Wanli, Chengzhaiji WMM, 12, 114b. 4. This passage is quoted in Zhou Ruchang J^ft H, Yang Wanli xuanji S U M S ^ I (Beijing, 1964), 6. Unfortunately, Zhou does not give the source, and the original could not be located. 5. See, Nienhauser, 736-8, for a discussion of this work's significance. 6. Ibid., 738. The only extensive study of Yuan Mei so far is Arthur Waley, Yuan Mei: Eighteenth-century Chinese poet. See the present volume, Chapter 4, note 6, for Chinese works on Yuan. Zhao Yi is discussed in Nienhauser, 227—9. A recent study in Chinese is Wangjiansheng JE^^fe, Zhao Oubeiyanjiu SlSUtW 5E, 2 vols. (Taipei, 1988). A useful anthology of his verse, with modern commentary, is Zhao Yi, Hu Yixiao $3tft Nf ed., Zhao Yi shixuan jtfiiliNflS (Hunan, 1985)7. Chen Yan Stffi, ed.,Jindai shichao Ififttti^ (Taipei repr., 1961), 111. There is a selection of He Shaoji's verse translated into English in Lo and Schultz, 274-7. 8. For an example of this sort of poetry, refer to Yang Wanli's poem "On hearing 322

Notes to pages 82-9

9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

the wind's sound at night," Yang Wanli, 10, 100a, translated in Schmidt, Yang Wanli, 74. RJL, 34. Su Shi lived near three different lakes called "West Lake": the most famous one, near Hangzhou; the second, near Yingzhou, Anhui province; and the third, the Lake Abundant of this poem (now known only as West Lake), near Huizhou in Guangdong province. Sibu beiyao HSMii? (hereafter abbreviated SBBY), Su Shi M^,Dongpo qiji % ifc-tMiHoujifeM, 2,5b. RJL, 34-5, notes 4, 7, and 9. RJL, 35, note 11. Su Shi, Dongpoji, 4, 5a. See the discussion of Fan Chengda's decorative language in Schmidt, Stone Lake, 54-9. Du Fu's original reads: "A thousand acres of waves like piles of glass." Du Fu, 27/6/4. RJL, 76. RJL, 76, note 3. SBCK, Liu Yiqing MUft, Shishuo xinyu tftSftffSS, shang 2,21b. RJL, 118, note 1. Tao Qian, 3, 30b. RJL, 118. Tao Qian, 2, 21a. The poem mentioned in note 8 to this chapter is an excellent example of a vernacular closure, the last line of which reads: "And then we'll just see what the hell he can do about that!" RJL, 122, note 4. Yoshikawa, 142. RJL, 261, note 5, and RJL, 265, note 7. Fan Chengda, Fan Shihu ji fS5SS^I (Shanghai, 1962), 207, translated in Schmidt, Stone Lake, 135-6. Su Shi, Dongpoji, 5, lb. Su Shi, Dongpo xuji JWftlH^fPl, 1, 22a. See, for example, "Baibu hong" W ^ $ l , in Su Shi, Dongpoji, 10,4a. Also, Yang Wanli, 34, 325b. RJL, 424, notes 2, 4, 6. Su Shi, Dongpoji, 10, 4a. Su Shi, Dongpoji, 10, 8b. Su Zhe S?$8t, Su Zhe quanji jl?$ft^^ft, Luancheng houji ^.^^M (Taipei, 1975), i,8. This passage does not appear in Chen Sanli's published works, and according to Qian Esun, it was written in a colophon to CB. This also comes from a colophon to CB and does not appear in Fan Dangshi's works. Ibid. RJL, 422, note 6; RJL, 423, note 3. The Lake Shinobazu poems are not found in CB, suggesting they were composed after Huang left London. However, see the next note. The malaria poems are not in YGB. RJL, 225. This poem presents even more chronological problems. Huang vis323

Notes to pages

go-6

ited Lake Abundant in 1867 for the first time and in 1870 the second time, suggesting that this poem was composed in 1880, or ten years after the second visit, while he was still living in Tokyo. If Huang did write the entire series after he left London, he could have added this chronological reference, for the sake of consistency, but this seems rather odd. This poem is inferior in quality to many of the other quatrains in the series, and it is possible that it and some of the others were drafted in Japan but were not included in CB for some reason. The fact that the whole series was published in XMCB, no. 34 (1903) also supports a late date for composition or revision, but XMCB contains the date wuyin ^FM (1878), omitted from RJL, so at least some of the works must hav been written in Japan. 37. For Su Shi, RJL, 642, note 2, and 643, note 2; for Zhu Xi, 641, note 6; for Wang Anshi, 641, note 1; for Zhang Lei, 644, note 2. 38. For Wang Wei, RJL, 641, notes 4-5; for Wei Yingwu, 644, note 1. 39. See Needham, vol. 2, 1956, 455-505, for a discussion of the relation between neo-Confucianism and science, and 455-505 especially for the connection between Song rationalism and the golden age of Chinese science. 7. FOREIGN CLIMES 1. The first detailed accounts occur in Sima Qian, juan 100 and 113-6, which contain studies of the Huns, Koreans, and ancient Vietnamese, among others. 2. Gao Shi's poetry is the subject of Marie Chan, Kao Shih (Boston, 1978), and Cen Shen's poetry of Marie Chan, Cen Shen (Boston, 1983). 3. For the travel diary, see James Hargett, "Fan Ch'eng-ta.'s Lan-p'ei lu\ A Southern Sung embassy account," Tsing Hua journal of Chinese studies, n.s. 16 (1984), 119-77. Some of the quatrains are translated in Schmidt, Stone Lake, 123-8. 4. Fan Chengda, 145. 5. Ibid., 147. The temple mentioned in this poem is still the largest temple in Kaifeng and was patronized by the Northern Song imperial family. 6. After the seventeenth-century poet You Tong (see this volume, Chapter 8, note 5), little poetry on foreign lands was written until Chinese started traveling overseas in the second half of the nineteenth century. One of the earliest collections of poetry of this sort is Lin Zhen W^,Xihaijiyou cao M$lffB W^f- (Changsha, 1985), in Zou xiang shijie congshu TfefnJtft^fRifr. Huang's superior, He Ruzhang, also wrote poems about his period of service in Japan (see this volume, Chapter 1, note 46). See also the discussion of nineteenth-century poetry on foreign lands in Zhang Yongfang, 11. According to Zhang, the vice-ambassador of the Tokyo legation, Zhang Sigui, also wrote poems about his overseas experiences, but these could not be located. 7. RJL, 63, 65, 74. For Jiaqing's final testament, see Wang Xianqian Shi'erchao donghua lu "hZlJftljft^iS (Taipei repr., 1963), Daoguang, vol. 2, 13, 38b, 458b. 8. One possible example of an implied neologism might be the line in which Huang compares the gas lamps of Hong Kong to "silver flowers on flaming 324

Notes to pages 96-103

trees" (see translation on page 226). Huang's line is based on an allusion to the minor Tang poet Su Weidao's S^ftsE (648-705) line, "Flaming trees, the silver flowers close." However, here Huang merely uses the allusion to describe the gas lamps but does not seem to use Su's expression as a replacement for the term "gas lamp." See Quart Tangshi ^MW (Beijing, i960), vol. 3, 65, 7539. Two important discussions of allusion in Chinese poetry written in English are Yu-kung Kao and Tsu-lin Mei, "Meaning, metaphor, and allusion in T'ang poetry," HJAS 38 (1978), 49-133, and James Hightower, "Allusion in the poetry of T'ao Ch'ien," HJAS 31 (1971), 5-27. 10. Baibu congshu jicheng "&SP0#Hri(; (hereafter abbreviated BBCS), (Taipei repr., 1966-); Du Guangting tt*S§, Qiuranke zhuan M U g f t . 11. Quan Tangshi, 199, 2053. Fan Ye, 78, 2919. 12. The passage cited by Qian could not be located, but the term baoshan is used in a similar fashion in the Dazhidu lun ^ ^ f t t w in Taisho shinshu daizokyo ^CHE^ iKM (hereafter abbreviated Taisho), 1509, 17, 184c, and 22, 228b. 13. BBGS, Tao Hongjing ^%M,Huayang Tao Yinjuji WSPSISSIt, 6, 1 la. From BBGS, Dongfang Shuo jK^Fjfi, Hainei shizhouji tSft+SWKE, 1, 2. 14. Taisho, Amituqfojing WJtPfrfj&M, vol. 12, no. 366, 346c. 15. See Nienhauser, 215, and Anna Straghair, Chang Hua: A statesman-poet of the Western Chin (Canberra, 1973). 16. OuyangXiu WlM$E,Xin Tangshu iJfJSilr (Beijing, 1975), 4, 93. 17. RJL,6 7 . 18. Du Mu, An index to Tu Mu'spoetical works, ed. Yamauchi Haruo (Kyoto, 1972), 311. SBCK, Zhou li ffitt, 4, 74a. 19. Constantine Trypanis, The Penguin book of Greek verse (Harmandsworth, 1971), 203. 20. Ban Gu, "Wuxingzhi" Efrife, 1441. 21. BBCS, Yuanjiao MM, Ganzeyao Wffg, 3aff. 22. The most famous example of this sort offictionis the seventeenth-century/irc Ping Mei jfeffiitt. For studies of two moralistic interpretations of this erotic masterpiece, see David T. Roy, "A Confucian interpretation of the Ghing P'ing M e i , " in Proceedings of the International Conference on Sinology: Section on literature

(Taipei, 1981), 39-61, and Paul Varo Martinson, "Pao, order, and redemption: Perspectives on Chinese religion based on a study of the Chin P'ing Mei," Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 1975. 23. HYISIS, A concordance to Meng Tzu (Taipei repr., 1966), 21/3A/4, "Tengwen gong shang." 24. For a discussion of these linguistic questions and Huang's knowledge of Japanese, see Kamachi, 50-1. 25. Wu Tianren lists thirteen editions of RBZSS. See HGD, 305-7. From his comments, it seems that he did not have access to all of these. 26. BBGS, Liu Shui I'M, Wenquanziji X&lrM, 3, 4a. For Huai Su's burial of brushes, see Li Zhao $ H , Tangguo shibu ill HSifett!, in Congshu jicheng xinbian Wt

• H f c l S (hereafter abbreviated CSJCXB), vol. %$,diong "t, 8, 393. 325

Notes to pages 104-11 27. For a complete account of this and the texts of the poems, see Zheng Ziyu, "Riben Dongjing suojian youguan Huang Zunxian de yiwu" B ^J&Mffi^^ M^%LMtfitityil9Nanyangxuebao ftf#^Mft, XVII:2, 11-16 (November 1963). Also Kamachi, 52-3. 28. RJL, 1095. 29. Siku quanshu zhenben H ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ , 5, Nansong zashi shi S ^ ^ H - f N f (Taipei, 19*74), a collection of heptasyllabic quatrains by Shenjiazhe VLMIWL (fl. 174°) and other contemporary poets, on the capital city Hangzhou and its region during the Southern Song dynasty, each poem accompanied by detailed footnotes identifying its allusions to Song history. Huang owned a copy of this; see Huang Jingchang, 13, no. 227. The similarity in form to Huang's works is obvious, but the interests of Huang and these poets writing about a society long past were very different. The identity of the Assorted verses of Luanyang is not certain, but Jijun was from Luanyang and compiled two collections of stories,

entitled Luanyang xiaoxia lu HHSI^R JCfS {Records for passing the summer in Luanyang) and Luanyang zalu HjtBl^ift {Assorted records of Luanyang), so perhaps Huang is not referring to a specific collection of poems by Ji but means the various assorted quatrains he wrote. His collection of quatrains on Xinjiang is contained in BBGS, Ji Jun $Efl£j, Wulumuqi zashi JftH'Tfc^fttiNf (Taipei repr., 1967)30. See this volume, Chapter 2, note 8, about the method of citing poems from RBZSS. Locations for the terms cited here are 32, 1106; 12, 1101; 53, 1111; 129, 1136584, 1127. 31. Ban Gu, 96 shang _t, 3890, and Fan Ye, 88, 2920. 32. Ban Gu, 67, 2920. 33. SBCK, Liu Yuxi S l S t t , Liu Mengde wenji &\&%X% 4, 29a. 34. RBZSS, 8, 1099. 35. RBZSS, 82, 1125. 36. RBZSS, 80, 1125. 37. Huang Zunxian, Riben zashi shi, eds., Saneto and Toyoda, 84. RJL does not include the text of the earlier edition. 38. RJL, 213. 39. Kamachi, 120. 40. RJL, 304. This poem has been translated with detailed commentary in William Hung, "Huang Tsun-hsien's poem 'The closure of the educational mission in America,'" HJAS 18 (1955), 50-73. RJL, 322. See the discussion of the chronological problems on page 310. 41. Du Fu, 9/12. 42. Tao Qian, 5, 52. 43. Gong Zizhen H i i i £ , Gong Zizhen quanji H § 3 ^ ^ ^ (Shanghai, 1975), 9, 488. The Qiantang River, near Hangzhou, is famous for its high tidal bore. Kunyang was the site of a battle in which the founder of the Eastern Han dynasty annihilated the army of the usurper Wang Mang 31 ff? (reg. 9 23)44. Gong Zizhen, 9, 489.

326

Notes to pages 112-24 45. The best scholarly translation of the Vimalakirti sutra so far is Etienne Lamotte, L'enseignement de Vimalakirti (Louvain, 1962).

46. SBCK, Meng Haoran &ftjfc,MengHaoranji J&i&foM, 4, 12b, 31. 8. THE BRAVE NEW WORLD 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

RJL, 232, note 1. RJL, 640. RJL, 508. RJL, 510, note 1. It should be noted that practically all earlier poetry on foreign countries was written in shorter forms, the most famous Qing-dynasty example of which is You Tong's series of poems on overseas countries, Waiguo zhuzhici ^MH'fJfe f^, or Bamboo-branch songs on foreign lands. So-called "bamboo-branch songs" were heptasyllabic quatrains, originally in imitation of folk songs and usually about peasant life in Tang and Song times. Huang owned a copy of You Tong's complete works, Xitang quanji B S ^ I f c ; see HuangJingchang, 8, no. 127. Taisho, no. 474, vol. 14, 527a. The Sanskrit reconstruction of the Buddha's name is conjectural, since the Sanskrit original does not survive. Huang's Chinese translation of laksana is more commonly written ffi in Buddhist texts. The story of voyagers being saved by Guanyin comes from Taisho, Miaqfa lianhuajing &J>ftllI¥M, no. 262, vol. 9, 7, 56c. According to Sri Lankan Buddhist tradition, Kelaniya is one of the holy sites visited by the Buddha during his lifetime. RJL, 451, note 1. CSJGXB, You Tong JtM, Waiguo zhuzhi ci ^hH1tftt3, 7, 20, 586. Taisho, vol. 8, no. 235, 751c. Li Bai, 467, 34. See Congshu jicheng chubian Hi&Ujfi^jSi, Zhang Hua 3RH, Bowu zhi W^fife (Ghangsha, 1939), 3, 19Li Fang ^ 5 5 , Taiping guangji ^CT*fifS, Saoye shanfang JSJlllllS edition (Shanghai, 1926), 48, 20b. RJL, 417-18. Alfred K. Placzek et al., eds., Macmillan encyclopedia of architects (New York, 1982), 18. A number of leading intellectuals, including Charles Gamier, the architect of the Paris Opera, the composer Gounod, Dumas fils, and Maupassant signed a petition urging that the Eiffel Tower not be constructed, comparing it to the biblical Tower of Babel. A concordance to Meng Tzu, 52/7A/24, " J m x m shang." DuFu, 5/5/1. For example, refer to Cen Shen's well-known poem "Climbing the pagoda of the Monastery of Compassion and Grace with Gao Shi and Xue Ju," translated with critical commentary in Stephen Owen, The great age of Chinese poetry (New Haven, 1981), 178, and Marie Chan, Cen Shen, 59-61. 327

Notes to pages 125-36 21. RJL, 599, note 1. 22. RJL, 833. 23. It is interesting to note the tenuous intellectual connection between the Buddhist terms and neologisms in Huang's London fog poem, as opposed to the logical relation between the Buddhist and modern scientific ideas of this work. 24. For reasons of style, not all of these are preserved in the English translation. 25. The fairies and devils belong to the tian 3t (Sanskrit, deva) andgwi %> (Sanskrit, preta) groups of the six categories, whereas the Buddhas have already moved beyond transmigration. One should also notice the racial symbolism here. Fairies represent the white race, Buddhas the yellow, and devils the black. 26. Note the expression sanshi ^~$f, for the "three stages of karma" (past, present, and future). See William Edward Soothill, A dictionary of Chinese Buddhist terms (Taipei repr., 1968), 67. 27. Han Fei, 097, 09. 28. BBCS, OuyangXiu ftUff, Guitian /uSffl»,2, 9b, where Mei Yaochen's wife compares her impoverished husband to a catfish dangling from afishingpole. 29. SBCK, Han Yu HM, Zhu Wengongjiao Changli xiansheng shi :fcSt^Kill^7fc£ ft, 1, 21a. 30. See discussion on page 51. 31. For different critics' evaluation of Han's poetry, see Hartman, 268-9. 32. For Zhao Yi as a poet, see this volume, Chapter 6, note 6. Han Yu's major contribution to historical studies is translated in Bernard S. Solomon, The veritable records of the T'ang emperor Shun-tsung (Cambridge, Mass., 1955). Ouyang Xiu's most famous historical work is Xintangshu W\M^=t (1060) (Beijing, 1975). 33. YBS, 3. 34. The most famous early author of historical poems is Zuo Si S S (ca. 253-ca. 307). See Liu Wenzhong S!|3t&, Zuo Si he tadeyongshi shi SSfR'f&ftjJ^citS (Beijing, 1975). Also see the translations inj. D. Frodsham and Cheng ¥Lsi,An anthology of Chinese verse: Han Wei Chin and the Northern and Southern Dynasties (Ox-

ford, 1967). 35. If we follow the order of RJL, "Moved by events" would be earlier, but it is more advanced in its use of historical narrative, and the descriptive technique of the first poem seems closer to Huang's late style. 36. RBGZ, 32, 2b. 37. Xiao Yishan, vol. 4, 2053-5. 38. For Mo-ist science, see A. C. Graham, Mohist logic, ethics, and science (Hong Kong, 1978). 39. RJL, 310. 40. RJL, 925. 41. RJL, 489. 42. WJ, 190. 43. RBGZ, 32, 2b. 44. RJL, 1095. 45. RJL, 1075. 328

Notes to pages 137-45 46. This is particularly clear in the second poem of his Hong Kong series. See RJL, 65-6. 47. See Kamachi 130, 141-2, 154, 251. 48. RJL, 566. 49. See RJL, 366, note 1. 50. Huang's poem on his great-grandmother (translated on page 259) is a good example of this. See also his long narrative poem, "Song of General Nie," about Nie Shicheng JSifcjS (d. 1900), a general killed by the Boxers during the Boxer Rebellion. RJL, 1035. 51. Shen Yue tfc$J, Songshu ^ c # (Beijing, 1974), 54, 1532. 52. RJL, 377-8, notes 6-8, 16-17. 53. Cao Xu, 94. The sketch Cao alludes to is Mark Twain's "Running for governor," contained in Charles Neider, ed., The complete humorous tales and sketches of

Mark Twain (New York, 1961), 161-5. 54. For example, see Yang Tianshi's discussion of this subject in Yang Tianshi, 41-4, and the same in Xu Yongduan, 51-4. Kamachi seems to have accepted this view, at least partially. See Kamachi, 138, 248. 55. RJL, 376. 56. RJL, 377. 9. THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUANG ZUNXIAN'S SATIRE

1. For the allegorical interpretations of the Shijing poems, see Burton Watson, Early Chinese literature (New York, 1989), 207-17. Many of the Han and Tang commentaries on the poems may seem farfetched today, but even some of the relatively straightforward poems of the Guofeng BUH (Airs) section, such as "Shuoshu" 5HH ("Big rat"), are clearly satirical. One could argue that the Chinese critical term WLfeng (sometimes translated with the rather unwieldy expression "criticism by indirection") should not be translated as "satire." However, because there is considerable overlap between feng and "satire," and most Western scholars of Chinese continue to translate feng with that term, the word "satire" has been used in the following discussion as if it were synonymous vntYifeng. 2. Two of Sima Xiangru's most famous works are translated in "Rhapsody of Sir Vacuous" and "Rhapsody of the Imperial Park" in Xiao Tong, ed., Wenxuan, or selections from refined literature, tr. David R. Knechtges (Princeton, 1982), 53115: Ruan Ji's political satires are translated and discussed in great detail in Donald Holzman, Poetry and politics: The life and works of Juan Chi (Cambridge,

1976)3. For Du Fu, see David Hawkes, tr.,A little primer of Tu Fu (Oxford, 1967), and William Hung, Tu Fu: China's greatest poet (Cambridge, Mass., 1952). For Bai Juyi, see Arthur Waley, The life and times of Po Chu'-yi (London, 1949), and Howard S. Levy, Translationsfrom Po Chii-yi's collected works (New York, 1971). 4. Bai Juyi, 4~9a. 5. Jin He, Qiuhuiyinguan shichao $Clttl^ $ift$i$, 1914, 2, 19b. Unfortunately, the

329

Notes to pages 146-54 secondary literature on Jin He's poetry is still quite meager. See the article and bibliography in Nienhauser, 285-6. Recent articles dealing with satire in his poetry are Guo Yanli $|S WSt, "Ruhe pingjia jindai shiren Jin He" ittfiStifiM fclti$A±%\,ShehuiKexueZhanxian tt##*ttSI 38, 284-92 (1987-2), and Ma Qun Mffi, "Luelunjin He de fengcishi ji qi 'Lanling nii'er xing'" W&trcNfeffl ^MMMR%M^k^A"j,Renwenzazhi AJtflHlt 11 (June 1981, 6o-4, 59. For Jin He's position in Qing poetry, see Ma Yazhong, 238-48. For his possible influence on Huang, see Wei Zhongyou, 54-65. 6. The reader may notice a resemblance between this technique and Yang Wanli's "twists and turns," and it is not impossible that Jin He's satirical methods ultimately derive from Song poetry. 7. Liang Qichao, Intellectual trends in the ChHng period, tr. Immanuel Hsu (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 118. See also Zhang Yongfang, 144. 8. Chen Yan Sfit, Shi'yishi shihua 53lSfr$fS (Taipei repr., 1961), 8, 11. Wang Gengjin zEjU^7% Chuanshilou shihua H ^ H ? RTFIS, in RJL (Shanghai, 1957), 420. 9. The Poetry of Mysterious Language was looked down upon by most later critics, and only thirty-seven poems by Sun Chuo and three fragments by Xu Xun survive. See Lu Qinli %$JC±L, Xianqin Han Wei Nanbeichao shi 5felit8t8t]^Mt^ f# (Beijing, 1983), 12, 894, and 13, 896-902. 10. BBCS, Huang Tingjian HrUM, Shangu shijizhu Lll^ftUffi, neiji \^M, vol. 2, 191.

11. Gong Zizhen, 487. 12. For example, the Ming thinker Li Zhi ^ J t 1 (1527-1602) died in prison because of his "heretical" ideas. For a study of Li, see Jean Francois Billetier,Li Zhi, le philosophe maudit (Geneva, 1979). 13. RJL, 3-12. 14. Gu Yanwu's influence is discussed in some detail in Zheng Hailin, loff. 15. As in poem III (translated on page 14) and poem IV (not translated.) See RJL, 49. 16. Huang Zongxi's most famous work is translated in "A plan for the prince: The Ming-i tai-fang lu of Huang Tsung-hsi, translated and explained," Huang Zongxi, tr. William Theodore de Bary, Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 1953. See also de Bary, "Chinese despotism and the Confucian ideal: A seventeenth century view," in John K. Fairbank, ed., Chinese thought and institutions (Chicago, 1957), 163-203. Huang owned a copy of Huang Zongxi's works, Huang Lizhou quanji "SrSJjMi^^fc; see Huang Jingchang, 19, no. 344. 17. A useful study of earlier Chinese narrative poetry is Dore J. Levy, Chinese narrative poetry (Durham, 1988). 18. See Shen Deqian, Gushiyuan, 49-52, for the text of "The peacock flies southeast." Bai Juyi's poem is translated in Cyril Birch, ed., Anthology of Chinese literature (New York, 1967), 226. 19. Wanyou wenku huiyao M^l^CJt-'W^, Wu Weiye ^ifillt, Meicun shiji W^tWM (Taipei, 1965), 7, 224, and 2, 61. Fora translation of the "Song of Yuanyuan," see Lo and Schultz, 46—9. 20. For a discussion of Zheng and a translation of some of his poems, see Lo and

330

Notes to pages 155-63

Schultz, 284-90. For Jin He, see Lo and Schultz, 295-303. RJL, 4 28. Ibid. The "Ballad of Mulan" is translated in Liu and Lo, 77. See "Mingzi" 'RP'"? ("Command to my sons"), in Tao Qian, 1, 8a, 13. In contrast to Huang Zunxian, Tao Qian provides little detail about his illustrious ancestors. 25. Kamachi, 27-8.

21. 22. 23. 24.

1O. THE LATE SATIRICAL POETRY

1. According to Qian Esun, since none of these poems are in YGB they must have been written after Huang's retirement. E.g., see RJL, 647, note 1. 2. For a discussion of this question, see Burton Watson, Early Chinese literature, 57-8, and Burton Watson, tr., The Tso Chuan, selections from China's oldest narrative history (New York, 1987), xxviii. 3. Feng's biography is contained in QSG, 246, 12689. 4. See RJL, 379, note 1. Since the poem does not refer to any events after Feng Zicai's victory, it gives one the feeling of having been drafted before the war's conclusion. Admittedly, this argumentum ah silentio is hardly conclusive. 5. Huang Jingren JtjprC, Liangdangxuan quanji MUtff^H (Shanghai, 1930), Saoye shanfang edition, 6, 7a. 6. Nienhauser, 446. Li Bai, 379, 06. 7. Ibid., 126, 01. 8. QSG, 462, 12730. 9. QSG, 462, 12731. 10. Wang Li, the greatest authority on Chinese prosody, lists only one example of rhyming couplets in his massive study. See Wang Li 3LjJ,Hanyu shiluxue JUSR" f # # * (Shanghai, 1958), 353. 11. The locus classicus of this expression may be Xiao Zixian, 7, 487. However, it may have been proverbial even back in the fifth century. 12. QSG, 462, 12728. Liang Qichao, Zhongguo sishinianlai dashiji 4*1110+^5fcfc ^ME (also known as Li Hongzhang ^ S U L ) , 45-6 in Yinbingshi heji, vol. 18, zhuanji, vol. 2. 13. A readily available source for the Latin text of this poem is K. P. Harrington, Mediaeval Latin (Chicago, 1962), 367. Refer to Harrington's note about the unusual rhyme pattern and meter of this work. A somewhat similar but much commoner rhyme pattern is found in "Stabat mater dolorosa" ("The sad Mother stood"), by the Franciscan author Jacopone da Todi (ca. 1228-1306), where groups of three rhymes emphasize the fervor of the supplicant's plea to suffer together with the crucified Jesus and his mother. See Harrington, 363. In "Dies irae" the rhyme pattern is AAA, BBB, CCC, etc., whereas in "Stabat mater dolorosa" the pattern is AAB, CCB, creating a pattern that can be seen to revert to duple form at the end of each group of six lines. By the mid-sixteenth century, "Dies irae" became an integral part of the Roman Catholic 33

Notes to pages 163-8

requiem mass and was frequently set to music; the two most famous examples are by Mozart and Verdi. An equally stirring setting of the Latin text is found in the Polish requiem (1980-4), by the contemporary Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki (1933-). 14. The only example of this practice in earlier poetry that could be found is Cen Shen's "Ballad of Running Horse River," translated in Marie Chan, Cen Shen, 98. According to Chan, Cen's use of this unusual rhyme structure heightens the vigor of the battle description. This poem is so unusual that it is commented on in the Qing anthology edited by Shen Deqian tfcSfH, Tangshi biecai JtfiNr^JSic (Shanghai, 1979), 1/166, and in Wang Li, 372. 15. Fan Wenlan ?£3UI!, Zhongguo jindai shi 4*IH&rfW& (Beijing, 1962), vol. 1, 255-716. The rhyme scheme is archaic, although it does occur in later poetry. See Wang Li, 362—79. The m endings have been lost in modern Mandarin but are retained in many southern dialects. For the phonetics of the Hakka dialect, see D. Maciver, A Chinese-English Dictionary, Hakka-Dialect (Shanghai, 1926), as

well as Beijing daxue zhongguo yuwen xuexi yuyanxue jiaoyan shi JtM^ClP

4 J S S g £ * t ? i § W # l « S , Fangyin zihui * W ? * (Beijing, 1962). As a

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

classical poet, Huang was thinking in terms of the traditional rhyming categories, but he could hardly help being influenced by the sounds of his own dialect. Dai Zongqian's biography is contained in QSG, 460, 12713, and Ding Ruchang's in ibid., 462, 12727. These finals are those of Tang-dynasty Chinese, but all have been retained in modern Hakka, only with the occasional confusion of k and t (note modern Hakka SI kwet, which had a final k). Li Bingheng's biography is contained in QSG, 467, 12765. QSG, 462, 12727-8. This view has been adopted in Fan Wenlan, vol. 1, 261-2. Unfortunately, Fan does not give his source. QSG, 462, 12728. The identity of the two Western advisers could not be ascertained, and their names have been left in Chinese transliteration. For example, see Yang Tianshi, 74. Yang has totally accepted Fan's interpretation of the events. A poem that Huang wrote in 1895 to commemorate a visit to the shrine of Shen Baozhen ifc^til (1820-79), one of the founders of China's modern navy and reformer of the government in Taiwan, would seem to prove that Huang strongly disapproved of Ding Ruchang's surrender. Huang wrote the following about Ding, in which he imagines a meeting between Ding and Shen Baozhen after their deaths: Like [the craven generals] Cao She and Li Zhi, Ding gasped weakly for breath, Beseeching our enemies to favor him with their pity. He said he was begging for the lives of his men, When he drafted his surrender document on imperial stationery. 332

Notes to pages 168- JJ

He feared your [Shen Baozhen's] anger would rise high as a mountain when you heard this, But spoke recklessly to fool you that he had not lost his ships! See RJL, 664. 24. See this chapter, note 16. The rhyming words of this poem belong to the following rhyming categories in the Guangyun JUS!:fivezhi "branch" jfc, six zhi "fat" IH, seven zhi "of" 3L, eight wei "fine" Wi, and twelve qi "orderly" ^f. Categoriesfive,six, and seven already rhymed in the seventh century; category eight was added by the time of Baijuyi; and rhyme twelve does not seem to have been used with these other rhymes until Song times. Thus, when viewed from a stricter use of rhymes, the rhyming of the poem is rather loose but still quite acceptable for ancient-style poetry in the late nineteenth century. 25. Chen Shou, 36, 943. 26. Wu's biography is found in QSG, 450, 12551. There is also much valuable material in Arthur W. Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing period (Taipei repr., 1970), 880. 27. QSG, 450, 12553. 28. Gu's account has been incorporated into RJL, 695. Another valuable source for this story is Gu Tinglong I l S t l , Wu Kezhai xiansheng nianpu ^'UrSfTfe^fe^ Iff (Beiping, 1935), 225-6, which states that Wu obtained the seal on the twenty-seventh of the eighth month of 1895. Unfortunately, Wu's incomplete autobiographical nianpu, quoted by Qian Esun, does not seem to have been published. 29. See RJL, 695. 30. Maclver, 220, 325, 743, 711? respectively. 31. A classic example would be the Han general Li Guang $ ) S . See Sima Qian, 109, 2876. 32. See Wu Xiuzhi %.f§Z. et al., Wuxian zhi %MM (Taipei repr., 1970), 66b, 4, 41, 1207. 33. DuMu, 311. 34. See the discussion in Anne Birrell, tr., New songs from a jade terrace (London, 1982), 9-13. 35. A concordance to Shih Ching, 19/93/1, "Chu qi dong men." 36. Accounts of the Boxer Rebellion in English are found in Chester C. Tan, The Boxer catastrophe (New York, 1965); Joseph W. Esherick, The origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley, 1987); and Peter Fleming, The siege of Peking (Oxford, 1983). Two valuable sources of documents in Chinese relevant to the uprising are Zhongguo shixue hui c | =l i35fe^i!', Yihetuan HfPHI, 4 vols. (Beijing, 1951),

and Guoxue dang'an ju g l p ^ H M , Yihetuan dang'an shiliao iifPlIlfefeifeS (Beijing, 1959). An excellent anthology of literature written in response to the events of the time is A Ying PRl^i, Gengzi shibian wenxue ji

M'f't'lSL^C^M;

(Beijing, 1959). 37. The long poem on Nie Shicheng referred to in Chapter 8, note 50, of this volume is a good example. 333

Notes to pages iyg-84 38. An example of Du Fu's satirical wit is "Ballad of the beauties" ("Lirenxing" M A^T), translated in Hawkes, Little primer, 26. 39. RJL, 942. 40. Zhu Mu ^ f t , Xinbian fangyu shenglan W\IS^f JWSMft, Song Xianchun sannian £^*£ (1267), Qing Kongshi Yuexuelou chaoben ?f ?LRK]it!tt!>*, 11, 7b-8a. 41. Tang Guizhang JifjfelS, Quan Songci ^S^iml (Beijing, 1965), 280. 42. For a discussion of Huang's use of allusions, see Schmidt, Stone Lake, 35—7. 11. THE POETIC REVOLUTION AND MODERN SCIENCE

1. A study of Darwin's scientific poetry is found in Maureen McNeil, "The scientific muse: The poetry of Erasmus Darwin," in L. J. Jordanova, ed., Languages of nature: Critical essays on science and literature (London, 1986), 159-203. A percep-

tive examination of the relation between science and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romanticism is found in Hans Eichner, "The rise of modern science and the genesis of Romanticism," PMLA 97 (1982), 8-30. 2. An English translation of modernism's manifesto is found in Marinetti: Selected writings, tr. R. W. Flint (New York, 1971), 39~45- Modernist attitudes toward traditional culture and modern technological society can be seen from the titles of some of Marinetti's other polemical writings translated in this volume: "Let's murder the moonshine," "Against past-loving Venice," "Multiplied men and the reign of the machine," "The new religion-morality of speed," and "Geometric and mechanical splendor and the numerical sensibility." 3. YangWanli, 34, 17a, 324. 4. Ibid. Needham discusses the pounder, or "spoon tilt-hammer," in his volume on mechanical engineering, but his earliest reference dates from 1313, whereas Yang's poem is almost two centuries earlier. See Joseph Needham, Science and civilization in China, vol. 4, pt. 2 (Cambridge, 1965), 363-5. 5. RJL, 831. The following discussion of science in Huang's poetry should be read together with Kung-chiian Hsiao, "K'ang Yu-wei's excursion into science," in Jung-pang Lo, 375-407. 6. Sima Qian, 83, 2476. Han Xizai's nightlife was the theme of a famous painting by Gu Hongzhong M ^ 1 ^ , who was secretly sent to Han's house by the Southern Tang ruler to witness Han's revelries and then paint a picture, for his master's enjoyment. A Song copy survives in the Beijing Palace Museum. See James Cahill,^4rc index ofearly Chinese painters and paintings (Berkeley 1980).

For the original story, see CSJGXB,Xuanhe huapu mflUltfiif, 7, 264b. 7. RJL, 802. 8. In addition to giving a correct explanation of thunder and lightning, the footnote is interesting for its attempt to prove that Indian Buddhists already understood the cause of these phenomena. We have seen Huang linking Buddhism with modern science in both his London fog poem and his poem on arrangingflowersin Singapore. 9. RJL, 808. 334

Notes to pages 184-gy 10. For the foreign origins of sweet potatoes and cotton, see Needham, vol. 6, pt. 2, 427-8. 11. RJL, 829. 12. RJL, 810. 13. RJL, 804. 14. RJL, 808. 15. For example, refer to Tao Qian's "Living idly on the ninth," in Tao Qian, 2, 16a. Also, refer to his line, "My empty room has sufficient leisure," in ibid., 2, 16b. 16. Sima Qian, 23, 2017. Chen Shou, 33, 875. 17. For the influence of Darwinism on Hardy's grim view of the universe, see Tess Cosslett, The "Scientific Movement" and Victorian literature (New York, 1982), 132-81. This book also contains essays about the influence of science on Tennyson, George Eliot, and Meredith. 18. SBCK, Wei Yingwu # H t / , Weijiangzhouji #?Xjt|H, 4, 5a, 27. 19. Su Shi, Dongpoji, 18, lb. 20. Guo Maoqian UMm, Yuefu shiji ^ D S t t H (Beijing, 1979), vol. 3, 72, 1026. 21. Although we cannot be sure of the sense oijin in Huang's title, when it is read in isolation from the poems that follow the word's meaning becomes clear from the contrast between gu "if ("ancient") in lines 5 and 6 and jin ^7* ("modern") in line 9 of poem I. 22. SBBY, Mengjiao Wft, Meng Dongye shiji S ^ W t t H (Taipei, 1966), 1, 6a. It is interesting to note that Meng Jiao's poem is in 69, 986, of the Yuefu shiji mentioned in note 20 to this chapter, and it is likely that Huang had read it recently, together with the poem cited in note 20, before he thought up the series. 23. Mengjiao had been a victim otfan'an much earlier. See Su Shi's poem on Meng, in Su Shi, Dongpoji, 9, lb. 24. RJL, 517. According to Qian Esun, this is a colophon in CB. 25. LiBai, 188,01. 26. LiBai, 796,01. 27. Yang Wanli, 23, 217b. 28. Yan Kejun JSc ^T^S, ed., Quan shanggu sandai Qin Han Sanguo Liuchao wen =ft^M^M/\%iX (Taipei, 1975), 28, 282a. 29. Chen Yuanlong ffi7CiI, ed., Yuding lidaifuhui fflSMftKH (Taipei, 1974), zhengji (shang),i%, lb. SBCK, Han Yu, 3, 38b. 12. QUATRAINS OF 1899 1. See the discussion of these poems in Shirleen Wong, 73-100. The best commentary on the series, not yet available when Wong did her work, is Wan Zunyi H ^ t t , Gong Zizhenjihai zashi zhu B § ^ E ^ J H I t # & , 2 vols. (Hong Kong, 1978). Where Wan's interpretations of individual poems differ from Wong, Wan has been followed. 2. YBS, 17. 3. In citations of Gong's jihai poems, the first number refers to the order in the

335

Notes to pages 19J-20J 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

entire series, the second to Wan, and the third to Wong. 104, 152, 21. Wan Zunyi, 153. 117, 173,90. 63,97,43. 96, 144, 98. Wong, 98. RJL, 824. Zhuang Zhou, 17/6/51. Li He ^%LiHeshisuoyin ^ S f # 3 ? 3 l , ed. Tang Wen if £ et al. (Jinan, 1984). ShenYue, 76, 1971. Li Bai, ed. Hanabusa Hideki, 072, 13. ShenYue, 93, 2279. The best complete translation is contained in James M. Hargett, "Boulder Lake poems: Fan Chengda's (1126-1193) rural year in Suzhou revisited," in Chinese literature: Essays, articles, reviews 10 (1988), 109-31. An earlier translation, into Victorian-style rhyming poetry, is Gerard Bullet, ThegoldenyearofFan Cheng-ta (Cambridge, 1946). See also the study with selected translations in Schmidt, Stone Lake, 80-6 and 155-8. However, some of these poems may not be the straightforward depictions of rural life in the Song manner they seem to be, and Qian Esun has suggested allegorical interpretations for a number of them. Thus, Qian says that our poem VI, in which Huang says he regrets not having enough land to build towers and pavilions in his gardens, is a lament for the Reform Movement's failure and the next poem expresses Huang's wish to revive his program of reform "in the future." Such allegorical interpretations may seem farfetched to Western readers, but they are not uncommon in the Chinese literary tradition. Unfortunately, none of the poems provides us enough context to either prove or disprove Qian's allegorical readings. RJL, 809. Refer to the partial translation of Yang Wanli's moon poem on page 192. RJL, 810. RJL, 844. Fan Chengda, 376. RJL, 832. RJL, 827. A concordance to Meng Tzu, 56, 7 B, 14, "Jinxin xia." These traditions are all recorded in Sima Qian, juan 1, and were already accepted by Zhou times, but Sima himself voiced concerns about inconsistencies in his sources of information about these early rulers, now generally regarded as mythical. 13. FIN DE SIECLE

1. RJL, 1075. 2. RJL, 826

336

Notes to pages 207-14 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

RJL, 1071. See Chow Tse-tsung, 493-510. Zheng Ziyu, Renjinglu congkao, 27. RJL, 1071. In this chapter the termfinde siecle is not used with any of the negative connotations suggested in some writings about late ninteenth-century European literature. To be more specific, no parallels between Huang Zunxian and the socalled French decadents are intended. 8. A good starting point for any study of Mahler would be the article on him in Stanley Sadie, ed., The new Grove dictionary of music and musical terms (Washing-

ton, D.C., 1980), 11, 501-31. 9. Leonard Bernstein, "Mahler: His time has come," Highfidelitymagazine (September 1967), 53. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Donald Jay Grout, A history of Western music (New York, 1973), 621. 13. Bernstein, 53. 14. Ibid., 51-2. 15. When asked about these lines, Qian Esun offered a very different (but provisional) translation: "The local people [i.e., the Chinese] hold a whip in their hand, / And drive him [the foreign missionary] off like a tiger or wolf." My translation has taken the term turen ("local people") to mean "Jews," with the third-person object-pronoun zhi referring to Jesus. Both translations produce an equally bizarre effect, and the possibility of taking the lines in two such totally different ways suggests the obscurity of Huang's language. 16. Huang's allusion to the consul's curly beard may not be as strange as it seems to us today, because some Japanese grew beards during the Meiji period, in imitation of contemporary Westerners. 17. RJL, 802. 18. RJL, 1075. 19. RJL, 1072. 20. RJL, 1249.

337

Bibliography

Since the number of publications about Huang Zunxian is already quite large, the following bibliography is limited, with only a few exceptions, to works cited in the notes. Bibliographies with a greater emphasis on history and politics are found in Wu Tianren, Kamachi, Wei Zhongyou, and the two works by Zhang Tangqi. For the abbreviations used in this bibliography, see the list at the beginning of the notes. Publication dates and places for Chinese language books in congshu cited there are not repeated here. A Ying W^S. Gengzi shibian wenxueji JSt~PW6l&llP^. Beijing, 1959.

Amituofojing WMV&ffiM. In Taisho, no. 366. Apel, Willi, ed. Harvard dictionary of music. Cambridge, Mass., 1974. Ayers, William. Chang Chih-tung and educational reform in China. Cambridge, Mass.,

Baijuyi &J£M.Baishi Changqingji 6 R H U H . In SBCK. Ban Gu WM.Hanshu Wktt. Beijing, 1962. Barth, Gunther P. Bitter strength: A history of the Chinese in the United States. Cam-

bridge, Mass., 1964. Bays, Donald H. China enters the twentieth century: Chang Chih-tung and the issues ofa new

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Bibliography Guo Yanli SCJSIt. "Ruhe pingjia jindai shiren Jin He" Shehui Kexue Zhanxian tt## 14°> 205-6 Meng Haoran, 112 Mengjiao, 189—90 meter, 59—60, 165-6 Miao Rebellion, 154 "The midautumn moon," 178-80, 300-1 Mill, John Stuart, 23 Mito School, 23 "Mixed emotions," 13, 223-5 "Modern parting," 32, 72, 186-91, 269-72 modernism, 181

Okochi Teruna, 103 "The old charcoal seller," 144 "On climbing the Eiffel Tower," 33, 122, 130-1, 137, 203, 275-7 "On the evening that our ship moored at Port Said, it rained for the first time in six months," 277 "On the road to Wuqing," 151-3, 229 "On the twenty-first of the seventh month the foreign Allied Army attacks our capital," 177-8, 300 Opium War, 9-10, 55, 95, 137, 144 "An outing to Seven Stars' Cliff," 256 Ouyang Xiu, 128-9 Palace Poetry, 176 Pan Yue, 194 Paradise lost, 60

paradisial allusions, 98, 107, 120-2, 178, 212

"A parting poem for Zhang Sijing that I also showed to Chen Yuanzhuo," 231 "Peach Blossom Spring," 111 "The peacock flies southeast," 154, 156

352

Index Peloponnesian Wars, 159 Peng Lingzhao, 179 Pergamum Altar, 209 "Picking snowy plum flowers under candlelight," 79 "The pleasures of army life," 12 Poems of the thousand masters, 6 "Poems of Yixuan," 147 Poetic Revolution, x, 47-8, 56-7, 59, 68, 73,76,91,96,214 poetry of ideas, 146-51 Poetry of Mysterious Language, 147 Poetry talkfrom an Ice-Drinker's Studio, 47, 76 Pope, Alexander, 92, 144 Pound, Ezra, 47, 73 Praxitiles, 209 Puccini, 210 Qian Esun, xii, 52, 65, 67, 76, 82, 86-7, 97, 100, 113, 115-6, 118-9, 1 39~4° 160, 188-9, X94> 2 O 5 Qianlong emperor, 10, 41, 144 Qin Shihuang, 178 Qiu Fengjia, 42 Qiu Weixuan, 57 Qu Yuan, 51 quatrains, 104, 106 "Reactions to an ocean journey," 242 Reactions to Hong Kong, 95—102, 116, 118, 121, 132, 137, 176, 183, 226-8 "Reclining Buddha of Ceylon," 43, 118-20, 122, 131, 134, 212, 266-8 Record ofholding the carriage reins, 94 "A record of events," 40 "A record of events," 138-42, 247-52 "A record of what I saw on the fifth," 145 Recorded occasions in Song poetry, 80 Records of the Grand Historian, 52, 64 Reform Movement, ix, 36, 37, 40-2, 177, 179, 196, 213 regulated poetry, 59, 81, 83, 87-8, 95, 106, 116, 151, 153, 177-80 "Returning from a distant land," 30 "Returning home after the disorder," 10 rhymes, 160—4, !66, 168, 171 "Riding a boat downstream," 87, 96, 258—9 Romeo andJuliet, 181 Rousseau,Jean Jacques, 22 Ruanji, 143

sanqu, 76 satire, 140-1, 143-6, 150-80, 177-82 Schiller, J. C. F. von 205 science, 181-94 Second Opium War, 10 Second symphony (Resurrection), 210 "Seeing off Younger Sister," 174, 220-1 Self-strengthening Movement, ix, 15, 18, 30-1 Self-strengthening Society, 36 "Sending off Li Zhou in the evening rain, 187 "Sending off Su Zhe on an embassy to the Tartars," 187-8 "Sent to my daughter," 174-6, 211-3, 292-4 Shenjiazhe, 104 Shigeno Yasutsugu, 23 Shinto, 108, 113 Shun, 205 Sima Xiangru, 143 Sino-French War, 5, 75, 159 Sino-Japanese War, ix, 42, 92, 130, 15973,212 Smith, Sir Cecil C, 34 Social Darwinism, 37, 137, 185 Society for Southern Studies, 38 "A song of cherry blossoms," 110-13, 115, 116, 139, 146, 233-5 "The song of eternal regret," 154 "A song of falling blossoms in the Western Suburbs," 111-2 "Song of Yuanyuan," 154 Song poetry, 62, 79-92, 109, 183, 185, 192 song-art, 64 Songsfor attending kindergarten, 67-8 "Songs of the Taiping Rebels," 12, 151, 218 Sophocles, 101 "South Mountain," 60-1, 129 The speeches of the states, 64 Stalin, 136 Study Hall for Contemporary Affaris, 38 Su Shi, 51-2, 82-3, 86, 87, 90, 96, 121, 179, 187-9 Su Wu, 193 SuZhe, 87, 96, 187-8 "A sudden rainstorm at sea," 255-6 "The Suez Canal," 277 Sun Cho, 147 Sun Yatsen, 4

353

Index Sutra in forty-two chapters, 70 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 209 Taiping guangji, 121 Taiping Rebellion, ix, 9-12, 145, 150, 152, *54 Taizong, 97 The tale o/Genji, 24 Tan Sitong, 38-40, 42, 214 tanci, 6 2 - 4 Tang, 4 8 - 9 Tang Caichang, 38 Tao Hongjing, 98 Tao Qian, 16, 52, 84, 111, 156, 186, 189 Tasso, 159 "Ten thousand-word memorial," 36 "Thinking of Xiao Guangtai on a spring evening," 228 Thucidydes, 159 Tianjin Massacre, 15 Tongzhi emperor, 152 "The tragic fate of mankind," 179-80 transfer allusions, 98-100, 107-8, 122-7 transliterated foreign terms, 69-70, 105-6 Treaty of Shimonoseki, 36 "A trip to Lake Abundant," 81-2, 221-2 "Trying to cheer myself up," 265 Twain, Mark, 29, 141 "Twenty years old," 13 Vergil, 147 vernacular language, 62, 65, 84, 157 Vernacular Literature Movement, x, 65 Victoria, Queen, 99, 101 Vimalakirti sutra, 112, 117 Virgil, 159 "A visit to Hak one," 85-6, 116, 127-8, 235-8 Wang Anshi, 90, 186 Wang Gengjin, 146 Wang Guoyuan, 52 Wang Kangnian, 36, 38 Wang Niansun, 8 Wang Tao, 24, 103, 141 WangTong, 197 Wang Xianqian, 39 Wang Wei, 90 Washington, George, 36, 204-5 Watson, Burton, 159 Wei Yingwu, 90, 187

Wei Yuan, 8, 144-5, l4& Wen Tingshi, 36 Weng Tonghe, 37 "When I was about to leave for Japan, I wrote this on a half-length photograph of myself, which I mailed to friends," 21 "Where Snakes Slide Back," 86 Wilhelm Tell, 205 Wisdom scripture in eight thousand verses, 97 Women, 173-7 Wong, Shirleen, 160, 198-9 "Written on a gate tower after I visited the shrine at Mount Heng, where I spent the night at Holy Peak Temple," 194 Wu, 4 8 - 9 Wu Changshi, 171 Wu Dexiao, 88 Wu Fangji, 74 Wu Sangui, 154 Wu Dacheng, 170-3 Wu Weiye, 59, 154 Xia Cengyou, 52, 69 Xianfeng emperor, 49 Xiangji, 107 "The Xiangguo Temple," 94 Xie An, 83 Xie Lingyun, 52 Xiong Xiling, 38 Xu Shen, 52 Xu Xi, 170 Xu Xun, 147 Xue Fucheng, 31, 34 Xunhuan ribao, 103 YanFu, 37, 70, 186 Yan Ruoqu, 8 Yan Yan, 169 Yang Wanli, 66, 79, 80-5, 87-8, 182, 192, 201 Yang Yi, 86 Yao, 205 Ye Zhichao, 162 Ye, Miss, 9 Yin-yang School, 133 yongshishi, 130 Yoshida Shoin, 42 Yoshikawa Kqjiro, 79-80, 85, 147 You Tong, 63, 118-9 Yu, 205

354

Index Yuan Chang, 31, 41 Yuan Hongdao, 49 Yuan Mei, 49, 80 Yuanyuan, 154 yue'ou, 63-4 Zeng Guangren, 48 Zeng Guofan, ix, 48 Zhang Fei, 169 Zhang Hua, 99 Zhang Lei, 90 Zhang Sigui, 110 Zhang Zhidong, ix, 30, 35, Zhao Ping, 186 Zhao Yi, 80, 129 Zheng He, 119

Zheng Xuan, 52, 100 Zheng Zhen, 154 Zhiqian, 117 Zhou, Duke of, 198 Zhou Gun, letter to, 50-4, 63 Zhou Shuren, 208 Zhou Zuoren, 208-9, 214 ZhuMu, 178, 180 ZhuXi, 7-8, 90, 197 Zhuangzi, 199-200 Zhuge Liang, 173 ZongBing, 199-200 ZongQue, 199 Zongli yamen, 30-1, 103 ZouYang, 183 ZuDi, 172

355